The Alinsky Method: Anger at Obama

Reading an article by Matt at the Conservative Hideout regarding Tea Parties vs. Coffee Parties (what a silly name) he mentions the Alinsky Method (named after Saul Alinsky) which led to thinking about our president, Barack Obama:

In this process, one or more people known as ”Change Agents” or ”Facilitators”appear to be acting as organizers, ”allowing” each person in the group to express their concerns about some program or policy under consideration. While this process is going on, people are urged to make lists or form into task forces. The Facilitator carefully notes which members of the group are leaders, which are “loud mouths” and which may be easily swayed to different viewpoints.

At a certain point, the previously friendly Change Agent begins to act as “devil’s advocate,” becoming an agitator. The process involves playing one part of the group against another, the “divide and conquer” technique. Anyone who is not clearly in accord with the Facilitator’s agenda is made to appear ridiculous, inarticulate, ignorant or dogmatic. The idea is to make these members of the group angry thus escalating tensions. The end object being to shut opposition voices out of the group.

The “targets” of such manipulation rarely, if ever, realize how they are being manipulated. If they do suspect, they generally have no idea how to defeat the process.

Hillary Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state, wrote a thesis on Saul Alinsky when she was in college and Obama, a “community organizer” himself before he was a senator, must have at some point become familiar with Alinsky’s methods.  Alinsky’s son wrote of Obama:

…the Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style. . . .  Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

We saw the Alinsky Method clearly in those townhall videos from late last year when the Tea Parties were raging or, after the meetings out in the street with the SEIU union members doing their best to agitate people and get punched so they could discredit ordinary Americans who were upset with their elected officials.

Getting back to the the Alinksy Method again:

Anger directed toward the Change Agent makes him or her the victim. Their object is to become liked by the crowd, to be seen as a friend by a majority of those present to convince that majority the ideas of the Facilitator are correct and acceptable.

Clearly, Obama cast himself as the Change Agent and guess who was seen as the bad guys?  Tea Party members, Republicans… anyone who was against Cap and Trade (a majority of Americans), Obamakare (a majority of Americans), or any of Obama’s other big government ideas.

This week Just Politics..? will explore Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama to see where these two men have taken politics in America.

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