There is a strain of today’s conservative movement that does not like President Barack Obama. It goes beyond disagreeing with his ideology or policy prescriptions, or even finding his natural disposition intolerable. There are certain conservatives who are patently offended by the his mere existence, from the time he was a presidential candidate to now as leader of the free world.
That’s the only way to explain the complete fabrication of his biography and ideology by some conservatives. Instead of disagreeing with Obama on the basis of the merits of proposed legislation or ideas to solve the country’s most lingering and detrimental problems, and then countering with their own, conservatives have concocted an image of Obama as a socialist dictator, terrorist sympathizer, angry neo-Black Panther, Marxist anti-colonialist, hellbent on destroying the American way of life through an insidious plot to become elected president, perhaps illegitimately, and chip away at the bedrock of America’s foundation.
Some of this was to be expected. The optics of the first black president, with a middle name shared with the deposed Iraqi dictator and a last name closely resembling that of America’s greatest nemesis, surely would be too much for the fanatics and racists to handle at one time. That this thinking has found its way into mainstream conservative thought is a matter of willful ignorance and blind hatred.
And it isn’t just the rabble-rousing of the tea party activists painting signs of Obama with a Hitler mustache, or the crazed rantings of Glenn Beck. People like Dinesh D’Souza, author of the The Roots of Obama’s Rage, have provided an intellectual veneer to the irrational belief in Obama as socialist bogeyman. D’Souza’s Ivy League pedigree affords him a certain deference, but his theories are no less far-fetched and couched in the prevailing ethos of Obama as “different” and anti-American, based on his lineage.
In a documentary based on his book, 2016: Obama’s America, D’Souza has sought to further support his thesis that Obama inherited a hatred of the Western world and all things colonial because of his father’s Kenyan heritage. For the documentary, D’Souza scored an interview with Obama’s half-brother George, who lives in Kenya. In the clip made available as a trailer, George is seen fielding questions from D’Souza about why his brother hasn’t helped him, and reading passages from the former’s book about colonial powers in Kenya, none of which appears to have anything to do with nor supports D’Souza’s belief that Obama possesses a hatred of America, the West, colonialism, or anything.
That’s because the theory is a blatant untruth. D’Souza is lying. He is making things up, pulling together non-existent threads and weaving a narrative not even suitable for the imagination needed to produce a children’s book. There is no proof that Obama has an “anti-colonial Kenyan worldview,” no matter how many times D’Souza says it, nor whether Newt Gingrich finds the idea “brilliant” and pushes the lie. Try as they might, they have failed time and again to radicalize Obama’s centrism and belief in American exceptionalism.
It’s the same line of thinking that causes Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to repeat the equally untrue idea that Obama has gone around the world “apologizing” for America, or that Obama is overseeing a socialist takeover of the United States, a refrain real socialists continue to scoff at. Conservatives prefer not to debate issues as they are but use hyperbole and outright fabrication to engender the visceral hatred of Obama that turns people out to the polls under the belief that their vote is protecting America from a grave threat. It’s a ludicrous assertion, and one that plays into racism and bigotry for political gain.
Conservatives have created an Obama that doesn’t exist because they largely find themselves unable to run against the one that does. He has taken away their “weak on defense” line of attack that has been deployed against Democratic candidates for more than 30 years, and done all that he can to preserve and bolster America’s capitalist economy. He’s gone so far as implement old conservative ideas, much to the chagrin of his progressive supporters, and still found himself with fierce opposition from the very conservatives created and once championed them. Whatever universe that equate all this with a “Kenyan anti-colonial worldview,” it’s one that has yet to be discovered by humans of rational thought.
But facts won’t deter these detractors, and so long as that burden doesn’t existent, D’Souza and his ilk will find traction for their lies. It’s the bitter pill of today’s political landscape.
Follow Mychal Denzel Smith on Twitter at @mychalsmith