Barack Obama Is a Dangerous Leftist of a New Kind, not a Communist, Muslim, Marxist, or Socialist
Barack Obama is not a communist, a fascist, a Muslim, a Marxist, a Progressive (in the pre-1920s meaning of that word), or even a socialist. Obama and those who control much of America’s academia, mass media, and entertainment industry — plus a number of trade unions and hundreds of foundations, think tanks, and front groups — are believers in a new, very American form of leftism. It is very statist, very dangerous for freedom, and economically destructive. But we first have to identify what “it” is. Our difficulty in doing so has been a huge reason why we have not persuaded more people — though goodness knows a lot of people have woken up and now realize that there is a huge problem here.
Yet calling Obama those various names doesn’t persuade a large portion of the American population because they sense that these definitions aren’t accurate. They can come up with valid counter-arguments or be fed phony ones by schools and media. And all of those who rage in the comment sections of websites aren’t persuading anyone of anything except, perhaps, that Obama’s opponents are delusional. You may not like hearing that, but it’s the truth.
I’m amazed and amused by people who say that Obama cannot be a leftist because he–gasp!–appointed people from Wall Street to his cabinet and favors certain specific companies and banks. Excuse me, but you are merely saying that by engaging in corruption and getting some favored capitalists to give him big campaign donations in exchange for favors, Obama shows that he isn’t an “honest” leftist. Íf the left can get support from some such people, it would be foolish to throw away the chance. Refusing to act like that was how the Old Left and the New Left of the 1960s behaved, and we saw what happened to them.
We are in a totally new era. The nineteenth and early twentieth century debates and categories no longer hold. Indeed, when the New Leftists climbed out of the wreckage of the 1960s to early 1970s, they realized this and successfully built something very new. (If you are looking for a “prehistoric” founding document in terms of some important themes, albeit very much altered, read the original Weatherman Manifesto and then delete all the hysterical parts. Dress it up in a suit and tie and seat it behind the desk of a professor, foundation director, reporter, or politician. I don’t have the space here to explain this point in detail.)
Let’s start with the word “socialist.” The European socialist (or social democratic) movement was strongly anti-communist. Did they hate their countries? Remember, these were the people who remained patriots during World War II — that’s one of the main reasons they first broke with the communists. The European socialists gave up the idea of abolishing capitalism many decades ago. While some parties were further to the left (notably in Spain and Sweden), most had settled into relatively moderate positions. When was the last time they nationalized anything?
Moreover, remember that European statism is as much of conservative origin as of socialist origin. Consider France, a country whose high degree of centralization goes back to feudal times and Napoleon, not to mention the Gaullists. America is very exceptional all right, but only because it broke with both European conservative and leftist models. The welfare states there were the results of multi-partisan efforts.
Have European socialists — I’m not talking here about left-wing academics and journalists — fallen in love with Barack Obama? Not at all. They might like Obama more than George W. Bush, but they liked Bill Clinton even more. Not only do they not see Obama as a comrade, but they could probably give him good advice about why his policies will inevitably fail. They may not have the answers for their own countries, but they understand capitalism and how to make it work (and they want to make it work) far more than he does.
So here’s a key point: Obama and his ideological comrades–let me call them the New New Left (NNL)–are to the left of almost all of the European socialist parties.
Are Obama and company a Marxist group or a bunch of communists (referring to the movement begun by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and run thereafter by Joseph Stalin)?
I much appreciate this locating of Obama & his supporters in a different tradition than is usually described. I tried to identify the anarchist component of New Left anti-imperialism and anti-modernism here: http://clarespark.com/2012/08/16/marx-rivals-and-our-enigmatic-president/. I do agree that the Frankfurt School has had a strong presence in New Left professors, along with Bakunin. “Rage Against the Machine” is the most popular search term for my own website, and is thoroughly adolescent,reactionary and counter-Enlightenment.
I disagree with this attempt to nuance a pseudo-modern definition of Obama from thin air. He is in fact a Fascist, nothing more nothing less. There are only two categories of populist tyrannical collectivism. Communism and fascism. The only substantive difference between the two is the method of acquiring absolute power and the ownership of the means of production. European Socialism as it is called is merely fascism that has not yet become totalitarian. America is in fact a fascist country and has been steadily trending toward totalitarianism (as has Europe) since the Woodrow Wilson administration. Wilson invented fascism, Mussolini named it, and Hitler Militarized it for world conquest.
Thread over. The best short description ever of what is going on.
Consider perhaps it is a meld of many leftists’ ideologies, greed, and lust for power, joined together to reach a goal rather than a new ideology.
The goal they seem to be circling, drunk with power,like moths to a flame, is the state capitalism modeled after China. An elite all powerful politcal class controlling a well constrained but affluent intellectual and middle class of professionals and businessmen. What our political class is missing however is China’s slave class. They have borrowed to secure the votes needed to collect power. They are trying to restructure state capitalism from their Cloward-Piven collapse. But they have no slave labor. The gig is soon up.
The Rise of Innovative State Capitalism.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-28/the-rise-of-innovative-state-capitalism
Exactly, think of it as Smorgasbord Leftism……kind of analogous to Cafeteria Catholicism. Each individual modern Leftist picks and chooses his particular mix of tidbits here and there from a variety of sources. Where a black Leftist might be more interested in Black Panterism, Nation of Islamism, or Black Liberation Theology combined with various forms of Alinskyism, Frankfurt School Critical Race Theory, and perhaps a Muslim fetish….a woman might be more interested in 1rst and 2nd Wave Feminism, Women and Lesbian Studies, Marcusian Sexual Liberation, and Gramscian cultural Marxism.
Very perceptive comments…
Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “2016: Obama’s America” is worth seeing, with these thoughts in mind. You can check it out by linking to: 2016themovie.com/ (which also lists theaters in your area).
In historical terms, I believe that the closest previous regime to Obama’s would be Peronist Argentina.
I consider Obama to be a “post-industrial” Marxist. Lenin’s Soviet Russia did not have a firm enough middle class to resist his collectivization policies. Europe’s Fascists didn’t need to collectivize, as long as they had control over they who controlled. Obama’s Marxism uses information entities, academia and the media to exert control.
One significant difference in all of this is the observation that Obama does NOT like his own country. This is historically unique among those who have actually gained power (I’m ignoring Quisling).
P.S. In regards to religion, Obama is a Narcissist.
Agree with Racerdad. “Fascism…is the merger of the state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
Silent Revolution – should be an important contribution to the field of political pathology … looking forward to it.
An excellent counterpoint to all of the cringe-inducing inaccuracy of those who say that Obama and his cohorts want the U.S. to be “like Europe.” It is apparent that our leftists are not only left of Europe’s, but more socially destructive as well. I detect a degree of nihilism in Obama and his cronies in that their policies that induce instability in the economy and populace represent feature not bug (incompetence probably also plays a role).
At the risk of making Steve Allers rotate at high speed I would suggest that these guys are throwbacks to some of the worst pre-Soviet lefty thinking. Good luck with the book and with your other, formidable challenges.
I like to use the Christianity analogy. Both an Amish farmer and a Greek Orthodox nun are Christians, in that they both believe that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior, but aside from that they are wildly different.
I do think that Obama is a marxist in that he views the world through a marxist prism — that it is the role of government to shape and direct society and the people. Does that mean he’s a communist? No. There’s no indication that he thinks the State should own all property, in the Lenin/Stalin/Mao mode, or the variant Pol Pot mode. Marxism itself is simply a handy shortcut for a lot various progressive ideas floating about from the 19th – 20th Centuries, such as Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, as a contrast to the belief in Natural Rights. It is Manichean, while the world is filled with many differing grays.
But I do think this really puts him in the Statist camp:
“But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution”
http://patriotupdate.com/articles/obama%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98redistribution-of-wealth%E2%80%99-radio-interview-2001
rather than in the Jeffersonian Democrat camp. Maybe he’s the weird snake handler Baptist Christian type.
Obama worships at the Altar of Power, because everyone he’d ever been around, starting with the radicals that his mother (and grandparents) liked to associate with basically instilled him with a belief that he’s the only one who could bring about the social change the radicals had been dreaming of since the 1920s, but especially in the 1960s milieu.
Terrific Barry- absolutely brilliant. As one who has argued that Obama is a socialist, I now agree with your argument. It paralells, by the way, the points made to me by Martin J. Sklar, a historian whom I often cite in my own column.
Obama comes from the sectarian Left tradition of the CP and its followers. They act as Leninists in their political tactics- Obama combines this with Chicago thuggery politics and Alinskyism- but essentially he favors a unique form of American statism, exactly as you describe the NNL–a wonderful term we should all start using.
I look forward a lot to your book, which will be one of the most important being written- perhaps the first book that truly addresses the role and ideas of the new new Left.
The “progressive” movement of which Obama is the avatar is at least as much Fascist as it is Marxist:
1)There is the obsessive focus on race and ethnicity
2)There is no desire to actually *run* the country’s industries, but rather to control them without taking any responsibility for their performance.
3)”Progressives” are often believers in various forms of mysticism…astrology, magical crystals, a conscious “Gaia.” In its extreme feminist forms, “progressivism” rejects logic and culture as “patriarchal.”
Aldous Huxley memorably summarized the similarities and differences between Marxism and Fascism:
“In the field of politics the equivalent of a theorem is a perfectly disciplined army; of a sonnet or picture, a police state under a dictatorship. The Marxist calls himself scientific and to this claim the Fascist adds another: he is the poet–the scientific poet–of a new mythology. Both are justified in their pretensions; for each applies to human situations the procedures which have proved effective in the laboratory and the ivory tower. They simplify, they abstract, they eliminate all that, for their purposes, is irrelevant and ignore whatever they choose to regard an inessential; they impose a style, they compel the facts to verify a favorite hypothesis, they consign to the waste paper basket all that, to their mind, falls short of perfection…the dream of Order begets tyranny, the dream of Beauty, monsters and violence.”
Would that not make Obama’s philosophy closer to National Socialism than any other dogma?
Hi Barry:
I think the great Mark Levin has been doing yeoman’s work on defining not only Obama, but the Democrat Party and all the entities you cite. His umbrella word for them is “statist,” and his book “Ameritopia” is a must-read to really get a feel for this.
On a personal note, I hope you are doing well and an early “shana tovah” to you and family.
In my observations, the characteristics of this New New Left movement are:
* Tribal – They have a strong “us and them” mindset that resembles fascism, Soviet-led communism, and pre-Enlightenment religious rivalries. The “1% vs. the 99%” meme carries exactly the same connotations as George W. Bush’s “you’re either with us or you’re against us”. No neutrality or deeper contemplation is permitted. The movement uses adjectives like “peace activist” and “conservative” to define people as Us or Them, as Good or Evil, rather than as mere descriptors.
