These Alinsky-hating wingnuts are using Alinsky tactics

I don’t think Alinsky would have gone in for O’Keefe, Giles and the rest. For one thing, they’re clearly too eager to make a name for themselves. Alinsky wanted his organizers to build organizations that would outlast them; he didn’t want them upstaging the larger group. As a rule, he wouldn’t let his organizers be quoted by name in the newspapers. The whole point was to let the people speak for themselves.

For another thing, by hammering away at Democrats, like Landrieu, the O’Keefe crowd is drifting too close to the Republican Party. Alinsky stayed out of politics. Most of his groups couldn’t endorse candidates without losing their tax-exempt status.

Finally, for better or for worse, Alinsky was a leftist. He divided the world into haves and have-nots. The whole point of rattling the cage, he insisted, was to force the haves into giving the have-nots a bigger slice of the pie. Because, he said, Lord knows, they wouldn’t give it up without a fight.

Still, I can see why O’Keefe and his buddies would want to emulate Alinsky. All that irreverence, conflict and controversy, his rhetoric about rubbing resentments and fanning flames. If I were a young rabble-rouser, I’d want to be like Alinsky, too.