Tactics of the Left

Tactics of the Left

Overview


This section of Discover The Networks focuses on the strategies and tactics employed by the left in pursuit of its political and social objectives. A few examples are briefly outlined below.

A) Particularly noteworthy is the Cloward-Piven Strategy, which was first proposed in a 1966 article by Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven. This strategy seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading various government bureaucracies with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. In their article, Cloward and Piven focused specifically on the American welfare system, charging that by providing a social safety net, the government was dousing the fires of rebellion. The authors advised the poor to avoid the temptation of being placated by government hand-outs, and to work, instead, toward the goal of sabotaging and destroying the welfare system entirely. Toward that end, Cloward and Piven proposed a “massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls.” The authors calculated that by persuading even a small fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their full entitlements, they could bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be “a profound financial and political crisis” that would unleash “powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level.”

The Cloward-Piven strategy is an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements — initiatives whose outward purpose is to provide material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers.

B) A legendary figure in the playbook of leftist tactics is the late Saul Alinsky, a Communist/Marxist fellow-traveler who identified a set of very specific rules that ordinary citizens could follow as a means of gaining public power. “[W]e are concerned,” Alinsky said, “with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people … We are talking about a mass power organization which will change the world … This means revolution.” But Alinsky’s brand of revolution was not characterized by dramatic, sweeping, overnight transformations of social institutions. As author Richard Poe puts it, “Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.” Alinsky advised organizers and their disciples to quietly, subtly gain influence within the decision-making ranks of these institutions, and to introduce changes from those platforms.

C) In his book The Vision of the Anointed, sociologist Thomas Sowell identifies a four-stage strategy that the left has used repeatedly in order to promote its agendas:

  • Stage 1, The “Crisis”: Some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed [leftists] propose to eliminate. Such a situation is routinely characterized as a “crisis” … even though evidence is seldom asked or given to show how the situation at hand is either uniquely bad or threatening to get worse. Sometimes the situation described as a “crisis” has in fact already been getting better for years.
  • Stage 2, The “Solution”: Policies to end the “crisis” are advocated by the anointed, who say that these policies will lead to beneficial result A. Critics say that these policies will lead to detrimental result Z. The anointed dismiss these latter claims as absurd and “simplistic,” if not dishonest.
  • Stage 3, The Results: The policies are instituted and lead to detrimental result Z.
  • Stage 4, The Response: Those who attribute detrimental result Z to the policies instituted are dismissed as “simplistic” for ignoring the “complexities” involved, as “many factors” went into determining the outcome. The burden of proof is on the critics to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause of the worsening that occurred. No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had so confidently predicted improvement. Indeed it is often asserted that things would have been even worse, were it not for the wonderful programs that mitigated the inevitable damage from other factors.

D) After World War I, two leading Marxist intellectuals, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary, both concluded, independently of one another, that Western culture and the Christian religion had so blinded the working class to its true, Marxist class interests, that a Communist revolution would be impossible to carry out in the West without first destroying both of those institutions. Gramsci laid out a strategy for destroying Christianity and Western culture by conducting, in an orderly fashion, a “long march through the institutions” – where Marxists would infiltrate the schools, the media, the churches, the labor unions, the major political parties – i.e., every institution that could influence the culture. This process would sabotage American society from the inside, and would require decades to fully unfold. Lukacs, for his part, proposed the use of “cultural terrorism” to destroy his own country’s traditional sexual morals – and thereby contribute mightily to the downfall of its traditional culture and Christian faith.

In the 1920s, a wealthy young Marxist named Felix Weil was influenced by Lukacs’ ideas. Weil responded by establishing a new think tank at Frankfurt University in Germany. Originally it was to be called the Institute for Marxism, but its founders convinced Weil to give it a more neutral-sounding name, so as to conceal its true objectives and thereby increase its effectiveness. Thus was born the Institute for Social Research, also known simply as the Frankfurt School.

In 1934 the Institute for Social Research relocated to the U.S., where it was instrumental in the development of “Critical Theory” as a means of “negating” Western culture. Critical Theory was a method that called for subjecting every traditional institution — the family, the schools, the churches, the criminal-justice system, the media, the economy, the political system — to a bombardment of unremitting, scathing criticism. The ultimate aim was to cause those institutions to collapse under the weight of this criticism, rendering them vulnerable to exploitation and transformation by the Marxists. In recent decades, Critical Theory has become the basis for the various “Studies” departments — Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Whiteness Studies, Chicano Studies — that now inhabit American colleges and universities.

* Part D is adapted from “Who Stole Our Culture?” (by William S. Lind, May 24, 2007).