* Reactionary – They are constantly outraged by events and pseudo-events showing the evils of their enemies, real and perceived, and they demand excessive retribution such as lawbreaking, punishment without trial, new restraints that negatively affect innocent people, and new laws that would be unconstitutional.
* Moralist – Their morality is second to their “us and them” mindset, but they do have strong moral values. One of their moral values that causes the most friction in society is the demand for equality of result, which stands in opposition to the liberal demand for equality under the law, the democratic-socialist demand for equality of opportunity, and the conservative viewpoint that result is derived from personal effort and nothing else. Another moral value of theirs is that nobody should be offended, along with the belief that nothing they themselves say can possibly offend anybody because they are so perfect.
* Dishonest – Honesty is not one of their moral values. They have no qualms against lying if it serves the interests of the movement, and it is seen as immoral to admit that another movement personality is lying.
* Anti-science – Their arguments stem from emotion and the bandwagon fallacy. ARE YOU NOT OUTRAGED!? It’s what the people demand! Contrary arguments from reason and evidence are ignored to the same degree as by the fundie nutters on the right. When presented with evidence that they are taking a stand which is against their own moral values, they ignore the evidence no matter its provenance and take a firmer stand.
* Absolutist – If there is an imperfection in the world, they either demand its eradication or they accept it in the name of diversity and forbid any criticism of it. Nothing may be perceived to have both good and evil qualities that can be weighed independently. It either is pure good or pure evil.
* Conspiracy-minded – Any imperfection in the world is perceived to be both the fault and the intent of their enemies. Where Marx noted that businesses would tend to oppress the poor as a result of economic pressures, the movement believes that businessmen desire to oppress the poor and do so intentionally, and they believe that the existence of the poor is a result of this intent.
* Authoritarian, with populist rhetoric – They desire absolute centralized control in the name of “popular agreement” with the caveat that anybody who disagrees with the leaders is cast out as one of Them, an outsider and an enemy.
* Distrustful of existing institutions – like fascism and Soviet-led communism, all institutions not under the control of the movement are viewed to be the enemy. On the other hand, institutions that are under the movement’s control must never be questioned.
* Crypto-violent – While claiming to be nonviolent, movement activists support violence against property and the use of force so long as nobody’s physical body is damaged, with the exception that they accept violence against any person who is preventing them from using violence. They furthermore celebrate the more violent organizations which share the same enemies, and they get over the hypocrisy of doing so by denying that these organizations are violent.
* Effective at gaining supporters – They study rhetoric and propaganda techniques and know what to say to get people to believe them. They operate in groups, with one person speaking and others backing them up, because this leads people to believe them more than if the speaker was speaking alone. They aggressively try to shut down any contrary speaker and attempt to have them expelled from the debate. When an event takes place that the majority of the population will have a negative response to, they are the first to hold rallies against it to attract new recruits. When another group organizes a rally, the movement places their own signs in front of the cameras and tells the press that they organized it so that they get the credit.
In specific circumstances:
* They oppose the very form of government. Popular elections are viewed as a fraud controlled by the rich and powerful, with evidence being that mainstream candidates never speak to their views and third party candidates are never mentioned in the press and not allowed to debate. Rather than voting for an alternate candidate or raising popular support for an alternate set of goals, they call for staying home on election day, feeling no connection to the resulting government, hating it, and eventually overthrowing it by force. There is no next step; they either don’t think that far or assume that they or someone like them will take total control of society.
* They hate Christians and Jews. This stems from a rejection of the childhood faith due to irreconcilable differences with church teachings on certain matters. Personal character flaws inflate this rejection into a reactionary hatred of anyone who still follows church teachings. Jews are collateral damage for still believing in the Bible. Muslims are accepted regardless of their similar values because they rejected that Bible and have their own.
* The Army is perceived to be a brainwashed gang of murdering criminals, the street gang of the rich. Any claim of Army wrongdoing is immediately believed. Facts in the Army’s defense are ignore; see the reaction to “Collateral Murder” for a prominent example. For a corollary, anybody that the Army is fighting against is assumed to be the virtuous party.
* Statements on international policy are almost always laid out in Soviet propaganda terms of “national resistance”, “occupation”, “liberation”, and so forth. This is less a sign of following Soviet doctrine than of the mere fact that Soviet propaganda provided a ready set of principles with which to condemn existing governments and support violent revolutions against them.
* “International law” is said to be whatever is the opinion of the United Nations after the Soviet subversion of the Non-Aligned Movement and OPEC’s use of the oil weapon. The UN’s findings and the motivations of its members are never to be questioned. International agreements made before the Cold War, like the Hague and Geneva conventions, are rejected as tools of the rich and powerful. Geneva’s second protocol of 1977 is supported to the extent that it can be interpreted to define non-uniformed combatants as civilians so that the Army may be forbidden from fighting back.
* They have a simplistic view of the world based on tribalism and ignorance. The New New Left reacts to the Muslim Brotherhood’s conquests by accepting that Muslim countries should be under Muslim rule without questioning whether these are Muslim countries, what it means to be a Muslim country, who the new leader will be, what rules will be made, and what will happen to minorities. They have no knowledge of history, and they really believe that the Taliban are the people of Afghanistan and the Palestinians are the people of Palestine.
* They are pro-union but not pro-labour. They support unions only to the extent that their enemies among the rich and powerful are oppressing unions, or that specific unions are under the movement’s control. The interests of labour are otherwise absent from their rhetoric.
* The rape charges against Julian Assange are assumed to be a setup. They do not ask for him to have his day in court to present a defense, but they want the charges dropped and Assange to be freed immediately.
* George Zimmerman is assumed to be guilty because he used a gun against a black man. They do not ask for him to have his day in court to present a defense, but they want him thrown in jail immediately. This is on purely tribal grounds, because the notion of private gun ownership for self-defense has previously been rejected by the movement’s forerunners as an obstacle to a commmunist dictatorship, and because blacks are a preferred, superior race. They do not accept him as Peruvian, a Hispanic, another preferred, superior race; he is a white Jew. They do not accept him as a Democratic community activist; he is a Republican gun nut. All evidence to the contrary is ignored. Needless to say, all evidence of what actually happened that night is ignored. The narrative is more important than the facts.
* They support warezing and hacking because it gives them a sense of power and hurts businesses. They are opposed to reforming copyright law, but instead seek a court decision that declares copyright infringement to be a human right.
The movement inspires people through two of the social needs recognized by Maslow:
* The sense of community – The movement brings together people who share the same values.
* The sense of self-worth – Members believe that they are doing something of value by fixing the wrongs of the world.
The ego’s value of these senses leads to a perception that disagreement with the movement is an attack on the individual. The movement’s tribalistic culture reinforces this perception.
Fighting the movement can be done in many arenas:
* The Republicans need to stop attempting to outlaw abortion and contraception, unions, and voting, stop treating homosexuals, atheists, and dark-skinned people as dhimmis, stop their support for corruption and white-collar crime if it makes someone money, and stop their strict opposition to repealing recent tax cuts for the already rich while the national debt is skyrocketing at a trillion dollars a year. The #1 reason for supporting the New New Left is because they are the first and loudest to speak out against what the Republicans are doing.
* Democrats need to start standing up against the radical nutters in their own party, not only because somebody of the same tribal affiliation needs to do the speaking for the arguments against them to be heard but because many voters are willing to support the more radical Republicans just to be opposed to them, which leads other voters to support the more radical New New Leftists to be opposed to the Republicans.
* Government at all levels needs to stop lying to the people and take a stronger stance against corruption of all sorts. The use of press officers as official liars should be discouraged, and they should be more concerned with providing as much information to the public as possible. At the local level, police should seek the public’s trust rather than the public’s fear.
* The media needs to do a better job of reporting the news rather than what the party bosses want them to say.
* High schools should teach Constitutional law, critical thinking, propaganda analysis, and the history of 20th-century Soviet strategy and propaganda from Russian primary sources.
* Colleges and universities should identify professors that are lying to students and fire them for academic misconduct.
* Unions should speak out for workers’ interests and against the new new left’s positions where they conflict, such as with the importation of illegal immigrant labour to suppress farmworker union organization. Unions that are not under the movement’s control can poach locals from unions that are.
* Environmentalists can try to take the Green Party back from the New New Left and turn it back into a single-issue environmentalist pressure group, but good luck trying that; the movement has solidified its position there.
As for Obama personally, I do not view him as a “dangerous leftist” of this movement but as a less dangerous intelligent idiot, with some false preconceptions and equally idiotic advisors, who is influenced by this movement. He is like the college-educated idiot in the movie Barbershop who wrongly insists that the Indian store owner is Pakistani and who turns out to be bad at his job as a barber. Obama does not know enough to recognize when he is wrong, and there is nobody on his team to inform him. The influence of the New New Left on the Democratic Progressive caucus has gone from nil to overwhelming in ten years, but still varies from person to person.
I agree with your detailed analysis and I would add : Obama is a post-modern leftist.As a post-modern he is just a brillant critic of what went wrong in the USA but he has absolutely no idea on how to fix the situation.So Romney has to attack him on his emptiness, useless, continuous babbling.Obama is full of rethoric and devoid of result . that’s obvious.
“* The Republicans need to stop attempting to outlaw abortion and contraception, unions, and voting, stop treating homosexuals, atheists, and dark-skinned people as dhimmis, stop their support for corruption and white-collar crime if it makes someone money, and stop their strict opposition to repealing recent tax cuts for the already rich while the national debt is skyrocketing at a trillion dollars a year.”
What Republican supports any of those examples you listed? Proof? Ah, you were told by some leftist that’s what they stood for.
Agreed, Buckeye.
“* The Republicans need to stop attempting to outlaw” ……blah, blah, blah.
At the above quoted point in his rather long-winded treatise the whole analysis becomes a combination of the non-factual with wishful thinking hot air. At first it seemed that he was on to something then the whole case that he seemed to be trying to make simply fell apart in the final paragraphs.
I will stick with Mr. Rubin’s analysis for factual insight.
I was very impressed with the insight and accuracy of the NNL analysis Tang offered. Then had a brain “reset” on the “what should be done” area. That turned into Unicorn Skittles.
Sort of, if I had my wish……
Just stick with the three pillars of the Tea Party movement and the details that surround the implementation of same. (1). Fiscal responsibility (2). Constitutionally limited government (3). Free markets .
