Saul Alinsky:The Evil Genius Behind Obama

Saul Alinsky:

The Evil Genius Behind Obama

By

Jerome R. Corsi, Ph. D

Paperless Publishing
New York, New York

Saul Alinsky radicalism is at the heart of President Barack Obama’s politics proclaimed Republican presidential candidate and former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich during the 2012 Republican presidential primary campaign in Florida.

Gingrich was right. Alinsky is the evil genius behind Barack Obama’s politics. It is impossible to understand Obama’s politics without understanding Alinsky’s politics. The relationship of Alinsky to Obama is the relationship of teacher to student.

“Do we support independence and a paycheck or dependence and food stamps?” Gingrich asked as he campaigned in Florida. Do we support the principles of freedom articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, or are we advocates of Alinsky’s radical “community organizing” tactics – tactics Alinsky tells us he learned from Machiavelli and from the Lord of Darkness himself, Lucifer?

Even though Obama’s involvement with Alinsky-styled radical politics had been thoroughly documented during the 2008 presidential campaign, most Americans in 2012 had still never heard of Alinsky.

After Gingrich linked Obama to Alinsky, CNN tried to present a positive spin on the question, “Who is Saul Alinsky?” CNN reporter, Brian Todd, told CNN television host, Wolf Blitzer, on air that Saul Alinsky was nothing more than “a community organizer in Chicago who took on powerful bosses like Mayor Richard Daley to give poor, under-represented neighborhoods a voice in decision-making.”
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The truth is that Alinsky was a hardline power politics tactician who cut his teeth in the 1930s by aligning himself with then nationally prominent labor union organizer John L. Lewis, as the two joined forces to unionize workers in Chicago’s famed stockyards to demand higher pay.

Alinsky’s clearly stated goal was revolutionary – to organize poor and minority communities as “power to the people” political forces capable of overturning the established order to obtain income redistribution from the “haves” to the “have-nots.” That government should force the “haves” to relinquish their property to the “have-nots” is an idea central to socialism and communism alike, equally as the idea is at the center of Alinsky and Obama’s politics.

Nothing could be further from the ideas of freedom articulated in the founding documents of the United States of America – that human beings are endowed with inalienable rights bestowed by God that establish personal freedoms consistent with the idea of private enterprise and limited government.

An honest review of Alinsky’s life and his writings makes clear that Barack Obama has lifted his divisive power-politics tactics from Saul Alinsky so completely that the class warfare themes Obama articulates in his speeches running for reelection in 2012 come almost word-for-word from the Saul Alinsky “rules for radicals” playbook.

Dedicated to Lucifer

Alinsky began his seminal 1971 book
Rules for Radicals
with three acknowledgements. The first was to the renowned Jewish scholar Rabbi Hillel. It read as follows:

“Where there are no men, be thou a man.”

-- Rabbi Hillel

Alinsky was born in Chicago in 1909, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. With this citation, he appears to be suggesting that following his teachings is the path to rising above the masses to a position of leadership.

The second acknowledgment was to Thomas Paine, the U.S. Founding Father known for his pamphleteering, and especially for his book
Common Sense
that he published anonymously on January 10, 1776:

“Let them call me rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul …”

-- Thomas Paine

The clear implication is that Alinsky models himself a rebel as he encourages his readers that only in rebellion will their souls be free.

The final acknowledgment Alinsky attributed to himself:

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins – or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom

-- Lucifer.

-- Saul Alinsky

The dedication to Lucifer remains so explosive yet today that modern editions of
Rules for Radicals
frequently omit the testimonial to Lucifer altogether. Still, what Alinsky is saying is obvious. He embraces the dark side, modeling himself after the Prince of Darkness, as if to say that fulfillment of his destiny demands rebelling against the established powers in the United States. In his personal rebellion, Alinsky bows down to Satan, identifying himself with Lucifer’s goal in the Biblical rebellion – namely, to grab power from the hands of God so as to place himself on the Heavenly throne.

Alinsky’s message is the typical message of amoral political philosophers who embrace power politics as the end-all and be-all: that God’s laws are only right and just because God is in power, not because there is any inherent or intrinsic morality in the Biblical God of the Christians and the Jews. In a world of power politics, where the victors write the history and frame the laws, Alinsky would say that “right” is whatever “might” says it is. In other words, Alinsky’s politics, much like Lucifer’s, exist in a moral vacuum where all “value systems” regardless how perverse are perceived as “right” only because those in power say so.

The acknowledgments to the original edition of Alinsky’s seminal work,
Rules for Radicals
, leave no doubt that Alinsky considered himself the dark genius of power politics. His goal was “to stand like a man” in rebelling against the established law and order in the United States which he saw written in favor of the “haves” – the bankers, business owners, management and capitalists – in order to rewrite history in favor of the “have-nots” – the poor, the minorities, the workers and the labor unions.

Clearly a cynic would say that with his acknowledgment to Lucifer, Alinsky is admitting that for their rebellion, his followers gain not Heaven, but the eternal damnation in the soul-burning fires of Hell. Yet, Alinsky could counter that ironically the name “Lucifer” in Latin means “light-bearer.” The point is that for Alinsky all politics is reduced to power politics. In an Alinsky world where “might makes right,” his goal is to wrench power from the hands of the established “haves” to place power in the hands of the “have nots.” In other words, Alinsky’s goal was to make the “have-nots” the established order, much as Lucifer and his followers sought to cast God out of Heaven.

