Cartoon it all you’d like, but this thread is about how much of Obama’s early ideological training — bolstered and finessed by his associations (Wright, Ayers, et al) — is apposite both to his current belief system and his superficial appeal as a managed candidate.

"Obama learned his lesson well. I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday." --Letter from L. DAVID ALINSKY, son of Neo-Marxist Saul Alinsky

How many times have we heard or read stories about Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm, Halliburton, and its alleged influence over the government? A public company with more than 100,000 employees, Halliburton had revenues of $13 billion in 2001. However, George Soros is a human Halliburton who will be in a position if John Kerry is elected president to pull the strings. He is reportedly worth $7.2 billion. But his role in buying the White House for John Kerry has received generally positive coverage. Soros, we're told, is a "philanthropist" committed to "democracy." The Republican Party, by contrast, is supposed to be run by fat cats and Big Business, such as those at Halliburton.

Soros may be the biggest political fat cat of all time. Convicted in France of insider trading, Soros specializes in weakening or collapsing the currencies of entire nations for his own selfish interests. He is known as the man who broke the Bank of England. His power is such that his statements alone can cause currencies to go up or down. Other people suffer so he can get rich. But journalists don't want to examine the questionable means by which he achieved his wealth because they share his goal of electing Kerry and the Democrats. Curiously, once he made his fortune he became a global socialist, endorsing global taxes on the very means he employed to get rich – international currency speculation and manipulation.



Notes on Saul Alinsky and Neo-Marxism:

Alinsky's tactics were based, not on Stalin's revolutionary violence, but on the Neo-Marxist strategies of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Communist. Relying on gradualism, infiltration and the dialectic process rather than a bloody revolution, Gramsci's transformational Marxism was so subtle that few even noticed the deliberate changes.

Like Alinsky, Mikhail Gorbachev followed Gramsci, not Lenin. In fact, Gramsci aroused Stalins's wrath by suggesting that Lenin's revolutionary plan wouldn't work in the West. Instead the primary assault would be on Biblical absolutes and Christian values, which must be crushed as a social force before the new face of Communism could rise and flourish. Malachi Martin gave us a progress report:

"By 1985, the influence of traditional Christian philosophy in the West was weak and negligible.... Gramsci's master strategy was now feasible. Humanly speaking, it was no longer too tall an order to strip large majorities of men and women in the West of those last vestiges that remained to them of Christianity's transcendent God."

Alinsky thought the new left silly for having tried to attack the bourgeois institutions (and liberal ideology) head on, with outrageous costuming, in-your-face radicalism, smash-the-system rhetoric, and so on. The resounding beating the Dems took in 1972 only hammered that point home to the new left (Ayers and Dohrne, eg. — once radical activists who promoted violence — are now “mainstream”; respectable members of the “intellectual class”).

It was shortly thereafter that the new left — the “progressives” — decided it was better to attack from within, just as Alinsky and Gramsci counseled. The new left progressives, who at one time spit at the bourgeois liberals of the Democratic party, now joined them; and over the years, progressivism, having redefined the First Amendment, having enacted “diversity” initiatives and “hate crime” laws, having turned the very notion of “tolerance” on its head while successfully turning ideas like “merit” and “color-blindness” into “racist” and “sexist” code words, has established itself as the base of the Democratic party, and in so doing, seized control of the title “liberal.”

At the same time, progressives marched through other institutions — including the Humanities and social sciences, taking positions at universities, where they’ve agitated for PC speech codes, forced “sensitivity training,” “free-speech zones,” and an overall attack on Enlightenment principles. The result is that we now have bastions of higher learning that are, in many important respects, fundamentally anti-intellectual.

Naturally, the trickle down from the universities into the curricula of public schools is to be expected; so, too, is the reinforcement of academic progressivism by politicians raised under its auspices (Obama perhaps chief among them).

The question is, how much of all this has Obama himself internalized? The Alinsky model has not failed, as some have argued. Certainly, parts of it have had to adapt to new situations and challenges, but then, that’s the whole point behind it.