There is the path to all Americans well-being, prosperity, and maximum personal liberty. Notice that there are no issues about unions, abortions, race, gender, gays, etc. to be forced down anyone’s throat. Keep it simple and logical and we will prevail over statism.
Yeah, you’ve got all the pontification chops down. Did you cut and paste all that “resonable” tripe or did you actually spend serious time putting it together?
comment addressed to user: “tang”
“…even if Obama were to be defeated in the election, the far left’s relative monopoly over mass media, academia, many schools, and much of publishing and entertainment would not be affected. ”
Not to mention the comrades who were hired into civil service jobs at every level of government the leadership had a say in. Eric Holder may go, for example, but even if Romney wins, the DOJ he inherits will be more ideological and opposed to his policies than it would otherwise have been.
Today I don my professorial “persona”. Barry Rubin has brought up the question of “being”, i.e.: Who or what (or who/what) IS Obama? “Being” is intrinsically a philosophical teaser that seduces my philosophical proclivities. More than once I have sought to obtain from the wise pages of PJ Media an answer to Rubin’s “being”-question. Finally a brilliant attempt is made and “it” becomes the object of investigation. Alas, Rubin just about indentifies the positive essence of the “being” of Obama and then, oh woe, can do no more than to substitute a neo-acronym for the “it” that constitutes Obamian “being”. I am informed as to what Obama is NOT, which of course does NOT reveal positively Obama’s “what IS”. Obama is not a Communist, Muslim, Marxist, Fascist, Progressive, nor even a Socialist. I am fully in accord with the “not is” asserted by Rubin to so many -isms. Any reduction of Obama to anyone such -ism fails to achieve insight into who/what “IS” Obama, i.e., as an integrated human “being”. This certainly justifies Rubin’s search for an “it” that explains what Obama IS so that we may understand him with positive coherence. Alas, Rubin fills out this “it” with an interestingly sounding “NNL” acronym” which, in my opinion, does not infuse this “it” with an adequately POSITIVE substance. I see myself still left with this “it”, now renamed as an acronym. At this point, the reader will, perhaps, understand why I have turned to my own professorial background. Philosophers will tell you (I hope still) that it is not possible to define anything in its positivity SIMPLY by establishing what “it” is NOT. The term “it” itself suggest positive content. Negativity alone does not suffice. Any such attempt reduces “ANYthing” negatively defined to a semantic “NOthing”. Accordingly, I seek “SOMEthing” positive that might allow me to commence to grasp not only what Obama is NOT, rather what he IS. I fear that Rubin has neither fully found nor named that “someTHING” qua positivity that reveals “it” in a fully coherent manner and, perhaps, explains the disparate attempts to grasp Obama without explaining them away. In other words, are all the -isms that Rubin rejects — and correctly — as applied heretofore to Obama simply to be set aside? Are they all irrelevant to understanding the man? Do all of these -isms have nothing of essential importance to do with Obama’s “being”? How am I do answer my own questions.
I would answer that Obama “IS” in some not-yet defined manner ALL of the above said -isms, though not one of them can exhaust what Obama is. What is needed is a point of interpretative departure that enables an integration of the disparate and inadequate interpretations into a positive understanding of Obama. Or, just to add a touch of intellectual snobism to my quest: We need an adequate hermeneutics. I would like to suggest one, but only tentatively.
In 2010 Dinesh D’Souza, no less 3rd worldish than Obama Sr., published his “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” and since then another book on Obama and has produced a film documentary on Obama to be seen (hopefully) in a theater near to you (but not near me as I live in Germany). D’Souza seeks a POSITIVE starting point for an adequate understanding of Obama’s “being” in Obama’s own contrived spiritual autobiography of he found himself, namely “Dreams FROM My Father”. I have capitalized “from” in order to suggest, following D’Souza’s hermeneutics, “it” as the point of departure for a POSTIVE and integrating comprehension of Obama’s spiritual odyssey, one leading to his final attainment of self-identity, i.e., to the very “being” that he is. Understand this “from” and we have, perhaps, the key positivity necessary to grasp the inadequacies of all previous -isms, yet to understand their role in what Obama IS doing. What is D’Souza after?
D’Souza claims (and richly documents) that Obama did not seek just to inquire about the dreams OF his father, rather about the dreams FROM his father, i.e, the dreams that have become his, that finally have imparted to his very self the “being” that it is and the imperious vision that he IS seeking to realize. The experience of Obama SR. was that of the then anti-colonialism. Such anti-colonialism sought not just to liberate African countries from European (and now derivatively from American) control. Old colonialism had been replaced with a neo-colonialism whereby the new countries are controlled by the “FEW” of old who
now determine development. Those FEW are the countries of the West and they must be erradicated from African “being”. D’Souza is claiming that this VISION of the “few dominating the many” is the POSITIVIY contained in the “from” that constitutes the “being” of Obama and is applied by him in a non-colonianal America as his “dream” of what his “being” president is all about. D’Souza can interpret an amazing amount of Obama’s socialistic, marxistic, religious, fascistic and even islamic political behavior as a function of his “few oppressing the many” epiphany “FROM” his father. I noted above that I accept “tentatively” D’souza’s analysis. I am not totally convinced. Nevertheless, at the moment it offers an amazing amout of interpretative power. I do, alas, find the designation of Obama’s “neo-colonialism”, although very stimulative, as inadequate, particularly as a political weapon against him. Why?
In my studies on the “mythopoetic origins” of Marx’s marxism and the “mythic structure” of Marx’s scientific thinking, I came upon “the few vs. the many” vision–>and this is why I hold Marx’s thinking, which is “scientific” despite its failure, to be essentially “mythic” in its “being”. And the myth entailed is a modernized version of the ancient Manichian of the absolute opposition of good vs. evil, a drama reaching back centuries with, however, the difference today that the struggle is not eternal, rather it will be resolved as the powers of the “few” do overcome and control the “many”. This dynamic drama entered Western thought, particularly early Christianity, as gnosticism. Reading the Italian theologian, Massimo Borghesi’s “Secularization and Nihilism. Christianiy and Contemporary Culture” (originally in Italian and translated into Spanish, but not into English) I find Borgehsi’s described neo-gnosticism evident in Obama, be Obama a bit Muslim, Christian or atheist or all together. I fully realize that a term such as “neo-gnosticism” will aid little in the current political election. I cannot imagine Romney accusing Obama in a tv-ad of being a manichian neo-gnostic. He might gain Borghesi’s vote (whom we would have to smuggle into the US), but no one else’s. I know also that the average reader has little contact with such ancient heresies. But, I did wish to uncover the content of the “it” discovered by Rubin and give it an adequate name.
What a bunch of suckers we are with all this generous contemplation of the essence of contemporary American leftists. Here we go: they are 1) liars, 2)thieves, and 3) tyrants. That is all anyone needs to know.
Yes, agreed.
And fools too. They are completely deluded and are thus directly opposed to sound principles in every sphere of life. If someone wants to harp on the semantics that’s fine, but I think “authoritarian statist” works… same as your more concise #3.
Brett, there is no doubt that the Nazies were liars and theives who used such methods to become tryannts and thereafter to direct German politics. Any Germans opposed to the Nazies, particularly the Jews, before the seizure of power, not to speak afterwards, would not have had, based only on such features, sufficient information in order to predict what those liars and theives would do once, as tyrannts, they have control of the state and its means of coercion. Nazi ideology was clear, readable and loudly proclaimed. Yet, not enough people took it all that seriously, i.e., did not use it to predict Nazi behavior (how often have I seen Goebbels’s interview proclaiming the Nazi desire of peace.) Chaimberlain found Hitler to be a bit vuglar with a loud mouth, but also TO BE someone with whom one can make a deal and who will hold to his word (= essence). The ideology of Hitler’s “being” was ignored. What a tragic mistake! You may well have identified some peculiarities of American leftists, but that does not enable me to predict what their leader, Obama, will seek to do in the future or to fully understand what he has done in the past. Remember, Obama, just before taking office, talked about fundamentally changing America. I want to understand the fundamentals that will guide his efforts to change. If not, I will be as blind as Chaimberlain. So I must know more than what seems to satisfy your curiosity. Some “essences” can be horrible if they are allowed to change things.
Any reduction of Obama to anyone such -ism fails to achieve insight into who/what “IS” Obama, i.e., as an integrated human “being”.
Prof: That’s just it. Obama is not an integrated human being. It takes years (all of your life) to achieve integrity and it starts with the first “no” to that which is evil. In my humble opinion, he never said no to evil because he can’t see evil, only what pleases himself to get to the “end”, never minding the means. He is fragmented from all the parts of himself being “distributed” among the powers that be at the time of any particular butt kissing he may have to do to get his. Time for a defrag for our beautiful, wonderful America with a leader who does have integrity, that sees the vision of a strong, exceptional, God fearing country.
Professor, are you not so sure that Obama is nothing more than a rather bright but hugely narcissistic, angry, amoral, un-moored empty vessel that possessed good physical appearance and the right pigmentation to be seen as raw talent to be developed by the likes of Ayers, Wright, Emmanuel, Axelrod, and Jarrett? A real diamond-in-the-rough that could be molded into a perfect front man for their individual ambitions. Nothing more than a living and breathing Trojan Horse for the evil-geniuses that reside inside of him. Actually, I don’t believe that there is any such thing as a “real” Barry Obama but instead a completely empty fool with absolutely no leadership ability that has been created for the pleasure and advancement of others. Further, I presume he is seen exactly that by those who surround and attend to him. Meanwhile, the morons in the media and about half of the country see and admire the Trojan Horse.
Professor W.–
I predict he will continue to lie, steal, and tyrannize, just as he has done up until now, and that his every proposed policy will be some variation of these three activities. The smart play is to oppose it all.
That so many do not understand that these features already characterize our governing classes I attribute to our failure to deny our leftists employment in our government institutions or taxpayer subsidy of their organizations.
So much schooling, so little education.
A lot of overthinking going on here.
Despite obtaining wealth and fame from his autobiography and a few speeches, my impression is that BHO in fact, is not all that self-reflective. He has no idea who he is because that’s not what he is about. He is a poseur. His so-called ideas are really just fashion accessories. No originality, no depth, no judgement. Just recycled nonsense dressed up to appear profound. We can see the consequences in his actions – offloading all the important policy-making to others, getting stuck in outdated class-warfare rhetoric, obsession with race. For a supposedly post-modern president, he is surprisingly old-fashioned in his grievance-based politics. There really is nothing there – thus Eastwood’s perfect prop of the empty chair.
