4. “Make the enemy live up to his own rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
First off, note the definition of political “others” as “the enemy”. By definition, an enemy of a Communist is anyone who is not already a Communist. In this sense “revolution” is not all that different than jihad, which is perhaps why some Leftists see some commonalities with Islamic radicals. Both of them, in any event, are cultural outsiders.
The point I wanted to make, though, was this: Saul Alinksy was a nihilist. He did not believe in any immutable moral laws, and the only salvation he recognized was that of “revolution”, by which he knew in his heart he meant global tyranny. Psychologically, it is very easy to see why he saw Lucifer in such a sympathetic light, even though of course he was almost certainly an atheist.
Given that he was a nihilist–as are all committed Communists–what he was drawing tension not between what someone was doing, and what he believe to be right, but between what that person was doing, and what THAT PERSON believed to be right.
This means that the critique was solely rhetorical, not moral. Communists do not make moral critiques, since they don’t believe in morality. People miss this point.
You could add that they are trying to point to the crime of hypocrisy, which, one would think, even Communists could agree is wrong. Of course, that is not the case. Without blushing all Communist regimes have consistently accused the United States of crimes of inhumanity that were not with 3 orders of magnitude of what they practiced constantly.
At one time, there were more slaves in China at one time than were held in the United States in the whole history of slavery. One could, in any event, make that case. At the time of the Civil War there were roughly 3 million slaves. Let us say there were five generations of slaves, which is almost certainly excessive, since much of the slave growth happened after the cotton gin was invented somewhere in the first half of the 19th century. That’s 15 million. I would hazard a guess without looking it up that for substantial parts of the period 1948 (was it 49?) to roughly 1975 some 100 million Chinese were in reeducation camps of one sort or another. Many millions, of course were simply killed. Some 3,000 slaves were lynched in the entire history of slavery. The crimes simply aren’t comparable.
But unlike the Chinese Communists, we feel a sense of decency, and desire to do the right thing, so this rhetorical trick–and any time a Communist is talking about improving the world in any way it is a trick to get your support, or at least reduce you to silence and non-participation–works on us constantly. We are told we must sympathize with the “plight” of coddled mass murderers in Gitmo, but hear nothing at all about the system of political oppression that has characterized Cuba ever since the lies Castro told the New York Times enabled people like Saul Alinsky to seize power.
Push this further: how should one interpret the taunts of someone who believes nothing, directed to someone trying sincerely to do the right thing, and doing it imperfectly, since all of us are imperfect? In my view the word is sadism.
Go to a website patronized by committed leftists. Read the posts. Look at the schadenfreude, the incoherence, the hate, and the distance between their rhetoric and any possible notion of shared community norms.
The doctrine of Alinsky is evil. It is explicitly intended to subvert the moral basis of our civilization, and replace it with universal autocracy.
My definition of Cultural Sadeism is relevant: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/files/Download/Definitions.pdfhttp://www.goodnessmovement.com/files/Download/Definitions.pdf