Sanford Horwitt prefaces his biography of [Saul] Alinsky, Let Them Call Me Rebel, with an anecdote he felt illuminated Alinsky's method. In this anecdote, Alinsky shares his wisdom with students wishing to protest the appearance on their campus of the first George Bush, then America's representative to the UN during the Vietnam War:
College student activists in the 1960s and 1970s sought out Alinsky for advice about tactics and strategy. On one such occasion in the spring of 1972 at Tulane University's annual week-long series of events featuring leading public figures, students asked Alinsky to help plan a protest of a scheduled speech by George H.W. Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations, a speech likely to be a defense of the Nixon Administration's Vietnam War policies [Note: the Nixon Administration was then negotiating with the North Vietnamese Communists to arrive at a peace agreement- DH.]
The students told Alinsky that they were thinking about picketing or disrupting Bush's address. That's the wrong approach, he rejoined - not very creative and besides, causing disruption might get them thrown out of school.... He told them, instead, to go hear the speech dressed up as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards, reading 'The K.K.K. supports Bush.' And that is what the students did with very successful, attention-getting results.
This vignette tells you everything you really need no know about Alinsky's ethics and his attitude towards means and ends. Lenin once said that the purpose of a political argument is not to refute your opponent "but to wipe him from the face of the earth." The mission of Alinsky radicals is a mission of destruction.
From David Horowitz, Barack Obama's Rules For Revolution - The Alinsky Model, (c)2009 David Horowitz Freedom Center, Sherman Oaks, CA 91499
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