How the Right Wing has Helped the "Leftist" Cause

In 1969, Hillary Rodham, at Wellesley College, wrote an 'A' paper --a 92-page senior thesis entitled "'There Is Only The Fight…": An Analysis of the Alinsky Model". During the Presidency of Bill Clinton, the GOP --thinking that the paper contained evidence that Hilary had strong radical or socialist views --tried to get a copy that it could use against Clinton. In fact, the GOP is the biggest practitioner of Alinsky's 'rules for radicals'. I know because I had a GOP 'campaign manual' that was based upon Alinsky's campaign and organizational tactics.

By that time, at Hilary's request, Wellesley was denying access to the paper. What is in that paper that 'neo' and other 'conservatives were so massaged and outraged? A clue may be found in the terms: 'social revolution'.

If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution. Ironically, this is not a disjunctive projection if considered in the tradition of Western democratic theory.

-- Hillary D. Rodham, There Is Only The Fight…": An Analysis of the Alinsky Model

Ninety-nine percent of America's total wealth is now owned by just one percent of its population. Social revolution, therefore, is a necessity if the nation is to survive. This increasingly tiny elite will not --of its own accord --release the strangle hold it exercises over the nation's means of production, its national defense, the government itself.

Put another way: about one percent of the nation is rich enough to have bought and paid for a 'government' that it utilizes to defend its interests, its wealth, and the 'transfer of its raw power' from this generation to the next. A top-heavy US increasingly resembles the pro-typical, militaristic banana republic. A top-heavy society is unstable; one that has nukes poses an imminent threat to the entire world as the rogue administration of George W. Bush has demonstrated.

Hilary's paper deals with the work of Saul Alinsky, a social activist and organizer born in Chicago in 1909. Hillary's thesis is touted as '...very revealing of Alinsky’s view of American life '.

…after graduating from the University of Chicago, Alinsky received a fellowship in criminology with a first assignment to get a look at crime from the inside of gangs. He attached himself to the Capone gang, attaining a perspective from which he viewed the gang as a huge quasi-public utility serving the people of Chicago.

--Quote, "There is Only the Fight, Hilary Rodham

Alinsky is described as an 'academic-turned-radical' which it is claimed was a 'personality type' found first among journalists covering the Russian Revolution of 1917 and --some 'five decades later --among journalists and students trying to make sense of US military involvement in Viet Nam.

What is interesting to me about Hilary's paper is the level of 'outrage' it inspires though very, very few have actually read it. Wellesley denied access to it. Later, when it was released, it was apparently available for a while on the internet. Now --even that access appears to have disappeared. I found but one link and that, interestingly, was on a 'neoconsertive' web site. Like 'neoconservative' ideology, it didn't work.

It would appear, then, that those who are most outraged by Hilary's paper have never read it. Secondly, Hilary's paper is inspired and thus based upon Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals'. You can get a copy of that by mail at Amazon.com. Why does Hilary's paper continue to generate so much right wing teeth gnashing when its inspiration is available in paper back. That has to do with the fact that the right wing may get away with absurd characterizations of works that are not available. Lies about a work that is in print and available on Amazon.com are more difficult to support. The GOP is would be well-advised to confine its lies to things that cannot be so easily verified otherwise.

At last --the disingenuous nature of right wing outrage is obvious when it is the right wing, the GOP in particular, that cites Alinsky more often than does the 'left'. For years, I kept a 'Republican Campaign Handbook' carefully put together by "right wing" political consultants in Houston. The manual quoted Alinsky extensvely, primarily his 'Rules for Radicals', which include:

• 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.
--Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

For a complete online 'manual' for organizers, see: The Citizen's Handbook

I want to thank the right wing for having directed so much attention to the work of Saul Alinsky, a man whose work might have gone unnoticed. Clearly --he is not forgotten and, thanks to the press he still gets, millions of progressives and liberals will continue to be inspired by his 'rules' --as applicable to communities hoping to improve conditions in their neighborhoods block-by-block as well as those seeking to build a consensus, a movement, perhaps a much-needed social revolution.

Such campaigns, indeed, revolutions themselves are most effective when they are put together the Saul Alinsky way: block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood. By daring to call attention to Hilary's book and, by extension, Saul Alinsky, the right wing has done a much better job than her suppressed paper could ever do. The right wing has shown us HOW we can organize to defeat them and, in the process, build up a liberal, progressive consensus from the ground up, block by block, all over the nation.

The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky

Published Articles

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Rules for Radicals: How to Begin Taking Back Our Government

I am disgusted and fed up with campaign coverage. I don't give a crap about Hilary 'tearing up' or Obama wearing or not wearing a flag pin of any sort! I am not impressed with idiots who find patriotism in a flag pin like Bush finds courage at the bottom of a bottle! I care even less about how McCain --an idiot --is doing!

