FRANTZ FANON AND CHE GUEVARA: PERPETUAL SIREN SONGS OF THE FATUOUS LEFT

Ah, the heady days of 1960's radical chic!  There was always a demonstration to take in, and then there were the ever- present left-of-center speakers on campus, such as John Kenneth Galbraith, Saul Alinsky, RFK, Julian Bond and Eugene McCarthy, ready, willing and able,
it seemed, to accept administrators' invitations to speak at the drop of a hat to crowds of adoring young minds .

I first became familiar with Frantz Fanon as I prepared for a French reading competency test, which was a requirement in graduate school at that time. Brushing up on my French skills and with the aid of a French dictionary, I read the original French version, Les Damnes de la Terre, not at first realizing that Fanon was an icon of the political left.

Born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, Fanon served in the French army and was educated in France as a physician and psychiatrist.  Later, while living and practicing in Algiers, Fanon was imbued with notions sympathetic to the independence movement in Algeria, eventually joining in 1954 the Algerian Liberation Front.

Published just prior to the death of Fanon in 1961, Les Damnes de la Terre, makes a vigorous argument that people dominated by Western colonialism have every right to resist what has, by force and violence, been foisted upon them by the colonial powers; and, in fact, owing to the inherent unnaturalness  of their coerced state, they  should not be expected to adhere to ordinary strictures against violence and terror in fighting for their freedom.

Interpreted as a playbook for national liberation, Fanon's ideas have fanned the flames of such movements as the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Palestinians in the Middle East, the anti-Apartheid movement in Africa, and even the Black Panthers in the United States.

The Argentine physician, Marxist, and Cuban revolutionary leader, Che Guevara, was a disciple of Fanon's thought and used it as a rationale for unceasing violence and terror against oppression.  Osama bin-Laden was very familiar with Fanon, and, along with his emphasis on Koranic entreaties to strike unbelievers, saw him as useful in proselytizing for terrorists in formerly colonial Muslim lands.

STUDENT OBAMA

In Dreams From My Father, President Barack Obama revealed that, as a student, he was immersed in anti-colonial thought and frequently spent many hours with other Columbia University students in which Frantz Fanon was a topic of no  little interest.

Given Obama's Kenyan roots and the fact that his paternal grandfather was involved with the Mau-Mau revolutionaries against British rule, Fanon and Obama would seem to be a good fit for each other. In fact, a Fanon skeleton in a White House closet might shed considerable light on the rationale for certain presidential actions since Obama has occupied the White House.

With the Churchill bust controversy seen as a deliberate snub to America's closest ally, that episode may be viewed also as a harbinger of things to come in President Obama's world view and America's place in it. From Obama's earliest presidential comments, it soon became clear that America, in his mind, was no more of an exceptional place than any other country.  As for Israel and its prime minister, they could be left waiting in the wings, while the president set about apologizing to the world for any and all assumed American transgressions. Now, with a nominee for our U.N. ambassadorship who is known for her opposition to Israel, Obama is putting the icing on his cake.

Lately, the anti-colonialist cabal at the White House has had some setbacks, not the least among them being the fall of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  And dare we ever forget intelligence adviser General James Clapper's view of the Brotherhood as a "secular group." Then, there is Syria, where this administration seems to have no idea that its support of the anti-Assad forces will place Syrian Christians in grave jeopardy.

In addition, there is always race. Certainly, for Fanon, race was paramount, as it was expressed in another of his works, Black Skins, White Faces.  While apologizing to the world for this, that and the other, President Obama has kept his own country in constant turmoil with a steady diet of race-charged partisanship.  From the "Beer Summit" in 2009 to the Zimmerman trial of 2013, the racial chasm in the United States has grown steadily wider.  But, of course, to see neocolonialism in the United States as a great bogeyman, the president must have a permanent racial minority as an underclass, which may be exploited at will for the aggrandizement of presidential power.  Hence, the White House goes out of the way to confirm minority groups as permanent victims of white racism, which is merely a disguised form of neocolonialism.  And so, regardless of America's declining role in the world, a race- and colonialism- fixated president pursues his disastrous policies.

I, for one, can think of no other time in which this country has come so close to following a blueprint for a Third World dictatorship. It is also clear that those in power in Washington who are following the lead of Barack H. Obama  are mightily persuaded that, somehow, the United States must be punished for the sins of Western colonialism.  May God protect our American Republic!