Newsindhs.com l Independent News Desert Hot Springs
July 22, 2019
Paul Krassner, Desert Hot Springs resident has died.
“Paul Krassner, the publisher, author and radical political activist on the front lines of 1960s counterculture who helped tie together his loose-knit prankster group by naming them the Yippies, died Sunday in Southern California, his daughter said.
Krassner died at his home in Desert Hot Springs, Holly Krassner Dawson told The Associated Press. He was 87 and had recently transitioned to hospice care after an illness, Dawson said. She didn’t say what the illness was.”
The Realist was a pioneering magazine of “social-political-religious criticism and satire”, intended as a hybrid of a grown-ups version of Mad and Lyle Stuart’s anti-censorship monthly The Independent.Edited and published by Paul Krassner, and often regarded as a milestone in the American underground or countercultural press of the mid-20th century, it was a nationally-distributed newsstand publication as early as 1958. Publication was discontinued in 2001.
Conspiracy Theories
The Realist was the first satirical magazine to publish conspiracy theories. It was the first magazine to carry Mae Brussell’s work on conspiracies, which covered the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, the Watergate scandal, the assassination of JFK and other conspiracy theories.
When the magazine ran into financial difficulties in the 1970s, it was the conspiracy theory element that attracted ex-Beatle John Lennon to donate; saying, “If anything ever happens to me…it won’t be an accident.”
Featured image courtesy of http://paulkrassner.com/
