I Wish Newt Gingrich and Dinesh D'Souza Were Right!

Today, Morning Joe reported that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the National Review that President Obama follows a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview. To support his ridiculous argument, Newt Gingrich cited a so-called "insightful" article by Dinesh D'Souza. Gingrich's statement is despicable. When I heard about it, I thought, "Here we go again." Clearly, Gingrich was pandering to Birthers, Tea Party extremists and other fringe lunatics by portraying Obama as a radical, socialist foreigner. Later, I read the two news articles mentioned in the story.

In his Forbes article, conservative Dinesh D'Souza asserts that Obama is fulfilling his father's "anticolonialist" dreams. D'Souza wrote:

"Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah (1909--72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and plutocratic elites...This was the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives in India..."

"From the anticolonial perspective, American imperialism is on a rampage. For a while, U.S. power was checked by the Soviet Union, but since the end of the Cold War, America has been the sole superpower. Moreover, 9/11 provided the occasion for America to invade and occupy two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and also to seek political and economic domination in the same way the French and the British empires once did. So in the anticolonial view, America is now the rogue elephant that subjugates and tramples the people of the world."

"It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying...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."

Those two articles confirmed my initial impression. However, in some respects, I wish Gingrich and D'Souza were right. If Obama was anticolonialist, he would have immediately withdrew all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead requiring citizens to purchase private health insurance from avaricious companies, Obama would fought for a single payer health care system. If Obama was an anticolonialist, he would not have bailed out the Wall Street. Instead, he would have bailed out Main Street by imposing an immediate moratorium on foreclosures. If Obama was an anticolonialist, instead of lecturing Africans about nepotism, corruption, democracy and the rule of law, Obama would have demanded reparations for slavery and colonialism.  In college, I studied Kwame Nkrumah and Frantz Fanon.  Obama is no Nkrumah.  He is no Fanon.

As always, I welcome your comments.

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