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Tactics mean doing what you can with what you have. Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them. In the world of give and take, tactics is the art of how to take and how to give. Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves.
For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose. First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people's organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power. Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then...conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does. Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place.
Always remember the first rule of power tactics:
Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.
The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.
The seventh rule is: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment...
The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative...
The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. you cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right--we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us."
The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
In conflict tactics there are certain rules that the organizer should always regard as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and "frozen." By this I mean that in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil. There is a constant, and somewhat legitimate, passing of the buck....
It should be borne in mind that the target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target....
One of the criteria in picking your target is the target's vulnerability--where do you have the power to start? Furthermore, the target can always say, "Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?" When you "freeze the target," you disregard these arguments and, for the moment, all others to blame.
Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all of the "others" come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target.
The other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract such as a community's segregated practices or a major corporation or City Hall. It is not possible to develop the necessary hostility against, say, City Hall, which after all is a concrete, physical, inanimate structure, or against a corporation, which has no soul or identity, or a public school administration, which again is an inanimate system.
[He says your target should be a person in the organization you are opposing; a face within the opposition for you to focus on; it must be someone with power within the organization, like the CEO, school superintendent, governor, or something like that.]
Return to Anarchy for Anybody
(Of course, my Dad's a Truman Democrat so go figure.)
This is stuff we better be learning. I have been thinking about this subject all through the Clinton years. Republicans who know the truth but won't get their hands dirty doing the organizing and fighting the fights are worse that deluded Democrats IMHO.
I personally will never again be a passive observer of our government. And anyone who thinks that G.W. is the political Messiah is saddly deluded. He is a good place to start building but he is not the answer. He is just possibly the beginning of the right questions....if we are lucky.
carpio,
In Liberty
Great post by the way.
BUMP
Kick em in the teeth!
Note: "Hillary!" Rodham (Pre-Clinton), while at Wellesley, studied Saul Alinsky, whose ideas provided the organizing thesis for her (mysteriously unavailable) Senior Honors Paper.(!)
This is the absolute truth!
Heads up!
Note: "Hillary!" Rodham (Pre-Clinton), while at Wellesley, studied Saul Alinsky, whose ideas provided the organizing thesis for her (mysteriously unavailable) Senior Honors Paper.(!)
This is the absolute truth!
Heads up!
Learn the tactics & strategy of the enemy!
BUMP
This is precisely what my new site will be about. The three principles of politcal warfare. AGITPROP (agitation and propaganda) and sabotage. Being a ex-marxist-leninist (a long time ago) I have a lot to teach my conservative brethren. I have been screaming about this for ages. Now that the right has waken up to the leftist scam we had better learn how to fight back. 2002 will not be a cakewalk, the left will come back with a vengeance. The never sleep and never rest. In the words of Mao tse Tung "enemy attacks we retreat, enemy rests we harrass, enemy retreats we attack".
First, buy the book - $23.95 at Amazon FedEx.
The seventh rule is: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment...
Gore has failed Rule 7 - he has spent too much time in court
The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative...
Gore has failed Rule 11. He pushed through to the positive (for us) side of the Courts - we have won the cases.
BUMP
BUMP. I think this is an important post.
TM- Thanks for the flag.
Thumper1960, - I thought that your reply deserved its own thread.....WOSG has done it for you.
WOSG - Thanks for posting it.
Restore the republic!
the real work is only beginning...........Covenantor
BUMP
This is Goooood stuff ! Real eye opener. Sort of the Abbie Hoffman "steal this book" version of anarchy by mindphuc !! Whats your take on the court's today ? I was in the salt mine all evening and need to be refreshed on the honest unbiased and true facts aka your version..........
Algore got both barrels. He's a big bull that's been pole axed and is dead but doesn't know it yet.
BUMP
BUMP
This is all crap, and a recipe for disaster in the long term, just as we are now seeing in the opposition. Nor are ex-Marxist Leninists reliable 'advisors' on anything save their old errors, which included, by the way, thinking they had the whole truth then, just as they now think they do now by adhering to what they think is its opposition or complement or "contradiction":
Nope, that's inventiveness, innovation, and improvisation.
"Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them....
Nope. That's "social science" (hehe) and is usually a disaster in "real life". Huns were tactical geniuses, dressed in their field-mice skins and riding their strong, nimble, small horses. They were very successful for a time, wherever they chose to ride, but arguably unconscious of what made them so, not only "tactically" but otherwise.
"In the world of give and take, tactics is the art of how to take and how to give..."
Nope. It's also the why and when and where and how much. And, insofar as it can be learned, it's a "skill". The "art" part can't be taught or learned, only developed, for better or worse.
Need I continue analyzing this trash?
It is perhaps useful to know what the "enemy" is up to, otherwise it is utterly worthless, in my humble opinion, and the moment Conservatives adopt such a view of "tactics", they will begin to decay into the intellectual and spiritual worthlessness of their worst enemies.
Regards. S&W R.I.P.
It won't matter, Al Gore has become a liability to his side. Stalinists eat their children and despise failure. After this morass they will retreat to lick their wounds and in short time they will work harder to make sure all the dead vote in the next election. It's time to strike back while the iron is hot. They have gotten arrogant to the point they believe elections are an entitlement program that only they should win. Do you believe this people willingly give up power once they have it ? No way.
We have to attack in the deepest democratic areas. Launch agitation and porpaganda operations in minority areas. Buying TV commercial time just doesn't cut, we are not selling tothpaste here. Wars are fought and won by ground troops (activists and zealots). You have to physically take territory. We have to evangelize and convert as if our lives depended on it (they do). In a short time we have to have our own version of Patrice Lumumba University on the web.
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First know your enemy
I do believe you make some valid points. Tactics are simply general rules. The best military commanders in history have always been those who have been able to improvise. However, they also understood tactics. But, because you are willing to fight an enemy by understanding the manner and design of their ways does not mean becoming like him. We fought Hitler and the Japanese with equal ferocity (less the atrocities), we learned tank warfare from the germans and used it against them, etc. etc., But it should be pointed out that we are no longer engaged in fighting the party of Roosevelt or Truman. It was hijacked slowly since the 50's by people who operate under the precept that most of us are simpetons and fools and that by keeping us ignorant they will win. When someone in a boxing match no longer operates by the marquis of Queensberry rules it becomes a street fight and different rules apply. The conservatives can longer afford to keep playing by gentlemens' rules when the other side abandoned those a long time ago. That is a recipe for diaster and prepetual defeat.
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BUMP
As Patton said, "I read your book, you b^st^rd."
There were heated threads about the Alinsky method and Labor organizing 2 summers ago on FR. I have those threads bookmarked on my old computer. So for me they are lost in time. There were also Jennings-Bryant populism threads going at that time. So, this isn't the first time these ideas have moved across FR, and some of the knowledge has worn off on FR if only in an indirect way.
Launch agitation and porpaganda operations in minority areas.
You must be daft! How about checking into purchases by these local city/county police departments regarding riot gear purchases/philosophy first!
BUMP
Oh, I agree with that—Gentlemen Jim rules are for matches between Gentlemen Jims.
What I am saying is that "tactics" is a skill, teachable and learnable, but it says nothing about what one is fighting for, and these people use lies, for example, and distortions and untruths and oversimplifications at every turn, and that really is their "tactics", from beginning to end, which is exactly what the above is about.
Consider, for example, the use of the term "have nots". There is no such thing, for if they were really "have nots", they would have nothing to fight the supposed "haves " with, would they?
In fact, this is a tactical manual about how to produce and focus "resentment" in fools that can be easily manipulated toward one's goals, which are utterly exterior to the supposed "have nots" they exploit to reach them.
I didn't bother with the rest because it's so transaparently worthless.
And this not how or why we beat Hitler or the Japanese, eh?
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
The best discussion on AgitProp I've seen on FR __________
PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES
And to finish it off, a statement by JimRob in Nov. 1998 that supports your position on this.
BTTT
And to finish it off, a statement by JimRob in Nov. 1998 that supports your position on this.
