Saul Alinsky's 1972 interview with Playboy Magazine

1972

[ProgressingAmerica]

Originally published in The Progress Report in 13 pieces, here it is in full, easy access.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Due to probable copyright issues, I probably should not simply cut and paste from the archive.(That's what I would prefer most to do) But I thought many of you would find this to be a useful resource.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Alinsky has come back into the news cycle, and this interview is one of the most thorough with regards to the many topics covered.

[ProgressingAmerica]

FYI...............

[Yo-Yo]

Which link is for the centerfold?

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[Federal46]

Boom mark

[Snickering Hound]

"Honey, I got the March 72' Playboy for the Alinsky interview, not the Ellen Michaels centerfold..."

[PMAS]

*

[Billthedrill]

“Pictures? Playboy has pictures? Who knew?”

[Baynative]

ALINSKY: "Sometimes it seems to me that the question people should ask is not 'Is there life after death?' but 'Is there life after birth?' I don't know whether there's anything after this or not. I haven't seen the evidence one way or the other and I don't think anybody else has either. But I do know that man's obsession with the question comes out of his stubborn refusal to face up to his own mortality. Let's say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell."

[Paine in the Neck]

[circlecity]

"Let's say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell."

I'm sure he got his wish.

[betty boop]

Thanks so much for the links!

[pieceofthepuzzle]

One of the very interesting issues raised in this interview is when Alinsky states that the middle class is large in numbers, and the poor are a relatively small percentage. He's stating this to make the point that fashioning a political movement by appealing to the poor and disaffected would not generate enough support. To me, this would be a positive, essentially saying that we were making headway against poverty and that we had a good shot at eradicating the relatively small percentage of poverty - and making everyone’s quality of life better.

He, and likely many of the current political elite on the left, see it differently. He wanted, and they want, to decrease the percentage of people in the middle class, and shift more and more of them to the ‘impoverished’. Then, and only then, will the impoverished represent a large enough percentage of the populace to allow the left to enlist them against the rest of society. Interesting.

[Buckeye McFrog]

One of the very interesting issues raised in this interview is when Alinsky states that the middle class is large in numbers, and the poor are a relatively small percentage. He's stating this to make the point that fashioning a political movement by appealing to the poor and disaffected would not generate enough support.

Do you:

a) Court the middle-class with freebies such as free college tuition, free health care and mortgages for homes they can't afford in order to co-opt them?

b) Use the Tax Code to convert the middle-class into the poor?

c) Import a whole new underclass of poor people from the third-world?

d) All of the above

[Uversabound]

ALINSKY: “Sometimes it seems to me that the question people should ask is not ‘Is there life after death?’ but ‘Is there life after birth?’ I don’t know whether there’s anything after this or not. I haven’t seen the evidence one way or the other and I don’t think anybody else has either. But I do know that man’s obsession with the question comes out of his stubborn refusal to face up to his own mortality. Let’s say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.”

It always comes back to their relationship, or not, with God. He is all that I know that is the truth my Dear Freepers....eveything else is an illusion and I am as sure of this as Alinsky is of hell itself.

Enjoy asshat!!!

[RedStateRocker]

Any conservative who has NOT read this book is like a military officer who has never read Sun Tzu or Von Clausewitz. Hate him as you will, but he understood perfectly how to attack ‘the establishment’.

[Talisker]

ALINSKY: "Sometimes it seems to me that the question people should ask is not 'Is there life after death?' but 'Is there life after birth?' I don't know whether there's anything after this or not. I haven't seen the evidence one way or the other and I don't think anybody else has either. But I do know that man's obsession with the question comes out of his stubborn refusal to face up to his own mortality. Let's say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell."

LOL, yeah, I was a sophomore in college talking in a coffee shop once, too.

Hillary fell for a common hustler. Then she did it again with Bill.

Now she wants to burn down the world because she couldn't find a better daddy.

Feminism - yeah, right.

[RayChuang88]

This part of the interview--the very end--is the most chilling part, in my humble opinion:

ALINSKY: Sometimes it seems to me that the question people should ask is not "Is there life after death?" but "Is there life after birth?" I don't know whether there's anything after this or not. I haven't seen the evidence one way or the other and I don't think anybody else has either. But I do know that man's obsession with the question comes out of his stubborn refusal to face up to his own mortality. Let's say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.

PLAYBOY: Why?

ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I've been with the have-nots. Over here, if you're a have-not, you're short of dough. If you're a have-not in hell, you're short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I'll start organizing the have-nots over there.

PLAYBOY: Why them?

ALINSKY: They're my kind of people.

Some on the Left dismiss Alinsky's obsession with the Underworld in this interview and in the book Rules For Radicals as an attempt at a very dark form of the self-deprecating humor Jews are known for (Alinsky grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family), but once you finish reading Rules for Radicals, we wonder if he's really serious about his obsession with the Underworld....

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

bfl