Is anyone surprised that the two most prominent Americans caught up in the war on terror are Californians? It is true, Adam Gadahn (aka Azzam the American, aka Adam Pearlman) and John Walker Lindh, who is now serving jail time after being caught in Afghanistan with the Taliban, come from Orange County and Marin, respectively.
And not surprisingly, both men have much in common. Both had non-traditional schooling and non-conformist parents steeped in the radicalize jargon of the Summer of Love. Lindh’s upbringing was typical Marin: physiatrist father, odd hobby’s, meditative spirituality, obligatory broken home. Adam Gadahn was Californian at hyper-speeed. Born in Orange County in 1978. His father, whose actual impact on his son can only be speculated at as Gahahn Sr. avoids the press, was a well-known Psychedelic sound musician in the sixties whose most prominent album, Beat of Earth, was drum circle affair labeled as the “Velvet Underground of the West” upon its released in 1967. With funding from his prominent Urologist father, Adam’s Dad raised his offspring on a rural farm in the desert outside San Diego.
He was a strong advocate for the complete rejection of contemporary American culture, home schooled his children and, according to ex-band mate Karen Darby “voiced…a total distain for the ‘consumeristical society.’ In other words, Adam was raised in the funky, radicalized Whole Earth vibe that is typical from Arcadia to Santa Cruz to Encinitas.
FC personally thinks we ought to really fear Adam Gadahn. Just yesterday, he taunted America, boasting, "Yesterday, London and Madrid, tomorrow Los Angeles and Melbourne, Allah willing...this time, don't count on us demonstrating restraint or compassion." We have, it seems, ourselves a real California revolutionary. Someone, bred on an odd quirk in the history and mythology of California who finds himself in the wild west of Pakistan threatening his homeland with its very existence.
FC believes Adam Gadahn’s current radicalism is not the work of Al Qaeda Imams but the Guru’s and shaman of the California Coast. Only in Al Qaeda’s brand of anti-Americanism and anti-globalization he has found the perfect outlet and continuation of the ideology his father raised him on. In Adam, we find, for the first time, a line that can be traced from the ideology of late-sixties radicalism to Islamic fascism of today. His complaints and motivations are almost identical to his fathers. His final actions, still to come, are real and we cannot fool ourselves, they mean it this time and they are prepared to take it to it’s conclusion. We, all Californians, need to know where this comes from. Not the Middle East, no way, his anger comes from something in all of us. A hatred and avarice is formed by arrogant yoga instructors and life coaches, a self-hating self-doubt in ourselves creates all Adam Gadahn's, like it or not.
Recent Comments