The Palestinian Student's Godfather: Saul Alinsky, Part II

How Peace and Compromise Are Not Part of the Radical's Toolkit

In my last Substack post, I examined the ideas of the New Left strategist Saul Alinsky and his widely heralded “bible” for radical activists titled “Rules for Radicals.” 

In that post I reviewed his disturbing ideas about morality, ethics and truths when serving as a radical organizer. He argued that truth and morality can be quite elastic and most troubling, that the only factor that counts is what objectively advances a radical’s cause.

Alinsky’s “lessons” can be seen in play at today’s pro-Palestinian encampments. Now we know that many older New Left organizers have been on site at actual college encampments, guiding their younger Palestinian and progressive student activists in tactics and messaging. These younger activists are turning to veteran anti-war and Black activists for guidance.  

In today’s post, I want to shed light on Alinsky’s advice on the use of words for the radical propagandist. He emphasizes that choosing the right words are vital if one is to win. His recommendations are coldly straightforward as well as frightening.

I’m writing this Substack as a past New Left activist. As a roommate of Chicago 8 defendant Rennie Davis, I was able to regularly meet, plan and strategize with other radical activists. With time I moved toward more conservative ideas. But, I now see in today’s headlines Saul Alinsky’s operational strategies in action.

In “Rules,” Alinsky told New Left activists he was a man who favored raw political power. Power, he says, is the ultimate goal of the radical activist. “To use any other word but power is to change the meaning of everything else we are talking about,” he wrote. 

So with lightening speed, we now can see progressives and pro-Palestinians actually exercising political power in 2024. We see Joe Biden openly bending to that power by “pausing” military aid to Israel while the embattled country fights a hot war with Hamas.

Alinsky’s ideas about language also are adopted by today’s campus radicals. He was starkly blunt. “To pander to those who have no stomach for straight language, and insist upon bland, non-controversial sauces is a waste of time.” 

Thus, pro-Palestinian demonstrations don’t talk about peace. They talk about the elimination of Israel, death to the Jews and death to America. These are not squishy phrases. Alinsky says to use bland, gooey words is to “tranquilize” a movement.

“To travel down the sweeter-smelling, peaceful, more socially acceptable, more respectable, indefinite byways, ends in a failure to achieve an honest understanding of the issues that we must come to grips with if we are to do the job,” he writes.

In rejecting “sweeter smelling” language, he also tells the organizer that he condemns American culture, a sentiment which is welcomed by many progressive, college-age activists. “The myth of altruism as a motivating factor in our behavior could arise and survive only in a society bundled in the sterile gate of New England Puritanism and Protestant morality and tied together with the ribbons of Madison Avenue public relations. It is one of the classic American fairy tales.”

For decades, left-wing professors, many of them my former New Left friends, entered the classroom where they consistently preached anti-imperialistic, anti-U.S. messages. These professors largely remained in the shadows until today.

So now we see pro-Palestinian college activists also attack broad Western values. Their words go far beyond Israel, to anti-capitalistic and anti-imperialistic philosophies.

As was discovered at Columbia University, a “six-page ‘National Liberation Struggles’ proclamation was found left behind in a lab class at the embattled Ivy League institution”. The radical authors ask the college students, “How is the student movement engaged in the larger anti-imperialist and internationalist movement in the U.S. and the world?”

As a tactician, Alinsky counsels today’s radical children to avoid compromise at all costs. “Compromise is another word that carries shades of weakness, vacillation, betrayal of ideals, surrender to moral principles,” he writes.

Hence, protesters have insisted on staying put as police clear their encampments. More than 2,000 have a been arrested so far. Many encampment leaders continue their steadfast opposition to any compromise with university authorities. Some have been successful in getting their demands met for university divestment in Israel or in U.S. defense companies.

One of Alinsky’s most revealing and worrisome pieces of advice, however, is to always seek conflict. Conflict is “essential,” he writes. He argues that a major theme for radical organizers is to promote societal “dissonance.”

That’s what Americans have witnessed as streets, bridges, churches, presidential press conferences, even the Met Gala, have been flooded with protestors. Since October 7, life in America has been filled with disruptive violence, noise and chaos.

It all looks spontaneous to us. But who knew there was a method to their madness?

In my next Substack post, I will begin to examine how Alinsky selects the choice of tactics that can maximize disruption in Western societies.