# Do people really believe that Obama is a Communist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 18, 2008, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442 "2008-08-18T16:35:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/61 "2008-08-19T04:56:55Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] Of course not, you’re locked in the, ‘liberals are smart conservatives are stupid’, paradigm. [/QUOTE] I just read the article again. It seethes with hatred and feverish fantasy (“Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother’s milk…”:rolleyes: ), but there is nothing in there about socialism. The piece accuses Obama, his wife and his mother of all hating America and does so on the most specious bases possible (Spengler really hates anthropologists, doesn’t he), but I don’t see any indication in there that he has an education above a high school level or can delineate any definitional distinctions between liberalism and socialism. I don’t say that because he’s a right wing crank, but because the evidence simply doesn’t exist in this article. What does exist in the article is insane, paranoid lunacy and xenophobia. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/62 "2008-08-19T05:09:06Z")
> [@](#): > > “Naivete” is a euphemism for Ann Dunham’s motivation. Friends describe her as a “fellow traveler”, that is, a communist sympathizer, from her youth, according to a March 27, 2007, Chicago Tribune report. Many Americans harbor leftist views, but not many marry into them, twice. Ann Dunham met and married the Kenyan economics student Barack Obama, Sr, at the University of Hawaii in 1960, and in 1967 married the Indonesian student Lolo Soetero. It is unclear why Soetero’s student visa was revoked in 1967 - the fact but not the cause are noted in press accounts. But it is probable that the change in government in Indonesia in 1967, in which the leftist leader Sukarno was deposed, was the motivation. > > Soetero had been sponsored as a graduate student by one of the most radical of all Third World governments. Sukarno had founded the so-called Non-Aligned Movement as an anti-colonialist turn at the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. Before deposing him in 1967, Indonesia’s military slaughtered 500,000 communists (or unfortunates who were mistaken for communists). When Ann Dunham chose to follow Lolo Soetero to Indonesia in 1967, she brought the six-year-old Barack into the kitchen of anti-colonialist outrage, immediate following one of the worst episodes of civil violence in post-war history. > > Dunham’s experience in Indonesia provided the material for a doctoral dissertation celebrating the hardiness of local cultures against the encroaching metropolis. It was entitled, “Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving against all odds”. In this respect Dunham remained within the mainstream of her discipline. Anthropology broke into popular awareness with Margaret Mead’s long-discredited Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which offered a falsified ideal of sexual liberation in the South Pacific as an alternative to the supposedly repressive West. Mead’s work was one of the founding documents of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and anthropology faculties stood at the left-wing fringe of American universities. The point is that he touches on a lot of the detail of events that occurred around that time. The type of redneck monkey you are trying to make fun of who cannot distinguish between liberalism and socialism doesn’t learn details like that about events in Indonesia. To be able to comprehend such historical narratives, you have to be able to distinguish between liberalism as practiced by the United States for the past century, and Socialism/Communism as the leftist movement in Indonesia. I figured you might be able to look at the sophistication of the examples cited and recognize that one can’t actually examine such events without understanding the difference between liberalism(America) and socialism(Sukarno). I guess that was too much to expect. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/63 "2008-08-19T05:15:36Z")
Enjoy your latte’s gentlemen. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/64 "2008-08-19T05:17:00Z")
There’s nothing in there about Indonesia that couldn’t be googled in about 5 minutes, and the overall level of thought in the piece is anything but sophisticated. I didn’t use the word “redneck,” by the way. That’s your word. My belief is that the average American off the street can’t give a decent definition of Socialism, whether they’re rednecks or not. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/65 "2008-08-19T05:20:40Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] There’s nothing in there about Indonesia that couldn’t be googled in about 5 minutes, and the overall level of thought in the piece is anything but sophisticated. [/QUOTE] Sophistication means, “Agrees with me”, for you right? You generally use yourself as the bellwether of sophistication? I mean that’s been my overall impression of reading your posts over the years. Is that generally how you develop your metric? I’d like to point out that this article is one of the first out there to go this route in regard to the Obama’s. You can look at the date stamp. Many of the famous right wing pundits out there referenced that particular article, which is why I used it. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/66 "2008-08-19T05:27:12Z")
From a casual read of the article, it looks like the author is annoyed that Barack’s mom was politically active. I wonder what the author’s written about GWB. His dad was _really_ into politics. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/67 "2008-08-19T05:28:43Z")
