Obama’s Communist Mentor
Is “coalition politics” at work in Obama’s rise to power?
In his biography of Barack Obama, David Mendell writes about Obama's life as a "secret smoker" and how he "went to great lengths to conceal the habit." But what about Obama's secret political life? It turns out that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.In his books, Obama admits attending "socialist conferences" and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a "hard-core academic Marxist," which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.
However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in
The reason is apparent:
Trevor Loudon, a New Zealand-based libertarian activist, researcher and blogger, noted evidence that "Frank" was Frank Marshall Davis in a posting in March of 2007.
Obama's communist connection adds to mounting public concern about a candidate who has come out of virtually nowhere, with a brief U.S. Senate legislative record, to become the Democratic Party frontrunner for the
AIM recently disclosed that Obama has well-documented socialist connections, which help explain why he sponsored a "Global Poverty Act" designed to send hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. foreign aid to the rest of the world, in order to meet U.N. demands. The bill has passed the House and a Senate committee, and awaits full Senate action.
But the Communist Party connection through
You won't find any of this discussed in the David Mendell book, Obama: From Promise to Power. It is typical of the superficial biographies of Obama now on the market. Secret smoking seems to be Obama's most controversial activity. At best, Mendell and the liberal media describe Obama as "left-leaning."
But you will find it briefly discussed, sort of, in Obama's own book, Dreams from My Father. He writes about "a poet named Frank," who visited them in
This "Frank" is none other than Frank Marshall Davis, the black communist writer now considered by some to be in the same category of prominence as Maya Angelou and Alice Walker. In the summer/fall 2003 issue of African American Review, James A. Miller of George Washington University reviews a book by John Edgar Tidwell, a professor at the University of Kansas, about Davis's career, and notes, "In Davis's case, his political commitments led him to join the American Communist Party during the middle of World War II-even though he never publicly admitted his Party membership." Tidwell is an expert on the life and writings of
Is it possible that Obama did not know who
The communists knew who "Frank" was, and they know who Obama is. In fact, one academic who travels in communist circles understands the significance of the Davis-Obama relationship.
Professor Gerald Horne, a contributing editor of the Communist Party journal Political Affairs, talked about it during a speech last March at the reception of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at
Horne, a history professor at the
As Horne describes it,
It was in Chicago that Obama became a "community organizer" and came into contact with more far-left political forces, including the Democratic Socialists of America, which maintains close ties to European socialist groups and parties through the Socialist International (SI), and two former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), William Ayers and Carl Davidson.
The SDS laid siege to college campuses across
Both communism and socialism trace their roots to Karl Marx, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, who endorsed the first meeting of the Socialist International, then called the "First International." According to Pierre Mauroy, president of the SI from 1992-1996, "It was he [Marx] who formally launched it, gave the inaugural address and devised its structure..."
Apparently unaware that
In addition to Tidwell's book, Black Moods: Collected Poems of Frank Marshall Davis, confirming Davis's Communist Party membership, another book, The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946, names Davis as one of several black poets who continued to publish in CPUSA-supported publications after the 1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact. The author, James Edward Smethurst, associate professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, says that Davis, however, would later claim that he was "deeply troubled" by the pact.
While blacks such as Richard Wright left the CPUSA, it is not clear if or when
However, Obama writes in Dreams from My Father that he saw "Frank" only a few days before he left
For his part, Horne says that Obama's giving of credit to
Dr. Kathryn Takara, a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the
In an analysis posted online, she notes that Davis, who was a columnist for the Honolulu Record, brought "an acute sense of race relations and class struggle throughout America and the world" and that he openly discussed subjects such as American imperialism, colonialism and exploitation. She described him as a "socialist realist" who attacked the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Takara says that
Is "coalition politics" at work in Obama's rise to power?
Trevor Loudon, the New Zealand-based blogger who has been analyzing the political forces behind Obama and specializes in studying the impact of Marxist and leftist political organizations, notes that Frank Chapman, a CPUSA supporter, has written a letter to the party newspaper hailing the
"Obama's victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle," Chapman wrote. "Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, which sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary ‘mole,' not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through."
Let's challenge the liberal media to report on this. Will they have the honesty and integrity to do so?
1 comment:
Why do you post that Frank Marshall Davis was Obama’s “mentor”? Because conservative firebrand Cliff Kincaid said so? "Dreams From My Father" belies that myth. It's a pity Americans are so easily hoodwinked by this right-wing disinformation, just like we were duped regarding the Iraqi threat. But even today, some Americans would rather believe fully discredited lies than admit they were duped. They don't have the courage to admit their mistakes. For everyone else: "Follow the evidence."
Although Obama's book indicates "Frank" was a family friend who offered him advice on racial issues, Obama wrote that Davis "fell short" and his views were "incurable." Obama did not even visit Davis for a three year period (high school) before going to college. Obama's book proves that Obama did not consider Davis to be a "wise and trusted counselor," which is the standard definition of "mentor." They are mutually exclusive. By what creative definition can Davis be considered his "mentor"?
By exaggerating evidence that Davis advised Obama, yet ignoring evidence from the same source that Obama did NOT Frank to be a wise and trusted advisor, those who claim Davis was Obama's "mentor" are as dishonest as ex-D.A. Mike Nifong. The "Nifong Syndrome" is the stacking of evidence by ignoring evidence that does not fit one's agenda.
By portraying Davis as Obama's mentor, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, fraudulent "opposition research" by Cliff Kincaid and others permeates the blogosphere. Their travesty of journalistic ethics demonstrates that they are unreliable sources of information on the Davis-Obama relationship. As the epitome of contemporary propaganda, Cliff Kincaid may be a worthy successor to Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels.
Cliff Kincaid and his colleagues designed an elaborate scam. Instead of fake jewelry, they fake opposition research. They present false information about Frank Marshall Davis, like the Bush administration presented false information about the Iraqi threat. Both were the product of disinformation campaigns designed to frame their targets for imaginary offenses, because their actual behavior was insufficient. They combined fact with fabrication to create a tapestry of historical fiction, not unlike "The Da Vinci Code."
Fraudulent memes, unwittingly propagated by well-intentioned bloggers, have spread throughout the blogosphere, which proves the effectiveness of viral disinformation campaigns. Even the title of Kincaid's initial attack, "Obama's Communist Mentor," is itself a masterful deception. Through the "*fallacy of equivocation," it implies three enduring falsehoods:
- That Davis was an avowed or known communist who advocated collectivist principles. The evidence, however, indicates that Davis was a closet communist who never advocated communism.
- That Davis had a continuing mentorship with teenage Obama, "almost like a son." Evidence, however, indicates that Davis was an occasionally visited family friend whom Obama did not even see for three years before college.
- That Davis taught communism to young Obama. The evidence, however, indicates that although Davis offered advice on racial issues, Obama did not even trust that advice.
(*The "fallacy of equivocation" is the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense, by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time. It occurs when an equivocal word or phrase makes an unsound argument appear sound. It deceives through ambiguity.)
"Truth is generally the best vindication against slander."
- Abraham Lincoln
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