Yes. He’s President Jimmy Dean. A rebel without a cause. In the most powerful office in the world.
I’m an American who has lived in Australia for most of the past 30 years. I went to Columbia (64) and worked as an academic in both the US and Australia. I have tended to see Obama as a Social Democrat (ie Marxist but not anti capitalist) and a direct descendant of progressive Henry Wallace who was Roosevelt’s third VP and ran against Harry Truman as a third party candidate in ’48. But your analysis makes me realize that I never have understood how the American left remade itself after 1968 – this NNL that you describe.
During the critical period, I was in Australia where I came to despise what i think of as the postmodern left. Here, of course, they can and do openly hate the United States. (“When I saw the Twin Towers come down I said ‘Yes, America MUST fall!’ ” as a fellow academic triumphantly informed me after 9/11- the Marxist inevitability and hate are plain to see.) What I have failed to see and understand is how the US left has reinvented itself and used the academy and the media to twist things into something that is in many ways as anti American as non American leftists. That, for me, is the tell. What makes these people truly something new. They really do, at a level I don’t fully understand, actually despise their own country – except unlike Australians they have to hide it. Howard Zinn style history with America always the bad guy. Postmodernist driven cultural and moral relativism. Dissent being highest form of patriotism. And so on.
However I would offer this observation: I noticed in the Wikipedia article on Modernity that it supposedly ended in 1989. What gives?! That was the fall of Communism! What I think is going on with the postmodern left and the NNL is that there is a deeply felt hatred of Modernity particularly as exemplified by the US and that claiming that Modernity itself has ended expresses that hatred and serves as revenge for the failure of Marxism. It is a case of academics trying to frame the modern project in Marxist millennialist terms. (We may not have gotten our dream of the End of History, but we will destroy the very foundations of your modern project.) I’m not sure how conscious this destructive urge is, but certainly the blowing out of the debt under Obama is an efficient way to bring America to its knees. I look forward to your book – to gain a more accurate understanding of this new new left. Intuitively I think I have gotten it on a gut level for some time. In December 2005, thinking about the American left’s opposition to the Iraq war I found myself saying out loud: “They may have an election or two left in them, but they are done.” It is still not clear if it is one or two elections.
This is an important point.
Being anti-American when you are not a US resident is only idiotic.
Being anti-American when you are a US resident (citizen or not) is worse than that: it is suicidally insane.
Marx, as a Jewish antisemite, was arguably suicidally insane; and of course Hitler committed suicide. In general, though, neither Marxists nor fascists are suicidally insane.
A shadow civilization running in tandem with our own,
exploiting the rich ecological niche of administration:
Puritans chasing Pilgrims to the New World.
Modern leftists have the vile and twisted ideology in comparison with their marxist predecessors,who believed that the poors are robbed by the rich.Today leftists know who create the wealth of the West-the rich capitalists.Their ideology changed in reality: they demand the “just sharing” of the wealth earned by the rich.The democracy turns this “social justce” in the mere robbery.This is the psychology of the modern leftists.
For me, the four horsemen of Barack Obama are:
1. Third world radicalism – inherited from father, mother, grandfather and “Frank”. This is Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016″ angle
2. The Racial Bargaining Ascension Mechanism – this is Shelby Steele’s “White Guilt” and “A Bound Man” angle. Construct a black racial identity and use it to rise.
3. Stealth Alinskyism – sabotage the Machine to take over the Machine. Gain power and parcel it out to your clients. The New New Left in stealth mode. This is Stanley Kurtz’s “Radical in Chief” angle.
4. The Reactionary Progressive Message — we care about the little people, we fight for you, “Government is the only thing we all belong to” — vote for us and we’ll take care of you. This is the public face of the New New Left.
One thing that really disturbed me about the Democrat National Convention as opposed to the RNC was the tone of the audience members. The DNC had a much greater feel of a religious revival and not a political ralley.
That people were happy to be owned by the government, that accepting BHO as president is akin to accepting Jesus christ as your lord and savior, that people who don’t believe in the Democrat party and all they wish to accomplish are Heretics to be converted or cleansed.
One of the lessons that I have gathered from a casual study of guerrila warfare, and counter insurection operations is that it IS possible to change a man’s politics, difficult, but not insurmountable. It is virtually impossible to change his religion.
It makes it incresing difficult to change a mans politics when you turn it into a religion. For years the party of the right has been accused of being the religious party, but I think for many it is more that their faith influences their politics. What I saw at the DNC was peoples politics becoming their faith.
That’s a powerful insight about changing politics vs. changing religion. Conservatives, I hold, are less likely to make politics their religion because they (generally) already have a religion. Liberals, conversely, find their significance and purpose (religion)in their politics.
Going back to the idea that liberalism went from an idea, to a political position, and then to a religion. I.E. Founders: liberal minds; Wilson/FDR/LBJ: Liberals; ’70′s radicals: “real” Liberals, bearers of “THE” truth.
Brett (#12 in the comments) has it rather succinctly – I think Dr. Rubin your attempt to get your arms around simple tyranny will go unrewarded – there is a very great number of people in the US that actively despise it, its traditions and its values, but can articulate none of them, nor their own cause, or ideals; 911 is a celebration – these many, many are but the gathering before a dictator to support USA style – we observe it in its nascent but clearly coalescing stage as they lay bare the agenda and dispense altogether with the pretenses – the recent DNC convention the last of its kind as the gloves come off – note that when dear leader undertakes a war there is virtual silence. In time, they will have their perfect idiocracy:the mechanics of governance openly tyrannical and nonsensical at once; a compliant majority, silent, bewildered and liberty crushed by a militarized police force only too willing to push people around. You see it coming together, like random growths of e.coli in a petri dish. The shit my friends has already hit the fan.
I call Obama a Marxist all the time. But I’m using it as a shorthand to communicate he’s extremely left wing of some composition. And yes, he doesn’t want the US to be like Europe – he wants it to be much worse. I wouldn’t argue with any of the details you’ve outlined here, but simply saying he’s a Marxist, for me, gets the job done. When they hear ‘Marxist’, most people get the message. Sure, you can argue it’s technically incorrect, because it is, but I can’t possibly say “but what I really mean is…” and repeat your article verbatim all the time!
The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of a fool to the left. Ecclesiastes 10:2
Barack Obama is a fascist. His views on the State v. Individuals are essential identical to those of Benito Mussolini.
If today’s liberals could be made to see that they are the Far Left’s (or NNL’s) useful idiots then….
Willful blindness is not an easily treatable condition.
To sum it up, obummer is an alinskyite (follower of saul alinsky), which can clearly be verified by reviewing ‘rules for radicals’. This does not however exclude him from being a communist, nor a muslim. Alinsky just changed the means, not the ends, for a communist takeover. Lastly, obummer drones are unyielding useful idiots, there is no turning them, only defeating them, as they are enemies of The Republic…
The author seems to be the last person on earth who has NOT read Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism.” Indeed, the roots of Obama’s actions are Marxist…but more from the NATIONAL Socialism side than from the INTERNATIONAL Socialism (Communism) side.
Government control of the Private Sectors through increasingly invasive regulation…
…SOUND FAMILIAR, Barry?!?
“Barack Obama is not a communist, a fascist, a Muslim, a Marxist, a Progressive ”
I would argue he is “All of the Above”. I would add one other descriptive..”Machiavellian” and I believe you have the whole of the beast configured.
A pragmatic use of Taqiyya, muslim allowed lying to advance islam against the infidel.Which he also uses to advance his Marxist/progressive ideology. It is the pragmatic part which gives the cover, the beast takes as much as possible then if there is a huge push back on minor issues , the Won will, reverse and even seem at odds with islam or marxism.
Make no mistake though, the beast is all of the above.
“I would argue he is “All of the Above”.”
That’s a matter of definition. I tend to agree with Barry Rubin’s definitions.
“I would add one other descriptive..”Machiavellian””
No, here I strongly disagree. This has nothing to do with definitions.
Machiavelli was a realist (like me). Obama and his henchmen are fantasists.
“The first step was to gain hegemony in the key institutions that created ideas, rather than the factories that created material goods. They succeeded brilliantly.”
Except that when they succeed the institutions stop creating (feasible) “ideas,” but dogma. Fine when sitting in a law firm, NGO or facutly lounge, but disastrous when applied in reality.
Obama’s what’s termed a neo-com, a new kind of communist, which I described in detail three years ago.
Revolution or civil war. The only possible result.
Yes, Obama is a new kind of political animal, a product of our affirmative action education, as are his voters. You are right about a Republican administration. The barbarians are so entrenched in the academy that they simply use that fact for further ridicule. Obama is being worshiped now in classrooms. Romney will be vilified. Republicans have been digging their own hole by ignoring culture and focusing almost exclusively on economic issues.
“So here’s a key point: Obama and his ideological comrades–let me call them the New New Left (NNL)–are to the left of almost all of the European socialist parties.”
Marxism and Fascism (Total Crony Capitalism) are to the left of European socialist parties as well.
Obama is using Marxist class struggle as we speak because he redistributes property “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” from the laboring middle class to the labor-challenged non-disabled proletariat class – you know – to make everyone economically equal – except for the not-to-be-equalized Marxist equalizers. Obama knows full well that Marxist economic class struggle destroys the laboring middle class because they eventually move over to the proletariat side with hands outstretched to Big Brother. Economic collapse and “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (code for Marxist Dictatorship) must ensue under such an irrational and dysfunctional economic system because so few are left working – a feature of Marxist class struggle – not a bug.
Obama is also using Fascist Crony Capitalism at the same time. Government power is needed to unfairly elevate selected businesses, and their owners, into great wealth where they can be easily controlled. The beauty of Crony Capitalism is that the government regulators get kick-backs from the guaranteed wealth of fat cats whom they control politically through laws and regulations – and very importantly – the forced elevation of a wealthy Crony Capitalist class provides an engineered justification for Marxist class struggle as above.
Voila! The New New Left is a hybrid of Marxism and Fascism – call it Marxo-Fascism – where the two forms of Leftist Tyranny – rather than fighting each other for total governing power – prop each other up like two sheaves of corn. This merger between Marxism and Fascism in the United States will not end well because the American Middle class will be erased – leaving only a great proletariat mass (call them proles) loomed over by a new American oligarchy of Marxo-Fascists.
1984
It seems to me the institutions of your NNL are crumbling of their own accord. Much of publishing, mass media and entertainment has seen its revenue streams dry up as technology offers consumers far more choices at lower prices. Higher education is crashing before our eyes after several decades of ever rising tuition combined with ever lower standards. Public schools have never been held in lower regard than they are today due to the combined greed and incompetence of unionized teachers.
