© AP PhotoSaul Alinsky, a professional organizer with a strong aversion to welfare programs, is pictured on a street on Chicago's south side where he organized the Woodlawn area to battle slum conditions on Feb. 16, 1966. He was opposed to the government war on poverty as a political welfare scheme. He said the poor must organize and help themselves.
When Ben Carson, in his speech at the Republican National Convention, drew attention to Hillary Clinton's tribute to the radical community organizer Saul Alinsky (1909-72), no eyebrows ascended. But when Carson went on to invoke Alinsky's admiration of Lucifer, and tie Clinton to that community organizer, the guffaws began in earnest.
"So are we willing," Carson asked, "to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer?"
Anyone who has actually read Alinsky, I believe, would have to take the question seriously. Alinsky's most famous book, the 1971
Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, includes a dedication to "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."
As for Clinton, there is no doubt that she was deeply impressed by Alinsky's work. In 1969, she wrote "'There Is Only the Fight ...': An Analysis of the Alinsky Model," a 92-page senior thesis at Wellesley College on the elder radical's tactics. At the Clintons' request, the thesis was embargoed until after they left the White House.
Comment: As Richard Porter pointed out in
Real Clear Politics back in January 2017, the anti-Trumpers aren't even good radicals, though they are indebted to Alinsky and his influence on their politics:
"This failure of many of our younger activists to understand the art of communication has been disastrous," Alinsky wrote in explaining why some tactics invariably turn off many more Americans than they inspire. "Even the most elementary grasp of the fundamental idea that one communicates within the experience of his audience - and give full respect to the other's values - would have ruled out attacks on the American flag...."
"These rules make the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one who uses the tired old words and slogans, calls the police 'pig' or 'white fascist racist,'" he continued, "and has so stereotyped himself that others react by saying, 'Oh, he's one of those,' and then promptly turn off."
So there you have it: The anti-Trump crowd is so out-of-touch with the people and even their own principles for effective protesting that their efforts backfire and give aid and succor to their enemies. And, interestingly, the folks that seem to have best learned from Alinsky's instructions for how the powerless can seize power are Steve Bannon and others on the Trump team. Take the third of Alinsky's rules: "Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear and retreat." Doesn't that evoke Trump and Twitter?
And as Joel B. Pollak pointed out in
Breitbart in February, Obama himself was a "community organizer". That's where the Alinsky tactics are actually in use.
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." During the 2016 election, the media tried to stop Trump from winning by focusing on his personal flaws, real and imagined. That failed - so they are targeting the people around Trump.
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The media are simply throwing whatever they can at the people around Trump, whether it is true or not. For example, bloggers and journalists smeared Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka as a Nazi sympathizer, in keeping with the ongoing defamation of White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon (both formerly of Breitbart News) as a "white nationalist" and worse.
Sometimes the attacks are not only false, but also personally abusive, such as a recent article in Fusion targeting White House speechwriter and policy guru, Stephen Miller: "Why does Stephen Miller sound like such a dick? A voice coach explains." MSNBC's Joe Scarborough's attacks on Miller have become so openly hostile to Miller, and so personal in nature ("my young, little Miller") that even the Washington Post seemed genuinely taken aback by the Morning Joe host's criticisms.
It is worth noting that the media did not press for the resignation of any of the Obama administration officials associated with much more serious scandals - Benghazi, the IRS scandal and the NSA scandal come to mind - even when officials admitted that they had misled Congress and the public. Now, the media are constantly searching for personalities they can pillory as proxies for the Trump administration as a whole.
"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." In the weeks after Election Day, Saturday Night Live contented itself with weepy tributes to Hillary Clinton. Now, however, it has returned to comedic form in ridiculing President Trump and his staff. There is nothing wrong with that - and Melissa McCarthy's impersonation of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer is funny - but what is interesting is that mainstream news outlets, such as CNN, often spend the next several days after each new sketch reporting and re-running Saturday Night Live segments as news.
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"If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its [positive] counterside." What Alinsky meant was that tactics that would ordinarily be abhorrent - say, rioting on a university campus, or telling the public that members of the government were "Nazis" - would be tolerated, and even celebrated, once they had been proven successful.
The current Democratic Party strategy is not to reach out to the voters they have lost over the past several years, but rather to make the country appear ungovernable, hoping that voters then turn to the Democrats for relief.
In recent protests at Los Angeles International Airport, for instance, Mayor Eric Garcetti not only joined demonstrators in solidarity, but did so at a time when protesters were blocking traffic and disrupting travel. He was perfectly willing to harm his own city for political gain - normally objectionable, except that it worked.
These tactics will not fade because of one resignation. Alinksy, after all, advised his acolytes to "keep the pressure on." What is happening today will continue throughout the Trump administration. The government, and the conservative voters who are expecting it to deliver, will have to be just as tough, and even stronger, in the face of Alinskyite attacks.
Comment: See also: