Posted on 03/21/2013 6:29:07 PM PDT by Nachum
Fighting Back:
How to fight the radicals who play by the Rules for Radicals
Here is the complete list from Alinsky.
* RULE 1: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. Power is derived from 2 main sources money and people. Have-Nots must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)
Rule 1: Radicals are your enemy. They think you have power over them, whether you do or not. Radicals are in an never-ending attempt to Build Power by recruiting the miscreants of society, conditioning youth, and using any and all agents to do so.
* RULE 2: Never go outside the expertise of your people. It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals dont address the real issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)
Rule 2: Find the areas of lack of expertise of the enemy and those they have recruited. You cannot attack what you do not understand. Find their weakness to expose the ignorance of the enemy.
* RULE 3: Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)
Rule 3: Attack the Attackers. Whenever the enemy attacks an organization, objectify the ones making the attack immediately and return the attack. Know that the enemy has scouted you for perceived weakness and you must undermine by any means necessary those who are attacking and financing the attack
* RULE 4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entitys very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)
Rule 4: Modify your rules to waste the time, energy and money of the enemy. If you have promised to give a reply to every letter, do not respond to the letters of the enemy at all. You will not die and they will spin their wheels uselessly. The enemy depends on this rule to kill you, but the besieged entity will lose nothing by ignoring the obvious ploy of the enemy. Be prepared to respond to the attackers with lawsuits, public humiliation, and the spotlight of media they are unprepared for.
* RULE 5: Ridicule is mans most potent weapon. There is no defense. Its irrational. Its infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)
Rule 5: Return ridicule with even more ridicule. They believe there is no defense, and they will act irrationally themselves. The enemys pressure will evaporate to avoid the return of their most potent weapon on themselves.
* RULE 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. Theyll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. Theyre doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid un-fun activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)
Rule 6: Make their own tactics no fun. Make their tactics harder, more boring, and even painful. If ignorant activists are feeling pain, like other human beings will avoid the pain.
* RULE 7: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Dont become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)
Rule 7: Make sure their tactics take a very long time. Work to make their activities look repetitive and tired. Excitement will dwindle when nothing is happening and everyone sees the tactics the enemy employs are from a playbook being used over and over again.
* RULE 8: Keep the pressure on. Never let up. Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)
Rule 8: Always make the enemy pay. The enemy never stops. They will always come back with something else. They will say whatever comes to mind. If the enemy finds you have thwarted their attack, be sure that another one is coming. You must be vigilant and you must make them pay dearly for every attempt. They must pay a price. It must be painful.
* RULE 9: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)
Rule 9: Answer all threats with threats of your own. Use the knowledge you have of your rights to make the enemy aware that you will make them all personally pay, even if you do not follow through. If your organization is under threat from activists, return the threat with threats on the enemy. Personalize the threats. Let them know you know who they are and you will make a threat of your own. They also have irrational fears. Use them.
* RULE 10: If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive. Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred managements wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)
Rule 10: Defend yourself physically if required. The enemy will always resort to violence, defend yourself. The enemy has overplayed their own negative tactics. The public will respect someone who will not lay down and die. The enemy will also know that they will also pay a physical price if they resort to violence. Expect it violence and prepare for it. During the Los Angeles riots, those businesses that used armed security to respond to physical threats were largely untouched.
* RULE 11: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Never let the enemy score points because youre caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If youre not part of the solution, youre part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)
Rule 11: The Always identify the enemy as never having a constructive alternative. The enemys only alternative is communism or fascism. The enemy has no ideas of their own. Everything they have is borrowed from the extreme left or European socialism. Activist organizations are mostly fronts for communism. Do not ever compromise with a communist. They only will use it as a foothold to take more rights away from you.
* RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
Rule 12: Get to the enemy first. When your enemy sets out in the morning to kill you, wake up earlier than your enemy and kill him first. You have been attacked. Do not wait to be a victim. Make the enemy pay in every way. Make them a pariah in society. Make them outcasts. Punish them personally.
There is probably much written already.... :)
Well written!
Nicely done.
Perhaps you should be part of the “boot camp” for upstart Republican hopefuls.
Well done. An answer needs to be formulated for the ridiculous charge of “racism”.
Actually I would like to form or (see formed) a conservative JournOlist and have an army of bloggers, phone callers, and journalists for large news organization as an immediate response team.
Conservatives should have a way to systematically respond other than the various conservative entities running around playing defense.
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Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
The answer to the charge of “racism” could simply be “communist” in return. Let them respond every time to that charge.
Another possibility would be “societal rapist”.
It has to be personal, loud, and take them off their game.
I went in a time machine and gave Alinsky an atomic wedgie if that helps
Make them live up to their own rules - prove to America their ideas are insane and the dishonesty of their message.
They have no rules. They will literally do anything.
It’s rule #4.
Yes, it is there rule #4. They have no rules. We have to modify ours when they use them to attack to render their attack useless, expensive, and frustrating.
“Rule 4: Modify your rules to waste the time, energy and money of the enemy. “
I call this the Reagan Rule. It’s how he bankrupted the Soviets.
Want to take down the left? Make them spend their own money. Cut off all government funding of the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and NPR. When they complain, ridicule them.
As long as the left is spending their own money to defend their turf, they cannot use that money to go on offense.
Only other thing I would do is marginalize the MSM. Call it antiquated and its writers dinosaurs from the Soviet era. What they tried to do to Woodward is a guideline for what we need to do to them.
If someone would have taken the lead on Obamacare, and not waver from the message that it would raise costs, etc, it wouldn't have passed IMO.
Good idea. Just start reading from the cpusa goals and ask them what they disagree with. If they fall into the “communism isn’t so bad” script, ask them why so many of the the commies own countrymen had to die to put it in place.
ping
Excellent! Very useful and just the type of information each individual can actually use, Thanks.
Copied it for future implementation.
Rule 5: Return ridicule with even more ridicule. They believe there is no defense, and they will act irrationally themselves. The enemys pressure will evaporate to avoid the return of their most potent weapon on themselves.
I remember..
the 1960s Marxist-Alinsky campus radical, psycho spoiled brats were celebrated in the establishment MSM as the most intelligent generation ever!. They are now arguably that very establishment that praised them and they hold themselves and their ideological issue in even higher regard.
Alinsky's book is really "Rules of Spoiled Brats."
"What difference does it make?"
Let's show 'em! Let's show what ridicule is and make it so the "low information voters" see it.
Nachum: You knocked it out of the park. Great post.
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