Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" for dummies

Couldn't find the book at the library, but there's plenty about it online. It's Saul D. Alinsky's book "Rules for Radicals," the radicals' handbook for taking over the government. It worked, and it would be no small irony if those sames rules were used against them.  In any case it certainly wouldn't hurt anyone to bone up on the tactics. Here's a quick and dirty list of Saul Alinsky's rules for radicals found on the net here, here, and here (pdf), as follows:

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.)

Aside. The local library has a copy of Saul Alinsky's book "Rules for Radicals," however the online search engine says it's checked out until October 9, 2009, six weeks from today and seven weeks from when I first checked last week. My library card lets me check out a book for three weeks. Those sneaky radicals, how'd they do that?

Addendum -- Saul Alinsky was interviewed by William F. Buckley, Jr., on Mr. Buckley's TV show "Firing Line" on December 11, 1967, and five minutes of that interview can be seen in this Youtube video. Click Hoover Institute Archives for program notes and a link for downloading the transcript of the whole interview.

Comments

[Peggy McGilligan]

When President Obama hired Clinton-era players, he didn’t just signal a failure to grasp the fundamental lesson of that administration – loss of trust. Take Barack Obama’s CIA director, “nice, quiet, civilized” Leon E. Panetta. Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff. California State University – Monterey Bay’s patron saint. Founder of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy. Leon Panetta, who flew back to Monterey at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and announced to the CSU, “There has been a stalker in the White House. It was frightening.” Thanks to some rather adroit media manipulation, students heard only Panetta’s accusations, but learned nothing of Monica’s exculpatory blue dress from local KSBW TV News. Panetta controlled the school’s cable TV, from which even CNN disappeared. Fox News would never be an option. Panetta who, from his publicly-funded political institute opposed George W. Bush’s Homeland Security reorganization, and the detention of enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

When Leon Panetta denounced Bush’s policies form his Panetta Institute, located squarely on the former US Army Fort Ord, where both his so-called “think tank CSU,” and his namesake institute are located, it was Memorial Day 2002. So, Panetta told the national television audience he was located in Salinas, Calif. instead. Conspicuously absent from the CSU’s bookstore, and its own well-stocked tax-funded oppression studies library: any textbook by a Caucasian author, any text by a Christian author. Panetta even used KSBW News to deflect Gary Condit’s detractors during the Chandra Levy disappearance. (Remember Fox News commentator Barbara K. Olson? Flight 77 ring a bell?) Perhaps not coincidentally, Panetta’s CSU opened its doors on 23 August: Italian anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti Memorial Day. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis pardoned the Sicilians posthumously 23 August 1977, making Sacco & Vanzetti Day official. How the US Department of Education facilitated this hideous little “experiment,” and how the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), conspired to accredit the boondoggle, and grant these Alinskyites a license to steal is yet another story.

Saul D. Alinsky, among other things, was a clotheshorse, who often donned a fedora. Louis Farrakhan always appears nattily attired. Al Capone’s official mug shot features “Big Al” in a three-piece suit. People tend to give Panetta a pass, if only because he wears a necktie. Interestingly, Panetta began his political career as a Republican. Panetta switched to the DNC because in his words, “They had a bigger tent.” Saul Alinsky passed away in 1972, in bucolic Carmel Valley, Sicilian Panetta’s fabled 17th congressional district. I first ran afoul of Panetta; while out trying to appease the radical professors, hate mongers and race baiters, he’d hired to inculcate Marxist philosophy into our daily lives. Personnel is policy. Anyway, the far-Left’s enforcer-in-chief would slip unannounced into my on-campus residence and surreptitiously replace my showerhead with a stingy water-conserving device. In like manner, my wall-mounted fire extinguisher vanished shortly thereafter. Gone without a trace. But things were about to get worse, much worse: http://theseedsof9-11.com

[Geo]

You've certainly given us some things to ponder, Peggy.

[Andrea]

don't forget that Hilary Clinton interviewed Alinsky also.

[Geo]

Huh what?

Well of course! I should have known.

Hillary's a child of the Chicago political machine.

[Jim]

How truly clueless you are...the thought of ordinary working people, immigrants, those in marginal jobs and housing, having the tools and a proven method of organizing and effectively pressing their legitimate demands for municipal services and enforcement of health and housing regulations just gives you the willies! I can almost hear you sputter: "Who do these upstarts think they are, demanding fair enforcement of the laws we take for granted? That's unAmerican!"

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[Alejandro]

I came across this blog, and I just had to cmoemnt, If you knew a little more on Bill, you can clearly tell he is being a little sarcastic and of course ironic. of course Bill knows who Saul Alinsky is, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have an opinion if he didn't know. He is speaking for the general public, most people do not know who Saul Alinsky is. So when they hear idiots like Newt Gingrich so confidently speak his name and call his tactics radical and compare them to our "black" President, it evokes fear.

[stephenwv]

All organizing efforts can use some or all of these tactics. While they were designed for the liberals/progressives/left/unions/Democrats... who sign on to many of Alinsky's admonitions especially #3, #5, #8, #9, #10, #12. All of these rely on deception and the avoidance of the truth of the issues. Diversion away from the truth of the issues on which they lose.

The Tea Party types rely more on #1, #4, #8, #11. The reason they do not get into the deceptive arena is because they deal with the truth of the issues which do not require deception.

[Nico]

Anon, "He's going to be your President... he has really great ideas and suoltions... you really should start listening to him instead of trying to find some tiny little slip you can make sound bad..."Going to call you on projection of your thoughts. No one on earth can make a statement on that, including Nancy Pelosi. Stop the mental tricks please.You obviously reacted here without listening to the You Tube video to get a better grasp on the US financial & political situation. I suggest you take 5 minutes to review it.If/when the US collapses, Mitt may have wished he kept his overseas accounts to protect his capital. Did you not hear?"Update: the Senate has failed to reject a bid to stop the debt ceiling hike with a simple 52 vote majority all of it along party lines. The US now has $16.4 trillion in debt capacity as of Friday. Since roughly $100 billion was plundered from Pension Funds in the past month, The US will have about $15.4 trillion in debt with the Monday DTS. The question then is how long will the $1 trillion in debt capacity last: at $125 billion/month it won't be enough to carry the US past the election without another massive debt ceiling spectacle."Events are overtaking you.

[Riyaj]

It is interesting how Congress, the pleope who actually make the laws and the budgets keep being forgotten. Three-fourths of the Bush administration was run by a Democrat-owned Congress so many of the budget and other woes are really the fault of a hostile Congress with whom Bush had to make deals with to get what he wanted.Now don't mistake this for a pro-Bush person, he was just a better choice than what the others offered. The big difference is that Obama has used his first two-year majority Congress to do things one can only label as Socialist in nature while Bush wasted his first two-years on starting a war.

[Muhammad]

I am tired of the flip-flop comments. There hasn't been a flip-flop in his cearer. Flip-flop suggest that you take one side only to take another and then back to the other side with changing political motives. If anything you could get away saying Romney has flipped. As with most Americans Romney has become more conservative with age and experience. Once he was pro life he remained so. How is that a flip-flop as suggested in some of these comments? A gradual trend towards more and more conservative thought is not a flip-flop.

[Tom Barrera]

If the president truly is using these techniques, particularly Rule 10, this is shameful. I believe he is, I see it plain as day. The sad thing is it's working. Uninformed people believe it.

Vote NOT for Obama because he is so Pathetic.
Vote FOR Mitt Romney because he is so much better.