Of course Obama is a Marxist - or a neo-Marxist more accurately. As usual people here pretending to know Marxism and declaring Obamas distance from it are all wet. His speeches and ideas constantly echo Marx, Alinsky, Gramsci, Che etc. - if you know these things yourself (and who would teach you? - the media? Haha). This is one reason Marxists, terrorists, racists and radicals around the world endorse him. The dark side of the force knows its own and they know what Obamja is about.
It's not even a secret Obama was trained in Alinksy methods (Radical Saul Alinsky wrote "Rules For Radicals") at the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in Chicago - and that he taught classes in Alinsky methods (one of which is Rule 13" Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.)
In "Rules for Radicals" Alinsky wrote, "There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution." This is why the far left Democrats love high oil prices (we will socialize oil companies!) high health care (we will socialise health care!) and hoping for loss in a war (shame)
So you see why Obama always paints a bleak picture while offering very vague notions of change that is "about you..for you..in your moment..you are the one you been waiting for bla bla bla.
Alinsky emphasized in "Rules for Radicals" that the radicals of the Sixties were wrong for scaring potential converts in middle class America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism - they cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties (keep "Antonio Gramsci" in mind here).
One of Obama's early teachers in the Alinsky method was Mike Kruglik who said:
"He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better."
Of course Obama's Marxist roots go back way before Alinsky. The mysterious "Frank" he mentions as his Hawaiian mentor in "Dreams From My Father" is communist party member Frank Marshall Davis. This in itself might not mean much but since he chose to hide the name and now has 28 dozen other radicals hanging around in his life its another indicator of Obama's mind.
The Obama's though (and I include Michelle) are more neo-Marxists than classical Marxists. Che Guevara was more of a neo Marxist himself in that the dry economics of classical Marxism were not his main interest:
"I am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation. One of the fundamental objectives of Marxism is to remove interest, the factor of individual interest, and gain, from people?s psychological motivations. Marx was preoccupied both with economic factors and with their repercussions on the spirit. If communism isn?t interested in this too, it may be a method of distributing goods, but it will never be a revolutionary way of life."
Now focus on the word "alienation" because alienation is a big problem in the Marxist scheme of the world - and its one Michelle Obama harps on all the time. From one of her speeches:
" In 2008 we are still a nation too divided, we live in isolation and
fear one another, we dont know our neighbors, we dont talk, we believe
that our pain is our own, we dont realize the challenges of all of us
are the same, we are too isolated...
We have to compromise and sacrifice for one another, in order to get
things done..Barack Obama is only person in this race who understands
that before we can work on the problems we have we have to fix our
souls - our souls are broken..If we can't see ourselves in one another we will never make those sacrifices..Barack is going to demand that you come out of your division, that you come out of your isolation"
All that rubbish about being"isolated" from each other and needing to "sacrifice" for one another is soft sell Marxism. Che said the same things:
"The ultimate and most important revolutionary aspiration: to see human beings liberated from their alienation."
A person can understand why Che posters were hanging in the office of Maria Isabel - Obama's Houston campaign 'precinct captain, co-chair of the Houston Obama Leadership Team and close to the Obama's.
Economically, Obama's Marxism is seen in his big government centralization, taxes and wealth redistribution efforts like the Global Povery Tax that seeks to conform to the UN's Millennium Development Goals. The tax will commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to "a 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends". Obama will be an absolute blood sucker on the US people (many of whom he hates but pretends not to).
If you want to understand Obama's neo-Marxist "cultural" implications they are seen in his appeals to "marginal people" and groups. Alinsky admired Antonio Gramsci the founder of the Italian Communist Party in the 20's.
Orthodox Marxism taught that there were groups who were privileged and groups that were oppressed economically. Gramsci shifted that paradigm to other groups using cultural factors instead of raw economic ones. He saw things like churches, schools, families etc as vehicles that maintained a "cultural hegemony" over peoples beliefs and actions. He proposed a "counter hegemony" to erode the established hegemony. He wanted to turn marginalized groups against established capitalist society and its culture.
Gramsci wrote: "The marginalized groups of history include not only the economically oppressed, but also women, racial minorities and many 'criminals.' What Marx called "the people," Gramsci called an "ensemble" of subordinate groups and classes. These groups - "the people" -- lack unity and, often, even consciousness of their own "oppression". To reverse power from the privileged to the "marginalized," was Gramsci's goal. Gramsci's idea were used by other Marxists and blended with psychology, sociology etc
In 1923, the Frankfurt School-a Marxist think-tank-was founded in Weimar Germany. The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms. It would provide the foundations on which to base a new political theory of revolution based on culture and new oppressed groups instead of proletariat.
It was Herbert Marcuse who favored including within Gramsci's new proletariat homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals. Into this was spliced Georg Lukacs radical sex education and psychological intimidation tactics - accusations, debasement, ridicule etc (see Alinsky tactics).
If you know Obama's neo-Marxism and that of his churches (both his black liberation [Marxist at the core]Trinity Church and the larger United Church of Christ it belongs too) it's plain to see Obama's neo Marxism at work.
Obama has a whole shtick about the oppression and liberation of "the other" and the "isolated" and "rejected" that is a religious facade for the neo-Marxist principles of using fringe groups to wage culture war, erode institutions, put marginal things at the center of social development etc (frustrate and degrade the many by focusing on rights for a few). Brainwashing kids and debasing/confusing them at an early age to make them cultural and political change agents is part of the whacked liberation churches are about - and Obama is not ignorant of it at all. Debasing the economy over global warming, homosexualizing the military, intentional use of judges to make laws that by pass the Constitution
Check out the commercials for the United Church of Christ (the larger church Obama's was a congregation of). You'll see the Aryan whites are the bad guys oppressing the homosexuals, the minorities, the cripples etc. Those commercials right there are the best illustration of neo-Marxist ideas being hidden as religion - much as Obama hides what he is really about. If he gets elected he'll bring change that is certain - then you'll see the face behind the mask
Ejected
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXCzzNoMeNs
Bouncer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx1u1v7hAtY