A Marxist Obama...Facinating Insight Into Obama's Formative Influences

[Bruce Clemens]

http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/02/17/face-to-face-with-young-marxist-obama-remembering-my-days-as-an-anti-apartheid-student-activist/

Face-to-Face with Young Marxist Obama: Remembering My Days as an Anti-Apartheid Student Activist

2010 February 17

tags: Barack Obama, John Drew, News, Politics
by John Drew

Flipping through some old photos, I found this picture of me graduating from Occidental College on June 9, 1979. I’m wearing a red arm band. My parents were probably angry at me for doing this because it spoiled the graduation photo. Nevertheless, this photo has now come in handy as significant evidence that I was doing my part to protest Occidental College’s investments in South Africa. Moreover, it is part of the trail of documents that allows me to make the case that I was, indeed, a radical student who founded the anti-apartheid group which young President Obama spoke for a year and a half later on the Occidental College campus.
The fellow handing me my diploma was Occidental College president Richard C. Gilman. I’m sure he didn’t care for me…and I believed he was an evil guy.
From what Obama writes, I had the unusual opportunity to meet the young Barack Obama at a turning point in his life. In Dreams of My Father, Obama writes he got one of the early signs of his interest (and ability) in public speaking during his participation in a later anti-apartheid rally at Oxy in the fall of 1980.
I met Barack Obama face-to-face later that same year in late December 1980. By then, I was in my second year of graduate school at Cornell. I was doing my first, official teaching. The young Ann Coulter was a student in Theodore J. Lowi’s Introduction to American Government course in 1980 and I was the teaching assistant responsible for guiding her small group discussion section. Back on the West Coast for Christmas break, I was visiting a girlfriend who was still attending Occidental College who introduced me to “Barry” Obama and his housemate Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, a wealthy Pakistani student.
My most vivid memory of my time visiting with Obama was the way he strongly argued a rather simple-minded version of Marxist theory. I remember he was passionate about his point of view. As I remember, he was articulating the same Marxist theory taught by various professors at Occidental College. Based on my more detailed studies at Cornell, I remember I made a strong argument that his Marxist ideas were not in line with contemporary reality – particularly the practical experience of Western Europe.
I went on to become an assistant professor of political science at Williams College in MA, and won the William Anderson Award from the American Political Science Association for my doctoral dissertation. See here.
Obama, of course, became President of the United States in 2009. I can’t help but wonder if my common sense arguments ended up impacting his decision-making and career planning.
Nevertheless, I think my experience with the young Barack Obama is useful evidence of why he was able to win the trust and support of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Alice Palmer. In 1995, Alice Palmer represented the state of Illinois’ 13th District. After she decided to run for Congress she named Obama as her hand-picked successor. Palmer’s extremist ideology is evident in an article she wrote for the Communist Party USA’s newspaper, the People’s Daily World, now the People’s Weekly World in June, 1986. Amazingly, it detailed her experience at the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Regarding Rev. Wright’s affection for Marxism and socialism, please view the YouTube video below:

My gut feeling is that Obama won the trust of folks like Alice Palmer because he never surrendered that uncompromising, Marxist socialist ideology I saw in him as a sophomore at Occidental College back in 1980.
My graduation photo helps me remember my days as a young revolutionary and the moments when – like Barack Obama – I sincerely believed a Marxist socialist revolution was coming to turn everything around and to create a new, fairer and more just world. Today, however, it pains me to write that I’m deeply ashamed of my radical views. With more maturity, I understand the true meaning of that red arm band. It is especially painful for me to look at it knowing that my time at Occidental College aligned with the brutal Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979) which covered the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge over Cambodia.
Nevertheless, I’m happy to revisit this unhappy chapter of my life if it helps others better understand the sincere commitment to Marxist revolutionary thought which animated me and the young President Obama.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist

[Austin Kelley]

The David Horowitz Freedom Center is suggesting that President Obama is today a committed socialist, duplicitously pursuing an agenda for a Marxist-Leninist economic agenda?

All the available evidence indicates that this man dances to Wall Street's tune, not labour, not some international communist conspiracy.

These are the talking points for a resurgent and highly reactionary right wing populism in the United States but essentially these kind of "red herrings" provide cover for a corporate agenda to roll back public services, pursue neo-liberal economic agenda, and make corrupt backroom deals such as the bailouts. The propaganda campaign is organized around personalizing their agenda through unfounded assertions that Obama is a "terrorist-sympathizer", a Marxist, a Muslim, a foreigner etc. One gets the sense that latent racism and an unclear sense of class politics fuels the fire.