First off, let me just state that I am not familiar with Alinsky (shame on me ) I must have been out that day. I am not one to state that one should read a book and go by it or adopt rules with strict adherence. I am only suggesting that we understand the nature of the enemy and what he is about. If a safecracker has figured out how to open your safe it is not just a matter of changing the combination but of re-designing the lock. I have managed a number of politcal campaigns on both sides. Once a conservative democrat runnig for assembly in a minority district (yes he was a minority, black, before you ask). I have also managed other assembly campaigns , a state senate race and a US senate race. I have played this game before. However, I can add that I was never a traditionalist and utilized different tacticts and did manage to throw the opposition off. However, the political game has changed radically in then last ten years. While the democrats have gotten more proficient at coming up with some rather innovative ways of running campaigns in many areas republicans have fallen behind. If there is a pattern I notice on the other side is that they are employing more and more variations on radical strategy and organizational tacticts than they did before. Before you can understand what the color CYAN is someone must point it out to you. That is the only validity of understanding how the other side operates. He reads the same books on tactics, but like in a game of chess there are many variations on the sicilian defense and not all players know them all. the best chess players improvise and come up with variations their opponents haven't thought of.
Thanks. I have Bookmarked it for later reading. I try never to read while in a dead faint and I am now in my 20th hour of being on the go.
carpio
What is in the link useful only to know what the enemy does, and to know how best to inoculate those whose support you want against it.
It is considerably less sophisticated in some areas than ancient rhetoric and sophistic, which had many of the same methods developed to a subtilty few moderns not versed in it have any inkling of.
Propaganda almost never wins shooting wars, for example, or Europe would be speaking German. It produces enough of them though.
Go off in this direction as a positive mode to spread American values and conservatism and we are doomed.
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
I understand what you are saying. Esentially you are merely repating the fact that the other side the rules of Josef Goebbels "repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth", but that rule also works in reverse. "Repeat the truth often enough and it remains the truth".
Of course I am oversimplifying as to why we defeated the germans and japanese. But George Patton had also read Hans Guderian's "Achtung Panzer" and understood the theory behind tank warfare that the germans were employing.
You are right in determining that our ideology and ideals were a factor in defeating the enemy. However, the nemy also had his ideals and ideaology. Political warfare is in many ways like religion and like any religion it can only spread through evangelism. It works for the Muslims today and it has worked for the Christian church for 2 thousand years. We had better start trying to convert people to basic beliefs in our constituion and educating them. Running TV commercials as if we are selling toothpaste won't sell our product.
The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Good news, friends...If the liberals are forced to remain within the experience of their 'people', then they are bound to fail on there own...When you think about all of the implications of rule 2...when losing, litigate, assasinate, destroy, whine, use the race-card, obstruct, etc. etc. etc...the whole mantra of liberalism unfolds. Think about it...Liberalism is destructive in every from, and by remaining so bound by it, they cut their own throats.
And yes, I admit, liberals confuse me, but they never cause me fear or retreat!!!
Does anyone have a bigger pic or link to this scary damn photo ??
"You are right in determining that our ideology and ideals were a factor in defeating the enemy. However, the nemy also had his ideals and ideaology. Political warfare is in many ways like religion and like any religion it can only spread through evangelism. It works for the Muslims today and it has worked for the Christian church for 2 thousand years. We had better start trying to convert people to basic beliefs in our constituion and educating them. Running TV commercials as if we are selling toothpaste won't sell our product." We disagree. Our "ideology" was not a factor in defeating the enemy at all, because beyond certain sorely tested values, we had no ideology.
"Evangelism" is not how religions spread, or at least, there is only one lasting and succssful way to evangelize and both you and I know what it is. Example.
We don't need to convert people to basic beliefs in the Constitution. We need to show, again by example, what those basic rights recognized by the Constitution are, and why they are so superior, once lived, to anything that can be given away by a "government" or "regime"—after it has been taken away from them in the first place, of course—to its "subjects".
Alinsky and Psy-Ops and the rest is all garbage, save you yourself want to win only fools to your cause.
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
try this link for a bigger picture
I did a little reverse engineering
Let me pose this question to you... Name a group of conservatives that have put out activism manuals in any form that try to counter-act Alinsky's methods.
I don't know of any that aren't religious based and targeted. That's not the demographic Conservatives must take on in the coming 23 months until the ought-2 elections.
These methods can be used, adapted, counteracted against, but they must be know to the street level activists if they are to be prepared for what comes ahead of us.
FR.com will be villified by the media as soon as they lick their wounds and get back in the rink. That simply means they will put up a large number of trial balloons using different blends of agitprop until they find one that sticks. All of this will be focus-grouped, slick, and repeated daily.
