The New Radicals
[I’m exploring 100 podcasts and writing what I learn. This is #39]
The other night I was listening to talk radio host Charlie Sykes on his first ever show on WNYC.
Sykes has been an outspoken critic of Trump, despite or maybe because of his longstanding conservative credentials. (He calls himself a “contrarian conservative” on the show, for standing apart from the GOP.)
On his first show, he had on longtime conservative thought leader George Will, also a vocal Trump critic. One of the points that Will made in the interview was that Trump’s “denial of facts” arose out of what he described as leftist and academic traditions.
He didn’t delve much into this argument, but I assume he’s referring to postmodern philosophy, which holds that objective truth is nothing more than a convenient social construct. Of course, not all listeners took too kindly to how he assigned the blame for “post-truth” or “alternative facts.”
Flash forward to today when I was reading about Saul Alinsky and I had to do a double-take. I went down Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” and they all sounded familiar.
Alinsky was a writer and activist primarily in the 1960s who wrote the rules for the counterculture protest movement. He had a list of tactics to keep those in power (“the establishment”) off-balance and under pressure.
One of his favorite techniques was the use of insults and ridicule. He said it was man’s most potent weapon because there is no effective response to it. It would just provoke the other side into an overreaction.
For years, this was seen a leftist community organizer playbook — Think Occupy Wall Street. But in recent years the same tactics have been co-opted by the right as well. Think of the scored earth discourse of the Tea Party, Breitbart, Steve Bannon and Trump.
I think there’s a danger to read too much into today’s political climate, and ascribe every action to a larger Machiavellian strategy. I’m guilty of doing that in hopes of trying to make sense of it all.
But that said, you have a community organizer in Alinksy — and his rules sound like they are right out of a Trump textbook speech. Here’s just one example:
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”
Sounds an awful lot like Crooked Hillary, Crooked media, Lying Ted Cruz, Little Marco Rubio, very dishonest media… I could go on.
Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” sound like an “ends justify the means” philosophy. What he may not have foreseen is that anyone can use his tactics, for the purpose of furthering their own power.
While I have a hard time seeing Trump reading Saul Alinsky’s books before bed, I actually could see it being done by Steve Bannon. George Will might have been on to something.
