This book is highly recommended. It clearly refutes the lies and other misinformation regarding Davis's "radical" influence on Barack Obama. Used in conjuction with "The Writings of Frank Marshall Davis," Davis's political posture is self-evident. This book confirms that Davis was primarily a writer and civil rights activist, and by no means a collectivist.
The conservative blogosphere seems to have swallowed disinformation about Davis from Freddoso, Corsi, and others, hook, line & sinker, in an effort to discredit Obama through guilt-by-association. A disinformation campaign is like a house of cards, or an illusion fabricated over a framework of falsehoods. When enough support is withdrawn, the disinformation reveals its true colors. So it was with the Bush administration's Iraqi "threat" myth, which falsely claimed WMD stockpiles and mobile weapons labs largely based upon false reports from Iraqi source "Curveball." So it is with disinformation regarding the Davis-Obama relationship myth, largely based upon false reports from the conservative "Ministry of Truth" source, Cliff Kincaid's so-called "Accuracy In Media" (AIM). Their parallel functions belie any coincidence in their parallel names.
Just as there are a few loyalists who still insist that Bush told the truth about the Iraqi threat despite overwhelming evidence of deception, so too are there misguided souls who believe Davis-Obama disinformation despite overwhelming evidence of deception. In both cases, some Americans would rather believe fully discredited lies than admit they were duped. They don't have the courage or integrity to admit their mistakes. For everyone else: "Follow the evidence" of deception, for it is irrefutable.
Through innuendo, half-truths, and outright fabrication, Obama's opponents deliberately misrepresented a casual family friendship as political indoctrination sessions, or worse. In their rush to malign Obama, their scam transformed the legacy of a relatively obscure leftist poet into a "Stalinist agent" who corrupted Obama's values. Slander and libel were their tools of their trade, because truth was irrelevant. Their perverted ethics find nothing wrong with such lies. Destroying Davis's reputation was collateral damage. Cliff Kincaid may rationalize his deceit as a Leo Straussian "noble lie," but in reality it is a dishonorable attack.
While originators' culpability is irrefutable, they cause unwitting people to spread such disinformation throughout the blogosphere. Such recycling may be attributed to "confirmation bias," wherein people are predisposed to believing falsehoods that reinforce an existing bias (e.g., "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"). When unwitting people spread such lies, disinformation becomes simple misinformation. Although their motivation may differ, the result is just as rancid. Unfortunately, such myths may be exaggerated with each retelling, in an expanding spiral of viral disinformation.
Although "I'm hardly interested in proving my research to Kincaid or any of those whose work is a travesty to scholarship," University of Kansas Professor Edgar Tidwell, whom AIM's Cliff Kincaid cites as "an expert on the life and writings of Davis," dismisses misrepresentation of Davis's influence in one simple paragraph:
"Although my research indicates that Davis joined the CPUSA as a "closet member" during World War II, there is no evidence that he was a Stalinist, or even a Party member before WWII. Further, to those attempting to make the specious stand for the concrete, there is no evidence that he instructed Barack Obama in communist ideology. Frank Marshall Davis did NOT believe in overthrowing the USA. He was committed to what the nation professed to be. For him, communism was primarily an intellectual vehicle to achieve a political end-a possible tool for gaining the constitutional freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for ALL Americans."
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