All I'm saying is that these documents that have been on the bookshelves of Democrat activists for 30+ years need wider exposure if the Conservative movement is to continue to own the street.
The photo is much larger on the NRA's new magazine, where it first appeared. I have only a small black and white scanner, or I'd scan it for you.
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
Thank You Very Much ...... I saw the ad in an October American Rifleman and have been searching for the pic since. I owe you one steak dinner when and if you ever come through the Texas Panhandle.
Thank You again..... Now I'm gonna use it to scare some fence sitter's....
I respectfully have to disagree, however, it does not seem we will come to any agreement on this. Evangelism is the only way in which religions gain new converts. You can simply view this as evidenced for example in the spread of the balck muslim religion. The greatest spread of christianity occurs in areas where evangelism is most concentrated.
simply because we live lives a certain way will not convince people that they should follow our example. If that were true most of the muslim world would have adopted western culture and values.
It is difficult to express the correcteness of constituional principles of liberty etc.. on people who have never read the constituion or have no understanding of the underlying principles of our republic. Our public education system has become an engine of indoctrination rather than education. Most high school graduates today have little if any concept of the noation of separation of powers or laizes faire capitalism etc.. Where education in these matters is lacking we must fill in the gaps.
I am still looking for the question. Your "name" etc. is an imperative.
As a matter of fact, we've already got them running. When they started yelling "Republican Mob Action", I knew they were in deep doo-doo.
It's like "Convention of Anarchists", only it actually makes sense, since they are out there defending what each of usenjoys individually, and among other things that includes meaningful law and a Constitution that recognizes basic human feedoms.
Not only that, in so far as they behaved lawfully, the "Republican mob" was only a sign of what armed free citizens might accomplish once there was no law and Constitution at all, but only what the Communists and their dupes in "power"(hehe) call "law" and the "Constitution", and so forth.
Think about it.
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
The Muslims, after initial conversions in Saudi Arabia by a small group, evangelized mainly by conquest and force, excepting peoples of the Book, and even for them—by making "conversion" materially and socially advantageous.
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
Historically that is true, however the main impetus of new converst to islam today in many parts of africa for example is through the evangelism of muslims. We may also look at a primary example right here in the united states. The predominant spread of islam in the balck community in the last 25 years has come about because of the active evangelism of muslims to gain more converts. They are certainly not converting by the sword.
Cacique did just that for me friend thanks for the try / assist. I'm now armed with my new Placard for the next Bush Rally !!
Agreed. Even with the imperative part. Working on 18+ hours now, so I'm not ready to take on this debate.
As far as the Democrat's calling us "Rent a Mob's", you hit upon a point I haven't seen brought up yet. Perception is reality, and Democrats see Republican protestors in a peaceful protest, but perceive each and every one of them as gun weilding revolutionary Nazi's of some sort. To keep up the appearance, they are directed to FR.com and find daily threads about guns ammo, secession, CWII and other assorted theories of the Republic. Nadler's "whiff of fascism" comment was in this analysis a political slip, in so much as he said what he was actually thinking.
How long before the web site your linking here is fully operational ?
No, they were not converting by the sword. In a sense, however, they were not converting anyone to "Islam" at all, but to an idiosyncratic American variant,"Muslim" only in imagery. And, from my own experience with Black Muslims, I can tell you they were converting mostly by example, paticularly by abolutely clean living, no alcohol or dope, hard work, a supporting community, and self-defense.
I am thinking especially of Wallace Muhammad's group, begun by his father as the variant, but moved early by him and his adherents into orthodox Sunni Islam.
They certainly were not converting by words or arguments, I can tell you that.
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
Given commitements elsewhere and not hanging out at FR so much, I'd say we will have our initial material on-line by sometime next week.
The radicals -- including Al Gore -- have lost.
It does us well to understand their tactics, but it is not wise to emulate the tactics of losers.
There is a half truth in what you say, I do not deny that. However, evangelism does play a role in the conversion process and it has some success, otherwise they would not waste their time in the streets prosletizing with the Holy Q'uran in their hands. The Sunni variant is BTW the fastest growing islamic religion in the black community these days. I have worked with some black muslim groups in community projects and I can tell you that they do quite a bit of active evangelism.
