From: U54778@uicvm.uic.edu
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: Re: Oswald's Motive?
Date: 4 Sep 92 07:01:45 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago

In article <1992Sep2.120322.22761@ncsu.edu>, FIELD1@NIEHS.bitnet (Jack Field)
says:
>
>One of the things virtually no one has ever been able to determine was
>Oswald's motive for assassinating JFK.  In this book, Mr. Brown speculates
>the opposite.
> If Oswald was truly a disgruntled Communist as the Warren Report would like
>everyone to believe (although in Oswald's own words, he was a Marxist not a
>Communist), it would be to Oswald's advantage to keep JFK alive not to kill
>him.  JFK already had a reputation of being "soft" on communism; the Berlin
>Wall crises, arms agreement with USSR, Bay of Pigs incident, etc.  Since JFK
>had publicly stated the plan to withdraw 1,000 advisors from Viet Nam by the
>end of 1963 and privately stated he wanted the US completely out by 1965 and
>if we follow the predominate belief of the period that if we did pull
> out all of Southeast Asia would fall to the Communist.
The whole idea of a Communist sympathizer killing Kennedy for political
>purposes is absurd.
>
Nice exposition on the book, Jack.  I've been hearing about this book for
several days now and will hunt it down.
The idea of LHO as a commie sympathizer inflamed into a fever dream of
killing JFK for essentially political purposes is not as absurd as it is
portrayed here.  An author, Jean Davison, wrote a book in 1983 called
"Oswald's Game" in where she proposes that LHO indentified with Castro as
a Marxist rebel, as opposed to the Soviet bureaucrat he found in Russia, and
was inflamed by radio and newspaper accounts of Castro accusing the U.S.
of plots to kill him, also mentioning that they could stand a dose of their
own medicine.  According to Davison, this pivotal exposure was enough to
send LHO on to his fateful destiny.
By ignoring many, many other incongruities in this case and just focusing
on LHO's possible motive, her contention is well covered in her work and
can't be ignored.  But as with all speculation around this case, it is not
with out problems.
Paul Hoch, in his EOC, has pointed out that if we are to follow Davison's
path and take a close look at what LHO was reading and being influenced by
we can also look at the articles in the Daily Worker which LHO subscribed to
which had several writers analyzing the Cuban problem in a way that
emphatically was sympathetic to JFK and his stances towards Cuba/Castro.
The writers go out of their way to enlist their readers to support JFK's
more moderate stances over the hard core right which was openly calling
for another invasion.  Just what portion of what LHO was reading should we
rely upon for evidence of motive?
Though we can't ignore Davison's thesis and she presents it well, Hoch has
revealed the tenuousness of it's core connection.  With out further support
from others at the scene, this core contention is just as plausible as any
of its opposing contenders.

But further thought should also pluck more substance from such a speculation.
If LHO was caught up in some fever dream of being a Marxist rebel hero
killing the leader of the Capitalist world, then I would expect this
behavior of his to be present through all of his travails before he was
cut down by Ruby.  One could plausibly expect LHO to plan his assassination
in such a way as to get away with it without being caught.  The WC version
of LHO is not bereft of some cunning.  But once he was caught and such
items as the rifle was connected to him, I would expect him to follow others
who were of the same mold and scream "Death to all tyrants" or some such
from his cell.  One can't be a Marxist hero unless the world knows one's
Marxist deeds.  Doesn't this fit better the WC profile of LHO?  Isn't it
evident that the WC was befuddled on the question of motive precisely
because he doesn't fit this mold?
There are also numerous problems with LHO as a dyed in the wool Marxist
as presented in the WC profile.  For someone who has all these scenes of
obvious communist sympathies, LHO is seen hanging around with the wrong
type of people.  And beyond this, what I have personnally found absent in
both pro and anti-WC writer/researchers is the other side of the coin.
Why isn't there more substantial connections to leftist organizations in
the Dallas and New Orleans areas?  I have interviewed persons who were
active in the leftist movements of those times, in those areas and they
were always amazed that no one, and that's an absolutely no one, could
remember anyone who had any contact with LHO.  With all his posturing such
as his passing out leaflets, he never made any move to contact those who
would have gladly been out there with him on the pavement.  When critics
paint these posturings as phony attempts to fix LHO's public mask, they
have a lot of weight behind these contentions.
No, this aspect of motive is an enigma as long as one tries to continue
to keep the illusion of LHO as a lone nut assassin.  As soon as one
frees up one's mind to other possibilities and admits that this angle of
motive is weak, other scenarios of LHO as a patsy or part of a conspiracy
left holdiing the bag becomes much stronger as a key to tie many of the
strange and baffling pieces together into scenarios that hold up better
under close scrutiny.
ALAN ROGERS