The Obama Syndrome: Back to black

The Obama Syndrome is a radical analysis of the first thousand days of Obama’s presidency.

Though primarily a historian, Tariq Ali has made a reputation as a novelist with the publication of his Islam Quintet of historical novels. His recent book The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad is a radical analysis of the first thousand days of Obama’s presidency. No one could be better at deconstructing Obama’s presidency than Ali, a respected historian of left-wing sympathies, who has spent much of his career analysing liberal democracies and presenting his diagnosis of late capitalism.

Obama’s election as the president of the United States has become the romance of our times. His government was heralded as the beginning of a cultural reformation. “The emblematic significance of Obama’s victory should not be underestimated, but did it ever move beyond symbols?” asks Ali with the hindsight of Obama’s first 18 months in office. Obama is not the happy ending to Martin Luther King’s dream, according to Ali. Moving beyond the pointless rhetoric of change and hope that surround the Obama Effect, Ali positions it in the discourses surrounding late capitalism. He reveals the ineffectiveness of the Obama presidency and explains why it turned out to be so in two ways: by talking about the continuation of the same foreign policy and war on terror, and by revealing the past disastrous domestic politics in the financial, health care and education sector.

The world Ali unveils is a dystopia of imperial presidency. Although he has been repeatedly portrayed as a progressive by neo-liberals, Obama is, in fact, a shrewd politician who would not stop at anything to achieve his goals which, the writer doesn’t forget to tell us, are just as bad as those of the previous US president. He writes: “The problem is that Obama, while an extremely intelligent human being, is not a progressive leader by any stretch of imagination. . . In reality, Barack Obama is a skilful and gifted machine politician who rapidly rose to the top.”

Ali’s detailed descriptions of the struggles of African Americans is disillusioning yet enlightening. He aptly quotes Malcolm X in the epigraph to his book and then carefully takes us back to the gaps in history that no one talks about. The masterful narration of the politics of the Black Panther Party and the gradual elimination of figures like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Hutton makes for extremely disturbing reading. Moving on, he surveys the Iraq and Afghan wars, and makes a penetrating evaluation of the Palestinian resistance.

A brilliant novelist and playwright, Ali’s approach towards politics and history has always been Marxist. He puts things in historical context by reframing certain facts. The resulting analysis is extraordinary, and the critical insight, wit and powerful prose writing makes for exhilarating reading. Though he has the ability to shock a new reader, Ali’s appeal is certainly not limited to those who share his political ideology.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, March 20^th, 2011.