Why Obama Boycotted France's Terror March

By Paul Sperry
IBDEditorials.com

Fanon would've been fine with French snub. View Enlarged Image

Two of the biggest mysteries surrounding Barack Obama's presidency involve his snubbing of close allies. Why did he kiss off the French in their terror grief? For the same reason he sent an Oval Office statue of Churchill back to the Brits: anti-colonialism.

Anti-colonialism is the idea that Western countries got rich and powerful by oppressing and plundering poor countries and peoples, and that they continue to exploit minorities like Muslim immigrants within their societies.

Obama's baffling decision to skip the anti-terror rally in Paris is rooted in this ideology, which he adopted from writer Frantz Fanon, a French-African revolutionary who played a major role in his intellectual development.

If Fanon were alive today, he'd take solace in the Muslim terror siege of France. He'd also be proud of his Oval Office admirer's boycott of the French government's protest march.

In 1954, Fanon left France for Algeria, where he joined Muslim rebels in their fight for independence. He railed against the French colonizers, claiming they were raping Algerian culture by banning the Muslim veil and other forms of Westernization — something French Muslims complain Paris is doing again today.

The French government expelled Fanon from Algiers and threatened to arrest him if he caused more trouble. Fanon went on to pen a defense of the right for colonized people to use violence to gain independence. He titled his treatise, "The Wretched of the Earth."

While Paris censored the book, it became a personal favorite of Obama. While attending Occidental and Columbia universities, he debated it tirelessly with other politically active black students, along with Muslim immigrants.

Algerians, Tunisians, Moroccans and Senegalese eventually all gained their independence, and as part of decolonization, France began welcoming the families of migrant workers from the North African region. A trickle of Muslim immigrants quickly turned into a flood, and today France is home to some 6 million Muslims — the most in Europe.

Now, African Muslims are in effect colonizing parts of France.

Police have virtually lost control over some 750 urban immigrant enclaves that have become breeding grounds for jihadists like the two Parisian terrorists of Algerian descent and the one of Senegalese descent who slaughtered French journalists, police and Jews in a bloody two-day rampage in the City of Light. Fanon would absolutely relish such a turnabout.

For Obama's part, there's no doubt he sympathizes with formerly colonized Africans and their children, a concern he repeatedly — and angrily — expresses in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father."

As a student of Islam, Obama also sympathizes with Muslims' anger over French cartoons ridiculing their prophet Muhammad. In a 2012 United Nations speech, he asserted that "the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

All this in mind, Obama saw the terror attack on French intellectuals and authorities by Franco-Algerian Muslims differently than other Western leaders and decided to boycott the greatest anti-terror rally ever held and one that demanded American representation.

The White House says it was an oversight, but the snub clearly was calculated. Obama was the only Western leader absent, despite a clear travel schedule. He didn't even send his vice president in his place — or his attorney general, who was actually in Paris at the time. He was sending a message to the French, our oldest ally, as well as the British and other former colonial powers locking arms in solidarity.

Obama is not a big fan of our other ally across the pond, either. Until the '60s, Britain colonized Kenya, and according to Obama, mistreated his father and Muslim grandfather (a story biographers now dispute). Winston Churchill was prime minister at the time, and became the object of family scorn.

So, one of the first things Obama did when he moved into the Oval Office was pack up the bust of Churchill and ship it back to London, to the utter dismay of 10 Downing Street.

It's not surprising Obama would be intellectually weaned on the writings of Fanon. The self-described "Mujahideen of Algeria" also agitated for Kenyan independence from Britain, making him a hero in the eyes of Obama's anti-colonialist father.

Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was a Kenyan Muslim who hated the British even more than the French. The younger Obama also identified with Fanon's biracial background.

Obama's Parisian snub is no puzzle. But to make sense of it, you first must understand Obama's twisted world view. He views all global events through the lens of Western colonialism and imperialism. Then, more narrowly, you must understand his acknowledged reverence for the militant anti-colonialist Fanon, who despised the patriarchal French establishment.

Anti-colonialist sympathies explain Obama's French disconnection just like they explain his ongoing hostility toward Israel, his shocking appeasement of Castro and his retreat from Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader War on Terror.

• Sperry, formerly IBD Washington bureau chief, is author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington."