Radosh on Alinsky: How Radical Was He?
Writing in National Review, Ronald Radosh reviews Nicholas von Hoffman's new biography of Saul Alinsky which presents a different take on the controversial community organizer.
One often hears critics of President Obama’s policies proclaim that he is acting “straight out of the Alinsky playbook.” Because Obama was a community organizer for a brief time before going to law school, many people have assumed that, as a disciple of Saul Alinsky, he was committed thereafter to apply Alinsky’s principles as a guide for whatever position he held in life. Many therefore assume that he is now acting on them as president. ...
According to von Hoffman, Alinsky had nothing but disdain for the New Left with which Obama was associated. He thought Bill Ayers was wedded to “petulant ego decision making,” as well as a “comic-book leftism whose principal feature was anger at a government which did not do as they bade it. Their foot-stamping anger and humiliation at their failures . . . made them believe they were justified in taking up violence.” He saw the Weather Underground as a group prone to tantrums and “Rumpelstiltskin politics.”
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