The higher education bubble was created by the subsidizing of students of lower and lower ability. That subsidy of academia is a central plank of Obama’s DNC speech, dressed up as support for students. Paying off your supporters with taxpayer money. In this case, 2 birds with one stone. The spoils system….from each according to their ability, to each according to their political support.
Mr. Rubin misses the big picture in part because he buys into the left/right definitions that originated in the early 1930s.
Mussolini and Lenin had competing definitions of leftism which the Soviets distorted after Hitler came to power. Prior to 1933 the Communists classified Fascism as a right deviationist form of Socialism. However, Fascism was still considered leftwing. Mussolini won his argument with Lenin when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-91. Since then the left has evolved into a rainbow coalition so to speak of Red, Black, Brown, Blue and Green (both Islam and eco-Fascism) politics. Leftism has become and mish-mash of all the false premises, prejudices and hatreds of its components. Obama is the ideological successor to Benito Mussolini. I know that this somewhat unfair to Il Duce since he was a much better educated man than the One.
This video explains why Marxism and Fascism are both “Left” and why the American Revolution is Center-Right but not far Right. We should refer to Marxism as the Marxist Left – and to Fascism as the Fascist Left.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7M-7LkvcVw
Marxism and Fascism are connected in the most fundamental way – they both derive power over the individual through collectivization of the individual’s property – either directly via abolition of private property (Marxism) or indirectly via regulation of private property (Fascism).
“The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property… In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend… In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.” Karl Marx
“Private Property as conceived under the liberalistic economic order was a reversal of the true concept of property. This “private property” represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the general interests… German socialism had to overcome this “private,” that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.” Ernst Huber – Nazi Party Spokesman
“Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation’s economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property – so long as the state reserves to its self the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property. If “ownership” means the right to determine the use and disposal of material goods, then Nazism endowed the state with every real prerogative of ownership. What the individual retained was merely a formal deed… which conferred no rights on its holder. Under Communism, there is collective ownership of property de jure. Under Nazism, there is the same collective ownership de facto.” Leonard Peikoff – The Ominous Parallels
“Mussolini and Lenin had competing definitions of leftism which the Soviets distorted after Hitler came to power. Prior to 1933 the Communists classified Fascism as a right deviationist form of Socialism. However, Fascism was still considered leftwing.”
Wrong: as a matter of fact both Lenin and Mussolini saw themselves as Right-wing when compared to democratic socialism, because they were not egalitarian.
For Lenin, see his last book: “Left Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder.”
For Mussolini, see The Doctrine of Fascism, where incidentally you’ll discover that Mussolini considered classical liberalism to be Left-wing.
“Mussolini won his argument with Lenin when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-91.”
Wrong: Lenin won his argument with Mussolini when the fascist regime collapsed in 1944.
SG:
“as a matter of fact both Lenin and Mussolini saw themselves as Right-wing when compared to democratic socialism, because they were not egalitarian.
For Lenin, see his last book: “Left Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder.”
For Mussolini, see The Doctrine of Fascism, where incidentally you’ll discover that Mussolini considered classical liberalism to be Left-wing.:
That is a flat out misrepresentation of Lenin. He used “Left wing” as short hand for left deviationism by which he meant the deviation from the Party Line in the direction of the statelessness. He thought left wing deviationists (anarchists and Social Revolutionaries) were trying advance prematurely to the final stage of Communism. Right deviationism was collectivism that was not centered on the working class. Lenin believed in one and only one form of mature leftism — the Bolshevik Party Line.
“Lenin won his argument with Mussolini when the fascist regime collapsed in 1944.”
This statement puts your simple mind on display. Mussolini and Lenin argued over theory not over the existence of a state. Italy’s defeat had little to do with political philosophy and everything to do with a leader’s poor decisions making. Had Mussolini stayed out of the war Italian Fascism would have lived on just as Fascist Spain did. Communism’s failure came as result of its false substructure (to turn a Marxist phrase). Collectivism after 1991 follows the pattern outlined by Mussolini and not Lenin. The European Union owes nothing to Marx and everything to Mussolini.
“[Lenin] used “Left wing” as short hand for left deviationism by which he meant the deviation from the Party Line in the direction of the statelessness.”
Whatever, he did not think of himself as Left-wing and thought that Left communists were infantile.
“This statement puts your simple mind on display.”
Thank you for letting me know this.
“Mussolini and Lenin argued over theory not over the existence of a state.”
Well I am sure that the last thing that went through Mussolini’s mind before being shot was that he had won the debate with Lenin.
“Italy’s defeat had little to do with political philosophy and everything to do with a leader’s poor decisions making.”
So according to you, wars of aggression have nothing to do with fascism.
“Had Mussolini stayed out of the war Italian Fascism would have lived on just as Fascist Spain did.”
“Fascist” Spain? you mean the Franco regime? you call that “fascist”, and think that it is other people who have simple minds?
“Collectivism after 1991 follows the pattern outlined by Mussolini and not Lenin.”
I’m afraid that Obamanomics is much worse than fascist economics.
“The European Union owes nothing to Marx and everything to Mussolini.”
Let me guess: you have never been to Europe.
SG:
You really are a moron. Unless you are a European I can guarentee you that I have spend more time in Europe than you could ever dream of. ALso Asia and Australia.
Obama’s economic plan is straight out of Mussolini’s playbook. I could say Hitler’s but I don’t want to make that comparrison.
The Fascism/’Aggression line is straight out the Communist propaganda line. Communism was as aggressive as Nazi Germany. Have you forgotton that World War II started with a Nazi-Communist alliance? No Molotov-Ribentrop Pact, no World War II and no Holocaust.
The rest of your post is just noise.
net net…neither of them “won”.
Why does our poser in chief think it will now? Just because he’s smarter than everyone else?
His actions speak louder than words and many of his words are evidence of his not being too intelligent.
I hate to end on such a pessimistic – but realistic – note. The hour is late – but there is hope. We have a Constitution. We have State legislatures. Our State legislatures can amend our Constitution with anti-Marxist/anti-Fascist law, and they can do it without permission of the President, Congress or Supreme Court. Our State legislatures can also nullify, within their respective borders, all Federal laws, regulations, executive orders and Supreme/Federal court decisions which violate our Constitution.
“That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact [U.S. Constitution], to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil… the General Assembly doth solemnly appeal to the like dispositions of the other states, in confidence that they will concur with this commonwealth in declaring, as it does hereby declare, that the acts aforesaid [Alien and Sedition Acts], are unconstitutional; and that the necessary and proper measures will be taken by each, for co-operating with this state, in maintaining the Authorities, Rights, and Liberties, referred to the States respectively, or to the people.” James Madison – 1798 Virginia Resolution
“The course & scope of the reasoning [1798 Virginia Resolution] requires that by the rightful authority to interpose in the cases & for the purposes referred to, was meant, not the authority of the States singly & separately, but their authority as the parties to the Constitution., the authority which, in fact, made the Constitution; the authority which being paramount to the Constitution was paramount to the authorities constituted by it, to the Judiciary as well as the other authorities [Congress and President]. The resolution derives the asserted right of interposition for arresting the progress of usurpations by the Federal Government from the fact that its powers were limited to the grant made by the States [Constitution]… The mode of their interposition, in extraordinary cases, is left by the Resolution to the parties [States] themselves…in the event of usurpations of power not remediable under the forms and by the means provided by the Constitution [Article V Amendment]… It is sometimes asked in what mode the States could interpose in their collective character as parties to the Constitution against usurped power. It was not necessary for the object & reasoning of the resolutions & report that the mode should be pointed out. It was sufficient to shew that the authority to interpose existed, and was a resort beyond that of the Supreme Court of the U. S. or any authority derived from the Constitution [Congress and President].” James Madison – 1834 Notes on Nullification
Part of the difficult in dealing with Obama is assuming you can fit him in a category of thought. I don’t think he’s that systematic in his thinking, and he has the advantage (to conservatives) of being lazy and narcissistic. He doesn’t appear to be power-mad … he’s more petulant than that and a know-it-all.
I would say he’s an Adult Child of a Dysfunctional Family who doesn’t know where he fits in the world. He has to remind himself over and over again that he’s president — that’s why he keeps saying “I’m the president” in ways that are increasingly comical. He’s missing a certain element that all presidents up until now have had — a sense of belonging to this country and loving this country.
I don’t think Obama really knows what he wants. I think the NNL thing is possible, as well as Marxist thinking, as well as American thinking, as well as a general “international” outlook where you keep your own national identity somewhat at arm’s length. There’s something missing there.
Obama will continue to damage the U.S., but it’s the postmodern Marxists increasingly affecting the Democratic Party (who don’t have an inoculation against it) that’s more worrisome. In other words, I’m less concerned about Obama than those who surround him and those who voted for him. He reminds me most of a lazy version of a South American dictator.
America will survive Obama. But the postmodern Marxism (that often exploits the libertarian strain in American thought) — that’s the real problem.
This is already after the election, but this article and most comments still ring true. I have to agree with the above comment and add that it has been put “out there” that this guy cannot make a decision without the input of Valerie or Michelle.
Let me add to the well deserved praise from most of the comments above.
One thing that needs saying is that the vast majority of Americans know what policies Obama has implemented incomparably better than they know about the policies of Lenin, Mussolini, Euro social democrats, or even Wilson and FDR, or about the policies recommended in Das Kapital or the Koran.
Therefore it is just plain batty to try to “explain” Obama by labeling him “a communist, a fascist, a Muslim, a Marxist, a Progressive (in the pre-1920s meaning of that word)” or generally a socialist.
The comparison to social democracy is particularly dangerous because people might reply that social democracy has proven pretty stable in the Nordic countries, so what’s wrong with it?
I myself know what’s wrong with it, but in any case Obamanomics is NOT proving anywhere as stable as the Nordic countries, so the comparison engenders a false sense of security.
Saying that Obama is “to the left” of social democrats is, in my opinion, accurate in the post Cold War _American_ meaning of “left”, and it helps to bring home the seriousness of the situation. People who doubt that should ask themselves: which European leader has been associated with “left-wing” terrorists and radical preachers?
Also remember that Zapatero, probably the most post-modern European leader of all time, took a principled stand in defense of Aznar when Chavez called Aznar a “fascist”. Compare that to Obama’s apology tours.
And yet I have a minor criticism: at the back of most people’s mind “the left” is associated with liberty, equality, and fraternity, and no amount of arguing can change what is at the back of people’s minds in much less than a century. It might be better to call Obama “more extreme” than any social democrat, and wait for a request to specify in which way he is more extreme.