While Alinsky would deny throughout his life that he was a Communist, his
Rules for Radicals
was written to lay out for socialists a step-by-step “how to” guide of power politics that was developed to empower the “have-nots” to turn free enterprise on its head – allowing the poor and downtrodden to redistribute income in their favor by wrenching wealth from hands of the “haves.” Alinsky’s vision rested not upon any understanding of classic moral principles, but instead derived from a socialist consciousness of class and race warfare that Marx and Engels would have understood. None less than conservative icon and pundit William F. Buckley is widely credited with describing Alinsky as, “Very close to being an organization genius.”
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Still, there is no proof that his desire to change the United States from a private enterprise society to what amounts to a massive government-run social welfare state on the European model would end up producing more income and wealth for all Americans.

Despite that, Barack Obama used Alinsky’s vision of “Hope and Change” to run for president successfully in 2008, and today he is re-crafting Alinsky’s admittedly radical and revolutionary consciousness for social justice into the foundational themes of his 2012 presidential campaign. In 2008, Obama’s advisors packaged and sold him to American voters as if he were a great unifier. Today, Obama’s presidential campaign is pure Alinsky, as Obama campaigns on the theme “The rich should pay their fair share of taxes.” Alinsky taught “community organizers how to focus on grievances, including hatred of those who succeed in a free enterprise system. Now, it appears Obama intends to use Alinsky methods to divide the rich from the poor, the young from the old, majority whites from minorities, and Latino communities from Republican Party politics.

Saul Alinsky – The Machiavellian Master of “Hope and Change”

Alinsky fashioned himself a modern day Machiavelli, well-versed and comfortable with Machiavelli’s teaching that, “It is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.”
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Paralleling Machiavelli’s thought, Alinsky wrote, “To me ethics is doing what is best for the most.”
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He could as easily have written, “To me ethics is doing what works.” Alinsky repeatedly stressed that the advantage of the “have-nots” centered in numbers. “The resources of the Have-Nots are (1) no money and (2) lots of people.”
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This, he advised, required the Have-Nots to use street tactics to succeed. “For example, I have emphasized and re-emphasized that tactics means you do what you can with what you’ve got, and that power in the main has always gravitated towards those who have money and those whom people follow.”
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As Machiavelli sought to advance himself by advising the prince how to use the amoral tactics to gain and hold political power, Alinsky fashioned himself championing the economically downtrodden. “
The Prince
was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power,” he wrote on the first page of
Rules for Radicals
, in a chapter entitled “The Purpose.” His goal was exactly the opposite. “
Rules for Radicals
is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
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Alinsky taught that politics, camouflaged as “community organizing,” was the only effective way that the socialist elites could mobilize the Have-nots to take power from the Haves.

Long before Barack Obama used the rallying cry of “Hope and Change,” Alinsky used the themes of “Hope and Change” as code words for creating a socialist revolution in the United States. His goal was to set in motion a peaceful revolution, using the ballot box, not bombs or bullets, to wrench power from the hands of capitalist elites and business leaders currently in charge. He taught a pragmatism in power politics, noting that, “Even if all the low-income parts of our population were organized – all the blacks, Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Appalachian poor whites – if through some genius of organization they were all united in a coalition, it would not be powerful enough to get significant, basic needed changes.” Instead, he advocated seeking political allies in “the organized sectors of the middle class.” Specifically, Alinsky argued that the “have-nots” should seek their middle class allies among the young. “Activists and radicals, on and off our college campuses – people who are committed to change – must make a complete turnabout,” he wrote, “With rare exceptions our activists and radicals are products of and rebels against our middle class society.” But, to be successful, Alinsky encouraged activists and radicals to cut their hair, put on business suits, and run for political office.
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Appropriately,
Rules for Radicals
was subtitled “A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.”

Alinsky’s methodology began by teaching “community organizers” to raise the consciousness of the economically disadvantaged, who were typically also minorities. The goal was to stir the pain of economic suffering in order to creating awareness in an economic underclass of their disadvantages. “The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt oppression,” he wrote. “He [the community organizer] must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act.”
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From there, the community organizer’s job was to mobilize the discontent into political power. When Alinsky asked new students why they wanted to organize, he shouted back at them a one-word answer: “You want to organize for
power
.”
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To illustrate his methodology, Alinsky references the labor organizer who enters an industrial plant where the workers are underpaid. “He [the labor organizer] begins his ‘trouble making’ by stirring up these angers, frustrations, and resentments, and highlighting specific issues or grievances that heighten controversy,” Alinsky advised. “He dramatizes the injustices by describing conditions at other industrial plants engaged in the same kind of work where the workers are far better off economically and have better working conditions, job security, health benefits, and pensions, as well as other advantages that had not even been thought of by the workers he is trying to organize.” The point is to fan the flames of economic controversy to the point where the workers demand the formation of a trade union.
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Alinsky summed up the methodology in one paragraph: