Stanley Kurtz, NRO:
A loose accusation of his being a socialist has trailed Obama for years, but without real evidence that he saw himself as part of this radical tradition. But the evidence exists, if not in plain sight then in the archives — for example, the archived files of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which include Obama’s name on a conference registration list. That, along with some misleading admissions in the president’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, makes it clear that Obama attended the 1983 and 1984 Socialist Scholars conferences, and quite possibly the 1985 conclave as well. A detailed account of these conferences (along with many other events from Obama’s radical past) and the evidence for Obama’s attendance at them can be found in my new book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.
The 1983 Cooper Union Conference, billed as a tribute to Marx, was precisely when Obama discovered his vocation for community organizing. Obama’s account of his turn to community organizing doesn’t add up. He portrays it as a mere impulse based on little actual knowledge. But that impulse saw Obama through two years of failed job searches. Clearly he had a deeper motivation. The evidence suggests he found it at the Socialist Scholars conferences, where he encountered the entrancing double idea that America could be transformed by a kind of undercover socialism, and that African Americans would be the key figures in advancing community organizing.
[my emphasis]
I’ve been torn between thinking of Obama as an opportunistic narcissist who is out of his depth, once the campaigning is over; or as a stealth candidate, a socialist posing as a moderate in order to enact the Cloward-Piven strategy.
That question still isn’t settled, I don’t think, but what Kurtz finds is that Obama’s relationship with Frances Fox Piven is closer than has been previously revealed — and that many of Obama’s decisions, when viewed through the lens of strategies outlined by his socialist mentors, make perfect sense: the goal is to reshape the political landscape along class lines (and class conflict) in order to affect a wholesale “transformation” of the country into a socialist state, albeit one that eschews the label of “socialist” and instead depends on a manufactured populist uprising that yields de facto socialism.
I haven’t yet read Kurtz’s book — Geoff B has kindly purchased me a copy and it’s on its way, at which point I’ll be posting excerpts as part of a new “provocateurism” series — but in the interim, I’ve listened to Kurtz talk about his book, and about Obama’s past, in interviews such as this one with Mark Levin.
Do give it a listen — and read Kurtz’s entire NRO article — then come back here and discuss: does the evidence point to Obama as a true believer? Or do you think he has simply learned to game the system, and so has used socialists, moderates, and an often bi-partisan collective cultural guilt over supposedly institutionalized racism, to further his own egoism (recall just how many “hip” libertarians threw in for Obama in the 2008 election, and how many conservative “pragmatists” insisted we treat him as a Good Man)?
I’ve been torn between thinking of Obama as an opportunistic narcissist who is out of his depth, once the campaigning is over; or as a stealth candidate, a socialist posing as a moderate in order to enact the Cloward-Piven strategy.
Why can’t he be both? Would a sane person want Cloward-Piven?
Obama was around pretty hard core leftists all his life. Granted his grandparents were not that left, but we saw what he did to grandma. Apparently her influence did not stick.
Bill Clinton wanted to be loved. Barack Obama does not give a shit about that, he wants to remake the world.
Most of us here at PW knew he was a red diaper baby. Maybe the rest of America will realize that now. We’ll know on Nov 3.
…does the evidence point to Obama as a true believer? Or do you think he has simply learned to game the system…to further his own egoism
I’m not sure we have to make it an either/or proposition. I think he has the ego and the ambition, but not the raw natural talent. Thus, he found the machine, and began a symbiotic relationship where he gave them a vessel through which to pursue power, and they gave him a means to share that power personally. It would be child’s play to manipulate our Narcissist-In-Chief into playing the part required of him, and each party would be convinced it was using the other for its own ends.
Obama’s special gift isn’t deep thinking or Machiavellian plotting; it’s being the blank screen onto which others project their wishes. There is no reason why those doing the projecting must be duped voters; indeed, I’d say that Ayers et al have been projecting their dreams on him for decades.
He uses the machine, and the machine uses him. He’s quite probably a True Believer, not so much in the worker’s paradise, but rather that this is a movement that gives him the prestige and power and ego-stroking that is his narcotic of choice.
I’ve been torn between thinking of Obama as an opportunistic narcissist who is out of his depth, once the campaigning is over; or as a stealth candidate, a socialist posing as a moderate in order to enact the Cloward-Piven strategy.
Why can’t he be both? Would a sane person want Cloward-Piven?
Well he’s either out of his depth or he isn’t. Not both and. I’d like to know.
Well he’s either out of his depth or he isn’t.
