MARXIST COLUMBIA PROF' - AND OBAMA BOOSTER - DIES JUST BEFORE HIS OPUS ON MALCOLM X IS PUBLISHED

NYTIMES: On Eve of Redefining Malcolm X, Biographer Dies

For two decades, the Columbia University professor Manning Marable focused on the task he considered his life’s work: redefining the legacy of Malcolm X. Last fall he completed “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” a 594-page biography described by the few scholars who have seen it as full of new and startling information and insights.

The book is scheduled to be published on Monday, and Mr. Marable had been looking forward to leading a vigorous public discussion of his ideas. But on Friday Mr. Marable, 60, died in a hospital in New York as a result of medical problems he thought he had overcome. Officials at Viking, which is publishing the book, said he was able to look at it before he died. But as his health wavered, they were scrambling to delay interviews, including an appearance on the “Today” show in which his findings would have finally been aired.

The book challenges both popular and scholarly portrayals of Malcolm X, the black nationalist leader, describing a man often subject to doubts about theology, politics and other matters, quite different from the figure of unswerving moral certitude that became an enduring symbol of African-American pride.

It is particularly critical of the celebrated “Autobiography of Malcolm X,” now a staple of college reading lists, which was written with Alex Haley and which Mr. Marable described as “fictive.” Drawing on diaries, private correspondence and surveillance records to a much greater extent than previous biographies, his book also suggests that the New York City Police Department and the F.B.I. had advance knowledge of Malcolm X’s assassination but allowed it to happen and then deliberately bungled the investigation.

SO JUST WHO IS THIS GUY MARABLE? HERE: NEW ZEAL:

Obama File 62 Obama "Understands What Socialism Is", Works With "Socialists With Backgrounds in the Communist Party"

Obama file 61 here

A leading US Marxist claims that president elect Barack Obama has read some of his books and "understands what socialism is."


Columbia University professor of African American Studies, Manning Marable, writing in the December Issue of British Trotskyist journal Socialist Review, also alleges that Obama works with socialists "with backgrounds in the Communist Party"

According to Dr Marable;

Obama represents a generation of what might be called post-racial black politicians-by which I mean they espouse a politics that minimises matters of race. They do not like to talk about race and subsume it under the rubric of poverty and class. So they are generally left of centre, or liberal, on social and economic policy. Obama is a progressive liberal.

What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organiser. He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years...

Manning Marable is certainly in a position to know about Obama's views and reading habits. Whether Dr Marable and Barack Obama have ever met I'm usure, but they have been "close" for many years.

Since the 1980s Dr Marable has been a regular speaker at DSA's annual Socialist Scholars Conference, usually at held Cooper Union in New York. In the early 80s, Obama "went to socialist conferences at Cooper Union and African cultural fairs in Brooklyn".

Perhaps Dr Marable inspired Obama then, just as Obama inspires Dr Marable today?

UPDATE:

AND THERE'S THIS CONNECTION TOO:

MARABLE WAS A LEADER IN THE NEW PARTY - A SOCIALIST PARTY - AND THE FIRST PARTY OBAMA WAS EVER ASSOCIATED WITH AND ON WHOSE PARTY LINE HE RAN FOR CONGRESS.

FACTS:

In the fall of 1994, Marable was identified in a New Party (NP) publication as being one of 100+ activists “who are building the NP.” Other notable names on the list included John Cavanagh, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Randall Forsberg, Maude Hurd, Frances Fox Piven, Zach Polett (who later became a national political director for ACORN), Wade Rathke, Mark Ritchie, Gloria Steinem, Cornel West, Quentin Young, and Howard Zinn.

UPDATE #2:

• ONE OF MARABLE'S CONTRIBUTORS ON A BOOK ENTITLED "BLACK ROUTES TO ISLAM" WAS MUSTAFA BAYUMI - WHO EDITED THE EDWARD SAID READER. ED SAID WAS RAHSID KHALIDI'S MENTOR - KHALIDI NOW HAS THE "EDWARD SAID CHAIR" AT COLUMBIA.

• EARLIER IN HIS LIFE, RASHID WORKED FOR THE PLO -- DURING THE ARAFAT ERA. AND HE ALSO BABYSAT FOR THE OBAMA'S IN CHICAGO.

• MARABLE'S CO-AUTHOR OF ABOVE MENTIONED BOOK WAS HISHAM AIDI - WHO ALSO TEACHES AT OBAMA'S ALMA MATER, COLUMBIA. AND ONCE WROTE AN ARTICLE PRAISING LATINO CONVERSION TO ISLAM.

• ALONG OUR MEXICAN BORDER THIS LATINO/MUSLIM CONVERGENCE IS A GROWING TERROR THREAT...

• AND IT'S ALSO A PROBLEM IN SOUTH AMERICA...

• A PROBLEM THAT OBAMA ALLIES APPARENTLY POOH-POOH AND THINK IS JUST GRAND. SHEESH.

(END UPDATES)

MARABLE - ALONG WITH OTHER MALCOLM X ALLIES - LIKE PERCY SUTTON AND JEREMIAH WRIGHT AND BILL AYERS - WERE MAJOR INFLUENCES ON OBAMA, AND HELPED HIM FOR DECADES BEHIND THE SCENES.

THIS LEFTIST-CHICAGO MACHINE AXIS EXPLAINS WHO OBAMA REALLY IS, HOW HE OPERATES AND WHAT HE WANTS TO DO TO THE USA.

OBAMA IS A BREZHNEV SOCIALIST WHO WANTS TO MAKE US MORE LIKE CUBA. [MORE ON THE BREZHNEV COMPARISON HERE.]

AND HOW DID OBAMA - A KID FROM HAWAII AND INDONESIA GOING TO COLLEGE IN LA - GET MIXED UP WITH THE POWERFUL LEFTIST-CHICAGO MACHINE AXIS?

VIA FRANK MARSHALL DAVIS.

MEMEORANDUM'S ROUNDUP HERE.