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Has anyone actually read Alinsky?

by: Putney Swope

Sun Jan 22, 2012 at 10:06:34 AM EST
Gingrich mentioned Alinsky's name at least three times in last night's victory speech, as if we all carry his books and quoting from them daily.

I'm curious - has anyone actually read Alinsky?
Putney Swope :: Has anyone actually read Alinsky?
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Has anyone actually read Alinsky? | 13 comments
I don't even know who he is! n/t (0.00 / 0)


"We start working to beat these guys right now." -Jed Bartlet
Nope n/t (0.00 / 0)




"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    
I thought he was Glenn Beck in drag. (0.00 / 0)

Read some about him (4.00 / 4)
Alinskly's definitive book on community organizing, "Rules for Radicals," was written late in his life after a career involved in social change and community organizing in Chicago. His approach was not considered "socialism" in that it was more about working from the bottom up to effect change by organizing the disenfranchised. The goals were not necessarily "socialist" but to create more democratic institutions. Obama's community organizing in the South Side of Chicago was based on Alinsky's teachings which promoted gradualism and infiltration.

Alinsky believed it was necessary to promote change from within organizations and institutions.  He thought it was often counter-productive to agitate directly as an outside "radical," but rather to work from inside and get inside through whatever means and attitudes worked.

He, himself was not a member of any Marxist groups; however, his work does have roots in a Russian Marxist, Gramsci, who was a Marxist theorist, not a revolutionary, who also believed in gradual, not revolutionary change.    

Hillary Clinton wrote a paper on Alinsky during her high school years and was seen by Alinsky followers to have followed his advice of speaking moderately, -- not as a radical -- in order to be effective at getting into institutions to promote change from within.

Current references to Alinsky are attempts to smear Obama and the democrats with a name that sounds foreign and Jewish. Alinsky can be caricatured as a pinko commie because of his link to Marxism via Gramsci. Most people will never make a distinction between types of Marxists and Alinsky/Obama will just get caught up in esoteric revolutionary theory.  Obama = black plus pink!


 "The future is not something to be predicted, it's something to be achieved,"  unattributed aphorism



Gramsci was Italian (n/t) (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
I keep meaning to. (0.00 / 0)
I'm only aware of one of his books - Rules for Radicals. IIRC, it dates to the 1960s or early 70s, and suggests basic principles of community organizing.
Read? (0.00 / 0)
When you are going to vote for someone like these "candidates" reading would definitely confuse the issue (and the voters).

Or, "I thought Alinsky was Obama's Kenyan father?"

Nope. (4.00 / 2)
Apparently they conflate Alinsky with Marx and Engels; we are all supposed to have "Rules for Radicals" on the shelf right next to the Communist Manifesto (and probably the Little Red Book as well).

This is all such old tired stuff, but then so is Gingrich.

November 2012
Hope for a return to sanity.

naturally (4.00 / 2)
I've read Rules for Radicals.

But then, I'm a pinko lefty.  

Naturally! (4.00 / 1)

[ Parent ]
Never heard of him (4.00 / 3)
until the Glenn Beck crowd started accusing me of him.

I find it perfect that Newt is spouting his name off the same way O'Brien accused a teenager of his tactics. Two peas in a pod, they.

Social Media Director for Jackie Cilley for Governor. Follow her on Twitter & Facebook!

Not me. (4.00 / 2)
First I heard of him, Bill O'Brien was accusing a young man of being a follower at a Town Hall meeting.  My conclusion was that The Speaker was far more familiar with his works than I was.

Here is a fact that should help you to fight a little longer.
Things that don't actually kill you outright make you stronger.

Piet Hein, Grooks

Stay tuned... (4.00 / 1)
I think CNN will do a special on "Who is Saul Alinsky?"


 "The future is not something to be predicted, it's something to be achieved,"  unattributed aphorism



Has anyone actually read Alinsky? | 13 comments

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