Give Us Liberty

Obama’s Surrogate, Communist Father

October 14th, 2010 Dr. Paul Kengor, The American Spectator

My friend and colleague, Dinesh D’Souza, has advanced an intriguing thesis regarding the roots of Barack Obama, arguing, in short, that to understand Obama, we must understand the anti-colonialism of his African father. Predictably, D’Souza’s thoughts have brought the wrath of the liberal choir.
I’m not going to dissect D’Souza’s argument. But I would like to add some important information: If Obama is indeed motivated by anti-colonialism, the source may be Frank Marshall Davis as much as, if not more than, Obama’s father.
I come to this via a different route from D’Souza. My new book — released the same day as D’Souza’s, coincidentally — examined the communist movement in the 20th century, and specifically how communists duped progressives and liberals. I determined, definitively, that Frank Marshall Davis was not a duped liberal but a duping communist. I show this at length, quoting Davis’s weekly columns from the CPUSA organ, the Honolulu Record, and reprinting pages from Congressional investigations and from Davis’s declassified FBI file, including a document that lists his Communist Party number: 47544.
As to their relationship, Davis was introduced to a teenage Obama in the 1970s by Obama’s leftist grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who sought a father figure for Obama. Of all people to pick, Dunham chose someone summoned before the Senate in 1956 to testify to Communist Party associations.
In Dreams from My Father, Obama recalled fondly how Davis advised him on women, on race, on college, on life. He shared with Obama his “hard-earned knowledge.” Numerous biographical accounts (from the Left, and highly sympathetic) describe Davis as a “mentor,” a “father” figure, and an “important influence” on Obama.
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