Were the Manson Family Killings planned to sabotage the peace movement?

So, the end of the sixties. We're in Vietnam, and public opinion for the war is at a new low. Protests and peaceniks and people with flowers in their hair, going around saying, "We don't like the Man, and the way things are going. Let's do something about it.". Love ins, and rallies and civil rights marches. Nonviolent resistance, mean while, the Establishment is going about burning down villages and civilians in 'Nam and saying they're winning the hearts and minds of the average man in the hut out in Son My.

They started to look bad. Things were looking like they might not go smoothly any more for the Machine. The Establishment needed a scapegoat, anyone to take the attention off of what they were up to. The right man for the job? Charlie Manson. A small time crook and ex-con, who some how manages to convince a dozen or two of people that he's Jesus. Not only that, but he convinces them that Jesus wants them to kill Roman Polanski's wife. A very high profile target, a pregnant movie star.

Well, the official account is that under Manson's orders, Tex Watson and the other members of the family went up to that house that night and slaughtered those people. They were on methedrine, a then legal medication with stimulant properties. Well, they smeared blood on the walls, and just turned to place into an abatoir. Blood, viscera everywhere. "Healter Skelter" smeared on the walls, a misspelling of the Beatles song.

Now, why would Manson risk his groovy position of having a bunch of willing cult broads? I look at Tex Watson, the all american football player from Texas who joined Manson's cult. Maybe he was working for the government. Have him lead these dumb, drugged out hippies to murder and depravity. He was doing the stabbing those nights. Or maybe he was just a psycho. I watched him on "The 700 Club", a hive of awful television programming. He claimed to be a reborn again Christian. Naturally, he put all the blame on Manson and the drugs. No personal responsibility for his own actions.

It just seems so convenient. When the Establishment needed a figure with which to justify their desire to ostracize the group that annoyed them, they had it. A figurehead behind which they could convict and crucify the entire hippie movie.

That man was Charlie Manson.

reply to post by Grifter42


There is a rumor that Charles Manson is a MK ULTRA victim

I have thought about this same thing many times and honestly, it seems very likely.

Manson was no fool, just a misfit who was out of place in the consumer society. He was also a good songwriter. A man as smart as him with the potential to spread the words of his mind through population was dangerous, as dangerous as the movements. In all reality Charles Manson embodied a small sliver of each aspect of the peace movement. The perfect scapegoat.

reply to post by Grifter42


Well in one way or another that horrid little man killed flower power. The 60s ended on a very dark note indeed.

I will not even speak his name nor will I speak the name of that other horrid little man who murdered John Lennon.

Lennon's death is certainly very suspicious. I do not think they brainwashed that murderer to do it. I think they blackmailed him.

reply to post by Revolution9


The media killed flower power. By putting the entire hippie movement on trial when it should have been about one lunatic living with a bunch of other gullible fools. This was around the time My Lai was breaking as a news story, about a year after it happened in '68.

They certainly played up the image of some cinematic villain, made him look good to hate. They could have been talking about the piles of massacred civilians over in 'Nam, about William Calley and the brutality that was occurring, dehumanizing people. But the story of Americans dying, why, that's too sensational to pass up. Who cares if a hundred vietnamese men, women, and children are gunned down in cold blood. Who cares if a thousand, even.

The human brain has a nasty way of trivializing the death of others outside of their tribal structure. But for some reason, people care a lot about the people on the silver screen. I guess since they see them every day, they become attached. They care about whether or not they live or die. But some faceless number, it doesn't really sink in until you think about it a moment. Or maybe it doesn't sink in at all.

A genuine American war criminal, William Calley. Where's that branch of the law? He got a trivial sentence. If the other side had won, he'd be facing a tribunal and an execution. Instead, he's out walking the streets. I wouldn't trust him knowing what he's done. A man who could kill like that would be a person to avoid.

I believe so and I also wrote a thread along the same lines, although my premise is different. It wasn't just the peace movement they wanted to derail, but a "spiritual awakening," for lack of a better phrase, of the entire population. I believe this thread teeters on the brink of ATS's TOS but it is still around, probably because no one ever replied to it.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

This is an excellent, and quite original post. I have always thought that the Manson story was just strange and didn't make much sense, now your theory makes a lot of sense to me.

We need to find out if any of the perpetrators or victims had any connection to intelligence, as that seems to be a common thing with conspiracies of this type I have read about or heard on coast to coast. One of the people always has a connection to someone on the inside, who thinks they would be a good patsy.

i think it possible that the manson murders were planned to further an agenda , but i think the manufactured drugs had a severely bad reaction to mansons character . i do think that the harder drugs coupled with the heavier mood that fell over that generation were created by a hidden hand.

