This election is too important not to know your enemy.
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.”
Obama follows this in all his campaigns. Ask his former opponents.
Rules for Radicals
In 1971, Saul Alinsky wrote an entertaining classic on grassroots organizing titled Rules for Radicals. Those who prefer cooperative tactics describe the book as out-of-date. Nevertheless, it provides some of the best advice on confrontational tactics. Alinsky begins this way: What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.
His “rules” derive from many successful campaigns where he helped poor people fighting power and privilege
For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting what is wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. The two are linked. If people feel they don’t have the power to change a bad situation, they stop thinking about it.
According to Alinsky, the organizer — especially a paid organizer from outside — must first overcome suspicion and establish credibility. Next the organizer must begin the task of agitating: rubbing resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out controversy. This is necessary to get people to participate. An organizer has to attack apathy and disturb the prevailing patterns of complacent community life where people have simply come to accept a bad situation. Alinsky would say, “The first step in community organization is community disorganization.”
Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals.
Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
bookmark
Hmmmm. This Alinsky guy was not wrong about tactics, at least. I wonder if his “Rules for Radicals” occupies shelf space next to “Clauswitz on War” and “A Book of Five Rings.”
Turn the ridicule right back on them.
Good find. I posted something similar a while back. It would appear that Saul Alinsky looked up to Lucifer as the “O.R.” (Original Radical) and spent the rest of his life trying to immitate him. Apparently it worked, because we just watched two Alinsky followers run for the demorat primary.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1987291/posts
bookmark
btt
Of course, Republicans reaction to all this is to immediately go on the defensive. Seldom do they unleash their pit bull orators or strategists. Rather than use the immense amount of data available to prove the conservative case, Republicans tug their forelocks, say "yes sir," and hope the accusations and name calling will go away. Why is it that Republicans consistently fail to point out the monumental failures of the new Democrats? Failures such as the massive disaster that is the "war on poverty." On that topic alone Republicans should be drilling the public in every media venue and at every opportunity. Then and only then should Republicans offer alternatives to the failed policies of the Democratic left.
Republicans should pound relentlessly on the fact that the Democratic Party was hijacked by leftist reactionaries way back in the early '70s. The reactionary left is the obstructionist left. They do nothing but defend and cling to the failures of the past. That fact makes them reactionaries rather than radicals or progressives
Unfortunately, Republicans still pretend that nothing has changed regarding the basic philosophy of the political parties. They refuse to understand the horrendous notion that Democrats tell us the U.S. Constitution is flexible. That means the rule of law is flexible. If that is the case the law and the Constitution mean nothing. It means that the law and Constitution are twisted by the whims and fancies of the moment.
Resume of: B HUSSEIN OBAMA
1.) COLB
Proven fake by more than one source
2.) Sketchy childhood
We know some details - Lots of gaps - muslim?
3.) College thesis has vanished
Was it anything like Micheles?
4.) Overseas travel
Pakistan? Why? On what passport?
5.) Law records
What cases did he represent?
6.) Senate records disappeared
What was he trying to hide?
7.) Associations
Rev Wright, Ayers, Rezko, Michele etc.
8.) Senate voting record
That speaks for itself
9.) SCOTUS
Who would his choices be?
10.) Proven Liar
11.) Inexperience
12.) Racist, Sexist, Radical, Marxist views
His judgement in the people he associates with and his radical/marxist views scare the hell out of me.
[Saul Alinsky's] Son sees father's handiwork in [2008 democrat] convention
ALL THE elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd's chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people.
The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style. Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness.
It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.
I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.
L. DAVID ALINSKY
Medfield
________________________________________________________________________________
From Rules for Radicals, Alinsky outlines his strategy in organizing, writing:
"There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution."[2]
[2] Saul Alinsky, The Latter Rain
http://latter-rain.com/ltrain/alinski.htm
bump for later.
Interesting you mention Lucifer. The 1971 edition of "Rules for Radicals" has the following quote from Saul Alinsky in the preface:
Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgement to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins-or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer
-Saul Alinsky
You might find this discussion of the philosophical mentor of a couple of our favorite politicians interesting.
The Republican Congress and President made it easy for the radicals by abandoning traditional Republican "rules" against fiscal restraint, new govt. programs, and political corruption.
OUTSTANDING post/thread. Thanks to every linker, researcher, educator. BUMP-TO-THE-TOP!
Do “independents” need more evidence of a parasitic, criminal philosophy?
Thanks to all truth-seeking, freedom-loving lurkers reading this thread.
Alinsky ping.
Excellent, though lengthy, background at post #21.
Alinsky ping.
Excellent, though lengthy, background at post #21.