Additional Resources:


TACTICS OF SAUL ALINSKY:

Saul Alinsky Profile
By Discover The Networks

Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model (booklet)
By David Horowitz
2009

Alinsky, Beck, Satan, and Me (A Series in 8 Installments)
By David Horowitz
August 2009

COMMUNIST TACTICS:

How to Degrade the West
By Lavrenti Beria (head of the Soviet secret police)
1953

Excerpt from Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It
By J. Edgar Hoover
1958

The Communist Takeover of America: 45 Declared Goals
By Rense.com
January 10, 1963

Gramscian Damage
By Eric Raymond
February 11, 2006

How Obama Revolution Came to America
By Robert Chandler
April 6, 2009

THE CLOWARD-PIVEN STRATEGY OF ORCHESTRATED CRISIS:

The Cloward-Piven Strategy
By Discover The Networks

Manufactured Healthcare Crisis
By James Simpson
August 16, 2009

The Anti-Incarceration Movement: A Crisis Not Wasted
By Joseph Lawler
May 2009

CHANGING A STATE FROM RED TO BLUE:

The Colorado Model
By Discover The Networks
2023

CONSTANT LIES & DECEPTION:

“That’s Not Happening and It’s Good That It Is”
By Michael Anton
July 26, 2021

USING REDISTRIBUTIVE POLITICS TO SHAPE A LEFT-WING ELECTORATE:

The Curley Effect
By Discover The Networks

PROMOTING POLITICAL AGENDAS VIA SUPPOSEDLY NON-POLITICAL PURSUITS:

Why Reporters — and Judges and Professors — Are Biased
By Dennis Prager
November 25, 2008

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS & CULTURAL MARXISM:

Political Correctness / Cultural Marxism
By Discover The Networks

RADICAL GAY AGENDAS AND TACTICS:

The Overhauling of Straight America
By Marshall Kirk and Erastes Pill
1987

ENVIRONMENTALIST TACTICS:

Silent Alarmism
By Iain Murray
May 31, 2007

Environmentalists Use ‘Global Warming’ for Political Gain
By Ivy J. Sellers
March 9, 2007

“Energy Independence” A Formula For Attacking Energy Production
By James Dellinger
January 2007

DELEGITIMIZING ISRAEL:

How to Get the World to Hate Israel
By Richard Cravatts
August 4, 2008

MANIPULATING LANGUAGE:

A War of Words
By Thomas Sowell
May 29, 2007

Controlling the Language of Political Warfare
By Mark Tapson
November 11, 2013

REGULATIONS ENACTED FOR “THE GOOD” OF THE PEOPLE:

They’re Coming After You
By Walter E. Williams
February 13, 2008

LYING:

Why Liberals Lie about What They Believe
By John Hawkins
June 27, 2008

CREATING MULTIPLE FRONT GROUPS:

The Many Faces of Socialist “Peace” Activists: The International Action Center
By John Perazzo
March 17, 2006

INFILTRATION AND INCREMENTALISM:

Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out (III)
By Daniel Greenfield
May 24, 2013

Psychologist Teaches Mainstream Americans How to Beat Liberals at Their Own Game (Video)
Interview with Dr. Timothy Daughtry
January 12, 2014

Creeping Liberalism in America: How the “Long March” Became a Blitzkrieg (Video)
Interview with Dr. Timothy Daughtry
January 12, 2014

The Muslim Brotherhood “Project” for Israel and America
By Discover The Networks

Cultural Marxism in Education: The Gathering Revolt
By Chuck Roger
April 18, 2010

Why Reporters — and Judges and Professors — Are Biased
By Dennis Prager
November 25, 2008

The Communists Behind Obama’s Health Care Goals
By John Perazzo
December 23, 2009

TARGETED CAMPAIGNS:

GOP-killing Juggernaut Puts Bull’s-eye on States
By Bob Unruh
December 5, 2008

STAGED CONTROVERSIES:

Are Acts of Staged Controversy an Islamist Strategic Tactic?
By Madeleine Gruen and Edward Sloan
February 27, 2009

FORMING ALLIANCES WITH AMERICA’S ENEMIES: 

The Political Left: United In Hate with America’s Foes
By Dr. Sanity
April 21, 2009

FORMING ALLIANCES WITH RELIGIOUS GROUPS:

Greener Than Thou
By Patrick J. Reilly
June 2009

CREATING LARGE NUMBERS OF “FREE RIDERS” AND DEPENDENTS:

47% Will Pay No Federal Income Tax
By Jeanne Sahadi
October 3, 2009

Welfare Spendathon
By Robert E. Rector and Katherine Bradley
February 9, 2009

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM:

Back to Plan A: The Courts
By Mario Diaz
October 29, 2009

RUSHING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF POLICIES:

Emanuel Fast-tracked Immigrants to Get Votes
By Paul Sperry
December 15, 2008

DISCOURAGING OR OUTLAWING CRITICISM:

Muslim World League Calls for “A Strategic Plan to Introduce Islam as a Solution to Major Problems Facing Humanity”
By Robert Spencer
December 4, 2008

CONTROLLING THE MEDIA AND THE ARTS:

Hollywood’s Missing Movies
By Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley
June 2000

LIBERAL-LEFT CORPORATIONS QUIETLY EXPLOITING FOREIGN SLAVE LABOR:

Uyghurs for Sale
By The Australian Strategic Policy Institute
March 2020

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