I was going to write about communication today, the greatest asset required to be a successful community organizer, however, just making my rounds of blogs this morning I thought Saul Alinsky’s further admonition about destabilizing communities was more appropriate. The militant Muslims we see protesting around the country have most definitely been trained by leftist community organizers to make the most “almighty stink” they can.
For new readers I have been studying Saul Alinsky to better understand how and why we elected Barack Obama, and of course, to find a way to halt his obvious goal of moving America farther left and toward more socialism. I hadn’t seen this, Obama’s Alinsky Jujitusu in American Thinker a year ago, until just now so check it out, then come back.
From “Rules for Radicals:’
….if your function is to attack apathy and get people to participate it is necessary to attack the prevailing patterns of organized living in the community. The first step in community [or a country’s] organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displaced by new patterns that provide the opportunities and means for citizen participation. All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.
This is why the organizer is immediately confronted with conflict. The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latest hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act.
From the American Thinker article linked above:
One of Obama’s early mentors in the Alinsky method was Mike Kruglik, who had this to say to Ryan Lizza of The New Republic, about Obama:
“He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better.”
The agitator’s job, according to Alinsky, is first to bring folks to the “realization” that they are indeed miserable, that their misery is the fault of unresponsive governments or greedy corporations, then help them to bond together to demand what they deserve, and to make such an almighty stink that the dastardly governments and corporations will see imminent “self-interest” in granting whatever it is that will cause the harassment to cease.
If you are now wondering how this could be, Obama doesn’t strike you as the classic “agitator,” that is because he is a master of Alinsky’s communication model. I’ll tell you more about that the next time. The skilled community organizer is not the one out in front whipping up the crowds, he is behind the scenes pulling all the strings.
The question for conservatives is, are we willing to make the most “almighty stink” we can?
My Alinsky calendar can be found in our “community destabilization” category here.