Were he acting alone, he’d be so far out of his depth that Chilean miners would send him sympathy cards. But I daresay the movement of which he is an important piece thinks it’s right where it wants to be.
Or would be, if these damn Tea Party hoarders and wreckers would just shut the hell up and get out of the way.
If everything you’ve ever been taught is wrong, it doesn’t make you insane to believe it. It just makes you wrong.
Since the Cloward-Piven strategy called for the social welfare system to be overloaded until it broke, the successful execution of that strategy is going to look like gross incompetence, isn’t it? At least to those accustomed to focus on the results of actions instead of the intentions of the actors.
The Barak Obama Presidency: Malice or Incompetence? It’s an interesting parlor game, but at the end of the day, it’s no more relevant than trying to understand why Islamists hate us to death (ours and/or theirs). It’s enough to know that they hate us enough to kill us if we don’t kill them first, isn’t it? Same with Obama. It doesn’t really matter why he’s doing what he’s doing. It’s enough to know that he must be stopped.
Were he acting alone, he’d be so far out of his depth that Chilean miners would send him sympathy cards. But I daresay the movement of which he is an important piece thinks it’s right where it wants to be.
Or would be, if these damn Tea Party hoarders and wreckers would just shut the hell up and get out of the way.
Truly.
It matters to me, Ernst, if only because knowing that it’s being done purposely would mitigate future claims by smiling liberal fascists that their plans for really getting this country happy and “fair” and “equal” just hasn’t been done properly yet.
An explanation of incompetence would tend to mitigate what appears to be intentional dissembling as regards Obama’s past associations and links to his present aims. It’s akin to the question “Bumbler or Con-Artist?” and to that extent ought to be no negligible matter, but to go to the center of things to come.
I’m going to come down as one of the “true believer” camp, with a little side of opportunism.
I think that all of these socialist ideas naturally appealed to Obama, given his indoctrination at the knee of avowed and dedicated communist Frank Marshall Davis, who clearly believed that the black underclass of his (Davis’) youth were clearly the proletariat and for obvious reasons primed a priori for classic communist class warfare arguments, at the behest of his socialist slacker grandpa, and his America hating mother, who in her natural teenage desire for uniqueness went over the edge and romantically embraced transnationalism-the antithesis of post-war American culture at that time. That’s why she married Barack Obama senior in the first place…
So it’s easy to see why these ideas naturally resonated with him. The opportunism is introduced when Obama, who has been told his entire life that the sun rose and set based on his very existence, was chosen as the “Face man” for the DSA and Midwest academy operatives. He performed well, perhaps exceeding theior expectations; after all, he’s no idiot.
And so began a mutual usery based on gain. For the
socialistcommunists, they had a front man of a preferred victimhood group, a group they needed solidly in their camp for to both more easily advance their class warfare tactics-owing to the then recent institutional oppression of many in that group and the moral authority, guilt, and sympathy they could engender-as well as begin the process of “divide and conquer” the American public that still had warm nationalistic notions following WWII; and perhaps most importantly, a front man who could neutralize all criticism by accusing or just inferring racist motivations on the part of the critic, which in the wake of the civil rights movement had become the most toxic label one could be tarred with in US society.And Obama, well, he had a vehicle for personal advancement that was a sure thing. A group that regognized the greatness he had always been told he possessed, and that had no qualms about letting everyone think he was in charge. And, at least psychologically, he’s get to see the dreams of his many “Fathers” fullfilled, by his own hand.
Too bad the jig is up…
I’m waiting, JD.
Fair points, Jeff & sdferr. But unless and until we get widespread acknowledgement that Eric Voegelin correctly posited that Leftism, in all its various guises, is a species of Gnosticism, too many people who ought to know better are going to believe that because one intends heaven on earth, a little more hellishness in the interim is necessary price that others are going to have to pay.
Quoting Jeff from his Juan/NPR thread:
It seems to me that it is here, in this “[change]. . . from within” that Andrew Ferguson goes a bit astray in his takedown of De Sousa. Ferguson is content, in other words, to assume the contemporary “Liberal” of the Democrat party (Obama, that is) is identical with the Liberal of twenty to thirty years ago.
[…] Call me perspicacious, but from day one, this guy’s game was obvious to any “conservative” with a pulse. All that remained was for us to divine his motivations. […]
“Or do you think he has simply learned to game the system, and so has used socialists, moderates, and an often bi-partisan collective cultural guilt over supposedly institutionalized racism, to further his own egoism (recall just how many “hip” libertarians threw in for Obama in the 2008 election, and how many conservative “pragmatists” insisted we treat him as a Good Man)?”
