# Obama is "Anticolonist," says D'Souza (and now Gingrich) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 13, 2010, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617 "2010-09-13T16:30:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/41 "2010-09-14T02:17:15Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > > [@jayjay](#): > > > > I’d like to know what the hell’s wrong with an anticolonialist outlook in the first place? I thought colonialism was bad…paternalistic, racist, etc. How is being anti-paternalist, anti-racist a bad thing? > > Well, if I could steer this back around, it’s the quote in the OP that’s up for debate: > > Is an “anti-colonialist worldview”–whatever that may be–necessarily incompatible with a competitive economic policy? Depends on how you define “competitive.” When the colonies were colonies, they were used by their colonizers mainly for extraction of raw materials and agricultural produce. Now the ex-colonies are used by the developed countries, especially the U.S., for cheap manufacturing labor. That relationship makes a lot of U.S. corporations competitive, but it has systematically damaged the domestic job market. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/42 "2010-09-14T02:40:20Z")
I think the title “Obama is Anticolonist” is hilarious. It sounds so 19th-century; I almost expect someone to respond “and yet he was seen at Napoleon III’s grand ball last season, the hypocrite.” ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/43 "2010-09-14T02:45:05Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > Yes, the President of a country with military bases in 130 of the world’s 190 countries is anticolonial. You can see clear evidence of his anticolonialism in the way he’s ramped up the war in Afghanistan, started expanding drone operations in countries like Yemen and Pakistan, etc. etc. Do you not know what the word _colony_ means? I’m living in South Korea right now, one of those countries with US military bases. Guess how much of the country the United States is governing. Go ahead. Make me laugh. Tell me it’s more than zero. ---
**Author:** ![Oldeb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ea666f/32.png) [@Oldeb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oldeb)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/44 "2010-09-14T02:58:27Z")
> [@waterj2](#): > > To quote Adam Serwer’s [great response](http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer_archive?month=09&year=2010&base_name=forbes_embraces_birtherism) to the article: So I was supposed to learn from that article that my understanding of Western Colonialism is incomplete and, more importantly, that the our president is black? Yeah, no wonder I missed it. I was looking for something I didn’t already know. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/45 "2010-09-14T03:44:29Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > > [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > > > Yes, the President of a country with military bases in 130 of the world’s 190 countries is anticolonial. You can see clear evidence of his anticolonialism in the way he’s ramped up the war in Afghanistan, started expanding drone operations in countries like Yemen and Pakistan, etc. etc. > > Do you not know what the word _colony_ means? I’m living in South Korea right now, one of those countries with US military bases. Guess how much of the country the United States is governing. Go ahead. Make me laugh. Tell me it’s more than zero. I think **Dick Dastardly** is using “anti-colonialism” the same way that the D’Souza article we’re discussing does. As seen in here, for example: > [@Dinesh D'Souza](#): > > He came to view America’s military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father’s position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America’s power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe’s resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/46 "2010-09-14T15:53:49Z")
> [@waterj2](#): > > > [@Monty](#): > > > > Do you not know what the word _colony_ means? I’m living in South Korea right now, one of those countries with US military bases. Guess how much of the country the United States is governing. Go ahead. Make me laugh. Tell me it’s more than zero. > > I think **Dick Dastardly** is using “anti-colonialism” the same way that the D’Souza article we’re discussing does. As seen in here, for example: For the sake of argument, why don’t we just say “Obama is anti-neocolonist.” Surely our presence in the DMZ isn’t purely ideological. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/47 "2010-09-14T16:06:06Z")
One minor problem: [QUOTE=Eugene Robinson] [Gingrich, unhinged on Obama](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091305307.html?hpid=opinionsbox1) …In fairness to Gingrich, he wasn’t being original. He was speaking in praise of a big gob of gibberish in Forbes by conservative “intellectual” Dinesh D’Souza. In the piece – much of it strikingly lazy – D’Souza argues that Obama somehow absorbed a fully elaborated, frozen-in-time, anti-colonial worldview from his Kenyan father. **Who left the family when the future president was 2.** Well, we knew Obama was precocious. But if he was so absorbed with the study of colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism and all the other isms, when did he have time to learn to go potty?.. [/QUOTE] ---