Putting that happy face on progressivist authoritarianism — the “liberal fascism” of Jonah Goldberg’s book — requires a long march through our institutions. And today, we see a press that rationalizes its own “advocacy” journalism, speaking of fact-reporting as pedestrian compared to the media’s new role of instructive story tellers; we see an education system that refuses entry of Judeo-Christian mythology, but that gleefully welcomes junk science that acts as a cover for a vast global wealth redistribution scheme; we see a university system so rigidly dogmatic that it has had to establish caged-off areas where dissent is “tolerated” (provided one stays in the box, and follows the guidelines on when it is appropriate to use his free speech); we have one major party that is owned by progressives — controlling its politicians through fear and threats to their funding and reputation.

We have a judiciary that, for 80% of Obama supporters, is wrong in appealing to the Constitution rather than to the far more open-ended idea of “social justice” — a “justice” conveniently defined by the progressive left to match their ideological agenda.

This is a march through our institutions in an effort to reframe them for progressive totalitarianism: the press, academia, one of the two major political parties, the rules for public discourse and “tolerance” enshrined in our founding documents, religious institutions…

And Obama, trained by those immersed in Alinsky’s strategems, is the new face of such a movement: the urbane intellectual minority who promises hope and change, but whose life remains much of a mystery, and whose previous connections are kept carefully guarded.

So while thor would like to hyperbolize away very real questions by labeling them “dark conspiracies,” I would like us to take a good look at exactly what it is that underpins Obama’s candidacy, just as I would like to have some idea what his policies truly are.

It is no accident that progressives are running a well-groomed cypher; the question is, will they succeed in getting him elected — and if they do, will it be by having internalized Alinsky and Gramsci?

As Roman points out in the comments of the earlier thread:


This thread is about the intellectual framework that shaped Obama. If Alinsky’s tactics were indeed a cornerstone of Obama’s training, why should we view this any differently than the intellectual framework that Putin grew up with (i.e. The KGB) and how this framework has shaped Putin’s actions. It’s a valid discussion to have. Certainly, we can agree that Obama wants to move the country to the left. What, prey tell, comes after socialized medicine? Let’s even jet back to current state - what comes after the TSA and what comes after the goverment takeover of the mortgage giants - how big is this thing going to get?

– To which I’d add that the palpable desire to frame such questions as inappropriate or inapposite is precisely what one would expect from those who have learned from Alinsky, if only indirectly.

Ironically, these same folks embrace a culturally materialist and new-historical approach to “interpreting” texts in order to “deconstruct” them — to show how they’re authors have been inscribed by the cultural dialogic that creates them.

And yet when it comes to “reading” Obama, such a well-worn maneuver is suddenly off-limits — laughed away as an attempt to “smear by association,” or “inscribe onto Obama” seminal moments from his autobiographical and biographical record that we’re suddenly told are insignificant. Even if it doesn’t appear to be insignificant to Obama himself:


And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school. Kellman, who was already thinking of leaving organizing himself, found no reason to argue with him. “Organizing,” Kellman tells me, as we sit in a Chicago restaurant down the street from the Catholic church where he now works as a lay minister, “is always a lost cause.” Obama, circa late 1987, might or might not have put it quite that strongly. But he had clearly developed serious doubts about the career he was pursuing.

Yet, two decades later, to hear Obama the presidential candidate tell it, those years in Chicago as a community organizer shaped the person–and the politician–he has become. Campaigning in Iowa last year, he declared that community organizing was “the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School.” In a video this spring, Obama stated that community organizing is “something I carry with me when I think about politics today–obviously at a different level and in a different place, but the same principles still apply.” “Barack is not a politician first and foremost,” Michelle Obama has said. “He’s a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.”

[...] his campaign has taken the point a step further, implying that Obama the politician is a direct descendant of Obama the organizer–that he has carried the practices and principles of community organizing into his campaign, and would carry them into the White House as well. This is the version of Obama’s biography that most journalists have accepted.

The TNR story goes on to make the case that, despite Obama’s own protestations to the contrary, he is precisely the opposite of an Alinskyite — that community organizing disillusioned him and moved him away from the ideas of Alinsky that he’d lectured on while at Harvard. Which is to say, Obama is a creature of his unconsciously intended discarding of earlier radicalism, and that he is now to be judged not on what he claims about his past, but his current motivations.

I guess we’re all intentionalists now…

[...] in the world of Barack Obama, community organisers are a key strategy in a different game altogether; and the name of that game is revolutionary Marxism.