This.
I base my opinion (and that is all it is) on what I saw of him as an IL legislator and US Senator – the True Believer would have done a lot more, actually voted or proposed things rather than punt, hide and not really do much of anything. I think he has found a wonderful vehicle to take him to status, adulation, money and the like.
A true believer probably would have actually proposed legislation, budgets and the like – instead of tossing a nod of the head to Pelosi and Reid and hitting the golf links and talk shows to celebrate the wonderfulness of himself.
Or, I guess he could just be a really lazy and ineffective True Believer…
Oh, and Bob…since JD has not yet chimed in…
DENOUNCED!!!
Would you, perhaps, call that a national form of socialism?
“Or, I guess he could just be a really lazy and ineffective True Believer…”
That narcissism business could be a full-time job though, precluding devotion of much attention to other stuff.
Thanks Colonel John,
For both the historical insight and the denunciation.
He’s a true believer of the “the worse, the better” school. He is intellectually closest to the Ayers group of Chicago radicals, who marched their long march through the institutions in order to advance the revolution from within. They have not given up the dream; America just needs to be sufficiently broken down before it can be successfully radicalized.
I think he’s mostly a little bitch what does what he’s fucking told.
LTC John and others, buy and read the book. It’s to 1968 on as “Liberal Fascism” was to the earlier progressive era. I thought I knew most of what was/is going on but it is more than I ever expected.
So who’s doing the telling? M’chelle?
Bingo.
What makes Obama appear effective is Nancy, Harry, and the leftoid caucus of the Democratic Party. The Man himself has done, for all practical purposes, nothing but bloviate where he intended to pontificate.
But note his recent bloviations, which deviate not a hair from the originals. This has been interpreted as “doubling down”, but it’s nothing of the kind; he is a True Believer who will not tolerate a jot or tittle being removed from the Law. Calling it “narcissism” is true to some extent but misses the point. We have, throughout history, cases celebrated and otherwise of people who suffered the slings&arrows of outrageous fortune, and either held on to a heroic end or wound up as martyrs. Calling them narcissistic is introducing pop psychology to deflect the discussion — and that’s how Obama sees himself. EXCEPT —
He’s never been challenged before, and has no idea how to respond to an effective challenge. It shows in every ineffectual move he makes, from irrelevant lashing out at the wrong targets to retreating from confrontation. He is, in fact, neither the Hero Who Sticks It Out nor the Martyr To The Cause, because nothing in his life has given him the intestinal fortitude to be either. He has immovable convictions, but nothing in his soul to support them.
The next two years should be interesting. Prediction: Further outbreaks of assassination pr0n from the Left, because at this point the only thing that could save their program is genuine martyrdom. If JFK hadn’t been assassinated, there is exactly zero chance that Lyndon Johnson would have ever been anything but an effective and corrupt Senator, and the United States would look very different from what we have today. Pray for the health and effectiveness of the Secret Service, folks. Barack Obama in the White House we can probably survive, though it may be a near thing. Barack Obama carried up Pennsylvania Avenue in a box on a caisson…
Regards,
Ric
From sdferr’s link in #14.
This is more of a technique of the elites to keep the focus on a single individual and allow the whole of the organization[s] which operate behind them and behind the scenes to continue their missions unopposed by the larger population.
I have been praying for Obama’s health and safety from Day 1, for precisely the reasons you give, Ric.
As for whether he’s a true believer, an opportunist, or some other thing entirely, I personally don’t really care what the answer is. If I find maggots in my food supply, I’m going to throw out the soiled food and use whatever I can find that will eliminate as many different species of infestation as I can think of. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll start doing research.
I think Jeff’s point, McGehee, is that it’s important to understand how the maggots are getting in, so that you can more effectively prevent a repeat.
I assume some kind of fly laid eggs there. I’d want to stop all species of fly from getting into my pantry.
Or, I guess he could just be a really lazy and ineffective True Believer…
dingdingdingdingding!
The one thing you have to understand about Narcissistic Personality Disorder is that NPDs are obsessed with Ideal States, whether those states occured in the past or are anticipated in the future: a Golden Age, Perfect Love, etc. Whatever floats their boat.
