Michael Walsh, “The Full Alinksy”:
Alinsky rode into town on a one-trick pony that the Left has since turned into its warhorse: Agitate one side’s grievances, and appeal to another side’s decency and gullibility in order to provoke the establishment, whose reaction will unite the other two. Then the community organizer charges in on his nag-turned-steed and proceeds to set the rot in motion under the banner of “progress.”
It is the very devil’s work, and Alinsky certainly made a splendid devil: unctuous and whiny at the same time, and always casting himself as the real, heroic victim standing for progress, when in fact he was a particularly nasty, cowardly kind of cultural vandal. […]
[…]
[…] the key to Alinskyism is the whipsaw, a constantly shifting “moral center” that can argue both sides of an issue at the same time. Thus Alinsky’s love child, Barack Obama, can boast of being rich and siding with the “99%” simultaneously; attack him as one and he’ll say he’s “really” be the other. Just look what the Obama administration is doing now, claiming to suspend the “CLASS” act of Obamacare while the president swears to defend it. Intellectually absurd — but emotionally pitch-perfect: Barry as the eternal outsider, battling dark forces inimical. For Alinsky always needs a villain, even if the villain is Alinskyism itself. But what do you expect from a political philosophy that claims up is really down, in is really out, and black is really white?
Alinskyism forces the Right to always be on the defense, shadow-boxing in a hall of mirrors against a foe whose moral turpitude it refuses to credit. If Alinsky stood for anything, it was, like Lucifer, destruction; the Left’s rage is animated by its lust for demolition, and the sooner the Right stops accepting its pretensions, the quicker the real battle can finally be engaged.
Good advice, but wasted on an establishment GOP that is terrified of being portrayed negatively by the very media whose role it’s been to hide Obama’s radical past in advance of a moment just like this one, where all the President’s education and training and prior experience and ideological convictions merge and become manifest in the kind of cultural upheaval he’s long been intimating he would help usher in.
Again, some of us listened, others either didn’t — or else refused to believe what it was they were hearing. But regardless of past perceptions, what is clear is that this is happening now, and once again, many on the “pragmatic” right are hoping that if they show sympathy, they’ll gain the trust of the protesters, or at the very least avoid their wrath.
But the protesters themselves are mere puppets — the aimless, politically naive walking dead unwittingly waiting for the organized left to move in and co-opt them; evidence for this has been published and made publicly available, and yet the mainstream press either ignores or suppresses that evidence and works to further the narrative of a grand, grass roots uprising of The People, once again aiding their President in his efforts to usher in the fundamental transformation he promised while giving him a conscious pass on his own ties to Wall Street and his own pronounced engagements in pay for play-politics and crony capitalism. More, these same “journalists” have been tied to the very messaging of the movement — directing the demands, polishing and focusing the supposed grievances, and then hurrying back to report “objectively” on that which they themselves have cynically designed.
To be clear: these “grievances” on parade are not the point of the protests, at least, not to those who are orchestrating all this. Instead, the point of the protests is to con weak-willed pragmatic panders like Romney, or weak-willed and frightened “leaders” like Eric Cantor and John Boehner, to allow for the grievances, to sympathize with them, to begin speaking in the language of the left’s carefully crafted narrative, and to make concessions while remaining constantly on the defensive.
That Romney has been so easily manipulated, concerned as he is over optics and ever willing to try to align himself with the side he perceives is carrying cultural dominance, even momentarily, is a testament to both the aims of this “movement” and the weakness of Romney as a candidate. That the establishment GOP is backing such a weak-willed squish rushing to make concessions to the rabble-rousers and their artificially inflated movement, is a testament both to the cynical predations of Alinsky and his acolytes, and to the absent ideological center of our current party leadership.
We’d better find our stones fast, as a Party. Or we all lose.
****
(thanks to Jon E. for the PJM link; read through the comments to see an example of a battle within the Occupy movement for control over the narrative, and for the leadership roles that are working to shake themselves out)
this reminds me how Wall Street Romney says Rick Perry wants to fuck old people up the ass and choke them to death on saltine crackers
yet he’s running for the Team R nomination
Intellectually absurd indeed.
Romney is feckless when it comes to the media and perception. It is what worries me about him most.