I've bookmarked and will check in often. Thanks again.
Yep—if that had been a "Democrat mob", they would have been paid, and fighting for what they could get "for themselves", or so they think, by rioting and intimidation.
We're stupid enough to fight for free—and for freedom—and as, no less than Napoleon himself said, probably in relation to the Russians, "Stupidity is invincible".
I've worked eighteen hours a day many times in the past. Still doing it, but most of it now is voluntary and for pay
Now that's really stupid, ain't it?
Best regards. S&W RI.P.
Merely a temporary defeat, not a permament one. One would have thought that the collapse of the Soviet Union and it's empire would have convinced people to stop believing in failed utopias. 50 years of worthless welfare state policies subsidizing poverty and keeping minorities in perpetual poverty has not convinced them of the worthlessnes of their cause. As long as a large mass of people have no material interest in the benefits of a society they have little incentive to defend it.
WHO CARES???without financial teeth, boycott, it means jack.
"There is a half truth in what you say..."
No doubt there are people "converted" by the "Book" as a material thing, as opposed to the living example.
Are those the "converts" who will fight when another "book", also material and a prop, comes along? Or won't they conveniently just "convert" again?
Will they convert also when a more subtle and technical book of "tactics" is used on them?
As a matter of fact, one of the greatest tacticians of evangelism and Christian propaganda, Ramon Lull, got almost nowhere with the Muslims, mainly, in my humble opinion, because he relied too much on subtle arguments and so forth, that could best any Muslim scholar or philosopher in debate.
He won a lot of debates no doubt. But few converts.
I am by the way not disturbed by "half a truth". I don't pretend to know the whole on this particular subject or any other, and I am always glad to learn.
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
Oops—"Still doing it, but most of it now is voluntary and not for pay...."
As I said, really stupid.
Regards to all. S&W R.I.P.
Re:#56.
Precisely.
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
True the prop is the bait at the end of a hook. Nor do I pretend to know it all. My father who was trained as a physicist used to tell me all the time that when he died he would die a very ignorant man. I believe I will go the same way. All human experience is subjective and it all depends a great deal on what experiences we bring as indivduals. The only empirical evidence that we can work with is that which we have dug up ourselves. One thing I have learned in any advertising campaign is "know your target audience". I am not familiar with Lull but I imagine he was not familiar with his target audience. Black muslim are succesful because they know their target audience. I imagine that if they tried to convert out of the communities in which they live they would abismally fail also. That is why I beleive that if we are to work in certain communities such as the black community for example the recruitment must be made by blacks living in that community and the message has to be tailored to their experience.
Gotta go.
I'm not sure it's knowing their target audience so much, as it is their target audience knowing them.
Advertising works best when the "product" sells itself.
American "Liberty", as I keep repeating, is, in my humble opinion, a hard sell. But once lived and understood, most just won't settle for anything less.
Great fun talking with you.
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
I have to go too. Being a proletariat is a bitch sometimes, but somone has to do it. Need my rest. We'll continue this at some other time.
Hitlery Rob-'em, was old Saul's accolight; sat at his knee, so to speak , and soaked ALL of this stuff up. The Hippies, Yippie ( led by Red Diaper babies like David Howrowitz, Abbie Hoffman, et al ) used this method extenssively ! It is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY past time that WE turn the tables on them.
Good article! Reads like a modern revision of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
Freedom lovers generally, and Republicans specifically need to stop trying to "compromise" and playing nicey-nice with the Constitution-shredders and take a stand.
These are very effective tactics that we need to start learning.
The leftists have been slinging their $h!t in our faces for so long now, it's time to throw it back in theirs!
Good points, but I think this is the reason that conservatives and Constitutionalists have been losing the war.
They are so repulsed by the "tactics" of the left that they won't even consider taking the gloves off every once in a while. They kick us when we're down, and we say "thank you, can I have another?" The left will not stop their attack until we realize that we have to get "down 'n dirty" every now and then.
This is WAR, not a polite debate anymore.
Thanks, C.
Thanks, WOSG.
You don't have to agree with Alinsky's politics. But, you can see what his tactics have allowed the Left to do. They have been successful in their agenda, thus far. Given the reprehensible nature of their political beliefs, Alinsky's tactics and rules have allowed them to get further that they otherwise would have.