The debates might as well be about how many angels can dance on the head of a flag pin. Everything is eyewash until the treasonous criminals who seized the White House are brought to justice before a hangin' judge! Until someone addresses that issue, everything else is just meaningless polemics, a sop, bread and circuses to let the 'people' believe that they actually count. Since 911, you don't count!

I am not a 'Kumbayah Liberal'. I am a roll up your sleeves and carry a tire iron radical! I am not gentile when someone like Bush --a prissy, prancy, snot-nosed, gay boy cheerleader --tries to bullshit me while scrapping the Constitution and threatening the rest of the world with nukes! Bush's co-conspirators, the GOP, the MIC and certain well-heeled individuals have much to answer for. With any luck at all, they will! In a dock! Charged with a panoply of crimes for which there is abundant probable cause now to try their sorry asses! Don't waste time calling me a 'conspiracy theorist'; I'm not talking theories --I'm talking indictments!

The American left used to be tough. Throughout the American left were found tough minded organizers and radicals like Saul Alinsky who did not mince words.

"Liberals in their meetings utter bold works; they strut, grimace belligerently, and then issue a weasel-worded statement 'which has tremendous implications, if read between the lines.' They sit calmly, dispassionately, studying the issue; judging both sides; they sit and still sit.

The Radical does not sit frozen by cold objectivity. He sees injustice and strikes at it with hot passion. He is a man of decision and action. There is a saying that the Liberal is one who walks out of the room when the argument turns into a fight.

Society has good reason to fear the Radical. Every shaking advance of mankind toward equality and justice has come from the Radical. He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous. Conservative interests know that while Liberals are most adept at breaking their own necks with their tongues, Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of Conservatives.

Radicals precipitate the social crisis by action - by using power. Liberals may then timidly follow along or else, as in most cases, be swept forward along the course set by Radicals, but all because of forces unloosed by Radical action. They are forced to positive action only in spite of their desires ...

--Saul Alinsky: The American Radical

The American left was, in fact, so tough that a shocked and awed GOP decided that if they could not come up with their own strategies they would revert to form and steal those of the 'organizers' that represented America's left wing throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s. Though they will not admit it, the GOP was as impressed as it was frightened with Saul Alinsky. He had, after all, organized the tough Chicago neighborhoods made famous by Upton Sinclair in his novel: The Jungle.

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. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families - more than seventy million people - whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default.."[2]

--Saul Alinsky, Organizer

So impressed was the GOP that throughout the '80s --the decade that saw the rise of Tom DeLay --GOP consultants would include Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals' as the cornerstone of the various GOP 'Campaign Manuals' that they put together. It was a GOP manual, in fact, that was my introduction to Alinsky. I think it's time the 'left' reclaimed Alinsky. He is, after all, one of our own. It's time the 'left' dust off his 'Rules for Radicals', reclaim them, and put them to work in service to a higher call than that of Bush self-aggrandizement, bullying, and outright theft of the world's resources.

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

Power is derived from 2 main sources - money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

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

It results in confusion, fear and retreat.

Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don't address the "real" issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)

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

Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

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

If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

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

There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

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

They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They're doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid "un-fun" activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)

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

Don't become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)

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

Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

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

Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists' minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

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

Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management's wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)

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

Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

--Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Even now, Alinsky is quoted more often by the 'right' than the 'left' who should be studying him. I found the following comment on the 'Free Republic':

"Hillary!" Rodham (Pre-Clinton), while at Wellesley, studied Saul Alinsky, whose ideas provided the organizing thesis for her (mysteriously unavailable) Senior Honors Paper.(!)

This is the absolute truth!

Heads up!

My response to the 'wing nut' who posted this is: so what! I advocate taking Alinsky back. He's the genie in the lamp. He served the left well until, somewhere, sometime, he was hijacked. The right wing rubbed the lamp and his 'Rules for Radicals' became the object of right wing study, application and practice.

The right wing, however, misunderstood and misapplied Alinsky. The right wing organizes from the top down; Alinsky from people to people, block by block! The right wing is ideologically constipated. Alinsky believed in what works for the people.

I say: reclaim Alinksy, the Genie! Let him out of the lamp and put him back to work for greater and better causes than the enrichment of some one percent of the population who didn't work for it and doesn't deserve it. Class warfare? You bet your sweet ass, it is! Bring it on! Put Alinsky to work for peace and people --not guns and phony aristocrats!

Put Alinsky to work organizing 'committees' that will track down war criminals (we know who they are) when they are out of office and on the lamb. Put Alinsky to work organizing research teams that will support numerous capital crimes cases. Put Alinsky's principles to work getting the goods on the 'real killers' of 911! And we know who they are as well! Some good starts have been made. But a revolution is won, like chess, in the end game with checkmate. In this case, we start with Rule 12: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Saul Alinsky's Legacy

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