(My dad over-idealizes his early college years, when he escaped his tiny Idaho town and got to have some actual friends. But instead of being merely nostalgic about it, he keeps trying to relive those days by sending emails to his old college friends, inviting them to “relive the old times” and whatnot. In his mind, NOTHING BAD HAPPENED THEN, at all, his life has never lived up to that golden ideal, and it never can. It’s really very sad to watch.)
The SECOND thing you have to understand about NPDs is that they expect Teh Ideal to come their way with minimal-to-no effort on their part. They fully expect to get promotions at work when they’ve done nothing to merit it except baste in their own self-regard. If you try to point out their lack of achievement, it’ll go right over their heads, and YOU will be the negative defeatist who is trying to keep him down. (Remember Ward Churhill, the fake Indian with all the plagiarism to his name? It never occured to him to do his own work: not once. NPDs themselves are little more than walking façades, so the whole concept of substance vs. appearance is lost on them.)
Part of Obama’s delusion is that the hopenchange is inevitable given his incandescent presence in the Oval Office, and his narcissism prevents him from seeing exactly which levers need to be pulled to make it happen. Those he surrounds himself with are much cannier as to the practicalities, but as for he himself, he’ll just play another round of golf.
He truly believes “the entrancing double idea that America could be transformed by a kind of undercover socialism, and that African Americans would be the key figures in advancing community organizing.” He sees himself as the Black Messiah who will bring all that hopenchange about, but he has no concept that it requires more from him than just showing up and being magnificent.
Yes, he’s in it for the adulation, his primary drug, but good luck pointing out to him that the charge he gets from the adulation has nothing to do with effecting the desired goal. He can’t see it. He is genuinely blind to his own shortcomings: only the dreamed-of ideal is real to him, and if the rest of us can’t see it, that’s evidence of our unworthiness.
So yes, he’s a lazy and ineffective True Believer, for whom Transformed America is the ideal he is obsessed with. It’s the True Believers he’s surrounded himself with, who are neither lazy nor ineffectual, that you have to watch out for.
Calling them narcissistic is introducing pop psychology
Sorry, but he’s a clinical narcissist through and through. Krauthammer, neo-neocon, and other shrinks use the word “narcissism” to describe him, and they’d not employ such a term without cause.
And having been raised by an NPD, I can spot them a mile away.
He’s never been challenged before,
He’s not being challenged now–not from his perspective. NPDs are fully impervious to any challenge to their world view. The lashing out at “irrelevant targets” is exactly what narcissists do to protect their delusions. There will be no chink in his armor, no flash of insight, no Clintonesque triangulation.
Leftism and narcissism are a hand-in-glove fit: it tells Leftists that they are superlative people who ought to be in charge of the world, and few narcissists can resist that kind of lure.
I just can’t understand how the guy behind “Wanna Buy a Possum” got tied up with Marxism.
He’s no great shakes as a leader of a revolution.
But as the loyal foot soldier doing his part… he’s all over that.
It’s the same mentality that jihadis use. Absolutely the same.
Put on the belt, and for one bright shining loud brief moment, they are as one with their God. Except in Obama’s case, he gets to savor the coming collapse of The System for years.
No matter how insane, destructive, counter productive, or flat out nonsensical the actions of his administration or (the real instrument of destruction) the minions that have been inserted into the bureaucracy, he will get a pass over and over and over.
It must be hugely entertaining for him.
He’s a tool. A willing one. You may attribute only so much to incompetence before you are forced to recognize enemy action.
Racists. Denounced and condemned.
I’ll second the narcissism. But that doesn’t preclude him also being a true believer; particularly since he’s never really had any of his beliefs challenged in any meaningful way.
I’m going to second TmjUtah and add that Obama’s job was first to get elected so all those others could be put into place.
Second he is there to draw the heat, a flak-catcher-in-chief. The waving, distracting, hand with the wand of the magician. The bait inside the monkey trap that calls for you to never let go.
His narcissism is a tremendous asset in all of this. Keeping all eyes fixed on himself is not just his job but the love of his life. He is perfect in his imperfection.
Zaphod Beeblebrox.
“Hey, Barack’s just this guy, you know?”
incandescent
No, no, no.
Our presence is now…
fluorescent.
He’s a dick.
The way I see it is that there are no actual socialists other than the kind that want socialism for “the masses” while they run the show or carry the water for those who run the show and therefore, deservedly, receive a more than equal share due their diligence while laboring to perfect the socialist utopia. Con man or true believer? Above all they are opportunists and it seems to me that socialists have always advocated the fuhrer principle in one form or another. Didn’t Dylan say something about leaders?