Saul Alinsky

[Ombudsman]

I notice the cons seem absolutely totally obsessed with this Alinsky guy ever since Glenn Beck brought him to their attention. Today you can't hit a right wing site where they aren't talking about him extensively.

Conservative political forum + Alinsky

Liberty News Forum + Alinsky

Free Republic + Alinsky

Just wondering if anyone has ever read this book they're so hot bothered about?

[Ombudsman]

The funny thing is that his tactics are not lefty-dependent. They're just ways of confronting power and have been and are applied by the right.

Yeah there's a whole thread on the CPF site encouraging their members to read the book and apply the principles, while at the same time their claiming it's a liberal thing.

[O Really]

The funny thing is that his tactics are not lefty-dependent. They're just ways of confronting power and have been and are applied by the right.

Yeah, I've read Alinsky - or at least the Cliff's Notes version. Definitely not limited to any one ideology.

[rstrong]

The Right loves to hate - and imitate - Saul Alinsky

But a funny thing happened on the way to Alinsky taking a place alongside top contemporary conservative bogeymen like Michael Moore, George Soros and Jane Fonda. His seminal 1971 guide to organizing, “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals,” became a must-read for a new wave of conservative activists who mobilized — many for the first time — in opposition to the ambitious, big-government agenda pushed by President Obama and the Democratic Congress.
[...]
Suddenly, the book was being touted as a way to beat the left at its own game by everyone from 69-year-old former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, whose nonprofit group FreedomWorks has emerged as a leading Washington bulwark for the tea party movement, to 25-year-old James O’Keefe, the self-styled activist investigative journalist who last year became a conservative hero for secretly recording employees of the liberal community-organizing group ACORN apparently offering advice on how to set up a brothel, to tea party leaders seeking to disrupt congressional town halls.
[...]
In fact, a conservative leader quoted the rule in a memo that circulated widely last summer that calmly detailed techniques for tea party activists seeking to disrupt congressional town halls. They could “rattle” and “set back on their heels” lawmakers and their staffs, the memo asserted, partly “us[ing] the Alinsky playbook of which the left is so fond: Freeze it, attack it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
[...]
Firebrand talk show host Glenn Beck also has suggested his viewers use Alinsky’s tactics against the Obama administration.
[...]
And FreedomWorks’ organizers utilized and spread the Alinsky gospel as they traveled the country last year helping newly engaged tea party activists set up their own groups.

[Bungalow Bill]

I recall hearing the name Saul Alinsky a few times before 2008, when the wingnuts
went apeshit over all things Saul. I never really paid much attention to him and still
don't care very much one way or the other. He sounds rather dull on the whole.
I guess I'm a little conservative in this matter, cause I'm sticking with the good old
Communist Manifesto. instead of some new guy. But the nutjobs sure seem
excited about him.

[Crock Hunter]

Perhaps we should be terrified that the Tea Baggers are getting all Alinskyfied .. .. . I mean his tactics certainly got us Liberals everything we wanted.... .. ..

[Boatrocker]

Honestly. I never heard much more about the dude than his name, until the fundicongelicals and other assorted wingnut fear-everythings began to sling around their wildass notions about him a few years ago.

But, they do need their assortment of boogiemen.