How Donald Trump Exploits 12 Of Saul Alinsky’s Radical Rules

I have written several articles on our President Trump. A list of the links have been provided at the bottom of this article for your convenience. This article will, however address different aspects on President Trump’s Presidency and his campaign for the 2024 election.

Saul Trumpinsky – Donald Trump and Saul Alinsky

Yes Virginia, there is a United States. Most posts published on this blog are dedicated to Virginia-specific issues. This post is an exception. It is an attempt to understand the unexpected popularity of Donald Trump. While all states are impacted by the federal government and national politics, Virginia is perhaps the most affected state. The proximity of Northern Virginia to the nation’s capital as well as the military influence over Hampton Roads’ economy make the federal government particularly important to Virginia. So it behooves us to understand the president and how the heck he got elected.

Saul who? Saul Alinsky was a Chicago-born community organizer and writer. He was best known for his book Rules for Radicals published in 1971. Even before his famous (or infamous) book Alinsky was on the political radar. In 1966 William F. Buckley wrote an article in his “On the Right” column calling Alinsky an iconoclast and “close to being an organizational genius.” However, as would be the case with many critics on the left and right, Buckley ultimately found Alinsky’s approach ineffective. Famously, Hillary Clinton’s undergraduate thesis was a 92-page critique of Mr. Alinsky and his methods. Back in 1969, 22-year-old Clinton was sympathetic to Alinsky’s concerns but ultimately found his approach ineffective. Even Hoover’s FBI kept a close eye on Alinsky during the late 1960s. But the 1960s came and went and Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals was written and discussed, and then faded from view. There were momentary flare-ups around Hillary Clinton becoming First Lady and Barack Obama becoming president. However, Alinsky was largely relegated to those creaky crevices of the cultural cranium as a curious cartoon-like character. Or … was he?

Donald Trump and the resurrection of Saul Alinsky. As far back as early 2016 the right wing-media outlet Newsmax began to see parallels between Donald Trump’s approach as a candidate and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. After being elected some of President Trump’s conservative critics continued to associate Trump’s actions with the Alinsky brand. Could it be? Could this odd collection of #neverTrumpers have unraveled the secret to Donald Trump’s inexplicable election success? Is he simply following Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals? Repeated searches of Trumpian philosophy found no fond commentary by The Donald for The Saul. However, there are many points of commonality between Trump and Alinsky.

A baker’s dozen. Alinsky outlines 13 specific rules in his book. Donald Trump is following 12 of them. To wit (along with the Trump translation or Trumplation):

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” (Trumplation: constant exaggeration.)
“Never go outside the expertise of your people.” (Trumplation: Make America Great Again. A simple, understandable motto.)
“Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy.” (Trumplation: Canada’s 243% tariff on U.S. dairy products … who knew?)
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” (Trumplation: Slam Hillary Clinton for taking millions for giving speeches to banks.)
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” (Trumplation: Crooked Hillary, Corrupt Kaine.)
“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” (Trumplation: campaign speeches that look like revival meetings, “deplorables” as a badge of honor.”)
“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Trumplation: (Whatever happened to the NFL kneeling “controversy”?)
“Keep the pressure on.” (Trumplation: From North Korea to the EU to London to Helsinki backed by an unending chorus of tweets.)
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” (Trumplation: Nominate me or I’ll go third party.)
“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” (Trumplation: One Donald Trump tweeting, many Democrats attempting to rebut.)
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside” (Trumplation: Forget my business deals, look at Crooked Hillary, Crooked Hillary, Crooked Hillary …)
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” (Trumplation: The only rule he seems to have missed although GDP growth through corporate tax cuts might be an example.)
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” (Trumplation: target individuals not institutions – Carmen Yulin Cruz, Stephen Colbert, Megyn Kelly.)

Advise to President Trump. Read Hillary’s thesis. She did get an “A”. Alinsky’s tactics work well at first but fail to create a lasting unity among their adherents. They generate notoriety at a rapid rate but the momentum doesn’t last. Charles “the Hammer” Martel may have defeated the Moors at Tours but it was his grandson King Charles (aka Charlemagne or “Charles the Great”) who forged an empire. Hammers are forgotten while greatness is not. Hammer time is over. What’s next Mr. President? You’ve taken the rules for radicals as far as they will go. It’s time to start writing “lessons for leaders.”

America’s war is Left vs. Right

My leftist friends ask me if I’m bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum or if his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”

I say conservatives have tried dignity. George W. Bush was a man of dignity, and he suffered outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.

We tried statesmanship. Candidate John McCain exemplified “collegiality.”

We tried propriety. Candidate Mitt Romney typified “propriety.”

The results were always the same because, while we were playing by the rules, the left was engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are of Saul Alinsky.

There was nothing “dignified” about Barack Obama lying about what happened in Ferguson to increase racial hatreds to serve the Democratic Party. I see nothing “dignified” in lying about American deaths in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I see nothing “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to destroy your political opponents.

