A friend emailed me
a recent review of Dinesh D’Souza’s blockbuster film, 2016:
Obama’s America, which is now the second largest-grossing
political documentary of all-time. The review was done by an AP
writer. My friend found it interesting that of all the criticisms
made by the reviewer, there was no mention of Frank Marshall Davis
— the literal (no exaggeration) card-carrying communist who was a
mentor to a young Obama in Hawaii, and whom I briefly discuss with
D’Souza in the film. I’m not surprised. My book on Davis,
The
Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s
Mentor, made the New York Times bestseller list,
but I still haven’t received a single inquiry from anyone in the
mainstream press — proof that I have my facts right.
Speaking of facts, the title of the AP review was “FACT CHECK:
‘Anti-colonial’ Obama not Plausible.” I disagree with several of
the criticisms made by the reviewer, but I’d like to focus more
generally on the claim in the headline, which is being advanced by
liberals generally as a chief criticism of D’Souza’s film.
Is an “‘anti-colonial’ Obama not plausible?” Hardly.
In Dreams from My Father, the focus of the D’Souza
film, Obama uses words like “colonial,” “colonialism,” or
“neocolonialism” 17 times, plus associated words like “imperialism”
(among others) three times. Phrases used in the book (sometimes by
people Obama quotes) include “colonial administration,” “colonial
West,” “white colonials,” “serving the interests of
neo-colonialism,” and even a line about Christian missionaries
bringing not religion but (allegedly) colonialism. In Dreams
from My Father, Obama talks about arriving at Occidental
College in 1979, just after getting bitter parting advice from
Frank Marshall Davis on “the American way and all that sh-t.”
There, at Occidental, Obama recalls: “At night, in the dorms, we
discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism.” In that one
sentence are multiple powerful/synonymous anti-colonial references,
especially to Fanon, who was a militantly anti-colonial writer.
Those are simply Obama anti-colonial references in Dreams
from My Father, far from the only source that could be entered
into this conversation. There’s also the whole ongoing controversy
over things like President Obama removing the Churchill bust from
the Oval Office, which D’Souza mentions in the film. To the extent
that such an action was an Obama statement against Churchill,
D’Souza is certainly justified in linking the action to
anti-colonial views by Obama. Churchill was a colonialist.
Generally speaking, however, it shouldn’t surprise anyone —
especially liberals — that Barack Obama would be anti-colonial.
Why wouldn’t he be? What’s up with liberals on this? I attended the
same universities and lectures they have for the past 30 years.
Anti-colonialism and American imperialism were the daily
dogma. We were indoctrinated with those views. The political left
is vehemently anti-colonial. Everyone knows that. Why wouldn’t
Barack Obama be anti-colonial, especially given his upbringing? Why
the defensiveness by liberals? Do liberals want Obama to be
pro-colonial?
This would be like conservatives getting upset at claims that
Ronald Reagan was anti-communist.
My only addendum to this conversation on Obama’s
anti-colonialism relates to its sources. As noted, in D’Souza’s
movie I talk about Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s mentor. (See Paul
Kengor’s cover feature on Davis in the current American
Spectator.) Davis met with Obama a lot. How often? We don’t
know. I’ve been told everything from a few times to weekly, the
latter of which I cannot confirm. David Maraniss contends that
Obama and Davis met upwards of 15 times — surely a conservative
estimate that is nonetheless 15 times the number of times that
Obama met with his Kenyan father, the inspiration for the title of
his memoirs; that is, his Dreams.
As I document at great length, Davis was not only flagrantly
pro-communist but flagrantly anti-colonialist. For instance, Davis
attacked Winston Churchill and Harry Truman — Westerners opposing
Stalin — as colonialists, not to mention imperialists, fascists,
and racists. He
vilified the Marshall Plan as “white imperialism” and “colonial
slavery.” He wrote of the Marshall Plan, “I have watched with
growing shame for my America as our leaders have used our golden
riches to re-enslave the yellow and brown and black peoples of the
world.”
I scanned Davis’s 1949-50 writings for the Honolulu
Record, the Communist Party newspaper he wrote for.
Colonialism dominated his writings. The word “colonial” or
“colonialism” is used 17 times in those columns (ironically, the
same number as Obama’s references in Dreams from My
Father).
Did Obama get his colonial views from Frank Marshall Davis as
much (if not more) than his father? That’s plausible. And we could
get some of these answers if mainstream media sources like the AP
— which have access to Obama that the likes of D’Souza and I don’t
— would simply ask the president an occasional hard question about
his upbringing; that is, an occasional fact-check.
To the contrary, that task is apparently left to conservatives.
For doing so, we get fact-checked.