If there is a real conspiracy afoot here, David Horowitz is part of it, as are Tom Tancredo, Sarah Palin- all front people for the international corporatist conspiracy...

[Jan Klimkowski]

The source of this revelation that Obama was a "junior Marxist" (hohoho) is the David Horowitz Freedom Center, eh? :aetsch:

Horowitz himself was a "junior Marxist" before he became a far right, um, propagandist. :bootyshake:

A cursory wiki glance at Horowitz throws up:

Career
In the late 1960s, Horowitz was in London working for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation[12] where he studied under Ralph Miliband and Isaac Deutscher. In 1971, Horowitz wrote a biography of Deutscher.[13][14][15]

Horowitz then wrote The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War and, in the early 1970s, became an editor at the New Left magazine, Ramparts.

Horowitz was a supporter of Huey P. Newton, and raised money for the Black Panther Party. Later, he cited those experiences as catalysts for reassessing his views that took him from the political left to the political right. In December 1974, Betty Van Patter, a bookkeeper who had worked at Ramparts, was murdered.[16] While her murder is unsolved, Horowitz alleges that the Panthers were responsible for her death, motivated, he states, by the desire to stop Van Patter from revealing the party's financial corruption. Horowitz's allegations relating to the Panthers' involvement in Van Patter's death are unproven.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz

Sniff sniff - what's that smell?

Ah yes, the pungent whiff of the bought and paid for agent provocateur....

[Bruce Clemens]

I appreciate this input!

This is the beauty of this forum...to add necessary background and perspective to what is passing for "news" out there.

And Austin, I totally agree...he's a Wall Street shill.

Thanks!

[David Guyatt]

Gott in Himmel!

Could it be that Herr Ralph Miliband IS the father of our newest-beloved-fuhrer-to-be, David Miliband - der Leader of Chatham House's permanent franchise, Her Blighty's Foreign & Äußer Homeland Commonwealth Office?

Answers please on the back of a fag packet.

Preferably not this one from the Nazi era:



Afrika Corpse anyone?

[Dawn Meredith]

The source of this revelation that Obama was a "junior Marxist" (hohoho) is the David Horowitz Freedom Center, eh? :aetsch:

Horowitz himself was a "junior Marxist" before he became a far right, um, propagandist. :bootyshake:

A cursory wiki glance at Horowitz throws up:

Career
In the late 1960s, Horowitz was in London working for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation[12] where he studied under Ralph Miliband and Isaac Deutscher. In 1971, Horowitz wrote a biography of Deutscher.[13][14][15]

Horowitz then wrote The Free World Colossus: A Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Cold War and, in the early 1970s, became an editor at the New Left magazine, Ramparts.

Horowitz was a supporter of Huey P. Newton, and raised money for the Black Panther Party. Later, he cited those experiences as catalysts for reassessing his views that took him from the political left to the political right. In December 1974, Betty Van Patter, a bookkeeper who had worked at Ramparts, was murdered.[16] While her murder is unsolved, Horowitz alleges that the Panthers were responsible for her death, motivated, he states, by the desire to stop Van Patter from revealing the party's financial corruption. Horowitz's allegations relating to the Panthers' involvement in Van Patter's death are unproven.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz

Sniff sniff - what's that smell?

Ah yes, the pungent whiff of the bought and paid for agent provocateur....

David Horowitz seems to travel with whatever wind is paying his check. This agent provocateur first came to my attention in April of 1984. His trash book (co-authored ) on the Young Kennedy's was being serialized in Playboy magazine. The portion that I most remember, as it will be forever burned into my mind, was the hatchet job he did on young David. David had many drug issues having been with his father when Bobby was assassinated. That day David nearly drowned in the ocean in LA. RFK has saved the then twelve year old boy's life. That night David saw his dad shot down. Horrowitz utilized these events to traash David and basically suggest that since he could not return the favor and save his dad's life he had no reason TO live. The day after I read this young David was found in a Florida motel room- dead. I wrote Playboy an angry letter to ed. and never again bought a copy of that magazine. I have watched this sorry man's "career" in the ensuing years with nothing but disgust.

[Austin Kelley]

I don't doubt that David Horowitz could have seen things in his Old Left childhood, or his New Left youth, that might have left a bad taste in his mouth.

That said, his penchant for racist invective against Muslims and Arabs, his reactionary defense of all the crimes of the Israeli State, his continued work against academic freedom and his constant beating of the drums of imperial war, all make him worthy of a profound disrespect.