**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:** [September 14, 2010, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/48 "2010-09-14T16:32:30Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > > [@Marley23](#): > > > > You’re still wrong. Nevermind the claptrap about Obama being a radical leftist, this is not the subject of the book. The book is about his youth and his efforts to establish an identity of his own. > > So you believe that he wasn’t inspired by his dad & didn’t try to learn as much as possible about him? He never knew his father. He never knew his sfather. He never knew his father. Is that sinking in yet? That is not a belief. His father abandoned him when he was two, and he only talked to him one other time in his life after that (when he was11. His father gave him a basketball. Barck says in his book that he found the meeting very duisappointing and his father very unimpressive). No, he was not influenced by his father. At all. His book is largely about _not having_ a father. > [@](#): > > What claptrap are you talking about? The influence of those figures; Wright, Alinsky & Fannon isn’t exactly denied by anyone is it? Yes, they are denied by Obama himself. He specifically _rejected_ Alinsky (not that Alinsky was any kind of evil demon anyway), Wright was never a mentor (but when all else fails wave the nigger boogeyman, Reverend Wright stick. It’s worth a try I guess), and Fratz Fanon? Are you fucking kidding me? You pretty much just believe every single single email forward and WND article you ever read, don’t you? ---
**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:** [September 14, 2010, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/49 "2010-09-14T16:47:32Z")
It’s interesting how D’Souza is willing to extropolate all kinds of asinine conclusions from thingls like Obabama saying he discussed Fratz Fanon in his college dorm, yet completely and totally ignores the fact that Obama himself claims consistently, repeatedly and passionately in both his books and his speeches that (aside from his mother) his most important influences were his (whitebread American) maternal grandparents, a WWII veteran and a banker to whom he attributes virtually all of his learned values – values like fairness, hard work, persistence service to others and acceptance. Those are the values he constantly trumpets. These kinds of paranoid attempts to find motivations like “anti-colonialism,” and then claim them as proven fact are not only utterly baseless (and comnveniently unfalsifiable because how do you prove someone does NOT have secret thoughts or motivations?), but are obviously just coded ways to say that Obama hates white people and hates America – this despite the fact that Obama expresses his warmest praise and gratitude to his white American family in his book. The racism on the right is getting more and more overt all the time. It’s only a matter of time before they just start screaming nigger. I still have my money on Bill O’Reilly as being the first one who’ll break and say it. The right wing media narrative will then become about how O’Reilly (or whoever) is being victimized by “politically correct” forces and how it isn’t really racist to call black people niggers because they call themselves that all the time. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/50 "2010-09-14T18:16:11Z")
It’s interesting to see right wingers embrace deconstructionist thinking. I could be wrong about that, but isn’t that what it’s called when you conjure up hidden meanings about a person’s writing based on socio-political constructs? ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/51 "2010-09-14T20:04:35Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > The racism on the right is getting more and more overt all the time. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > It’s interesting to see right wingers embrace deconstructionist thinking…isn’t that what it’s called when you conjure up hidden meanings about a person’s writing based on socio-political constructs? (Appropriate sequence.) Well, I’d say to deconstruct is not so much to “conjure” what’s “hidden” rather than to readjust the frame of perspective, to see how the socio-political context shapes the discourse, and vice versa. D’Souza is just analyzing and compiling a set of–what are (in my opinion) sketchy–premises. However, it doesn’t take much deconstruction to perceive some validity in **Dio** ’s observation about the general discourse: **Anti-colonialist =\> black (or at least, not white)=\> naive** With everything from “tea parties” (i.e., “The nation has suddenly gone to pot.”) to “Obama is a socialist,” we’ve seen some pretty imaginative ways of expressing discontent with an administration that is mostly doing business as usual. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617/52 "2010-09-14T20:15:56Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Do you not know what the word _colony_ means? Do you not know it can mean more than one thing? Cuba was a U.S. colony from 1898 through 1959; it makes no difference that there was no U.S. governor. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-is-anticolonist-says-dsouza-and-now-gingrich/553617.md?page=2)