Obama and NNL are totalitarian, the same as marxists, Istamists, fascists. The distinctions between them are purely in style and fashion, not in substance. The essence of totalitarism in all these disguises is anti-individualism, belief that a collective is more important than a regular individual. Of course, they all make an exception for a particular individual on the very top which has to express the will of the collective.
For example. you say, Obama is not a communist, because he does not believe that the material existence defines ideas. In this sense, Stalin was not a communist either: he believed that his personal ideas shall define material existence and ideas of his subjects – the same as Obama and any other tyrant. So, the distinctions between all the shapes of totalitarism are for propaganda purposes only geared for particular population.
All these types of of totalitarism imply that there should be some specially anointed people who distribute wealth fairly. It is what Obama is trying to do. We will see much more of it if he is reelected.
Mr. Rubin
that was a complicated way to say ” …I won”.
that is the politics of obama.
dictator. PERIOD. or king. which is no different then any of the marxists or communists before him.
Mr. Rubin ..instead of semantics we need to fight this evil not debate terms of the ideology (do dictators have ideology?? … rhetorical ..NO they don’t).
he doesn’t care about anything or anyone but himself and those he needs to keep him in power.
………..and that is why he is dangerous ..we will not be thrown under a bus, we will be thrown under a tank.
NNL just won’t do. You’ve got to give it a NAME, dammit!
Like Alinsky says, name it, freeze it, mock it…
Give it a NAME, Barry, before your book is published.
Good point. I have got used to think of the NNL as “suicidalism”: a moderate version of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple.
However I am not sure that I would recommend this label for general use. It would not be taken as seriously as it should be.
They have infiltrated so many of our social and cultural institutions that there are many names for them. When they hijack science to prescribe social revolution would it be called scientism? The education system pedagogism? Redefining religious values, religionist? Is there a word that can sum it all up? (Forgive me for just making up words, or not if they are real, I did not major in English or journalism, and I kind of like making up words). It is not really about what you call it, but how you define it. I think many people understand the definition of the NNL, just don’t always get the name right.
The Left have been with us since the dawn of time. Cain and Abel. Obummer is the False Prophet. This nation is his empire. New York City is the ‘city destroyed in one hour’.
This is an important conversation, but I need to offer a caveat: the people who are currently mocked and derided for grasping, yet sometimes misnaming, the threat Obama poses need to be brought into conversations like these. They get it, and I don’t worry so much about how they express their concerns.
I’ve spoken to more than a thousand Tea Party and 9/12 members in the last three months. To a person, they have a better sense of the nefarious gradschoolification of America than even the professoriate involved in implementing it, particularly as it plays out at the all-important local level: schools and regional planning. To have a conversation with a PhD. urban planner about why voters rejected her electric train idea is to despair for American higher education. The same conversation with a 60-year old small business owner only makes me despair at how much ground we’ve lost in K-12 education since Bill Ayers assumed pontificate status in the education schools.
When I walk into a room at seven p.m. and know that the people there are coming in from a long work day and commute to discuss the dangers of Soros’ Foundations, or the takeover of K-12, I only wish there was more I could offer them. With some notable exceptions, conservatives in academia have failed to build bridges with these groups (to be kind). That’s too bad — every 9/12 and Tea Party group I’ve seen has an active lending library. I’m always asked for recommendations for books. If someone asks me whether I think Obama’s a secret Muslim, I just tell them what I think. The reception to differences of opinion is very different from what I experienced in academia, to say the least. I’ve had to teach myself to thaw out intellectually. Yet even the big groups sometimes have trouble getting speakers and authors on book tours.
Here’s the acronym I use to describe the political movement currently occupying the White House: the Activist, Advocate, Academic Cabal. AAACK.
Excellent point about “gradschoolification” and I’d add in “Chicago politics.” When he was running in 2008, first thing I thought was, “Oh no, he’s going to run American like an English department.”
“English” is the old term. Too colonialist.
The “gradschoolification” is evident on the climate blogs (i.e. Curry). The alarmists are almost to a person central policy advocates. After reading their comments for a while, you begin the realize that they believe that things were always done by government central direction. The concept of biological evolution is sacrosanct to them, but the concept of economic self-organization is beyond their comprehension.
The really dangerous thing about all of these latter-day ‘experts’ is their complete certainty that central policy always was and always will be the only way anything ever got done. Thus Joe Biden’s ignorant remarks about how the US government built the railroads in the 19th century.
Obama may or may not be accurately described at a communist, but the rise of the ‘anti-capitalist’ has made this moot. There’s a whole generation of ‘anti-capitalist’ policy wonks who are incapable of comprehending a society that isn’t managed top-down. Who actually manages operations is just a detail.
“Graschoolification” is a problem not because the leftists are in control (though they are), but because the academic world view is rationalist: here’s the problem, here’s the analysis, here’s the rationally generated solution. It assumes all of life is amenable to this process, and so most students, faced with a problem in society, respond by saying, “government should….” The most common student objection to this government-centered view is that government inhibits choices about drugs, sexual behavior, and other “personal choices.” Call this view the hedonistic view of liberty. Libertarianism enjoys a large degree of popularity among students for just this reason. Conservatism, if considered at all, is understood to be “no sex, no drugs, no fun, hates minorities, women, and the poor, and deeply religious.” Gradschoolification simply means that students have come to regard the rationalist / hedonist world views as the only two options. Conservatives would do well to consider how to present the public in and out of school with their alternative.
One of the most significant areas they have infiltrated is the scientific community. I don’t say that as a knock on science, I say it out of respect for the scientific method. The book “Ecoscience”, by John Holdren, is the perfect example of this. The book starts out like a science textbook, discussing ecological problems then turns in to a prescription for social engineering, transforming our social and cultural institutions, eradicating individual liberty for the good of the collective, and persuasvive (in some cases coercive) population control. I have witnessed many scientific articles that have this same approach. In the meat of the article, they talk about true science, this this and this was conducted crunching these numbers equals sugar is bad. Great. That is science. That is not the end though. The article then leads in to a social prescription to fix the problem that often suggests the need to eradicate individual liberty or personal responsibilty for the good of the collective. It’s the little things that people need to be aware of. The clip slipped into the movie that portrays the cops as ominous Santa Clause chasers. The constant innuendos and false perceptions of the businessman or white guy as the bad guy. The soft suggestion that having children is a sin because you are overpopulating the Earth (I met an old women the other day who complimented my children. She told me she had five children. I asked her how many grandchildren she had. She somewhat ashamedly said as her head tilted downward “I have eleven”, then quickly added “I am populating the world”). All of this, and more, my children will be exposed to in school because it is is “science” or politically correct, or percieved to be on the warm and fuzzy nice side of things. Polar bears are more important than people. Victims and martyrs are more important than those evil white guys. Cop killers are victims of those heartless evil cops. Muslims are just reacting to those meanie Americans who say mean things.
Barry,
I totality agree with your definition of the new new left which in my book is the old old tyrannical monster with the new and improve packaging. As for Obama I don’t believe is neither fascist, communist any other ist. He is a Megalomaniac front man of the left who’s convinced that he is the messiah who can save humanity from itself. Humans constant search for a savior, allows the Obamas of the world to flourish and create havoc. Human history is full Of Obamas, from Hitler to ancient Roman emperors and beyond. Eventually all of them failed at the expanse of human blood and treasure. I hope The American voter is
willing to correct the mistake they made in 2008.
Sociopath. Pure and simple. Classic. We put a fool in the White House. George Bush. He handed us a maniacal sociopath on a tin platter. I doubt this nation has what it takes to get rid of him any longer. The balance has tipped and it can not return. It is impossible to pay off or inflate our way out of just our 16 trillion dollar debt. Our impossibly monstrous unfunded mandate of tens and tens of trillions of dollars of future entitlements will bury us. Then you have the bankrupt individual states and their future debt they can never fund. There will be utter chaos and immeasurable conflagration. Soon their will be nuclear war in Central Asia. We probably won’t even have the radio and TV networks still standing to report it. The internet will be long gone. If by some long shot chance you live through all this you will be in a new dark age. Our only hope in this life is that The Revelation of Jesus Christ to Saint John and The Messiah’s other prophetic utterances were accurately transmitted to us.
Whatever Obama is politically has many antecedents. Maybe his particular recipe is novel, but the political world has seen all the ingredients at one time or another. The reasons why so many Americans blow off descriptive terms like “socialist” in his case are
1. their ignorance
2. their own adherence to Obama’s principles
3. their belief that criticism of this type is ungenteel
Item 3 is as dumb as it gets, because the Obama camp is brass knuckles 24/7.
Bingo! Right on the mark, Mr. Rubin. Well stated.
I would suggest naming it Ayersism, after William Ayers, the ‘intellectual’ progenitor of this particular strain of radicalism.
I like that. Ayers-Cloward-Piven.
Obama is all of those things…Communist, Marxist, Muslim, Progressive, Fascist, Socialist…..You see, he is the Composite Man….just like in his book….
I agree that Obama is not a Muslim. However, I would classify him as a “fellow traveler”.
Obama would need a second term in order to define him. As it stands, he’s barely to the right of Marxism.
Land of The Freebies, Home of the Enslaved
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSYy3ZYOfgQ
There is no way the nation will survive. How many years do we have before the complete collapse, or will the decline be incremental?
The historic parallels between the US and the early Dutch Republic (the superpower of its time) are amazing. Holland had an incremental decline, stabilzed, and is still a very pleasant place to live.
No more than half a dozen years at most.
Nah, you’re a bunch of crazy name-callers.
America has changed, and no amount of wishful thinking will take it back to the days of Mayberry and Eisenhower.
Our job, as modern conservatives, is to take America back to the rational thinking of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson – not back to their days – back to their thinking.
“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s.” John Locke
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson
Why all the fingerpointing, name-calling and navel-gazing?
Faux-bama plans to:
Take advantage of all those fools who support him.
Brain wash all those who do not.
Assassinate those who refuse to be brainwashed!
Who cares what “arguments” he employs, facts he makes up, or whether his actions could be described as socialist, marxist, statist, prograssive, or other.
He believes in none of this… he believes in HIMSELF.
He WILL NOT leave office VOLUNTARILY… under ANY circumstances!
YOU GOT IT!
HE IS ALSO GLADLY DOING IT FOR HIS FATHER’S RELIGION, SHIA MUSLIM GLOBAL CALIPHATE. OF COURSE, HE TOOK OUT BIN LADEN(RADICAL SUNNI LEADER). HE COULD EASILY FIND OUT WHERE UBL WAS AND BLOW HIM AWAY. HE DOES HAVE TOTAL CONNECTIONS.
