Michael Harrison
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In the Alinsky model, “organizing” is a euphemism for “revolution” -- a wholesale revolution whose ultimate objective is the systematic acquisition of power by a purportedly oppressed segment of the population, and the radical transformation of America’s social and economic structure. The goal is to foment enough public discontent, moral confusion, and outright chaos to spark the social upheaval that Marx, Engels, and Lenin predicted -- a revolution whose foot soldiers view the status quo as fatally flawed and wholly unworthy of salvation. Thus, the theory goes, the people will settle for nothing less than that status quo’s complete collapse -- to be followed by the erection of an entirely new system upon its ruins. Toward that end, they will be apt to follow the lead of charismatic radical organizers who project an aura of confidence and vision, and who profess to clearly understand what types of societal “changes” are needed.
As Alinsky put it: “A reformation means that the masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don’t know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won’t act for change but won’t strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution.”[1]
But Alinsky’s brand of revolution was not characterized by dramatic, sweeping, overnight transformations of social institutions. As Richard Poe puts it, “Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.” He advised organizers and their disciples to quietly, subtly gain influence within the decision-making ranks of these institutions, and to introduce changes from that platform. This was precisely the tactic of “infiltration” advocated by Lenin and Stalin.[3] As Communist International General Secretary Georgi Dimitroff told the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in 1935:
To counter that materialism, Alinsky favored a socialist alternative. He characterized his noble radical (read: “revolutionary”) as a social reformer who “places human rights far above property rights”; who favors “universal, free public education”; who “insists on full employment for economic security” but stipulates also that people’s tasks should “be such as to satisfy the creative desires within all men”; who “will fight conservatives” everywhere; and who “will fight privilege and power, whether it be inherited or acquired,” and “whether it be political or financial or organized creed.”[7] Alinsky maintained that radicals, finding themselves “adrift in the stormy sea of capitalism,”[8] sought “to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy of the name of human civilization.”[9] “They hope for a future,” he said, “where the means of production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful.”[10] In short, they wanted socialism.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2314
So, in Michael's own words, “Freedom doesn’t mean anything to those who do not benefit, or do not think that they benefit as much as others do. Therefore, for greed, it should be trampled." And further, borrowing from others to say this, communism breeds in the minds of the ignorant. And the election to these people is viewed as the storming of the Bastille. Indeed, how ignorant. For you have come a long way baby, to throw it all away now in a revolution.
Posts: 3273 | From: Charlotte N.C. | Registered: Sep 2007
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