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"Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."
"Never go outside the expertise of your people."
"Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy."
"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
"A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
"A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."
"Keep the pressure on."
"The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. "
"The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."
"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."
"The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. "

The rules are even used with humor to promote an anti-Republican political perspective. For example, by using Rule 4 (use their rules against them) and Rule 5 (ridicule), an entire school of comedy evolved from the fine-tuning of these techniques by Jon Stewart when he was the host of The Daily Show.

The Stewart proteges—John Oliver (HBO), Stephen Colbert (CBS), and Samantha Bee (TBS)-- utilized and improved the formula to promote liberalism and Democratic Party candidates.

The comedy strategy worked like this: first create the book of rules that the Republicans are using (this is often fallacious, e.g. you are Christian thus you hate gays). Then find a violation of said rules (a gay Republican). Point out the hypocrisy, followed by endless ridicule using analogies while feigning outrage.

Colbert became the number one late-night talk show host employing a streamlined version of this model to ridicule Trump and the Republicans, often for things Trump never did or said but based on questionable news items. It was all good fodder for Colbert. Near the end of the Trump presidency, it was almost all ridicule.

The only Republican-leaning comic utilizing anything close to the Alinsky model for humor was Dennis Miller, who seemed to have developed a similar structure as the Jon Stewart school. Miller was also early in the game as his HBO weekly show, Dennis Miller Live, ran from 1994-2002, predating Stewart’s appearance on the Daily Show by five years.

This model of finding hypocrisy and then ridiculing it may have stemmed from Miller’s time hosting Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live. This was a segment that relied on harsh and sometimes ironic ridicule of current news items. Miller, an astute political commentator, was aware of Saul Alinsky and his rules.

It’s something of a shame that, with the possible exception of Dennis Miller, only left-leaning comics, left-leaning writers, and left-leaning politicians have used what the right-wing calls the “Alinsky Playbook” when it can be utilized by anyone.

In much the same way that the liberals eschewed personalities like Rush Limbaugh, having never once listened to him, conservatives avoid leftist thinkers. How many conservatives have ever read a single word of Karl Marx?

Thus Alinsky, an adamant socialist, is a kind of forbidden fruit. A few attempts by conservative writers to rejigger Alinsky for the right-wing audience have failed. This is because there is no need to rejigger anything, the rules are good rules to subvert anyone or anything.

It's kind of a shame that American conservatives have left this goldmine for political action (and comedy) untouched out of a kind of “lips that touch wine will never touch mine” idealism. They’d rather be beaten up over and over by the same playbook, one that they themselves could use.

This is one reason why the political left in America thinks that conservatives are so dumb. — jcd

Rustinif7 hr ago
Anytime a conservative say anything he is instantly a racist, which is out of Alinsky's playbook. Conservatives should use group think to find the racism in whatever the left does (critical race theory says racism is everywhere) and never shut up about it.