PrintJune 25, 2008
Another Problem FOO: This one's a Doozy
The hits just keep on coming. Another problem "Friend of Obama (FOO)" has been exposed and, just from a personal perspective, this one's a real headcase.
His name is Martin Klonsky. Who, you might inquire, is Martin Klonsky? Jim Hoft steers us to this website where Steve Diamond fills in the blanks:
His name is Martin Klonsky. Who, you might inquire, is Martin Klonsky? Jim Hoft steers us to this website where Steve Diamond fills in the blanks:
Well, on one level, he might just appear to be a protege of Bill Ayers in the education world. He received, as I detail below, a $175,000 grant from the Ayers/Obama-led Annenberg Challenge to run the Small Schools Workshop that he and Ayers started in Chicago to push their school reform agenda.
But that is only half the story. Klonsky was one of the most destructive hardline Maoists in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the late 60's who emerged from SDS to form a pro-Chinese sect called the October League that later became the Beijing-recognized Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). As chairman of the party, Klonsky travelled to Beijing itself in 1977 and, literally, toasted the Chinese stalinist leadership who, in turn, "hailed the formation of the CP(ML) as 'reflecting the aspirations of the proletariat and working people,' effectively recognizing the group as the all-but-official US Maoist party." (Elbaum, Revolution in the Air, 228).
I know of no indications that Klonsky has ever expressed any regrets about that activity. Perhaps like his SDS comrade, Ayers, he, too, thinks he did not do enough back then. In my view they did more than enough.
A little history lesson for you; China in 1977 was still emerging from the so-called "Cultural Revolution" during which upwards of 20 million people were murdered, executed, and otherwise done away with by Communist party thugs - all in the name of Mao's breakthrough thinking of constant revolution. This was the idea that all revolutions eventually end and the revolutionaries become the establishment. Mao - at heart a murderous thug who took great joy in killing large numbers of people during the civil war - ordained this state of constant revolution during which time the country came to a standstill as gangs of Red toughs roamed through the cities, towns, and villages killing anyone they thought was a "counterrevolutionary."
This was Klonsky's political milieu as he tried to build a Maoist party here in the US. Later on, he apparently became a key ally of Obama-Ayers during the "school wars" in Chicago of the 1990's. The Ayers-Obama faction allied themselves with reformers and in 1995, Mayor Daley - who has spoken so highly of Ayers and Obama - took over the Chicago school system, instituting many of the reforms advocated by Obama-Ayers with Klonsky now heading up the "Small Schools Workshop" which teaches administrators and school districts how to transform their local school systems.
Here's what Diamond has to say about Klonsky's ideas on education:
How is it possible that someone of Klonsky's ilk would now be playing a visible role in the Obama campaign itself on such an important issue as education policy - apparently with free reign to push his authoritarian "social justice" agenda?
But as far as Obama is concerned, these are just "distractions." I am inclined to believe that the Obama campaign itself is a distraction to keep us from discovering how truly radical this man is.