It occurs to me that the current OWS protests follow the formula of the Gay Rights protests of decades ago (Agitate one side’s grievances, and appeal to another side’s decency and gullibility in order to provoke the establishment, whose reaction will unite the other two. Then the community organizer charges in on his nag-turned-steed and proceeds to set the rot in motion under the banner of “progress.”).
I suppose in another 6 months or so, we’ll have been chided into saying such things as, “Well, he is a full-blown Stalinist, NTTAWWT”.
Hey, some of the finest people I know are full-blown Stalinists!
I don’t think we beat these people by becoming them.
Pete Wehner pens a piece at Contentions under the headline “Obama is Losing His Honor“. Wow. Helen Keller was better sighted.
The leader logo is I assume a human “hash tag” and would seem to have been prefigured in these from the emails.
So it’s 21st century, text, neon colored gaffers tape.
who knew that a thug from chitown might be deficient in the honor dept?
The “ripostes” over at The Corner are telling: mostly “Why are you wingers obsessed with Alinsky? Nobody even knows who he is!”
Brilliant, I tells ya.
Yeah, I saw those, di. And also the helpful pragmatic right wingers who tell us how silly and Visigothy we sound, pointing out what everyone sees but only some will allow is actually happening.
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I don’t think we beat these people by becoming them.
I don’t think Walsh is advocating that we adopt Alinsky’s principles regarding the destruction of society, but rather his tactics. We don’t have to become them, but it sure wouldn’t hurt for us to learn how to turn their weapons against them.
Don’t let them define the terms of the debate. Don’t let them pervert words into novel meanings that give them an advantage. Don’t extend them the benefit of the doubt, nor assume good faith from their leaders and speakers. In short, stop treating them like decent Americans, because they’re not, and because they’re counting on such deference to give them an advantage. It’s akin to extending Geneva Convention privileges to terrorists.
I don’t think Walsh is advocating that we adopt Alinsky’s principles regarding the destruction of society, but rather his tactics.
That might be Squid. I don’t have a problem with calling them on their bad behavior (I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work). But I’m skeptical of the notion that you can engage in their tactics in order to defeat them without becoming what you set out to defeat. That’s all I’m saying.
Alinsky is not really all that revolutionary, all he did was take the original postmodern radical – Lenin – and make him comprehensible to street thugs in Chicago. But, thankfully, Alinsky’s weakness is Lenin’s and he telegraphed them perfectly when he said, “Probe with a bayonet: if you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.”
What Lenin and Alinsky instinctively knew was that their success was entirely dependent on the moral “mush” of their enemy. This isn’t a physical confrontation. Yet. It is a moral one. Either we let these cretins and their “morals” prevail, or we stand up and defend the inherently superior morality of freedom and liberty and we win. Period.
Reagan knew it too, which is why taking the MORAL stand to defend morality of capitalism against the horrors of Leninism was so successful. There is no compromise with a mindset that sees no moral distinction between capitalism and Leninism. The Tea Party realizes this and it is precisely why the Left is so scared of them.
Alinsky is not really all that revolutionary, all he did was take the original postmodern radical – Lenin – and make him comprehensible to street thugs in Chicago. But, thankfully, Alinsky’s weakness is Lenin’s and he telegraphed them perfectly when he said, “Probe with a bayonet: if you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.”
What Lenin and Alinsky instincitvely knew was that their success was entirely dependent on the moral “mush” of their enemy. This isn’t a physical confrontation. Yet. It is a moral one. Either we let these cretins and their “morals” prevail, or we stand up and defend the inherently superior morality of freedom and liberty and we win. Period.
Reagan knew it too, which is why taking the MORAL stand to defend morality of capitalism against the horrors of Leninism was so successful. There is no compromise with a mindset that sees no moral distinction between capitalism and Leninism. The Tea Party realizes this and it is precisely why the Left is so scared of them.
Great comment, Luke.
(Never heard that Lenin quote before.)
It does go a long way toward explaining why they’ve spent the last 50 years “teaching” anybody and everybody that standing for anything is stupid and backwards.
If we didn’t have the Gods of the Copybook Headings on our side, we would be so screwed. (We’re screwed anyway, but at least we’re not so screwed.)
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/18/harry-belafonte-falls-asleep-live-on-air/?hpt=hp_c2
The old coot is a nasty bit of work. But note how CNN treats this with kid gloves. I mean, it is not like he is Sarah Palin! Respect must be paid.
Instalanche on the way.
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