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| - In 2024, various social media accounts on Instagram and X shared a meme featuring an alleged quote from former U.S. President Barack Obama. According to the meme, in 2014 Obama said, "The idea is to bring socialism to America without the people realizing the country is being socialized."
The quote has circulated widely, especially in politically charged discussions, and has even been posted by the likes of musician Ted Nugent, who shared it on his personal X account the day after the U.S. election, Nov. 6, 2024. Nugent's post received nearly 60,000 views, as of this writing:
(Ted Nugent/X)
The alleged quote has also appeared on clothing and in September 2024 political ads in Texas newspapers, particularly the Valley Morning Star, asserting it was part of the agenda of "modern socialist leader in the U.S., Barak [sic] Hussein Obama." However, these ads provided no sources, and no historical records substantiated the claim.
(The Brownsville Herald/Newspapers.com)
Attempts to Verify Quote's Authenticity
Despite the quote's popularity, no credible source confirms that Obama ever made this statement. Our examination of primary sources — including official transcripts, broadcast and print interviews, reputable archives, and statements from Obama's time in office — revealed no documented evidence that he used this phrasing. What we did find is that the quote is sometimes attributed to various figures aside from Obama but without a clearly verified source. Its origin is unclear, but we found no evidence of it circulating before December 2023.
We reached out to Obama and his representatives at Obama.org and the Barack Obama Presidential Library. However, as of this report, neither responded with records of Obama saying this phrase. Additionally, searches in established public archives, including the New York Public Library's database records and the Newspapers archives, did not yield instances of this quote appearing in verifiable Obama speeches or statements.
Several prominent publications have documented Obama's discussions on social policy, but none include this wording. For instance, in a 2014 address to the nation about immigration, Obama expressed a similar communal sentiment but did not say the phrase in question. What he said, according to the White House Obama archives, is that "what makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal -– that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will."
In a 2013 interview with The New York Times, Obama spoke about social programs and the erosion of economic mobility, discussing changes in working-class America. However, he described social support systems more in terms of opportunity and economic equity than of a direct shift toward socialism. During the interview, which took place at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, Obama referenced his former Harvard professor, Robert Putnam, a political scientist who popularized the concept of "social capital," or community networks that help people thrive, telling the outlet:
The work he's [Putnam] doing right now has to do with this issue of inequality. And it applies to a city like Galesburg, where 30 years ago, anybody in this town who wanted to find a job, they could go get a job. They could go get it at the Maytag plant. They could go get it with the railroad. It might be hard work, it might be tough work, but they could buy a house with it.
The kids here all went to the same school -- the banker's kid and the guy working at the Maytag plant's going to the same school. They've got the same social support. College is affordable for all of them. They don't have to take out $100,000 of debt to do it. And there was a sense of not upward mobility in the abstract; it was part and parcel of who we were as Americans. And that's what's been eroding over the last 20, 30 years, well before the financial crisis.
Obama also talked about socialism in 2013, but the quote did not appear to come from that event:
Origins and Misattributions of Quote
The idea of "gradually socializing" an economy has been attributed to various figures over time. For instance, some speculated the alleged Obama quote may have come from Norman Thomas, a prominent American socialist who ran for president six times as a candidate for the Socialist Party. However, no documented speech or text by Thomas matches this phrasing, and no credible sources confirm he coined it.
Another possible source was British sci-fi writer H.G. Wells, known for his socialist leanings, who reportedly discussed gradually introducing a planned economy with Soviet leader Josef Stalin in a 1934 conversation. Yet again, concrete evidence is absent. Per the Marxists Internet Archive, Wells told Stalin:
I would like to stress the point that if a country as a whole adopts the principle of planned economy, if the government, gradually, step by step, begins consistently to apply this principle, the financial oligarchy will at last be abolished and socialism, in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of the word, will be brought about. The effect of the ideas of Roosevelt's "New Deal" is most powerful, and in my opinion they are socialist ideas. It seems to me that instead of stressing the antagonism between the two worlds, we should, in the present circumstances, strive to establish a common tongue for all the constructive forces.
Similarly, former President Ronald Reagan spoke about socialism's gradual influence on America in a 1961 speech, warning against "socialized medicine." In this speech, Reagan cited a remark from United Auto Workers' leader Walter Reuther about supporting national health insurance, which Reagan characterized as a step toward socialism:
Walter Reuther said, "It's no secret that the United Automobile Workers is officially on record as backing a program of national health insurance." And by national health insurance, he meant socialized medicine for every American. Well, let's see what the socialists themselves have to say about it. They say: "Once the Forand bill [the first bill proposing the provision of health insurance to social security recipients] is passed, this nation will be provided with a mechanism for socialized medicine capable of indefinite expansion in every direction until it includes the entire population." Well, we can't say we haven't been warned.
In sum, this phrase has circulated as a fabricated or misattributed quote often used in critiques of gradual social reforms, without credible evidence linking it to Obama or other figures. Therefore, we rate the claim as misattributed. Should concrete evidence emerge, such as a reliable source or primary record, we will update this article.
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