“They fear that thedevelopment and building of People’s (community) Organizations is thebuilding of a vast power group which may fall prey to a fascisticdemagogue who will seize leadership and control and turn anorganization into a Frankenstein’s monster against democracy.”- Saul Alinsky responding to his critics, Reveille for Radicals; p. 199
When Saul Alinskybegan building his community-organization movement in 1930s Chicago,observers were watching Alinsky with one eye, while with the other eyeobserving the building of communist and fascist movements in Europe. It wasn’t hard then to see in Alinsky’s programs at home, elements ofthe people’s revolution from Russia, as well as some of the same “inyour face” tactics being employed by Hitler’s Brownshirts.
WhatAlinsky’s critics saw was the burgeoning of a national movement, thecarefully manipulated construction of people’s organizations, which allhad two elements in common: (1) a collectivist creed, which denied theexistence of personal responsibility; and (2) an amoral dogma, in whichall means were justified by an imaginary utopian end.
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But perhaps the mostcunning propaganda feat in history has been undertaken for the past 8years. As Jonah Goldberg expertly expounds in his book, Liberal Fascism,American left-wing ideologues have managed to dissociate themselvesfrom all the horrors of fascism with a “brilliant rhetoricalmaneuver.” They’ve done it by “claiming that their opponents are the fascists.”
Alinskyhimself employed this method, quite deviously. Alinsky biographer,Sanford D. Horwitt provides an anecdote using precisely this diabolicaltactic to deceive the people. From Horwitt’s Let Them Call Me Rebel:
“…inthe spring of 1972, at Tulane University…students asked Alinsky tohelp plan a protest of a scheduled speech by George H. W. Bush, thenU.S. representative to the United Nations – a speech likely to includea defense of the Nixon administration’s Vietnam War policies. Thestudents told Alinsky they were thinking about picketing or disruptingBush’s address. That’s the wrong approach, he rejoined, not verycreative – and besides causing a disruption might get them thrown outof school. He told them, instead, to go to hear the speech dressed asmembers of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something indefense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placardsreading, ‘The KKK supports Bush.’ And that is what they did, with verysuccessful, attention-getting results.”
Inwhat may eventually prove to be a devious rhetorical feat of monstrousproportions, while the left has been indulging and fostering the “BushIs Hitler” meme, they may have just put a genuine ideological fascistheir in the White House.