Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals Updated
Jul 23rd, 2010 by Timothy Pancoast
With the advent of the Tea Parties, Conservatives started in earnest to learn history. They wanted to know the history of their heroes, and of their enemies. In the process they dug up Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. They read the rules, they learned them, and they began to use them with great effect. Unfortunately, I feel that recent experience has uncovered an additional rule that Alinsky did not include. Below I have posted a summary of his rules on tactics of power, with my own additional rule.
Rules for Power – Tactics:
1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible, go outside of the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Update:
14. If your opponents will use these rules against themselves, just sit back, enjoy, and let them do it.” (14th rule mine)
I am afraid that conservatives are now using these rules, these tactics, on each other. Not good. Perhaps it is simply because there are a lot of primaries this year, but that doesn’t make it any better. Whether they are effective or not, as Alinsky’s own dedication to his book indicates, the true owner of these rules is Lucifer.
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history… the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”
I would phrase it that these rules are of the Devil, by the Devil, and for the Devil. I don’t enjoy them. I don’t like having them used on me, and I don’t even enjoy using them. There are other rules. They may not be as much fun, nor carry the thrill of using Alinsky’s rules. They may not bring the instant gratification that Alinsky’s tactics do, but they do have remarkable long-term effectiveness and bring deeply satisfying and lasting results.
Here is one alternative set of rules used by Martin Luther King Jr.
“1. As you prepare to march meditate on the life and teachings of Jesus
2. Remember the nonviolent movement seeks justice and reconciliation – not victory.
3. Walk and talk in the manner of love; for God is love.
4. Pray daily to be used by God that all men and women might be free.
5. Sacrifice personal wishes that all might be free.
6. Observe with friend and foes the ordinary rules of courtesy.
7. Perform regular service for others and the world.
8. Refrain from violence of fist, tongue and heart.
9. Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health.
10. Follow the directions of the movement leaders and of the captains on demonstrations.
The Five Principles of Nonviolence
1. Non-violent resistance is not a method for cowards. It does resist. The nonviolent resister is just as strongly opposed to the evil against which he protests, as is the person who uses violence. His method is passive or nonaggressive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent, but his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade the opponent that he is mistaken. This method is passive physically but strongly active spiritually; it is nonaggressive physically but dynamically aggressive spiritually.
2. Nonviolent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation but he realizes that noncooperation is not the ends itself; it is merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent.
3. The attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces. It is a struggle between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.
4. Nonviolent resistance avoids not only external physical violence, but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
5. Nonviolence is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. It is the deep faith in the future that allows a nonviolent resister to accept suffering without retaliation. The nonviolent resister knows that in his struggle for justice, he has a cosmic companionship.”
Notice the difference. It is deep. On an overly simplistic level here is one way to summarize how they differ. Alinsky’s rules are violence. King’s principles are nonviolence.
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With the advent of the Tea Parties, Conservatives started in earnest to learn history.
Speak for yourself. For example, I studied Russell Kirk over thirty-five years ago; the only ‘tea party’ I had heard of had been in 18th-century Boston.
Since the Obama administration has solicited the expertise of former president Clinton I have already noticed a Clinton tactic being used. That tactic is to use a certain power of the presidency to maximize an agenda, and then make a statement condemning that use of power, i.e., deficit spending.
Obama stated recently, “We are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”, and “we can’t keep on just borrowing money from China”.
You gotta love it.
Tim, it is a very sobering contrast. Thanks for the reminder. GOD’s ways are truly above our ways.
Rick, I am aware that you and a few others have been at this for the long haul. That is a good thing because the rest of the conservatives were able to get up to speed a lot faster because of people like you who had been doing the thankless hard work and research all along. I think I chose my words well enough that, while they may not be a perfect and detailed description, they are still accurate.
Fightingbluehen is correct to point out that Alinsky’s rules are not the only ones that are on the dark side. There are other tactics used that drag, not just the targets, but the users to a dark place. Fortunaly Dr. King’s principles also have company, as there are many others that we can use to help us accomplish good things in a good way.
Tim, Just to be historically accurate, King’s Principles of Non-violence were articuated and instituted in the late 1940′s by Gandhi. King throughout his life always gave credit to Gandhi for King’s use of non violent, non compliance to achieve political goals.
The fact that the Alinsky tactics are the polar opposites of the Gandhi/King approach speaks volumes.
My goal was to show a contrast, and to point out that conservatives opened Pandora’s box and got into the devil’s play things. Now they are causing chaos and destruction not just for their intended targets but also among themselves. Providing a history of the principles of non-violence was not my aim, but thanks. Perhaps I’ll go further into that angle in a different article one day.
Tim, regarding yours, two words: SPOT ON.
One of the most truly informative posts I’ve read in any news forum.
Thanks Richard, I don’t really write much, but what I have been watching play out around Delaware durring the course of this election, and especially the pieces I have seen on this blog concern me. I am glad what I wrote this time has been worth while.
Don’t worry about decorum when dealing with leftists- they certainly don’t. The Socialist-Democrat Party, generally, is dedicated to the complete and utter destruction of the United States as we have known it. They despise religion, they despise capitalism, they despise military power, they despise traditional marriage, and they despise the tenets of our Founding Fathers- they despise our traditions.
Hence, they are an enemy of America itself and need to be dealt with accordingly.
“Stop the Stinkin’ Marxist Bastards!”