OBAMA’S FORCES ARE ALL OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD(HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH, NOURI AL MALIKI, TURKEY’S ERDOGAN. THEY ARE ALREADY HERE TO TAKE US OUT.
I think we should call them Legion for demons they are.
Wittaker Chambers told us that the differences in the forms of leftism from liberal to communist were like the differences in the terms of pregnancy. They all lead to the same thing, which is stillborn.
Still, the left is what is natural to our DNA, which is why we so easily return to it no matter our experience. As Hayek wrote, all advances in civilization are anti-instinctual. We get to thinking, some of us, that because liberty has been wildly successful in advancing civilization that is is natural to us. But it is not. It is the socialism which is natural.
Socialism is only “natural” if some men are “more than others.” Socialism is only “natural” if all men are not created equal – where only some men are endowed – by themselves to themselves – with a collectivist right to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of other men.
Hayek. “Road to Serfdom” is sitting on my nightstand now which was a birthday present from my wife. I mentioned him in conversation once or twice.
She was a member of the red pioneers and the “Komsomol” at one time. Oh the irony. G-d truly does have a sense of humor.
For months now, maybe years already…I have adopted Bill Ayers descriptor “small c communism” to describe the harsh and brutal leftism adopted by this current strain of fascists.
First, it is impossible to deny that Ayers himself coined the phrase or adopted it to self-identify.
Second, it makes the linear connection to its sire and mare.
Third, it breaks the cycle of aiding and abetting this virulent brand of leftism by being called in Pavlovian fashion… “liberal” or “progressive”. It is neither in any real definition of those terms.
Fourth, the enemies of this brand of radical and virulent leftist fascism are America and Israel generally, Judeo-Christian adherents specifically, white males who are not granted absolution and non-leftists of every stripe.
Obama is not a Muslim, but he is most certainly not a defender of Judeo-Christian beliefs or peoples. He has bathed in the acid bath of hatred of Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Frank Marshall Davis, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, Ali Abuminah. This is no ordinary religious bias, it is much, much more aggressive than that.
I completely agree that we should be precise in our terms. To bear witness against the transgressions in academia, the indoctrination of hatred, the lies, distortion and deceit of the Propaganda and Lies Ministry. But, we should not berate ourselves too rabidly for failing to properly identify this “brand” of fascism. The definitions are elusive because of the Fabian nature, the camouflage and masks, the intentional conspiratorial cover given to it by our traitorous media and institutions of education.
Small c communism works for me, for the reasons outlined above. I make no apologies for stating that, nor do I believe I am “name-calling”. I’m simply taking their own words and accommodating their self-definition.
Are Van Jones, Anita Dunn, Frank Marshall Davis, James L Cone, Sam Graham Felsen, Carl Davidson, the Socialist Scholars conventioneers, the New Party, the Midwest Academy all to be ignored? Are we to wipe away the history at Occidental and Columbia? All because the appropriate “name” of this movement eludes us?
I hope not. I did my best to identify it and to call it what is is. I won’t back down from that now because it might sting the ears of those unwilling to hear the truth. But, I will succumb to a better name…as soon as I hear one.
Won’t do for a variety of Madison Avenue reasons.
Must be one word, preferably with “ism”, and at least sound dangerous.
Small c communism can mean lots of stuff to lots of people, especially educated after 1960. It can even sound attractive to those generations.
You can’t win the propaganda war with marshmellows.
You can’t avoid being labeled. The savage far-left will label and attack anyone who disagrees with them. Worry more about persuading people by telling the truth.
Obama is a euro-president, and the Democratic Party is looking more and more like a euro-socialist party, Greenery and all. Check for funding by Siemens affliliates or wind, “clean water”, pv, waste management local partners.
The value of capital is what interest it can earn.Zero interest rates for savers steals the capital of the petty bourgeoise as surely as violent revolution. Obama has been able to print money and borrow unlimited amounts to purchase a revolution in a way never done before. 24 million new food stamp recipients registered to vote is only a start. How about every mortgage holder, every college student, every sick person? Unlimited funds for every military boondoggle,from the absurd Osprey to carriers that a speed boat can sink. Lincoln and FDR sweated for every war bond but Obama doesn’t even have a budget. With Bernanke and Boehner giving him a blank check,we get Chicago politics on a national scale. Got a disability? Want the fed to pay for the arts? Want endless billions to burn food in our cars? Obama will care for you cause he’s got more money than money itself. Since the Federal government and the Fed now control most industries and most capital,by definition, we now have at least a socialist, possibly, even a communist government already.
I’d disagree- Obama is a garden variety Steve Nelson turd.
It is ALWAYS about (hatred of) RELIGION PERIOD
While the concept of the New New Left (NNL) is a useful tool in organizing our thoughts, we should also remember that we’re witnessing a work in progress.
Marxism has proven itself to be adaptable, able to live with currents, cross currents, and heresies within its own ranks, and to co-opt many unwary bystanders. I would argue that it is rather difficult at this point in time to predict, with any degree of accuracy, what particular direction the NNL version of this ideology will take. We can be sure, however, that it will be a “fundamental transformation” road.
We can also show how the NNL borrows from the Marxist past, and how it shapes itself to fit the moment. Thus our categories should likewise be adaptable, but most importantly, they should be accessible to the widest audience possible.
Definitely a very good article and update on current “NNL” New, New Left ideology.
There are two main tenets to current NNL “actions.”
1) Austrian School of Economics, i.e., Otto Baer
2) A rigorous game plan of:1)religious, 2)educational, 3) governance and 4) capitalist-financial “modification.”
Otto Baer is a mollified, modified Marxist. His ideas were somewhat the same but with different approaches and obviously slightly different outcomes…a softer approach to a “kinder, gentler” socialism.
The operational application of this NNL mantra is:
1) Religion. Religion in the USA has always been a usurpers stumbling block. It is seen by any usurper as a necessary evil, to be decimated, in order to fully implement any “kinder,gentler” socialism in the USA. So far, every splinter group in the USA (from:LGBT to Green Energy) has failed miserably. Why? one asks! Because the end game is decimating and eviscerating “GOD” from anything AMERICAN. Period. Americans WILL NOT “toss out GOD with the bathwater!” Period…just won’t happen.
2)Education. Marginal success has been achieved by Unions and Teacher organizations in decimating and altering students, school curricuum AND severing children from their parents. Now, THE SCHOOL has control over everything and every child in the USA. Parents must ASK schools for permission to do this or that…or whatever. Schools have total authority over anything related to teaching and student education, especially texts. Today (2012), LGBT will begin introduction of texts, depicting all sexually explicit material including a “Hawk” movement with naked adult participation in a circle of naked children. Pedophile and homosexual instruction will be normative.
3)Governance. The “STATE” is all knowing, all wise. Administrators in a centralized function (Washington DC)will better know how economic staples of:land, labor and capital will better be (more efficiently and effectively) utilized. Central Departments will organize “units” across the USA aimed at sheparding these rules and regulations so as to better meet central planners objectives and goals. The Executive Branch of Government (in the USA) is from whom all Executive Orders will take precedence over any and all other rules and regulations (be it State or municipal). This is already underway.
Lastly, 4)Finance. As has been covered in items 1,2,and 3 above…capitalism as it has been known in these USA will have been totally snuffed out. A form of “public/private” sector re-organization of American society will have been instituted for central planning purposes. Metrics, currently in place, will be purposeful…but used in a different context, i.e., measure targeting of Central planners “sectorial” areas of responsibilites.
This is the NNL goal.It is listed in Van Jones’ “Storm Manifesto” of Top-down/Bottom-up and Inside-out…already underway in Obama’s first term (1)Religion and 2) Education. His second term will have 3)governance and 4) financial)…completely altered to this NEW LEFT “Mission, Vision, Goals, and Objectives.
God Bless America. She’s crying for help and is on life support. Amen. Vote massively, take 10 to 15 friends to vote Nov.6. God Save Our USA. Amen.
There is a collage of Leftists of various stripes, with no enemies on the Left. They are all the enemies of Western Civilization. Many new Leftists are merely a montage of these ideologies and tactics and viewpoints. Each individual New New Leftists varies a bit in their particular montage of Maoism, Stalinism, Marxist-Leninism, Gramscism, Marcusism, New Leftism, Minority Identity Politics, Third Worldism, Enviro-Communism, Fascism, Statism, Centralized Powerism, Authoritarianism, Feminism, Anti-Colonialsim, Anti-Imperialism, Unionism, Anti-Captialism, Nationalsim or Anti-Nationalism, Anti-Christianism, and so on and so forthism.
Oops, forgot Fabianism, Social Democracyism, Democratic Socialism, Greenism, Political Correctism, Frankfurt Schoolism, Social Justice, SDSism, Weathermanism, Black Pantherism, Multiculturalism, Diversityism, Atheism, Cultural Relativism, Moral Relativism, Eugenicism, Progressivism…
“We cannot expect Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”
-Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959
Sorry, but this is academic claptrap. There have always been Big Industrialists who were stone communists; Armand Hammer is the first one who pops into my mind, and Geroge Soros is an obvious second one, although unlike Hammer he never actually produced anything.
Early socialists hated communists only because they were naive and actually believed that socialism led to prosperity instead of, well, communism and slavery. They have no such illusions any more. The socialists who hated the communists were the ones dragged off to the communist execution cellars.
Barack Obama is nothing new except for one thing: most Stalinists, of which he is one, were men of terrible energy and violence who imposed Stalinism on a prostrate nation. Obama is a lazy weakling with Stalinist ambitions who was elevated to power by a supine American public. That is the only thing about him that is original or different. It is also why he will be removed from office without ending up in the Lubyanka dungeons.
I’m not going to take the time to explain why this author is so terribly wrong and why he doesn’t understand Marxism and the Marxist strategy for “Peaceful Revolution In An Advanced Capitalist Society.” He doesn’t understand standard Marxist revolutionary strategies and techniques, and how they are, peacefully, being carried out in this country.
Obama’s socio-political milieu is replete with Marxism, whether of the Progressive, Socialist, or Communist variety. Milieu is a significant reflection of consciousness and awareness, and an important determinant of behavior.
Obama is a Marxist. In that ideology he possesses, he intertwines an unforgiving resentment of colonialism and his desire to make American and Western restitution.
He’s no breed of a New New Left. He’s a Marxist, pure and simple, and to try to characterize him any other way, for the purpose of selling a book, is dishonest and diverting.
