Street on how best to overthrow American capitalism.
Alinsky, his contemporaries, and their radical successors knew that, given Americans’ fierce rejection of these fundamentally anti-American views and policies, it would help to have a crisis as a pretext. If a natural crisis did not exist, one could be created through the radical grass roots. This is one of the reasons why he founded the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in 1940 “to train people to reorganize” and which he used to infiltrate traditional organizations such as churches. After Alinsky’s death in 1972, IAF morphed into successor groups, including ACORN, Citizen Action, National People’s Action, and the Gamaliel Foundation. The Gamaliel Foundation describes its vision as “shared abundance for all,” which is a polite way of characterizing wealth redistribution. In the summer of 1985, newly minted community organizer Barack Obama joined Gamaliel, where his work was paid for by the Woods Fund. Later, from 1993 to 2002, Obama would serve on the board of the Woods Fund with … guess who? … the terrorist and self-described “socialism advocate” Bill Ayers.
If the existing capitalist system were to be destroyed from within, those invested in the system could be expected to put up a fight to try to stop it. In order to marginalize them, Alinsky recommended neutralizing the opposition through humiliation, mockery, questioning of motives, smears, outright lies, and ultimately aggression if necessary: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Alinsky preached polarization, not negotiation. Alinskyite organizers are taught to be tough when confronting what they call “the enemy” but to paint every move not as ideological but pragmatic. Hence Obama’s constant refrain that he’s a neutral pragmatist, the “adult in the room,” just trying to get results. “Look Ma! No ideology!” The first rule of Alinsky’s “power tactics”? “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” Demonize the opposition, remind them of the power you hold, and leverage it to stir chaos, divisions, and destruction, all while casting yourself as the reasonable broker.
Team Obama internalized these lessons well. After college, Obama moved to Chicago to be trained in community organizing by Gerald Kellman, an Alinsky protégé, who schooled Obama in the Alinskyite “power tactics,” including hiding their true goals by any means necessary. Obama himself went on to teach those Alinsky tactics at the University of Chicago. In 1990, he wrote an article called “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City,” which was published in that hot periodical Illinois Issues and as a chapter in After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois .
On page xix of Rules for Radicals , Alinsky writes, “As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be—it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.”
In chapter 2 of Rules for Radicals , Alinsky emphasizes the objective: “The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves , should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive—but real—allies of the Haves.... The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.... The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is , not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be .” (Emphasis added.)
It must have been a mere coincidence that Michelle Obama quoted from this passage during her speech at the Democratic National Convention. Referring to a visit her husband had made to a Chicago neighborhood,
Alinsky, his contemporaries, and their radical successors knew that, given Americans’ fierce rejection of these fundamentally anti-American views and policies, it would help to have a crisis as a pretext. If a natural crisis did not exist, one could be created through the radical grass roots. This is one of the reasons why he founded the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in 1940 “to train people to reorganize” and which he used to infiltrate traditional organizations such as churches. After Alinsky’s death in 1972, IAF morphed into successor groups, including ACORN, Citizen Action, National People’s Action, and the Gamaliel Foundation. The Gamaliel Foundation describes its vision as “shared abundance for all,” which is a polite way of characterizing wealth redistribution. In the summer of 1985, newly minted community organizer Barack Obama joined Gamaliel, where his work was paid for by the Woods Fund. Later, from 1993 to 2002, Obama would serve on the board of the Woods Fund with … guess who? … the terrorist and self-described “socialism advocate” Bill Ayers.
If the existing capitalist system were to be destroyed from within, those invested in the system could be expected to put up a fight to try to stop it. In order to marginalize them, Alinsky recommended neutralizing the opposition through humiliation, mockery, questioning of motives, smears, outright lies, and ultimately aggression if necessary: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Alinsky preached polarization, not negotiation. Alinskyite organizers are taught to be tough when confronting what they call “the enemy” but to paint every move not as ideological but pragmatic. Hence Obama’s constant refrain that he’s a neutral pragmatist, the “adult in the room,” just trying to get results. “Look Ma! No ideology!” The first rule of Alinsky’s “power tactics”? “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” Demonize the opposition, remind them of the power you hold, and leverage it to stir chaos, divisions, and destruction, all while casting yourself as the reasonable broker.
Team Obama internalized these lessons well. After college, Obama moved to Chicago to be trained in community organizing by Gerald Kellman, an Alinsky protégé, who schooled Obama in the Alinskyite “power tactics,” including hiding their true goals by any means necessary. Obama himself went on to teach those Alinsky tactics at the University of Chicago. In 1990, he wrote an article called “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City,” which was published in that hot periodical Illinois Issues and as a chapter in After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois .
On page xix of Rules for Radicals , Alinsky writes, “As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be—it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.”
In chapter 2 of Rules for Radicals , Alinsky emphasizes the objective: “The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves , should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive—but real—allies of the Haves.... The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.... The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is , not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be .” (Emphasis added.)
It must have been a mere coincidence that Michelle Obama quoted from this passage during her speech at the Democratic National Convention. Referring to a visit her husband had made to a Chicago neighborhood,
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