Bobby Fischer , a victim?

[AlanLlewellyn]

i can't say my source but it rings true.

[Chris Goodall]

the russians declared him an enemy of the people its like putting money on his head, other people they have done so include trotsky alekhine and JFK.

You didn't answer the question. From whom was Fischer experiencing such "duress" in the late 1990s, several years after the collapse of Soviet communism, that he was forced to damn every Jewish person in the world in pretty graphic terms to avoid being murdered? "The Russians" is not an answer. There are many Russians.

[AlanLlewellyn]

duress is psychological in nature-i dont expect you to understand mental illness or the effects of bad karma on the psyche or the constant threat of a death scentence applied to a person. in 1992 Bobby thought it was all over like the end of the soviet union was the end of the fatwah but he soon found out the press were still out to get him and he was informed the fatah was still be operated on by the russians. Their have been many instances of people killed by the russian security forces or do you deny this.

[AlanLlewellyn]

my intentions to bobby are entirely 100% honourable, i think we should speak up when we see horror perpetuated by a nation on an individual.

[NickFaulks]

From 1995 at the latest Bobby Fischer had just one big enemy. We know who that was.

[AlanLlewellyn]

i myself am a socialist, russia likes socialists and hates libertarians, but i have been outspoken against the worst excesses of socialist ppower and in the chess terms i am extraordinarily pro-western. I think i also bring an understanding of the russian people unusually for a pro-western person, and I seek to bring both sides together not devide and conquer. I seek a strong russia and a strong west and i wont do so by sacrificing my high morals on the alter of expediency by ignoring Fischers plight.

[Chris Goodall]

So to summarise:

Fischer, a staunch anti-communist, beat Mark Taimanov 6-0 in the Candidates match. The Soviets respond by cancelling Taimanov. They un-cancel him after Fischer does the same to Bent Larsen. They allow Spassky to defend his title against Fischer in Iceland, rather than in Moscow, and don't cancel Spassky for losing the title match.

Instead, someone in the Brezhnev administration decides that the prestige of Soviet chess can only be restored by literally assassinating the man who took their world title away, thus forever ending the possibility of defeating him on the chessboard, and issues a "fatwa" against Fischer.

Despite the existence of this fatwa, FIDE - in which the USSR is by far the loudest voice - carries out protracted negotiations with Fischer to defend his title against Karpov. FIDE agree to some of Fischer's demands but not others, Karpov wins by default, and no-one assassinates Fischer. On the contrary, the Soviets are disappointed that their new champion didn't get the chance to prove himself by beating the old champion, and send Karpov on a gruelling tournament world tour to silence the doubters.

17 years later, Fischer plays Spassky again in Yugoslavia. Despite the existence of the fatwa, and the chaos of the civil war in Yugoslavia, and despite Fischer no longer being able to count on the protection of the USA, no-one assassinates Fischer. Whoever ordered the fatwa is now sitting in a comfortable retirement home, a long way from the new Russian government under Yeltsin, and unable to bestow any political favour upon the person who carries out the fatwa.

The Yeltsin administration considers whether to lift the fatwa, and decides against it. Even though they agree with everything Fischer ever said about the communists. Even though the Soviet chess machine in its dying days had far more prominent critics than Fischer. Even though Fischer has seemingly fallen out with America, and publicly converting him to the New Russia cause would be a propaganda triumph.

Even though the man who claimed Fischer's title by default is once again FIDE world champion, and would be a strong favourite if the Russians could somehow coax Fischer to finally play the match that never was for the title that Fischer still insists is his.

For some reason, it remains the duty of all Russians to retrospectively avenge the defunct Soviet chess association by murdering Fischer.

However, Fischer has a get-out clause: his life will be spared if he remembers to regularly denounce the entire Jewish population of the world. Including the state of Israel, which has just resumed diplomatic relations with Yeltsin's government after the USSR severed them in the wake of the Six-Day War. It has never previously been necessary for Fischer to criticise the Jews in order to save his own neck, but it is now.

"The media" gets hold of this private information from Moscow and communicates it to Fischer, and only to Fischer. Despite the sensational nature of this news they've uncovered - Russian plot to assassinate former world chess champion! - not one media outlet thinks it a good idea to break the story of this fatwa to the public.

But Fischer understands the message perfectly, and goes on a long rant about the Jews.



...Alan, have you considered any alternative scenarios to the above? Any alternative explanations for Fischer's behaviour?

For example:

Fischer, an unimportant retired chess player who had always believed America good, Russia bad, found himself wanted by America on charges of sanction-busting and tax evasion. Unable to accept that the America he knew would persecute him for something as trivial as breaking the law, he concluded that the America he knew must have been taken over by Jewish interests. In Russia, this merely confirmed what everyone had always said about Fischer: that his brain was empty of everything except chess.

Which of those sounds more likely to you?

[AlanLlewellyn]

what sounds plausable to me is the media you rely on and i rely on for the truth in public affairs has been infiltrated by communists who seek a return to communism and are perpetrating a plan to prepare the west for the return to communism and undermining all russian pro western forces calling them both nazi and communist at the same time. that is indeed what is happening in ukraine which has pro-communist not anti-communist bias and the media are telling us what we want to hear over ukraine.

[AlanLlewellyn]

it may sound like a james bond movie but...

[Chris Goodall]

That is all terribly interesting, but the title of the thread is "Bobby Fischer, a victim?" not "has the media been infiltrated by communists?" so I must again invite you to state clearly where I have mischaracterised your Fischer theory, if I have done so?

[AlanLlewellyn]

you are meant to think fischer is the uncle jewish raging anti-semite by the press. The chances that the only western chess player to humiliate a russian player just happening to be such are incredibly small and the coincidence that he happens to have humiliated the russians and that magnus has recently done the same and almost disappeared should ring alarm bells everywhere but it wont because of the morons governed entirely by the press.

[NickFaulks]

and that magnus has recently done the same and almost disappeared

There were plenty of sightings at the Olympiad a few weeks ago.

[Chris Goodall]

you are meant to think fischer is the uncle jewish raging anti-semite by the press.

You don't mean to say that the press took Fischer's claim (in response to a question about chess) that the Jews invented the Holocaust to make money, and reported it in a way that made it seem anti-Semitic? Cor, typical media, eh.

[AlanLlewellyn]

Agenda Agenda Agenda are you even for the world anyway chris or are you for control of man as it seems.

[AlanLlewellyn]

revolutions dont always prove successful as i am about to prove