I knew Oswald was the accused assassin, but I had no idea how aggressively he advertised his communist beliefs before November 1963.

The guy literally wrote to the Soviet Union asking for citizenship, saying: “I am a communist and a worker, I have lived in a decadent capitalist society where the workers are slaves”. He defected to Russia in 1959 thinking he’d find an ideal Marxist society.

Back in the US, he didn’t exactly keep a low profile:

  • July 1963 – Lectured a group of Jesuits in Alabama about Marxism, confirming he was a Marxist (though he admitted he was disillusioned with the USSR)
  • August 1963 – Appeared on New Orleans radio debating anti-communists, where he admitted he was a Marxist and defended Castro’s Cuba
  • Summer 1963 – Handed out pro-Castro “Hands Off Cuba!” leaflets on the streets of New Orleans and was arrested for disturbing the peace

He also attempted to assassinate anti-communist General Edwin Walker in April 1963—months before Kennedy—and left a note for his wife suggesting he expected to be caught or killed.

Now here’s the twist that blew my mind: many researchers and even some government investigations have suggested Oswald was set up as a fall guy. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979 that JFK’s murder was probably the result of a conspiracy. Jim Garrison (the New Orleans DA whose investigation inspired the film JFK) built a case that Oswald was deliberately framed by US intelligence elements. Some conspiracy theories claim Oswald was an “innocent fall guy” who played no knowing role, while others suggest he was a CIA asset set up to take the blame.

The guy was basically walking around telling everyone he was a communist, getting into debates, handing out leaflets, and even trying to kill an anti-communist general—then suddenly he’s the lone gunman who killed the president? And he gets murdered by Jack Ruby before he can talk?

I’m not saying I believe any particular theory, but the timeline is absolutely wild.

  • Jorvex609@piefed.zipOPEnglish
    6·
    4 days ago

    I just heard it on “Michael Parenti - The JFK Assassination: The Gangster Nature of the State”

    • TankieTanuki [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      13·
      4 days ago

      Maybe you missed some other important context from that lecture.

      @17:50

      Lee Harvey Oswald spent most of his adult life not as a lonely drifter, but directly linked to the US intelligence community. At the age of 18 in the US Marines, he had [a] secret security clearance and he was working at Marine air control in Atsugi base in Japan. Atsugi was a top secret base where the CIA launched some of its U2 flights, and did other kinds of covert operations in China.

      The next year at the age of 19 he was assigned to El Toro air station in California with security clearance to work radar. And here, certain strange things began to happen. He emerged as a babbling Russophile and Soviet communist. He started playing Russian language records at blast level in his barracks. He started addressing his fellow Marines in Russian. He read Russian books and touted Soviet communism as, quote, “the best system in the world”. He called his fellow Marines “comrades”.

      Now, the US Marine Corps in 1958 was not exactly known as [a] bastion of liberal tolerance and free thinking. My buddy Bernard Livingston wrote a book called Closet Red; he tells of his experience in the army where they had to filter out anybody who had funny opinions—who had pinko-ish opinions or whatever else—they had to be reported. [Livingston tells] that the army constantly, and I’m sure the Marines [too], constantly surveil[ed] anybody who might outspokenly or actively begin to say, or act, certainly, in the way he did.

      But in this instance? Oswald’s Marine commanders didn’t mind. He kept his security clearance. He kept all the radar records. He could see what was going in and out and knew all about the things that were happening there—a wealth of sensitive radar information and other highly sensitive information from sensitive bases—black operations, as they were called.

      @31:49

      Once back in Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald settles in under the wing of one George de Mohrenschildt, a right-wing Russian with CIA ties. And this begins a whole pattern that goes on in Dallas and New Orleans, namely, forays out into the public eye as a leftist. He starts a one person Fair Play for Cuba organization in New Orleans [and] never recruits another member. In all his time in New Orleans and in Dallas he never once contacts a single member of the communist party or any other left organization, although he writes lots of letters to the Communist Party USA and the Socialist Worker’s Party, two groups which at that time that weren’t even talking to each other: “Dear comrades, how are you? We fight forward and we go on. Yes, what should I do?” and this and that, “Send me instructions”, you know.

      He blazes a trail. Local TV, fistfights, inflammatory incidents, leaflets. One of the leaflets showed that his organization was on Camp St. [in] the very same building that Guy Banister had his office (Guy Banister was an FBI agent), and a whole bunch of other Cuban émigré right-wing groups were there.

      And his personal relations were with right-wing anti-communist Cubans, or with right-wing crypto-fascists, or CIA-types, or others. So while he was supposedly was this “leftist”—and if you ever heard any of the tapes of him speaking and explaining what communism was or what socialism was, it’s laughable. It’s this little rote, superficial thing—while he was a “leftist”, in fact, all his personal associations were with right-wing people linked to the intelligence community.