Nicholas von Hoffman: 7 Lessons Saul Alinsky Would Give Progressives Today
[Nicholas von Hoffman, author of 13 books, recently republished 'Radical,' a biography of Saul Alinsky.]
Floating around in the Internet cosmos is a Web site with a headline asking, “Is Miley Cyrus an Alinskyite Mole Sent to Brainwash Country Music Fans?” It is not known if Ms. Cyrus has the faintest idea who Saul Alinsky was -- he died in 1972 -- but people in politics now know the name well.
Alinsky, a genius at political tactics, invented community organizing. He is said to have been a major factor in forming Barack Obama's ideas and to have provided the Obama campaign with the organizational template used in the 2008 presidential campaign. Some place Alinsky's book on organizing the powerless, Rules for Radicals, on the same level as military classics like Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
The far right is both hypnotized and terrified of the non-socialist Alinsky whom it brackets with Karl Marx in some of its more hysterical offerings. A better pairing would be with Tom Paine as both were in-the-trenches small "d" democrats. Today literally hundreds of grassroots organizations here and in other countries trace their origins to Alinsky, his ideas and his organizing.
So, if Saul Alinsky were around now, what seven pieces of advice might he offer today's progressives?
1. For starters, he'd say don't think you're kidding anybody by calling yourselves progressives. Your opponents take you to be liberals and hiding behind another name only makes you look timid and timid don't butter no parsnips.
Alinsky called himself a radical to differentiate himself from liberals who were wishy-washy wusses in his book. As far as he was concerned, liberals were the people who left when the fighting got serious....
Read entire article at AlterNet
Floating around in the Internet cosmos is a Web site with a headline asking, “Is Miley Cyrus an Alinskyite Mole Sent to Brainwash Country Music Fans?” It is not known if Ms. Cyrus has the faintest idea who Saul Alinsky was -- he died in 1972 -- but people in politics now know the name well.
Alinsky, a genius at political tactics, invented community organizing. He is said to have been a major factor in forming Barack Obama's ideas and to have provided the Obama campaign with the organizational template used in the 2008 presidential campaign. Some place Alinsky's book on organizing the powerless, Rules for Radicals, on the same level as military classics like Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
The far right is both hypnotized and terrified of the non-socialist Alinsky whom it brackets with Karl Marx in some of its more hysterical offerings. A better pairing would be with Tom Paine as both were in-the-trenches small "d" democrats. Today literally hundreds of grassroots organizations here and in other countries trace their origins to Alinsky, his ideas and his organizing.
So, if Saul Alinsky were around now, what seven pieces of advice might he offer today's progressives?
1. For starters, he'd say don't think you're kidding anybody by calling yourselves progressives. Your opponents take you to be liberals and hiding behind another name only makes you look timid and timid don't butter no parsnips.
Alinsky called himself a radical to differentiate himself from liberals who were wishy-washy wusses in his book. As far as he was concerned, liberals were the people who left when the fighting got serious....