Thanks to the rabid right wing for reminding us how all progressives including anarchists should read Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and "Revelry for Radicals".
From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2012/jan/24/republican-presidential-nomination-2012-newt-gingrich
An obscure, long-dead community organiser has been a constant presence in the GOP debates thanks to Gingrich
Posted byRichard Adams
Monday 23 January 2012
Unless you've been paying close attention to the undercurrents of right-wing US politics over the last five years, you might have missed an obscure name from the 1960s who has been hoisted into a hate figure: Saul Alinsky.
Alinsky died nearly 30 years ago but thanks to a tenuous link to Barack Obama, his name has been raised as evidence of Obama's radical roots. Newt Gingrich, the current front-runner for the Republican nomination, repeatedly denounces Obama as "a classic Saul Alinsky radical" on the campaign trail.
When Gingrich won the South Carolina primary on Saturday, his victory speech sought to distinguish what he called "American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky" of Obama.
Gingrich has merely tapped into a fulmination against Alinsky – who was what passes for a left-wing radical in American politics, agitating for better living conditions for the poor in the slums of Chicago and New York – that has been filtered through the likes of right-wing talkshow hosts such as Glenn Beck and Mark Levin.
The connection with Obama is that his career as a community organiser included work for an Alinsky-inspired group in Chicago, while a profile of Obama by Ryan Lizza in the New Republic in 2007 said Obama "taught Alinsky's concepts and methods":
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment