JGeropoulas
The Living Force
Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals and the Trump Resistance
So who was Saul Alinsky how has he altered our democracy? Born in 1909, Alinsky was fascinated from an early age with old civilizations and by 1930 had earned a degree in archeology from the University of Chicago. But grants for expeditions had become extinct in those depression-era years so he redirected his energies into digging up and sifting through the layers of American society as a community activist. According to Alinsky,
Alinsky's "bait" once was a threat to stage a "fart in" to disrupt the sensibilities of the city's establishment at a Rochester Philharmonic concert. FIGHT members were to consume large quantities of baked beans after which [these] increasingly gaseous music-loving members would tie themselves to the concert hall where they would sit expelling gaseous vapors with such noisy velocity as to compete with the woodwinds"
In 1971, he wrote Rules for Radicals, a virtual handbook for radicals aiming to change society. In it, Alinsky concluded his personal acknowledgements with this one:
In the book, he addressed the 1960s generation of radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power. In the opening paragraph Alinsky writes:
It’s interesting that Alinsky views his ideas as antithetical to Machiavelli, whose political philosophy has guided every ruthless dictator of the past 500 years. For many years, this Machiavellian philosophy formed the core curriculum for Professor Leo Strauss (1899-1973), at Alinski's alma mater, the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Science. Notable alumni include:
Paul Wolfowitz, Ph.D. '72 (Deputy Defense Secretary under Bush Jr.)
Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69 (the CIA's Iraqi puppet)
Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79 (Bush Jr.'s roving pro-consul for Afghanistan and then Iraq)
Abram Shulsky, Ph.D. '72 (Dir. of Office of Special Plans which found “evidence” of Iraq’s WMD)
The central tenets of Machiavelli’s philosophy will seem familiar to anyone knowledgeable about history in general, and the years since 9/11 in particular:
- Society has two tiers: the Elite and the Masses, ruled by the Elite
- The Elite should promote religion as a social control mechanism
- The Elite should use the threat of external enemies to consolidate control
- If there are no threats from enemies, the Elite should fabricate them
Francis A. Boyle, an alumnus of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science (A.B., 1971), has written:
Well obviously there are plenty of Machiavellian politicians running around deceiving the willing masses, but the distinction between them and the Alinsky disciples gets blurred sometimes. How often have we heard campaign rhetoric embracing Alinsky’s ideals, but then seen those candidates move towards Machiavellian goals after being elected?
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the ‘60’s radicals for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.
He excelled at wooing wealthy funders. Alinsky once boasted,
During the Sixties, Alinsky wielded tremendous power behind the scenes. When President Johnson launched his War on Poverty in 1964, Alinsky allies infiltrated the program, steering federal money into Alinsky projects. In 1966, Senator Robert Kennedy allied himself with union leader Cesar Chavez, an Alinsky disciple.
Alinsky's crowning achievement was his recruitment of a young high school student named Hillary Rodham, who met him through a radical church group. They remained friends until Alinsky's death in 1972.
Alinsky tried to hire Hillary as a community organizer, but she chose instead to attend Yale Law School. Nonetheless, Alinsky's network continued guiding Hillary's career. Fresh out of law school at age 26, Hillary received a prestigious appointment to the House Judiciary Committee's Watergate investigative team in 1974. She got the job on the recommendation of Marian Wright Edelman, Hillary's closest sister and ideological soulmate, and member of the Board of Trustees of Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation.
Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky's counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power.
Barack Obama, trained by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinsky group called the Developing Communities Project. Later, he worked with ACORN and its offshoot Project Vote , both creations of the Alinsky network.
Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant church-goer .
In 1969, while a political science major at Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton chose to write her senior thesis on Alinsky's work, with Alinsky himself contributing his own time to help her. But when she became First Lady, she requested Wellesley remove it from public access.
That Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are disciples of Alinsky tells us two things. First, they are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system. Second, they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public.
Ironically, just months into Obama’s presidency, the “radical” Tea Party movement was born, and soon thereafter, Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey distributed copies of Rules for Radicals to Tea Party leaders.
Now today we see the defeated Left in full “resistance” mode, zealously—if not rabidly—implementing several of those key Alinksy “rules”:
Nearly 50 years ago, when Alinksy wrote Rules For Radicals, he believed that many Americans were living in frustration and despair, worried about their future, and ripe for a turn to radical social change, and ready to become politically active citizens. He feared the middle class could be driven to a right-wing viewpoint, "making them ripe for the plucking by some guy on horseback promising a return to the vanished verities of yesterday”.
“Promising a return to the vanished verities of yesterday”… Interesting phrase, considering Trump’s promise to “make America great again”. Looking at what’s going on these days, and looking even closer at history, some question the verity that America was ever really that “great”. But while no one can dispute that America’s past (and present) includes great evil, let’s earnestly hope that the verity of any great goodness has not completely vanished.
Alinsky envisioned his social justice radical “Have Nots” as a counter-force to Strauss’s ruthless Machiavellian “Haves”. But since today’s leftist radicals have been suckered by the Machiavellian establishment’s pretense of wanting social justice, they’ve become more of a co-opted force, than a counter-force.
In other words, on the Left, the “Have Nots” have been had by the “Haves”.
Sources:
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_
_https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/08/01/the-university-of-chicago-is-a-moral-cesspool/
_http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/leo_strauss%27_philosophy_of_deceptionAlinsky
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals
_http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/why-pretend-that-hillary-_b_22841.html
The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of
the Democratic Party by David Horowitz and Richard Poe
"It is not too much to argue that American democracy is being altered by Alinsky's ideas."
