Dr. John Drew, a political scientist at Occidental College, reports on young Obama’s marxist socialist perspective in the Fall of 1980:
” I met the young Barack Obama during the fall of 1980. I got a chance to see how his mind worked from my conversations with him. He was already an ardent Marxist socialist by the time he was a sophomore at Occidental College. I would be curious to know how and why his beliefs changed…if, indeed, they have changed.
Obama Espoused Radical Views in College
Monday, Feb 8, 2010
By: Ronald Kessler
As a college student, Barack Obama expressed Marxist views, including the need for a new socialist U.S. government, according to a student who says he shared the future president’s opinion at the time.
Such views by a college student may not be surprising. And like most students who hold radical views, Obama’s positions, at least publicly, have evolved substantially.
However, this new window on Obama’s youth and early political thinking demonstrates how little is known about the background of America’s 44th president.
Dr. John C. Drew, a grant writing consultant in Laguna Niguel, Calif., tells Newsmax he met Obama in 1980 when Obama was a sophomore at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Drew had just graduated from Occidental and was attending graduate school at Cornell University.
Drew’s then girlfriend, Caroline Boss—now Grauman-Boss—knew Obama because she shared classes with him at Occidental.
During Christmas break, Drew says he was at Grauman-Boss’ home in Palo Alto when Obama came over with Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, his roommate from Pakistan.
“Barack and Hasan showed up at the house in a BMW, and then we went to a restaurant together,” Drew says. “We had a nice meal, and then we came back to the house and smoked cigarettes and drank and argued politics.”
For the next several hours, they discussed Marxism.
“He was arguing a straightforward Marxist-Leninist class-struggle point of view, which anticipated that there would be a revolution of the working class, led by revolutionaries, who would overthrow the capitalist system and institute a new socialist government that would redistribute the wealth,” says Drew, who says he himself was then a Marxist.
“The idea was basically that wealthy people were exploiting others,” Drew says. “That this was the secret of their wealth, that they weren’t paying others enough for their work, and they were using and taking advantage of other people. He was convinced that a revolution would take place, and it would be a good thing.”
Drew concluded that Obama thought of himself as “part of an intelligent, radical vanguard that was leading the way towards this revolution and towards this new society.”
In contrast, “My more pessimistic Marxist perspective indicated this was not a realistic possibility, that we really hadn’t seen a sort of complete revolution take place anywhere in Western Europe, and that this isn’t what had happened in more socialistic Germany or in France,” Drew says. “He was pretty persistent, that I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Drew’s viewpoint that a revolution was unrealistic “made me very unpopular that evening. It was considered a reactionary and insensitive thing to argue,” says Drew.
Drew saw Obama again at a party Obama and Chandoo gave in June 1981 at the house they shared. Drew went on to become an assistant professor of political science at Williams College.
In 1981, Obama left Occidental to attend Columbia University. During that year, Obama spent “about three weeks” visiting Chandoo and his family in Karachi, Pakistan, according to the account of Obama spokesman Bill Burton during the campaign.
Chandoo is now a financial consultant who was formerly a broker at Oppenheimer & Co. He has contributed to Obama’s campaign and helped raise more than $100,000 for him as a bundler.
“If that’s what John Drew said, that’s what he said,” Chandoo commented. “I can’t remember Obama ever talking like that. It sounds a bit absurd to me, but that’s my opinion. I can’t remember him ever expressing an interest in being a Marxist.”
Much of what is known about Obama’s past has been revealed and defined by Obama himself, largely through his two bestselling books “Dreams of My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.”
In these works and throughout his career, Obama has clearly identified with the oppressed. In “Dreams of My Father” Obama details how white settlers and sugar companies came to dominate and exploit his native Hawaii.
In that memoir, Obama said that at Occidental, “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.”
As president, Obama has espoused the view that the rich are not sharing their wealth with the less fortunate. In a Sept. 6, 2001, radio interview, Obama expressed regret that the Supreme Court hadn’t engaged in wealth redistribution.
In some ways, Obama’s opinions about American-style capitalism seem to mirror the views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Obama’s minister who was his self-described mentor and “sounding board” for 20 years. Wright’s “Black Value System” denounced “our racist competitive society” and included the disavowal of the pursuit of “middle-classness.”
The Black Value System defined “middle-classness” as a way American society seduced blacks into achieving economic success, thus snaring them rather than “killing them off directly.”
In a similar vein, when he discussed politics with him in 1980, Drew says that in Obama’s view, “America was definitely the enemy, and American elites were the enemy, and whatever America was doing was definitely wrong and bad. He thought that perhaps the Soviet Union was misunderstood, and it was doing a better job for its people than most people realized.”