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers] From a casual read of the article, it looks like the author is annoyed that Barack’s mom was politically active. I wonder what the author’s written about GWB. His dad was _really_ into politics. [/QUOTE] Also she was an anthropologist, who are apparently very evil. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/68 "2008-08-19T05:36:47Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] Sophistication means, “Agrees with me”, for you right? [/quote] Not at all, but it should rise above the level of lines like “Radical anti-Americanism, rather than Islam, was the reigning faith in the Dunham household,” and ““Evil will oft evil mars”, J R R Tolkien wrote. It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama.” That’s just raving. There’s nothing intelligent, insightful or truthful about it. I don’t think it’s impossible for a conservative writer to say anything intelligently critical about Obama, but this Spengler is not that writer. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/69 "2008-08-19T14:32:55Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] I don’t think Obama wants the government to control the means of production. He’s no Marxist. I was just pointing out that it’s not as simple as ‘heh heh heh silly redneck doesn’t know what communist means.’ [/QUOTE] Of course our loving repubs want the means of production to control the government. How is that working out. ? Top 1/10 of a percent of Americans owns 22 % of the wealth. Our government is intended to defend the people from the war mongers and elitist corporations that want to get evermore powerful. We are failing miserably. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/70 "2008-08-19T14:43:53Z")
Does it not matter what Obama _calls himself_? I seriously doubt he’s ever referred to himself as “a socialist” and I don’t even recall him calling himself “a liberal”. What all this boils down to is the idea that if you’re not a conservative, it can only be because you’re steeped in some equally virulent, but evil and opposite, ideology. If you’re not a conservative then you must have either been brainwashed by Marxist parents, or brainwashed by Marxist college professors. Conservatives can’t claim to be open-minded, but since that’s a positive-sounding thing, they’ll be dammed if they’re going to allow their political opponenets to be characterized as such. And so if a Democrat denies he’s a communist, it can only be because he’s conspiring to hide the fact that he’s a communist. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/71 "2008-08-19T14:46:06Z")
[QUOTE=gonzomax] Of course our loving repubs want the means of production to control the government. How is that working out. ? Top 1/10 of a percent of Americans owns 22 % of the wealth. Our government is intended to defend the people from the war mongers and elitist corporations that want to get evermore powerful. We are failing miserably. [/QUOTE] Communist! Don’t you know that it’s those .1% who are the true economic powerhouses that drive the economy and therefore should be allowed to do things that the little people can’t, like work their laborers to death and subvert democracy?! ---
**Author:** ![Bobotheoptimist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/919ad9/32.png) [@Bobotheoptimist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bobotheoptimist)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/72 "2008-08-19T14:51:34Z")
[QUOTE=sqweels] Does it not matter what Obama _calls himself_? I seriously doubt he’s ever referred to himself as “a socialist” and I don’t even recall him calling himself “a liberal”. [/QUOTE] If this is true, then it does not matter what he calls himself. I don’t think anyone with two functioning brain cells would deny that he is indeed a liberal. He’s to the left of that liberal mole _McCain_ for crying out loud. So if he walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, he’s probably not a heffalump… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/73 "2008-08-19T15:17:08Z")
[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist] . . . that liberal mole _McCain_ . . . [/QUOTE] :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/74 "2008-08-19T15:23:19Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] :rolleyes: [/QUOTE] I THINK **Bobo** was being sarcastic… ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/75 "2008-08-19T15:38:14Z")
[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist] If this is true, then it does not matter what he calls himself. I don’t think anyone with two functioning brain cells would deny that he is indeed a liberal. He’s to the left of that liberal mole _McCain_ for crying out loud. So if he walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, he’s probably not a heffalump… [/QUOTE] But why is it mandatory that he–or anyone else–be labeled with a particular epithet? It shouldn’t be a question of guilty-or-innocent to the charge of being “a liberal” or “left”, but rather of exmining the pros-and-cons of his policy positions. These terms may be useful in broad categorizations, but there comes a point where they get in the way of understanding, rather than illustrating it. And anyway don’t forget, back in the 60s, “liberal” meant “not radical” as often as it meant “not conservative”. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/76 "2008-08-19T15:38:36Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] I THINK **Bobo** was being sarcastic… [/QUOTE] I hope so, but you never know. I’ve known some Dopers to **seriously** characterize McCain as a “liberal.” ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/77 "2008-08-19T15:43:22Z")
To some people McCain IS a liberal BG. 😛 Just like some folks consider a centrist (or even a left leaning Democrat) a conservative, ehe? -XT ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/78 "2008-08-19T15:48:56Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] I hope so, but you never know. I’ve known some Dopers to **seriously** characterize McCain as a “liberal.” [/QUOTE] Well, that’s just nuts! The man wasn’t even a liberal back when he was actually a “maverick”. And he certainly isn’t one now or for the last seven and a half years. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/79 "2008-08-19T15:53:06Z")
It is nuts, but it’s true. The fact that he opposed making Bush tax cuts for the rich permanent and doesn’t see Mexican immigrants as evil subhumans makes him a bleeding heart among the Freeper set. Why, he doesn’t even hate queers that much. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442/80 "2008-08-19T16:05:46Z")
> [@](#): > > I THINK Bobo was being sarcastic… No, there are people who feel McCain is a liberal. (I once knew a guy who considered Barry Goldwater a liberal.) Their attitude is that they should hold their noses and vote for McCain because while he may be a liberal he’s better than an outright communist like Obama. Their counterparts are those people (some of whom are on this board) who plan on holding their noses and voting for a conservative like Obama because at least he’s better than an outright fascist like McCain. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-really-believe-that-obama-is-a-communist/460442.md?page=5)