Lionizing the Enemy

My article from the June 17, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine

Lionizing the Enemy

By Matthew Vadum

A project is underway to rehabilitate the self-exiled Sixties radical, anti-Semite and “black power” advocate Stokely Carmichael.

The opening salvo in this revisionist project of the Afro-centrist Marxist Left in academia is Stokely: A Life, by Peniel E. Joseph, which was recently published by BasicCivitas Books.

It is more infomercial than biography, calculated to transform its negligible subject into a towering figure of historic importance, and to whitewash the damage he did. Joseph’s central argument is that Carmichael was a “rock star” activist who inspired generations and who singlehandedly changed the course of American history.

Perversely, Joseph calls Carmichael a civil rights leader. If that fairly summarizes Carmichael’s work, he was a civil rights leader only in the bizarre modern sense that racial arsonist like Al Sharpton is a civil rights leader.

It is difficult to imagine an American civil rights leader making common cause with ruthless African dictators but that is what Carmichael did. He changed his name to Kwame Toure to honor two of them. 

In his self-imposed exile he was a courtier to brutal racist tyrants. He was a friend of Ugandan butcher Idi Amin, and rationalized away the relationship by reminding himself that Amin was anti-American and anti-Zionist. Carmichael even accepted Ugandan citizenship.

He was also a friend of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Libya came closest to accomplishing Carmichael’s vision of a socialist state, according to Joseph.

It is difficult to image an American civil rights leader going abroad to help hostile powers, but this is what Carmichael did.

Carmichael visited Communist Cuba, giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies abroad. While there he called Abraham Lincoln a racist and helped Cuba’s propaganda effort against the United States. 

After spending three days with Fidel Castro he told reporters that the conversations he had with him were the “most educational, most interesting, and most enlightening of my public life.”

Carmichael praised the world’s most prolific mass murderer, Mao Zedong, as “a great Chinese leader, the greatest Chinese leader there is.” He palled around with Communist Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh and called for the U.S. to be defeated in Vietnam.

Matthew Vadum's adventure on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"

Back on Oct. 30, 2008, I appeared on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" to talk about ACORN and community organizers.

Here is a link to the video (the show's website won't allow embeds).

About a month or more before the air date, I traveled to New York City to tape a segment with John Oliver. Being in hostile territory (ideologically) I thought of the nastiest things I could say about ACORN and community organizers and I said them. There is no point, after all, in going on a left-wing show and playing along with the puppet masters. (Some conservatives criticized me for doing the show. Alas, it's impossible to please everyone.)

Everything I said had a basis in truth except for a few comments that were obviously satirical in nature. It is in fact true that mainstream media outlets have reported that ACORN and other so-called community organizations such as the NAACP Voter Fund have used crack cocaine and cigarettes as payoffs in the voter registration process, so I wasn't saying anything new.

Little did I know the show planned to juxtapose my statements with reaction shots from Bertha Lewis, ACORN's chief organizer at the time. (When the segment was shot, the producer said he wasn't sure who else was going to be interviewed for the package.) Because Lewis is a black woman, this led to some of the more idiotic leftists accusing me of racism in the absence of any evidence. The cry of "racist" is the last refuge of a desperate left-winger and tends to suggest that a conservative is doing his or her job properly. If they're not attacking you, that's likely because you're missing the target.

Just as when Andrew Breitbart summoned the courage a few months later to go into the lions' den when he appeared on Bill Maher's show on HBO (facing off against pseudo-intellectual race-baiting demagogue Michael Eric Dyson) conservatives have to be willing to take some heat in order to be effective. Go deep into liberal territory and do some damage. Don't be worried about getting sprayed with slime. You might even win some converts.

As Epictetus taught, "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid."

That really says it all.