The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a ‘transformational Marxist’ in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a ‘long march through the institutions’ by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society.

[...]

His creed was set out in his book ‘Rules for Radicals’ – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the ‘first radical’. It was Alinsky for whom ‘change’ was his mantra. And by ‘change’, he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through ‘people’s organisations’.

[...]

But Obama brought a special slant to Alinsky’s radicalism.Far from being – as he has been painted – a ‘post-racial’ politician, Obama’s politics are all about promoting the cause of black people and achieving ‘reparations’ from white society (a perspective through which his whole welfare redistribution agenda is framed). Accordingly, he saw his three-year role as a community organiser in Chicago as mobilising black people for action against their white oppressors. Finding himself hampered in creating an activist network among black churches, he decided to join such a church to give himself more credibility. That’s why he joined the infamous black-power Trinity Church of Christ – a move, it seems, that had less to do with any spiritual quest than as a radical tactic for mobilising the black proletariat.
[...]





Alinsky was a radical straight out of the Gramsci playbook. In both America and Britain, Gramsci’s acolytes have been conducting a decades-long march through the institutions. In Britain, they have substantially achieved their aim of subverting western morality and changing the face of British society. No political party stands against this. In the US, they have made huge inroads but haven’t yet won. With Palin on one side and Obama on the other, it is now clear that this US presidential election has taken the culture war to the gates of the White House itself.

Obama, Alinsky, and Gramsci
The truly politically deranged are Alinsky and Gramsci, whose tactics are Obama's. Simply google "Alinsky Gramsci". If you have more time, read the Gramsci chapter in "The Keys Of This Blood," by Malachi Martin. Or you can read the below excerpt from the Spectator.

In her game-changing convention speech, Sarah Palin took a swipe at Obama for having been nothing more in his life than a 'community organiser'.
This prompted the Obama campaign to issue a pained defence of community organisation as a way of promoting social change 'from the bottom up'. The impression is that community organising is a worthy if woolly and ultimately ineffectual grassroots activity. This is to miss something of the greatest importance: that in the world of Barack Obama, community organisers are a key strategy in a different game altogether; and the name of that game is revolutionary Marxism.

The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a 'transformational Marxist' in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a 'long march through the institutions' by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.

His creed was set out in his book 'Rules for Radicals' - a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the 'first radical'. It was Alinsky for whom 'change' was his mantra. And by 'change', he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through 'people's organisations.'

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melanieph...elieve-in.html

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!" Barry Goldwater 1964

Ergo:

Obama, Ayers, Wright, ACORN, et al., are, and have been, engaged in Russian-Gramscian low intensity guerilla warfare and clandestine Marxist revolution against the United States and are de facto illegal combatants, i.e., Outlaws, under the Law of Armed Conflict. As Outlaws they have no Constitutional rights and fall under the jurisdiction of military tribunals, e.g., at Gitmo. Traditionally, Outlaws have been sentenced to indeterminate prison sentences or death.

Obama and his insurgents are grave threats to our national security, and they must be stopped.



It was shortly thereafter that the new left — the “progressives” — decided it was better to attack from within, just as Alinsky and Gramsci counseled. The new left progressives, who at one time spit at the bourgeois liberals of the Democratic party, now joined them; and over the years, progressivism, having redefined the First Amendment, having enacted “diversity” initiatives and “hate crime” laws, having turned the very notion of “tolerance” on its head while successfully turning ideas like “merit” and “color-blindness” into “racist” and “sexist” code words, has established itself as the base of the Democratic party, and in so doing, seized control of the title “liberal.”

At the same time, progressives marched through other institutions — including the Humanities and social sciences, taking positions at universities, where they’ve agitated for PC speech codes, forced “sensitivity training,” “free-speech zones,” and an overall attack on Enlightenment principles. The result is that we now have bastions of higher learning that are, in many important respects, fundamentally anti-intellectual.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melanieph...lieve-in.thtml

The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a ‘transformational Marxist’ in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a ‘long march through the institutions’ by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society.
A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.

His creed was set out in his book ‘Rules for Radicals’ – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the ‘first radical’. It was Alinsky for whom ‘change’ was his mantra. And by ‘change’, he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through ‘people’s organisations’.

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