Pure COMMUNISM; That’s where Obama is headed.
Communal organization is what Obama knows, and he has MANY ASSISTANTS already established in the Federal government to help accommodate this transition. (COMMUNITY ORGANIZING, remember?)
That is the scary part.
They have been established in their positions for years, and they are champing at the bit to facilitate this transition.
Having Obama as president is no different than having Bill Ayers as Chief of the Pentagon, or Jeffrey Dahmer as your preschoolers bus driver.
Obama wouldn’t be where he is if it wasn’t for RACIAL PREJUDICE; Whites are just as guilty as all other colors for voting based on the COLOR of this candidate. That’s his only qualification.
The Presidency of the United States hasn’t been retrofitted for a “special needs” individual yet.
There aren’t any “new kind” of leftists.
Under the cover they are all the same. Violent tyrants who do exactly as much as they think they can get away with. Eventually, that means everything. Contibutors to this forum, for example, are targetted for the gulag in the near future. It’s just about a sure thing within a few years if obama wins another term
What’s new is that our own little smirking tyrant has tailored his lies to an American audience. Redistribution on a stick from a basketball fan who’s a “nice guy” with a “lovely family” and “compassion” for the oppressed classes he intends to lift out of the misery they didn’t know they were in until he educated them. And he has his very own built-in pravda without having to create it at the point of a gun. Is it any wonder he is the most arrogant person to appear in at least decades, perhaps forver.
“We are in a totally new era. ”
Nah, it’s called Fascism — the mixture of Corporatism with Socialism, much beloved of the left from the 1920s through the latter part of the 1930s.
Mr. Rubin,
Your article closely aligns with a theory I’ve been developing for a few years. And while your article is better reasoned and referenced by your experiences, I think I’ve come up with an explanation for how we’ve gotten to where we are as a nation, as well as a possible solution. I’ll leave it to you to finesse my thoughts, but I think I’ve made my points. I’m trying to get someone with an audience to at least tell me where I’m wrong.
========================================================
Save America by Saving the Democratic Party
I can’t believe I’m actually writing this; “save the Democratic Party”? I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life! Why should I want to save them? They’ve done nothing more than spread misery and promote policies that have made us poorer as a nation.
I submit that to protect our Constitution and the founding principles that have sustained our nation we need a robust two-party system and an unbiased, curious free press. Sadly today we have neither. What happened to the Democratic Party of our parents or grandparents? Where are the good and decent, patriotic Dems today? And our media? Pathetic. Totally in the tank for Obama and the Democrats, protestation to the contrary notwithstanding.
To understand how we’ve come to this place a definition of terms is necessary, along with a brief, heavily-edited history lesson is necessary. It concludes with a prescription for recovery.
I. Patchwork Quilt of Disaffected Weirdoes
Today’s Democratic Party has devolved into what I call a “Patchwork Quilt of Disaffected Weirdoes.” It is nothing more than a coalition of disparate grudge and special interest groups held together by their mutual hatred, mistrust and disdain for our Constitution and traditional American values of self-reliance, personal responsibility, hard work and – especially – profit-driven capitalism. They favor collective rights, responsibilities and income/wealth redistribution. They also despise the military, for a range of reasons.
II. History; Kennedy to Obama
Looking at ideology it is clear that John F. Kennedy had more in common with Ronald Reagan than any subsequent Democrat president. He certainly had little in common with the stridently anti-capitalist Democrats of today. His assassination began what, to me, seems a dramatic shift to the left for the once center-left Democratic Party.
Robert F. Kennedy was, if anything, even more “conservative” than his brother and certainly more disciplined. His work with various civil rights leaders and his understanding of “social justice” was not only timely, it was consistent with the new direction BOTH parties were taking. RFK spoke great truth to this relatively new concept and was a truly transformative figure – or could have been. So, given LBJ’s refusal to run for office, the losses of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. set the stage for a coup. A leadership vacuum at the top of the Democratic Party created an opportunity for a takeover of the Democratic Party by the radical left. The beginnings of the Patchwork Quilt of Disaffected Weirdoes.
The chaos of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago was the perfect opening for “progressive” radicals to make their move. Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman Jerry Rubin and the rest of the Chicago Seven essentially grabbed the Democratic Party from the “old guard” and began the process of driving it hard towards the left. I’m not suggesting a grand conspiracy (I’ll leave that to others), but it does seem as though the timing of the “progressive movement’s” action in Chicago was ideal. Many factors contributed to this being the time of optimum opportunity for just such a coup.
It took a while for the Patchwork Quilt to elect a President. Jimmy Carter was elected largely because of Watergate. Clinton got in because Ross Perot siphoned a lot of support from George H..W. Bush (and he won re-election by coopting the conservative Republican agenda, to his un-ending credit; reprobate that his is.) Barack Obama is really the first Patchwork Quilt President. Elected largely through media complicity and a vague campaign theme that played on general fears, Obama is rapidly implementing the radical leftist “progressive” agenda that motivates the stridently ani-American lunatics who have taken full control of the once-proud, once-center/left Democratic Party of our parents and grandparents.
III. The Patchwork Quilt Takes Control
Looking at history it’s clear that the anti-capitalist, anti-American lunatic Left has seized full control of one-half of the body politic of the United States. Today’s Democratic Party is a hard-left, anti-American extremist “progressive” movement intent on destroying the foundations of America’s greatness, embodied in the historically-bizarre presidency of Barack Obama.
And Obama is not the symptom; he is the cause. But by “he” I mean in the sense that he is the point-man of a larger movement intent on destroying such concepts as private property ownership, personal freedom having priority over collective “freedoms”, capitalism, profit and rule-of-law vs rule-of-men justice. Their first goal is the destruction of the US Constitution, as evidenced by their actions. In his own words Obama has spoken about the multitude of flaws in the Constitution, calling it a document of “negative rights.”
He MUST be defeated and his ilk rooted out and exposed as de facto agents provocateurs at all levels; local, state and national.
IV. How to Save America
The answer to this question begins with a question: “What happened to all the ‘normal’ Democrats?” For example, Evan Bayh. He is, by all accounts, a smart, moderate, center/left Democrat who loves his country and reveres the Constitution. Why did he resign from politics? I think it’s because he saw, like Ronald Reagan, that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the party left him. He probably realized that his party no longer reflected his ideals; that they had gone way too far to the dark side and had effectively disempowered “normal” democrats. And Democratic Party operative like James Carville have been essentially shut-out of today’s Democratic Party activities. Carville is an incredibly intelligent, hugely charismatic character who is one of the greatest partisan operatives of our time. Why can’t Obama and the Patchwork Quilt use him today? I suspect that he’s not “one of them.”
So we’ve come to the place where its obvious that the best way to save America is to save the Democratic Party. And the best way to save the Democratic Party is for patriotic, normal Democrats to vote for Mitt Romney for President.
Why? The Patchwork Quilt of Disaffected Weirdoes is fraying at the edges. Indeed, it has always been a delicate coalition. The challenge is to push them over the edge into self-immolation by handing Obama and his Patchwork Quilt party a defeat of historic proportions. They must be utterly destroyed at the polls, creating a temporary opening for the likes of Bayh, Carville and others to reclaim the “real” Democratic Party. How? By inviting the Tea Party in to do for the Democrats what they’ve been doing for the GOP. Not all Tea Party people are rock-ribbed Conservatives or Republicans. So-called Tea Partiers are really just normal Americans who represent the entire political spectrum. Really! They are conservatives Republicans, Libertarians (and libertarians), “Reagan Democrats”. In other words, a broad spectrum of patriots who want to keep government in its place.
By exposing their America-hating ideology and agenda, “normal” Democrats can target Patchwork Quilt of Disaffected Weirdoes Democrats during election time and purge them from the Party.
America has always been a center/right country and it’s time for all American to re-claim our nation from the suicidal lunatics who are driving us over the cliff.
We need to get this word out.
Chris Shannon
Hermosa Beach, CA
Oh come on. Are you kidding? Good grief. Read Rules for Radicals, The Port Huron Statement, Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. I don’t need to excruciate to figure out what Obama is. However, he is NOT what is dangerous, not even close. What is dangerous is the majority who elected him in the first place. “Leftist of a new kind”? Please. What, are you trying to get your PhD in political theory from some conservative university, hence this article? Nice try.
Your book needs to explain why Obama is not a fascist. Setting aside the Lebensraum and Aryan superiority issues, how does Obama’s program differ from, say, Mussolini’s totalitarian fascism? I can’t think of any notable differences, except that Obama smiles a lot compared to Mussolini.
Chris Shannon, Your post gives me hope! I agree with you and fervently hope that an awakening of “normal” Democrats can bring about the sea change we so desperately need. Two parties, yes, essential: common sense, also essential(although that seems to be an endangered attribute right now!). I am far less concerned with “what” obama is, how we got here, what to call the radical left, than how do we get out of this miasma we are in!!!! I do know that the first and only place to start, right here, right now, is to defeat him soundly in November! Then, and only then can other measures be instigated.
Mr. Ruben stated: “Barack Obama is not a communist, a fascist, a Muslim, a Marxist, a Progressive…or even a socialist”.
You are, obviously, full of “Shi’ite” [if my Arabic is correct] You forgot to add “anti-Colonialist.{ Dinesh D’Souza has it 100% correct.} And he is also ALL of what you say he is not.
In his formative years he was raised as a Muslim by his Socialist and anit-Colonialist Muslim Socialist father [Barack, Sr] and his Muslim stepfather [Lolo].
His mother, Stanley Ann, was a staunch Marxist, as were his equally Marxist maternal grandparents, Ann & Stanley Dunham.
Last-but-not-least his surrogate father and mentor in Hawaii was a self-avowed Communist and a member of the Communist Party of America, Frank Marshall Davis.
Furthermore, Obama is and always has been a member of the Progressive Democrat Party where he was introduced politically to the entire nation from the Chicago home of the Nineteen-Sixties, Marxist, domestic terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn and attended “church” for twenty years where he heard the minister, Jeremiah Wright proclaim: “Goddamn America, not God bless America.” I could be wrong, but that sounds a bit ‘fascist’ to me.
So, he fits into every category you denied; how can he NOT be ALL of the things you claim him NOT to be?
One of your gabby commentators said “Obama was a Marxist, but not a Communist.”
The two terms are identical and indivisible from one another and there are other synonyms, like the ones you listed in your opening statement: progressive and socialist, but maybe not fascist or Muslim, but certainly Democrat [as in Party]
Bill Clinton & Barack Obama defined: what IS is & what ISLAM is !