Thread by @ThyConsigliori

1 April 2021 #MAGAanalysis

#10 Alinsky – The Hardest Read Of All

Don’t get me wrong. Alinsky can be disarming, charming, funny, always intelligent, often brilliant, and always a good writer. He’s not a great writer, but a very good one.

2) I can't claim that Alinsky is a great thinker. I do not place him in the same category as Qiao & Wang, let alone Machiavelli or Sun Tzu. Thing is, where they are strategic he is tactical. I'll pull that back in a bit, but it works.

3) Actually, I'll pull it back right now. Alinsky may be one of the world's greatest strategic tacticians. His tactical thinking and execution is ALWAYS driven by a strategy, and he always knows what that strategy is. To capture the full profile, you'll need both his books.

4) Reveille was written in 1946, Rules in 1971. You can see they bracket his career as activist, organizer, promoter, teacher and far more often than recognized, power behind the king. Reveille was a wakeup call, just as indicated.

5) I'm not able to analyze Alinsky's influence from the million other odd factors in the changes of the coming decades. But Alinsky was influential, in an outsized manner, in taking radicalism from being disdained in our society to the very definition of cool.

6) It's an oversimplification to say that Reveille was written for outsiders storming in, and Rules for insiders storming out; but it kind of works, still. Another way to look at the two is that in Reveille Alinsky lays out the story of his efforts and shares his vision.

7) In Rules, he more than merely reviews the outcomes, he analyzes them, extracts his famous 13 rules, and presents the whole as a method. And what a method it is. This is where his genius would reveal itself if it weren't so well hidden.

8) If you follow my reading here, you'll start to get the flavor. Alinsky dedicates Rules for Radicals to...Lucifer. Yes, Satan. He calls him "the first radical known to man." I pondered that long and hard and I believe I cracked the code of it.

9) Alinsky was an atheist who no more believed in Satan than he did in God. And his book is NO Satanist work in any way. So why do that? For the following extraordinary reason. He didn't want traditional, square, bible-studying Christians to read his book. He poison pilled it.

10) Please note, I did NOT say "bible-believing" Christians for a very specific reason. Anyone can believe in the bible without taking it too literally. It's easy to do. And many of Alinsky's target audience fell into that category. He welcomes them happily.

11) But anyone who takes offense at a reference to Lucifer as the original radical is EXACTLY the person Alinsky does NOT want to read his book. He found a genius-level method of splitting up the market and repelling those he did not want reading his book.

12) This poison pill works on so many different levels that I just can't believe he failed to do so purposefully. Before I tie that down, let's consider another level of hiding in plain sight he demonstrates. Let's look at the 13 rules, themselves.

13) I decided to snap a screenshot of all 13 so you could read them in a single flow. In fact, here they are, and I'll pick up below so as not to further influence your reaction, yet...

14) The first thing to notice is the missing hellfire, brimstone, and smell of sulfur. One can always argue means vs ends and the reverse ethically, but who among us expects politicians or political activists to adhere to such niceties, regardless of their brand or beliefs?

15) Just one famous example is needed on our side. I came to despise McCain but had no idea of that when I first learned how Karl Rove robocalled South Carolina with the salacious message of McCain's illegitimate black daughter. She was adopted, and the message was a bald lie.

16) Rove certainly did not need Alinsky to teach him dirty politics. The fact that we on the right categorize Alinsky as, basically, nothing other than the teacher of wrongful tactics is part of Alinsky's genius. Let me show you more.

17) Now, you can't tell it just from going from rule 1 to rule 2, but, that these rules are tied to each other shows up instantly next. A system demonstrates a cumulative relationship flowing from one part to the next. It is obvious that rules 2 & 3 are connected, right?

18) I couldn't have unpacked the following inner structure without reading the book multiple times and studying it in multiple ways - which include reading all our conservative refutations and responses - but rules 1 & 4 are also connected. It's sly. Watch.

19) Rule makes you list out what you know your power is (without ever telling you to do so) and then makes you measure your power against what your enemy thinks you have. These are actually very challenging tasks, and hard to get people to do. I know!

20) Do you see? That's a type of cloaking mechanism right there, and it works. Tricky! Now, cut down to #4. It's essentially the inversion of rule 1. You now identify the enemy's rules (which lead to his own strengths and weaknesses) and FORCE him to live up to them.

21) To unpack this critical guidance, I had to read the book Reveille to see it in action and map out incidents where we're always having that done to us, over and over again, and we never see it coming. There's more.

22) Your enemy's book of rules is actually where his power comes from. But every rule has its limit of effectiveness. All you need to do is discover where the rule stops working and push your enemy to and past that point. Sounds simple, right?

23) Alinsky's constant cloaking work reminds me of the old saw, how do you get to Carnegie hall? Practice, practice, practice. Alinsky could have been the original writer of that old joke. All his rules fit its apparent simplicity but underlying complexity.

24) Go slowly now. Go back to rule 1 and see if you can't divine the connection to rule 4 here again. Each of these two rules requires that you unearth and clarify your own as well as your enemy's capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. Interesting, isn't it?

25) Aha! But now think Oreo Cookies with the double cream center. Rules 1 & 4 sandwich rules 2 & 3. Try to work it out. Truth is, no matter how well you master rules 2 & 3 by themselves you won't have opened the door to power yet without rules 1 & 4 as context.

26) That brings us to today's homework assignment. You had to see this coming, right? Try to work out other ties from one rule to the next or hidden by other various means and methods of our devious author's extraordinary mind. Respect him while doing so.

27) Here are some easy cheats to consider in attacking your homework. Buy both books and read them, blowing any deadlines out of the water. Read the wiki articles on Alinsky, and on each of the books. Read a conservative response or two and note how shallow and weak they are.

28) I have to make another point about our weak responses. Many of the authors are brilliant, and very good people, having completed huge amounts of homework to write their works. But they seem all to fall into Alinsky's traps. They respond to him, and worse, they judge him.

29) He's so, so easy to judge. And that's what you to watch. He knows that you're judging him and is laughing at you while you do it. Let's skip to the end, but we'll come back to the middle, soon! His rules actually work. There's a reason we can't replace them. They work.

30) What he needed to hide from us is that they'd work every bit as well, maybe even better, for us as they do for his team. Sure, we have to hold onto our identity and values, but there's no reason not to. That's his truest, most hidden secret. More tomorrow...

Thread ends at #30.

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