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the 1960s — a war fought with violence, demagoguery, lies and the violent take over of universities. The Right has acted with dignity, collegiality and propriety. With Trump, this all has come to an end. Trump is America ‘s first wartime president in the culture war. It’s wonderful to see Trump defeating the left using their own tactics.

Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” is the book of the liberals’ war against America, the playbook for Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s tweets may seem rash, but he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested. Instead of going after “the fake media,” Trump isolated CNN. Trump employs ridicule, which Alinsky described as “the most powerful weapon of all.” Trump’s tweets have put CNN in an unwinnable position. The problem for liberal media is if they started honest reporting, that would end the Democratic Party they serve.

It is the use of fake news that keeps the left alive. Imagine if CNN had reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to domestic terrorists, Bill Ayers, the mafia, Tony Rezko or the true evils of his spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright’s church.

Imagine if they had conveyed the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS against political opponents.

These aren’t the times for decorum, dignity and statesmanship. This is war — a war the Left has been fighting without opposition for 50 years. Say anything you want about this president — he can be vulgar, crude and undignified at times. I don’t care. He fights for America.

Rules for Radicals and The Donald

You’ve probably heard about Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.” Ever wonder what they were?

Alinsky, who died in 1972, is sometimes seen as the father of modern urban community organizing, a calling that provided President Obama with his first job (in Alinsky’s hometown of Chicago at that). Hillary Clinton wrote her undergraduate thesis about him. (It’s currently kept under lock and key at Wellesley at her request).

Alinsky’s rules are frequently credited as being the core operating principles of radical leftist organizations like Occupy Wall Street, MoveOn.Org, and Black Lives Matter.

But what are they?

Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” are found in his 1971 book of the same title — in the chapter on tactics, to be precise.
The chapter contains 13 numbered, italicized rules, as well as several other pieces of advice.

Here are the rules, along with some of Alinsky’s elaborating comments on them:

1. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.

2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
“When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat. It also means a collapse of communication…”

3. Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.
“Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”
Alinsky gives General William T. Sherman’s march through Georgia and the German Army’s panzer tactics during World War II as examples of going outside the experience of the enemy.

4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
“You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Alinsky adds, “The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule:”

5. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
“It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. It also infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”

6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
“If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
“Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings… ”

8. Keep the pressure on, “with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.”

9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

“It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential to the success of the campaign… The pressure produces the reaction, and constant pressure sustains action.”

11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; “this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative. We have already seen the conversion of the negative into the positive, in Mahatma Gandhi’s development of the tactic of passive resistance…
“In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt… ”

12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
“You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying, ‘You’re right — we don’t know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us.”

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
“ … a target … must be a personification, not something general and abstract such a community’s segregated practices or a major corporation or City Hall…

“ …the C.I.O. never attacked General Motors, they always attacked its president, Alfred ‘Icewater-In-His-Veins’ Sloan… ”
Alinsky’s rules were intended for left-wing radicals who wanted to transfer wealth and power from the world’s haves to its have-nots. But the rules weren’t means tested. Anyone — have or have-not, poor or rich — can use them. Including multi-billionaires running for president.

Here are a few examples, in no particular order, of Trump playing by Alinsky’s rules:

Never go outside the experience of your people.

Trump never does. He not only stays within his supporters’ experience — on immigration, on trade, on national security, on foreign policy — he has a genius for giving voice to those experiences in ways they haven’t thought of before, like his four-word refrain, “America doesn’t win anymore.” For millions of his supporters, it is the common denominator that ties together the major public and private grievances that define life as they experience it.

Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.

Has Trump done anything in the last seven months that is inside the experience of his adversaries?

A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

Trump rallies are a hoot. They are hands down the most entertaining political theater to come along in decades. People come from hundreds of miles around because they are so much fun.

And now Trump found a way to make them even more fun — by making the Eighty-Sixing of MoveOn.Org and Black Lives Matter protesters part of the show.

Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

Trump’s mastery of this rule should be self-evident. The obvious title for his forthcoming campaign memoir is The Art of the Insult.
Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.

Alinsky was probably thinking of the ability to convince an adversary that you’re stronger than you actually are, but the ability to convince an enemy that you are weaker than you actually are can be just as important.

For the first three months of the campaign, Trump’s enemies were dismissive of him while his support emerged, jelled and grew. More the fools they. If they had recognized the nature and potential of his challenge from the outset, they might have been able to stop it.

If the ghost of Saul Alinsky were to appear at a Trump rally, Trump would have some choice words for him: You’re hired!

Resources

modernghana.com, “How Donald Trump Exploits 12 Of Saul Alinsky’s Radical Rules.” By Ralph Benko; tribtoday.com, “America’s war is Left vs. Right.” By Cathy Lukasko; baconsrebellion.com, “Saul Trumpinsky – Donald Trump and Saul Alinsky.” By Don Rippert; archives.boulderweekly.com, “Rules for Radicals and The Donald.” By Paul Danish;

Common Sense and Ramblings In America

How Donald Trump Exploits 12 Of Saul Alinsky’s Radical Rules

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