Chandoo said he doesn’t know which professors Obama was referring to in his book. Asked when he last saw Obama, Chandoo said he has not seen nor talked with him since before Obama became a U.S. senator. However, under “community member,” the White House listed Chandoo as a guest at Obama’s Ramadan dinner last fall.
When asked about that, Chandoo acknowledged from his home in Armonk, N.Y., that he attended the dinner. Despite the fact that fewer than 70 people were in attendance, Chandoo added, “I did not get a chance to see the boss.” He then said he shook hands with Obama in a receiving line.
Chandoo said he has been in touch with Caroline Grauman-Boss over the years. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Burton, now deputy White House press secretary, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Drew’s encounter with Obama’s early political thinking adds to the mystery that has shrouded his past.
For more than a year during the campaign, the media were aware of Obama’s ties with the Rev. Wright, for example, but the press did not reveal them until Obama was far ahead in the primaries.
Obama has contributed to the lack of knowledge about his past by refusing to release early documentation about his life, including his college and Harvard Law School transcripts and his senior thesis at Columbia.
Referring to Obama’s quote from “Dreams of My Father” that he associated with Marxist professors, Drew says, “What he’s not saying is that he was in 100 percent total agreement with those Marxist professors. When you understand that, Obama’s later associations and policies make more sense, including why he was taken in by Rev. Wright’s ideology.”
In 1983 and 1984, Drew says he came to realize that his own Marxist views were rubbish. He now considers himself a conservative.
In contrast, Drew says, Obama has never revealed how his political thinking evolved and “what were the logical steps he took to get out of his Marxist world view.”
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Wild Thing’s comment……….
The right know this, the left celebrates it yet probably won’t admit it!
The shame is, this didn’t happen yesterday, he had these feelings and beliefs YEARS ago.
Interedting too is the matter that there are ZERO witnesses to Obama ever being at Columbia. No teachers, no students, no records. Just Columbia’s word that he was there. That’s all we have.
WE knew it. Sarah tried to tell people, but McCain wouldn’t allow Obama’s background to be in play. The media refused to ask even the most basic questions. That was a crime against the American people. They were allowed to remain in ignorance and now we suffer for it.
People remember Obama at Occidental but why doesn’t anyone remember him at Columbia? And I think this Dr. Drew is the first one to remember him from Occidental. At least, that I’ve heard of
Need to point out too that Obama spoke of “revolution”.
And Obama has not changed his views, but he has worked very hard to conceal them from the American people, aided and abetted by the Marxists in the American press.
“We are 5 days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America”
–B.H.Obama, 2008
The truth will come out, and we should do whatever we can to help that process.
Communist revolution is what reverend Wright’s “Black Liberation Theology” is all about. Add in too the Weather Underground connection Obama has had.
“Their founding document [the Weather Underground’s] called for the establishment of a “white fighting force” to be allied with the “Black Liberation Movement” and other “anti-colonial” movements[1] to achieve “the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism.”…”-Berger, Dan (2006). Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. AK Press, 95.
This is the first I’ve heard of Doctor Drew, where was he during the election. This would’ve been helpful exposing the commie rat. As you say, WT, Sarah Palin wanted to reveal obama’s communist connection but McCain forbid it.
Didn’t McCain say ‘obama was just like you or I.’ Maybe McCain was in on it, too along with the MSM and every other leftist turd in the country. Too convenient. Reverend Wright, Ayers and his bitter half, all the communist in the administration. This has got to be the biggest ‘con’ job in our history.
obama’s words and actions prove that he is a socialist/Marxist. Anything we can find out about his earlier history also proves that he is a Marxist. It really came out in his campaign rhetoric if you were paying attention.
obama’s actions of leading America to financial bankruptcy are indicators that he wants to destroy us by ruining our economy. He has gone around the world demoting America’s richness and value system. This guy is anti American and although some people are awakening to it, we need more people to realize it and be ready to end obama’s political caree in 2012.
2012 is a long time off Tom. I keep wishin the puke would have a fatal aneurism ASAP.
Mark, I too wish he would have come forward during the election. I am glad he is speaking now, but it is after the barn door is closed.
And yes McCain sure did. McCain has a huge problem which makes it our countries because what he does and says effects us all and it is that exact kind of kissing up he does that you mentioned.
Tom, I did did come out to all of us during the campaign. I wish the left would listen when we tell them instead of having to hear it from former marxists like this Dr. Drew guy. I wonder if he will have any impact on the dems now that he is speaking out.