— Time magazine, 1970
— Time magazine, 1970
So who was Saul Alinsky how has he altered our democracy? Born in 1909, Alinsky was fascinated from an early age with old civilizations and by 1930 had earned a degree in archeology from the University of Chicago. But grants for expeditions had become extinct in those depression-era years so he redirected his energies into digging up and sifting through the layers of American society as a community activist. According to Alinsky,
Alinsky's "bait" once was a threat to stage a "fart in" to disrupt the sensibilities of the city's establishment at a Rochester Philharmonic concert. FIGHT members were to consume large quantities of baked beans after which [these] increasingly gaseous music-loving members would tie themselves to the concert hall where they would sit expelling gaseous vapors with such noisy velocity as to compete with the woodwinds"
In 1971, he wrote Rules for Radicals, a virtual handbook for radicals aiming to change society. In it, Alinsky concluded his personal acknowledgements with this one:
In the book, he addressed the 1960s generation of radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power. In the opening paragraph Alinsky writes:
It’s interesting that Alinsky views his ideas as antithetical to Machiavelli, whose political philosophy has guided every ruthless dictator of the past 500 years. For many years, this Machiavellian philosophy formed the core curriculum for Professor Leo Strauss (1899-1973), at Alinski's alma mater, the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Science. Notable alumni include:
Paul Wolfowitz, Ph.D. '72 (Deputy Defense Secretary under Bush Jr.)
Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69 (the CIA's Iraqi puppet)
Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79 (Bush Jr.'s roving pro-consul for Afghanistan and then Iraq)
Abram Shulsky, Ph.D. '72 (Dir. of Office of Special Plans which found “evidence” of Iraq’s WMD)
The central tenets of Machiavelli’s philosophy will seem familiar to anyone knowledgeable about history in general, and the years since 9/11 in particular:
- Society has two tiers: the Elite and the Masses, ruled by the Elite
- The Elite should promote religion as a social control mechanism
- The Elite should use the threat of external enemies to consolidate control
- If there are no threats from enemies, the Elite should fabricate them
Francis A. Boyle, an alumnus of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science (A.B., 1971), has written:
Well obviously there are plenty of Machiavellian politicians running around deceiving the willing masses, but the distinction between them and the Alinsky disciples gets blurred sometimes. How often have we heard campaign rhetoric embracing Alinsky’s ideals, but then seen those candidates move towards Machiavellian goals after being elected?
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the ‘60’s radicals for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.
He excelled at wooing wealthy funders. Alinsky once boasted,
During the Sixties, Alinsky wielded tremendous power behind the scenes. When President Johnson launched his War on Poverty in 1964, Alinsky allies infiltrated the program, steering federal money into Alinsky projects. In 1966, Senator Robert Kennedy allied himself with union leader Cesar Chavez, an Alinsky disciple.
Alinsky's crowning achievement was his recruitment of a young high school student named Hillary Rodham, who met him through a radical church group. They remained friends until Alinsky's death in 1972.
Alinsky tried to hire Hillary as a community organizer, but she chose instead to attend Yale Law School. Nonetheless, Alinsky's network continued guiding Hillary's career. Fresh out of law school at age 26, Hillary received a prestigious appointment to the House Judiciary Committee's Watergate investigative team in 1974. She got the job on the recommendation of Marian Wright Edelman, Hillary's closest sister and ideological soulmate, and member of the Board of Trustees of Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation.
Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky's counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power.
Barack Obama, trained by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinsky group called the Developing Communities Project. Later, he worked with ACORN and its offshoot Project Vote , both creations of the Alinsky network.
Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant church-goer .
In 1969, while a political science major at Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton chose to write her senior thesis on Alinsky's work, with Alinsky himself contributing his own time to help her. But when she became First Lady, she requested Wellesley remove it from public access.
That Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are disciples of Alinsky tells us two things. First, they are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system. Second, they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public.
Ironically, just months into Obama’s presidency, the “radical” Tea Party movement was born, and soon thereafter, Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey distributed copies of Rules for Radicals to Tea Party leaders.
Now today we see the defeated Left in full “resistance” mode, zealously—if not rabidly—implementing several of those key Alinksy “rules”:
Nearly 50 years ago, when Alinksy wrote Rules For Radicals, he believed that many Americans were living in frustration and despair, worried about their future, and ripe for a turn to radical social change, and ready to become politically active citizens. He feared the middle class could be driven to a right-wing viewpoint, "making them ripe for the plucking by some guy on horseback promising a return to the vanished verities of yesterday”.
“Promising a return to the vanished verities of yesterday”… Interesting phrase, considering Trump’s promise to “make America great again”. Looking at what’s going on these days, and looking even closer at history, some question the verity that America was ever really that “great”. But while no one can dispute that America’s past (and present) includes great evil, let’s earnestly hope that the verity of any great goodness has not completely vanished.
Alinsky envisioned his social justice radical “Have Nots” as a counter-force to Strauss’s ruthless Machiavellian “Haves”. But since today’s leftist radicals have been suckered by the Machiavellian establishment’s pretense of wanting social justice, they’ve become more of a co-opted force, than a counter-force.
In other words, on the Left, the “Have Nots” have been had by the “Haves”.
Sources:
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_
_https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/08/01/the-university-of-chicago-is-a-moral-cesspool/
_http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/leo_strauss%27_philosophy_of_deceptionAlinsky
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals
_http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/why-pretend-that-hillary-_b_22841.html
The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of
the Democratic Party by David Horowitz and Richard Poe
