Here’s how I’d paraphrase a comment in the new documentary film on Americans who refused to believe in morality, and struck out violently to prove they only can be self-judged:

…reading Ayn Rand meant we were extremely anti-JFK, saw him as our arch-villain. US Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was going to be the hero of my novel when he became ‘disenchanted’ with the US, defected to the USSR, then jumped up and shot the President. It was very weird…

What’s missing is the actual connection from this guy looking for notoriety, in his admittedly otherwise empty search for meaning of life, to an event that meant a lot to everyone.

We have a duty to be selfish and any other behaviour is irrational. These were the thoughts of Ayn Rand, Russian-American novelist of the 1950s.

We know Rand was trying to forment attacks on JFK. Her ugly Ford Hall Forum speech on December 16, 1962, fraudulently claimed that any individual who served the needs of someone else became a victim, as if mother was subjugated by child. She spread disinformation about JFK, falsely painting him as fascist because he was promoting public duty and sacrifice for societal benefits (e.g. 1800s European concepts of public holidays, health care, police, fire, military).

…subordination and sacrifice of the individual to the collective [is the] ideological root of all statist systems, in any variation, from welfare statism to a totalitarian dictatorship…

Absolutely untrue. Rand was spreading toxic lies about service and duty in order to undermine democracy and vilify JFK, paint a target on him that far-right extremists would latch onto.

A year later he was assassinated.

Dictatorships often turn on individuals being extremely selfish and refusing to respect others at all, enabled in hyper-competition through institutional favoritism for some particular form of selfishness (e.g. racism and xenophobia). Rand promoted fascism through gaslighting truth, arguing that public service should be seen as the opposite of public service.

She literally testified to U.S. Congress with a straight face that acts of charity were socialist subversion tactics, for example. She thought people could be scared into believing a feel-good Christmas movie It’s A Wonderful Life was actually deep Communist propaganda vilifying bankers.

Among the group who produced the analytical tools that were used by the FBI in its analysis of It’s a Wonderful Life was Ayn Rand. Later, on October 20, 1947, Ayn Rand also testified in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities…. According to another FBI memo related to “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry”, Rand had in fact published a similar report all by herself.

We know Thornley was stationed with Oswald in Japan, but we don’t know whether a connection to Rand’s crazy poison (“a gateway drug to life on the right“) was established by Oswald or projected upon him by Thornley.