Kevyn wrote:
Alinsky was not a Marxist and keeping people in turmoil is not one of his rules for Radicals. Do you just pull this nonsense out of your arse?
The trouble with Democrats is that they know so much about what isn't true. Alinsky was very much a Marxist, and although he was not a communist he had a great affinity for Marxism. From the book, "Let Them Call Me Rebel" by Sanford D. Horowitz.
"Alinsky was enchanted with the action and adventure of...[the Spanish civil war]. It was not something that [he] would do,...but he did raise money for the International Brigade. He also liked what the Stalinists were doing in Spain, recalls Leon Despres, who was at the time a member of the Socialist Party.... 'I don't think he ever remotely thought of joining the Communist Party [but] emotionally he aligned very strongly with it,' said Despres. In fact, it would be accurate to say that Alinsky was more radical in his inclinations, convictions, rhetoric, and wishes than his actions, which took a more pragmatic form."
"Alinsky was never a member of the party or a communist. He was too independent and combative to surrender intellect to dogma. But the communists did not give up on him, Alinsky believed. ' The definition of myself in the higher circles of the Communist Party was quite interesting,' Alinsky wrote in the early 1940s. 'They felt that I was doing a united front job . . . and while I was a rank individualist, fundamentally I was a liberal and maybe through a period of time I could be educated and possibly recruited.'"
"In the fall of 1937, he presented a paper at the annual congress of the American Prison Association in New York. This rather theoretical and historical paper raises more questions than it answers about the ideological direction in which Alinsky was headed. It suggested a flirtation with Marxism.'
"Saul Alinsky wanted to address the big political and social questions partly because he wanted to have a big impact. He wanted to do it as other men throughout history had done it, with the force of his ideas and the power of his pen. from time to time, he would seek out others who were interested in doing the same. ...His politics--although more at the level of philosophical than of activism--placed him as an independent leftist: anti-authoritarian, non-communist, but with an affinity for Marxist ideas,..."
When attacked as a radical, Alinsky replied: "As far as being attacked as a radical . . . well, you are a radical. 'To be a radical is to grasp a thing by the root. Now the root of man is himself.' K.Marx, which is what I always say."
The following sounds very much like keeping people in turmoil: "...one key to mobilizing [the middle-class activists] was 'to excite their imagination with tactics that can introduce drama and adventure....'"