You ever just look someone in the eyes and there's something wrong about them? Tex Watson, man. Now, his eyes are dead. Look like shark's eyes. And from this predator's mouth, he spouts claims of complete repentance. Of finding Christ and remorse in jail.

Why is it that Tex, being an all american football player, didn't incite a witch hunt in the all american foot ball player community? I mean, even if Charlie told them to do what they did, he was an ex-con. They were allegedly normal people. But normal people don't do that.

It just has... hinky feelings all around. There's been so much media B.S. spinned around it that it's hard to separate myth from fact. I was reading Helter Skelter, and Bugliosi describes a part in which he's at court, and Manson looks at him, and Bugliosi looks down at his watch, and it's stopped. Oh, sure. Go on, pull the other leg. He's an ex-con! Not a wizard. One guy from a broken home manages to demonize the entire hippie movement. Just doesn't seem right.

I don't really classify Manson as a hippie, anyway. He's not some Haight Ashbury type. He was a criminal. Too prone to impulsive, destructive behavior to be a hippie. But the media picked up on his long hair and there ya go. They have the guy they needed to make the peace culture look bad.

Wondered such myself. What you are asking,may have just been part of a bigger picture. According to the book/movie "Helter Skelter" Manson to the effect of "wanted kill the Hippy", and as a known quote, " I was a beatnik in the '50s before the hippies came along. " Yet it was pushed that he was a representative of the culture. What better deception, case in point media manipulation, for one agenda or another there became use of the case, such as kill off the movement.

Funny that I heard an interview today with the author of a new book on Manson.

His take was that Charlie had a group of followers he said would become rich and famous. He tried to get his music recorded but failed.

As a cult leader he couldn't allow failure and people started to leave his cult. So he devised the killings as a way to keep himself on top by starting the race war he preached would happen.

So it seems from my take on the authors point of view that if he had been talented enough to record his music the murders would not have been necessary.

I think there very well could be something to this idea. It is a very interesting one.

I find some of the conspiracy theories regarding the 60's and the hippies to be particularly interesting. There is a theory going that the entire 60's counter-culture movement was an experiment started by the government.

It is known that they were involved in psychedelic research with MKUlTRA, including testing on unwitting american citizens.

Manson is a little too convenient a figure at a time when the hippy movement (which the government may have begun) was growing into something they may have had a hard time controlling / containing.


And to whomever said that it was the media to blame for killing the spirit of the 60's, not some plot by "The Powers That Be".... who do you think runs the media, if not TPTB?

Revolution9
reply to post by Grifter42

 

Lennon's death is certainly very suspicious. I do not think they brainwashed that murderer to do it. I think they blackmailed him.

Not quite sure how you could come to that conclusion, especially with some of his behavior. There was a lot of weirdness going on with his (MDC's) behavior prior to, the day of, and in his account after the fact, of Lennon's murder.

Sure, those could be taken as signs of mental illness.... but IDK if that idea is entirely compatible with the notion of a more sane gunman operating due to blackmail. What form would this blackmail have taken? One would have to have something that they feared being taken away (or feared being revealed) more than fear for their own life, to do something like that. And I have a hard time seeing MDC as fitting that kind of profile, with what I remember about him....

Chapman strikes me as an attention seeker. He killed John Lennon to become him. To steal a fraction of his fame. It's pitiful how a fat lump like that could kill one of the most iconic musicians of all time. It's possible that there was some sort of plot, but I've always thought Chapman was legitimately nuts. That he did it for his own reasons that only made sense to himself.

God, Chapman makes lunatics look bad. When I think of poor Johnny Hinckley serving time for shooting Reagan, I think, "There's a man with at least decent intentions.". He wanted Jodie Foster's love, and thought Reagan was a tyrant. Q.E.D., to impress Jodie Foster, he had to shoot Ronald Reagan. Chapman's thought process was that he loved John Lennon, so he had to shoot John Lennon. One has at least a slight basis in reality.

On the subject of assassins, what do you folks make of Squeaky Fromme's attempt on Gerald Ford's life?
She went to a rally with a pistol, allegedly intent on shooting Ford. So she drew her gun, and pointed it at him. She did not fire, however, and was tackled by secret service. Once again, very convenient for the establishment. Ford probably got a nice boost in public opinion before he did or said something stupid and blew it.

Weirdly I just lurked this page yesterday while on a side-track for a history paper, unaware of any news/media stuff and then I find out he's dead on Facebook.

Not saying anything huge but just one of many weird things/coincidences that have happened today (this one not at all related to my personal life though)