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Rules for Radicals - Study Group
Information
Discussion and planning for small study group
Members: 16
Latest Activity: Jan 16
11 Rules
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents 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.”
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents 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.”
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
Discussion Forum
Rule 11: 1 Reply
Started by Rob Grand Haven. Last reply by Rob Grand Haven Sep. 16, 2009.
Rule 5: 4 Replies
Started by Rob Grand Haven. Last reply by Jerry Wildrom Aug. 30, 2009.
Rule 6: 2 Replies
Started by Rob Grand Haven. Last reply by Tina Dupont Aug. 24, 2009.
Comment Wall
Comment
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Comment by Rob Grand Haven on September 15, 2009 at 10:29pm -
That perennial question, "Does the end justify the means?" is meaningless as
it stands; the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends
is, and always has been, "Does this *particular* end justify this
*particular* means?"
Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The *end* is what
you want, and the *means* is how you get it. Whenever we think about social
change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the
issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other
problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of
various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable
and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. To say that
corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of
ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a
corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off
against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears
corruption fears life.
The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's "conscience is the
virtue of observers and not of agents of action"; in action, one does not
always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's
individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be
for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's
personal salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal
conscience has a peculiar conception of "personal salvation"; he doesn't
care enough for people to be "corrupted" for them.
Saul Alinsky - Rules for Radicals
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Comment by Tina Dupont on September 7, 2009 at 3:31pm -
This doesn't quite fall into Rules for Radicals but it does follow your comments Rob. I think the Obama's are racist or maybe statist is a better term. They don't even want their own to advance. This is off of Rush Limbaugh's site. I couldn't find it on a youtube or anything and didn't have time or even want to listen to Michelle's speechs but supposedly she said this to a black women's group or maybe just a women's group. It is Rush's paraphrase. I wish I could find her saying it.
"And Michelle Obama is telling them, don't do that, don't do that, don't become doctors, don't become lawyers, don't become hedge funds, stay in your community and be a nurse, a community organizer, or what have you. And so you might say the worst thing the Obamas can have is an educated underclass because they don't want them escaping the underclass, regardless their race."
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Comment by Rob Grand Haven on September 7, 2009 at 11:54am
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MEGA Kudo's to Glenn Beck!
If you look at the shifting tactics he and his staff have employed, Rules for radicals counter attack has one it's first MAJOR VICTORY!
Ridicule strikes me as the logical response to any whining from the left on the Van Jones topic. "vicious lies and distortion". Bullcrap. His own vicious lies and distortions brought him down. The man is just another in a long line of poverty pimps. Many black leaders claim that blacks cannot be racist due to the racism they have experienced (or some such nonsense). Listening to this hateful black man shows me the kind of "high on his own rhetoric" personality our president surrounds himself with. The followers cheer, the speakers head gets larger.
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Comment by Rod Merrill on September 6, 2009 at 2:00pm -
The name of this group caught my eye because of a need for trainers for an initiative that just began at http://www.conservativeradicaluniversity.com/. This is being promoted by the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition. Although I have spoken with the NTPC group and Michael Patrick Leahy in particular about how we in west Michigan have our own training through such organizations as the Independence Caucus, Mackinac Center, and Americans for Properity, it does sound like what you are studying in this small group fits into the overall picture of what is being launched this week nationwide.
It amazing to me as I partake in conference calls with other Tea Party members across the nation how our Ning network provides many of the tools for learning and collaboration that is lacking even in the largest groups. I think its great how well the TP of WMI works together for a common cause. I can see that I need to pick up my own copy of "Rules for Radicals".
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Comment by Patricia Collins on August 30, 2009 at 9:26am - Because Glenn Beck has been speaking out against the Obama administration and the Marxist Van Jones, Weather Underground co founder Jeff Jones, Chavez supporter Mark Lloyd people he is surrounding himself with Glenn has been attacked personally rather than attacking the points he has been making about these people. Interesting, I think that is part of 5 and 11. Personal attacks rather than specific issue points of concern. Glenn has thick skin and we must also, that is why we must stay together.
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Comment by Jerry Wildrom on August 30, 2009 at 7:13am -
I hear you, Patricia... thx for responding...
You all seem to be much more knowledgeable about this "Rules for Radicals" book. I only went by the Rules listed above.
Can you clarify your "Glenn Beck" comment? I didn't quite understand...
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Comment by Patricia Collins on August 30, 2009 at 6:19am
- Jerry, butting out is not an option. We are all new at this and learning by the hour. Reread the rules listed and think about how they have used these tactics lately. For instance, Glenn Beck, with personal attacks, nothing concrete! The left will not answer a question with facts, that is why we need to know the facts, in my humble opinion. They will never listen to them but that is to be expected. They have lived by these rules for a long time. The unions may have used these rules to keep their people in line? Just a thought....
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Comment by Jerry Wildrom on August 30, 2009 at 3:13am
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Sorry, I'm a newbie...
Book...? what book? Can more background be given.
Perhaps I should butt out...
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Comment by Tina Dupont on August 24, 2009 at 5:39pm
- Tormala was going to use 10 supposedly on me and I prepared to answer that question then he never asked me. I guess he knows the book.
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Comment by Tina Dupont on August 24, 2009 at 5:37pm
- I'm thinking #7 may be our rallys. We seem to get smaller with each one and this last one did not even really grow us by much accept for the free press. We may just need a new way to get that press.
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