Radical-in-chief : Barack Obama and the untold story of American socialism

425 Pages·2010·4.03 MB·English

by  Obama

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Copyright © 2010 by Stanley Kurtz
Portions of Chapter Nine appeared in different form in The Weekly Standard Aug. 11–18, 2008, and are ©
2008 The Weekly Standard.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kurtz, Stanley.
Radical-in-chief : Barack Obama and the untold story of American socialism / Stanley Kurtz.— 1st
Threshold Editions hardcover ed.
p. cm.
1. Obama, Barack—Political and social views. 2. United States—Politics and government—2009– 3.
Illinois—Politics and government—1951– 4. Radicalism—United States. 5. Socialism— United States. 6.
Presidents—United States—Biography. 7. Legislators—Illinois—Biography. 8. Political activists—Illinois
—Chicago—Biography. 9. Community organization—Illinois— Chicago—History—20th century. 10.
Chicago (Ill.)—Social conditions—20th century. I. Title.
E908.3.K87 2010
973.932092—dc22
[B] 2010032032
ISBN 978-1-43915508-0
ISBN 978-1-4391-7696-2 (ebook)
CONTENTS
PREFACE
What on Earth Is a Community Organizer?
ONE
The Socialism Puzzle
TWO
A Conference for Marx
THREE
From New York to Havana
FOUR
Obama’s Organizing: The Hidden Story
FIVE
The Midwest Academy
SIX
ACORN
SEVEN
Ayers and the Foundations
EIGHT
Jeremiah Wright
NINE
State Senate Years
TEN
The Obama Administration
Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
PREFACE
What on Earth
Is a Community Organizer?
Ever since Barack Obama’s meteoric rise to the presidency began, Americans
have been asking themselves that question. The answer, it turns out, solves the
riddle of Obama’s political convictions. Community organizing is a largely
socialist profession. Particularly at the highest levels, America’s community
organizers have adopted a deliberately stealthy posture—hiding their socialism
behind a “populist” front. These organizers strive to push America toward
socialism in unobtrusive, incremental steps, calling themselves “pragmatic
problem-solvers” all the while. Barack Obama’s colleagues and mentors were
some of the smartest and most influential stealth-socialist community organizers
in the country. Their strategies of political realignment and social transformation
guide the Obama administration to this day.
Although contemporary community organizers deliberately hide their
socialism, with a bit of digging, their secrets can be revealed. In neglected
archives and long-forgotten issues of obscure journals, the untold story of
modern American socialism lives. As the revolutionary hopes of sixties radicals
banged up against the hard reality of a popular Reagan presidency, America’s
socialists turned to a combination of community organizing and local politics to
move the country steadily leftward by degrees. These were the socialists who
schooled Obama. Their story is his story.
The socialist community organizers who inspired and trained Obama openly
embraced American democracy. Although they admired Marx, Lenin, and Mao
—along with Obama’s idol, Saul Alinsky—in the medium term, at least, these
organizers surrendered their revolutionary hopes and abandoned authoritarian
ways. Some retained a soft spot for Third World Communist regimes in Cuba
and Latin America. And surely the program favored by Obama’s organizing
mentors could be seen as a subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—assault on
traditional American freedoms.
Yet this new stealth socialism, which Obama studied and absorbed as a