Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

The fifth video exposing even more corruption in the political activist organization ACORN surfaced yesterday. They can be seen at Biggovernment.com.

The fifth video is the same story of ACORN helping a man who passes himself off as an aspiring politician who needs advice on channeling money from his underage prostitution ring into his future political campaign, and a prostitute.

At Big Government however James Okeefe, the undercover journalist in these stories, quotes from the book, "Rules for Radicals" by Saul D. Alinsky (1909-1972), a mid twentieth century leftist activist. This is becoming an increasingly well known political play book that the left, through organizations such as ACORN, have been using against other organizations for years. Okeefe is now using the left's own tactics to infiltrate their organizations.

According to Richard Lawrence Poe "In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left 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. "

We see this today as churches, unions, the Democratic, and to some degree, the Republican party; not to mention institutions of higher learning and the government education system, have to a varying degrees, become tools in the hands of those with a socialist agenda.
As always these agendas wrap themselves in terminology that is familiar to the institution being co-opted. Whether it is Christianese, helping the poor, doing what is moral and right-what ever that means, civil liberties, or social justice, the end game is always the same, the imposition of a socialist worldview with the one true God replaced by the Man/State as the final arbiter on all things.

If you haven't seen Ainsky's rules, they are listed as follows:

RULE1: "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.)

As Christians we are to be wise as serpents. Not everyone coming in the name of the Lord is in fact from our Savior. We should warn young ones (young in spirit) of the enticing and good sounding arguments of those who, on the outside appear as sheep, but who are on the inside ravenous wolves. This is one of the reasons that the issue of abortion is far wider in scope than the systematic killing of the unborn, it is also one indicator of whether a person serves his Father in heaven, or his father the "murderer from the beginning".