Renounce the Rules

Ordinary folks often find themselves lamenting the lack of civility in our political discourse. Good people are often so put off by the loathsome rhetoric they decide they'll have nothing to do with politics, despite the fact that political involvement is perhaps our most important civic duty.

One reason there was such a sweeping anti-Trump vote in 2020 was the disgust many felt with what they considered to be President Trump's uncivil tone. Unfortunately, the desire among the public for a more respectful public discourse has little effect on politicians and journalists who regard politics as a bloodsport.

Vile, vicious, and hate-filled rhetoric, especially on social media, has come to be almost accepted as normal and pleas for greater civility and respect mostly fall on deaf ears.

Even so, one step that may go some distance toward a more cordial and civil polity would be for responsible people on the left to repudiate and renounce the malign influence that Saul Alinsky's 1971 book Rules for Radicals has had on left-wing political activism.

Alinsky was a guru for several generations of lefty politicians and activists many of whom have put his precepts into practice. Not everything in Rules is corrosive, but certainly it would be a salutary development if more folks on the left would distance themselves from Alinsky's rules #5, #11, and #13.

Here they are:

5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

11. "If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive." Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.

13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

Alinsky's book has been something of a catechism for left-wing activists throughout the fifty years since it first came out, whether those who employ his methods are aware of it or not, but a book that urges its disciples to ridicule their opponents, to provoke their opponents to violence, and to personalize disagreements by insult and isolation, is not likely to bring people together or to enhance comity.

Indeed, Alinsky promotes the very polarization many people deplore in #13.

Some of the remainder of Alinsky's thirteen rules are also of dubious value if we're serious about improving the quality of our political discourse. #4, for example, says that the activist should,

"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.

Notice the language. Those who disagree aren't just "opponents," they're "enemies." Enemies.

Moreover, the goal is to make people who may be decent, sincere human beings vulnerable to a phony charge of hypocrisy. Throughout the book Alinsky urges that activists discredit and smear, not just their opponents' ideas, but their opponents themselves. People who stand in their way don't just need to have their ideas defeated, they need to have their reputations ruined and their careers destroyed.

Appropriately enough, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer. Ever since its initial publication those who live by it have had a divisive, malignant effect upon our national discourse.

Division is what the book advocates and it's what its votaries want, but if they're serious about cleansing the political environment of the toxicity that currently permeates it, they'd do well to unambiguously renounce Alinsky and his Rules.