Obama's Nazi Straw man: An Old Alinsky Trick

The American Thinker ^ | August 13, 2009 | Kyle-Anne Shiver

[Scanian]

When I saw this video interview of Bill Burton, White House Deputy Press Secretary, I could not help but be reminded of one of old Saul Alinsky's favorite fake-em-out tricks of the revolutionary trade. Burton is reinforcing Pelosi's earlier claim that people were carrying Swastikas at townhalls, but goes even further and claims that folks are actually "dressing up like Hitler."

You got to give ole Saul a little credit. He was one wily deceiver, right after his hero, Deceiver in Spades, Lucifer.

Saul Alinsky, crusader for the downtrodden, darling of the Auxiliary Archbishop of Chicago, was just an underachieving nobody with neither guts nor moral code, who flummoxed a whole lot of willing-to-be-deceived power seekers. Saul Alinsky didn't invent a single new thing. His whole methodology, so widely-hailed by whole generations of leftists, could have been devised by any 12 year-old gang-style bully with half a brain and an ounce of charisma.

It's quite disheartening, now, to see the top echelons of the Democratic Party using Alinsky tactics in an attempt to freeze political dialogue, most especially when that dialogue is about the most intimate service we Americans procure for ourselves and our families: our medical care.

Nevertheless, they've decided to go at this whole hog, even if it means stripping off their dignity and parading their political bloomers right out in the public square.

When Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and now the president's own deputy press secretary conjure up images of Nazis at healthcare townhalls, they are engaging in one of the oldest tricks in anyone's book, but an especial favorite of their mentor, Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky himself employed this method, quite deviously. Alinsky biographer, Sanford D. Horwitt provides an anecdote using precisely this same diabolical tactic to deceive the people. From Horwitt's Let Them Call Me Rebel:

[bareford101]

FINALLY!!! someone CALLS OUT obamanation ON HIS TACTICS. STRAIGHT FROM HIS HERO, SAUL ALINSKY:

“The students told Alinsky they were thinking about picketing or disrupting Bush’s address. That’s the wrong approach, he rejoined, not very creative - and besides causing a disruption might get them thrown out of school. He told them, instead, to go to hear the speech dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards reading, ‘The KKK supports Bush.’ And that is what they did, with very successful, attention-getting results.”

Planting major falsehoods has been a favorite Alinsky strategy from the start. His acolyte, Barack Obama, learned his Industrial Areas Foundation lessons on deceiving for power while on a side trip during his Harvard years, then taught the Alinsky power tactics at the University of Chicago. “

WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!! THIS IS COMMUNICISM!!

[HiTech RedNeck]

Fortunately, calls of “Nazi” are getting a bit hackneyed and trite as political taunts today. Few are going to give consideration to the calumny, if only because it is simply boring.

[erkyl]

I was surmising this scenario the other day, without even knowing it was an Alinsky tactic. It just seemed like something Obama/Acorn/SEIU would do—dress someone up or make a swastika poster and hand it to a $16 an hour ‘community organizer’ to go out to a town hall to look like a ‘loony teabagger.’ Get someone to snap a pic or shoot some video, put it on the web while simultaneously getting old Nazi Pelosi herself to comment on the heinousness of the protestors ‘carrying swastikas’ even before said pictures/videos had a chance to be noticed by anyone.

Yeah, I figured that’s what the Chicago-style politicians would do. Well, people wanted change, and that’s what they got...change—for the worse.

[444Flyer]

"Alinsky's Rules for Radicals" (Obama's Playbook):

RULE 1:"Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have."

RULE 2:"Never go outside the expertise of your people."

RULE 3:"Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy."

RULE 4:"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

RULE 5"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."

RULE 6:"A good tactic is one your people enjoy."

RULE 7:"A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."

RULE 8:"Keep the pressure on. Never let up."

RULE 9:"The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."

RULE 10:"If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become positive."

RULE 11:"The price of a successful attack is a conservative alternative."

RULE 12:"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." (Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel. but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.))

[sheik yerbouty]

Obama is the National Socialist. Only his racial manias are not like Schickelgruber’s..

[PhilDragoo]

The man with the sign comparing Obama to Hitler at the Dingell town meeting later passed out Dingell literature.

Dingell smeared the father of the son in the wheelchair as identical to Klansmen.

Nancy Pelosi sees swastikas.

Harry Reid sees swastikas dropping from the ceiling and skittering under the door until his first drink in the morning.

Saul Alinsky dedicated Romilar for Radicals to Lucifer, who was good enough, smart enough and gosh darn it, people liked him.

Obama--or whoever he is--isn't even an American.

He popped out of a seed pod under somebody's bed and has to plug into a Sorostron docking port once every solar cycle.

To say he's not a marxist is to say Marx was not a marxist.

Anyone who announces his chief quarrel with the U.S. Constitution is that it "doesn't do enough to redistribute the wealth" is to the left of Trotsky.

The title says "straw man"--

--hey, for those of us keeping score, without straw men, DBA Obama would have no men at all--

--except of course Larry Sinclair.

He and Larry will always have "let's party like it's 1999"--

[flaglady47]

The best defense is an offense, and the liberal Dems are doing just that. Accuse the conservatives of that which they themselves are: fascist, with brownshirts attached (ACORN, Union thugs, etc.)

[ballplayer]

Well then show up on sept 12th with signs saying Socialists FOR Obamacare, the American Communists party for Obamacare,NAACP FOR Obamacare ,that should do it

[Anima Mundi]

“One of the most important things in life is what judge Learned Hand described as ‘that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you’re right.’ If you don’t have that, if you think you’ve got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated.” — Saul Alinsky

My son sent this quote yesterday. What if we started mirroring these words back to them? For example ask a question framed: What gives you, the government, appointed czars, etc. the inside track to the absolute truth in individual lives? Aren’t individuals in the best position to know what is good for them? Why so intellectually constipated?”

I think they might find this disconcerting to hear the actual phrasing back at them.

[a fool in paradise]

So Obama plants are seeding the crowds on both sides of the aisle.

What are they hiding?

Why must they tip the scales in public perception of this debate? Why stack the deck on the townhalls and send out rabble rousers to smear the patriotic protesters?

[a fool in paradise]

Well then show up on sept 12th with signs saying Socialists FOR Obamacare, the American Communists party for Obamacare,NAACP FOR Obamacare ,that should do it

The media won't show those signs any more than they showed the Communists signs at the so called antiwar rallies.

[sheik yerbouty]

Him and his crew are the worst sort of garbage..

[Mind-numbed Robot]

"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

The corollary of that is "Our side has no rules."

[Mind-numbed Robot]

What gives you, the government, appointed czars, etc. the inside track to the absolute truth in individual lives? Aren’t individuals in the best position to know what is good for them?

Other good questions: Aren't government and czars simply individuals, too? What gives one individual the right to have domain over the life of another? What if I were the individual who had domain over you?

Of course, they would be much more fortunate for you to have domain over them than vice versa.