Alinsky and Fake News

About this sermon

Alinsky and Fake News Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was the foremost pioneer of community organising in the United States, winning national recognition for his work through the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation. In the 2000s Rules for Radicals did develop as a primer for middle-class moblization, but it was of a kind and in a direction--the return to "vanished verities"--that Alinsky had feared. As did William F. Buckley in the 1960s, a new generation of libertarian, right-wing populist, and conservative activists seemed willing to admire Alinsky's disruptive organizing talents while rejecting his social-justice politics. Rules for Radicals, and adaptations of the book, began circulating among Republican Tea Party activists. According to spokesman Adam Brandon, the conservative non-profit organization FreedomWorks, distributed a short adaptation of Alinsky's work, Rules for Patriots, through its entire network. Former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey is also reported to have given copies of Alinsky's book to leaders of the Tea Party movement[66] In Rules for Conservative Radicals (2009) Michael Patrick Leahy, an early Tea Party leader, offered "sixteen rules for conservative radicals based on lessons from Saul Alinsky, the Tea Party Movement, and the Apostle Paul".