How to Create a Socialist State, Saul Alinsky

An item crossed my Twitter feed that has the appearance of an email chain letter with this title of creating a socialist state. Written by hand on yellow lined tablet paper. But, I don't see it in this image search that has plenty of other examples. [saul alinsky +create socialist state]

Sniff.

There it is. One scent molecule and the whole effort fails the smell test. And there wasn't even a test, just an effortless random odor molecule that's wrong.

The b.s. detector clanged all by itself.

We don't even have to read the book. We don't have to read Rules for Radicals to hear the voice and know that is not it. You don't have to be expert on Alinsky or even to have read his book to know that Alinsky did not talk about any of that. I'm sensing this from what I do know, what was gathered the last years all along without actually reading his rotten little book that you can read in an hour if you wanted, but I can avoid that unhappy hour by a single scent molecule. [rules for radicals, table of contents]

This is how Alinsky sounds by his table of contents. We'll hear his voice. Tune in like a radio.

1. Why we loose
2. Commandment: Never Trust Republicans
3. Commandment: Never Attack What You're Not Willing to Kill
4. Commandment: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent's Argument
5. Commandment: Never Surrender the Moral High Ground
6. Commandment: Reverse the Premise of Your Opponent's Argument and Use it Against Him
7. Commandment: Never Abandon Our Base (Unless They're Morally Wrong)
8. Commandment: Define Your Opponent Before They Define Themselves, and Define Yourself Before Your Opponent Defines You
9. Commandment: Always Make Your Opponent Defend Their Record / Belief System
10 Commandment: Stay on Message
11. Play Offense

That's how he sounds. All perfectly sensible advice on polemics. I like this guy. A blithely superior bossy commandment giving Moses. Here are your rules, your political religion, your commandments. Plain and simple. Well organized. And they are so clear, so accessible, they are studied, and dutifully followed. But it does boil down to sensible advice for all sides. For everybody. Actually, most of this comes to us naturally we just don't see it all splayed like this. None of it is bothersome any more than Bush being inspired by forthright clarity of Machiavelli. And I've avoided reading him too. All that I know of both authors is gathered and still, having heard, we know how they both sound.

He does not sound like he's interested in creating a socialist state. Alinsky's interest is polemics. The voice does not match. The concerns do not match. It is a different league of concerns and a different voice expressing them. Here is the new list attributed to Alinsky that is duplicated in different ways and passed around.

1. Healthcare, control this and you control everything. (emphasis theirs)
2. Increase poverty, they're easier to control
3. Increase debt so you can increase taxes
4. Gun control
5. Welfare, control every aspect of their lives
6. Education, take control
7. Religion, remove God
8. Class Warfare, divide people to tax wealthy with support of poor.

The list resonates. Ew, that Alinsky, I could just strangle his scrawny neck myself. But that does not sound like Alinsky rather that is the voice of Republican litany. Alinksy did not write in such grand sweeping terms. Alinsky describes personal community agitation not overarching Stalinist plans for the nation involving movement of populations and agriculture programs, suppression and manipulation of populations, and industrial activities and war preparation and ten and twenty year central development plans. Alinsky did not write on industrial scale like this list. Alinsky is intimate and the items on this list are not, rather this is a list of Republican horrors as read from the rearview mirror of present day events and that's why it rings. These are not Alinsky concerns. The list is anachronistic to Alinsky. They describe what conservatives, Republicans specifically, view as major catastrophes today and they're putting all these at once into Alinsky's mouth back then who is not here to say these are not his concerns, I suppose to make it appear like Obama and Hillary Clinton are avid and successful and dangerous students. Or else just the sort of resentful spiteful truth-simulcrum that is produced in quantity that clogs and bangs around as so much flotsam and jetsam.

And not having bothered to read Alinsky we don't know that we're being lied to again in ways that is music to us.

Whoever is producing this is doing what liberals do by way of hobby. And as poorly. This list is Alinsky tactic employed by Alinsky targets, Republicans, but they didn't read his book either or they would have done better. A bit too beautifully well tailor-fitted. Too perfect. Alinsky did not produce this bespoke list of fears.

Must I read all of Alinsky to prove to myself that Alinsky did not address revolutionary issues of creating a socialist state in a way that aligns to Republican party apprehensions? Easy enough to do, but no, I don't have to do that. Alinsky is more nettlesome than sweepingly Stalinist. And I don't want to read his book. Lastly I don't like being lied to, and it irritates when friends make them and pass them, knowing that like themselves we are unlikely to bother to actually read his little book to prove otherwise. I don't want to study the man just because Democrat politicians do and just to prove that some Republican activists are punking us. Again.

The sound is wrong. The voice does not match. The concerns are wrong. The level of activity is wrong. The vocabulary is wrong. The feel is wrong. The mind that produced it does not match. The smell is off. Everything is wrong. The vibes are wrong. Fails superficial literary forensics.

To political ends, don't toy with my emotion and with my ignorance. Don't make me unfriend and unfollow you. Keep it up, there'll be nobody left to follow.