The Rev Reads It For You: The Thirteen Rules of Power Tactics

I decided not to let three months go by between posts this time, which must surely be a shock.Today we're talking about the meat and bones of tactics.

"Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves."

Smarmy pulpitizing on the immorality of it all aside, this statement betrays something of a flaw in Alinskism: what do you do when your side has become the Haves? When you have won over, say, the majority of the education system, government bureaucracy, and massive influence everywhere else? A legitimate question, and you'll see how these tactics start to break down.

"First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people's organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power.

Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then do what Gideon did: conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does.

Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place."

We can similar tactics nowadays with sockpuppet accounts (concealing small numbers) and trolls (stink up the place).

The 13 rules alluded to in the title of the post are after the break.

"Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."

And this goes both ways. Sometimes, you want the enemy to think you have 100 troops when you have 1,000; sometimes you want them to think you have 1,000 when you have 10.

"The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat. It also means a collapse of communication, as we have noted."

Now of course you can bring new things into the experience of your people, but it's a poor opening gambit. Save the experimental stuff for isolated cells that can take damage, not the main body.

"The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat."

In other words, smash their OODA loop so that they can't respond effectively. Ideally, you want something inside your group's experience that the enemy isn't comfortable with (like the farting orchestra in the last chapter).

"The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of 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."

There's a very fine theological point about how this is actually true. The Christian church, made up of Christians, is actually incapable of perfectly fulfilling the law - that's the whole point of Christianity!

More to the point though, this is where the Left is starting to get itself into trouble. They can't live up to their own rules anymore, which is why you see Liberal Professors being torn apart for not being Liberal enough, or White Liberals being torn apart for the sin of being White. When you make Whiteness a sin, who make it impossible for Whites to live up to the rule book. Blinking Red Dot.

On the other hand, it's always fun to reverse this one on lapsed Christians. I've had more than one complain to me about Christians denying the faith by voting for Trump or not sainting abortion doctors or whatever, when they had actually denied the faith in public. They did not enjoying me pointing this out.

"The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."

“The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.”

"The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."

See: Space Raptor Butt Invasion.

"The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings. New issues and crises are always developing, and one's reaction becomes, "Well, my heart bleeds for those people and I'm all for the boycott, but after all there are other important things in life"—and there it goes."

Having multiple issues can help with this. When interest in one subject wanes, rehash a fresher one to get butts back in the seats.

"The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose."

And of course, you can simply use multiple tactics with the same issue, making use of new developments and events as they arise.

"The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."

"The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign. It should be remembered not only that the action is in the reaction but that action is itself the consequence of reaction and of reaction to the reaction, ad infinitum. The pressure produces the reaction, and constant pressure sustains action."

Ah, the "I'm not touching you" approach. The goal of pressure, the goal of going outside the opponent's experience, is to provoke a ridiculous reaction. A flailing enemy is more easily finished off than a composed enemy.

"The eleventh rule is: 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. We have already seen the conversion of the negative into the positive, in Mahatma Gandhi's development of the tactic of passive resistance."

If you don't have enough guns to drive out the British, claim that you're not using guns because you're better than the British. If you have no tactics comfortably inside your group's experience, choose one that it entertainingly novel.

"The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right—we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us."

The Fabian strategy - "Now you tell us. Oh, that won't possibly work. Oh, that won't possibly work either. Oh, the budget! Oh, the resources!" The trick is to put responsibility on someone else while keeping decision-making power. If you simply hand over control of the organization, you're doing it wrong.

"The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

If you want a book-length treatment of this topic, read SJWs Always Lie. It's more about responding to being frozen, but you can reverse-engineer the process of freezing from it fairly easily.

"Furthermore, any target can always say, "Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?" When you "freeze the target," you disregard these arguments and, for the moment, all the others to blame. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all of the "others" come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target."

There are two main goals in a freeze operation. First, strip the target of their humanity and make them a legitimate target ("Nazification"). Second, see who comes out to support them. So even if someone comes out and says "Why are you attacking this guy? He's a good father and gives to charity" or whatever other legitimate points, they are the next target.

"It is not possible to develop the necessary hostility against, say, City Hall, which after all is a concrete, physical, inanimate structure, or against a corporation, which has no soul or identity, or a public school administration, which again is an inanimate system."

This is the why of a freeze. The whole point is to turn a human face into the enemy, who if we could but overthrow, peace and justice would return to the land.

With this focus comes a polarization. As we have indicated before, all issues must be polarized if action is to follow. The classic statement on polarization comes from Christ: "He that is not with me is against me" (Luke 11:23). He allowed no middle ground to the moneychangers in the Temple. One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.

"A leader may struggle toward a decision and weigh the merits and demerits of a situation which is 52 per cent positive and 48 per cent negative, but once the decision is reached he must assume that his cause is 100 per cent positive and the opposition 100 per cent negative. He can't toss forever in limbo, and avoid decision. He can't weigh arguments or reflect endlessly—he must decide and act.

Otherwise there are Hamlet's words: And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action."

Just want to throw this in - Alinsky talks a lot about matching yourself to your audience. And when this Atheist Communist Jew spends this much time talking about Jesus and Paul, you know he's serious.

"Can you imagine in the arena of conflict charging that so-and-so is a racist bastard and then diluting the impact of the attack with qualifying remarks such as "He is a good churchgoing man, generous to charity, and a good husband"? This becomes political idiocy."

And also why sodomites become "not really gay" and saints become "not really Christians." There's less cognitive dissonance in a lie than in two uncomfortable truths.

Also, this is why you cannot engage in Gentlemanly Warfare with these types. Maybe one or two people on the fringes who are just jumping on the bandwagon, but certainly not with the leaders of a freeze.

"•The real action is in the enemy's reaction.
•The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.
•Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with the action."

Three little bullet points to remember. And laid out like this, it becomes clear why they prefer soft targets that will break down crying or dance around in swastika underwear for the camera. The point is the reaction - the emotional breakdown, the emotional lashing out that they can make hay out of.

"It should be remembered that you can threaten the enemy and get away with it. You can insult and annoy him, but the one thing that is unforgivable and that is certain to get him to react is to laugh at him. This causes an irrational anger."

Why? Because the real action is the enemy's reaction.

"The resources of the Have-Nots are (1) no money and (2) lots of people. All right, let's start from there. People can show their power by voting. What else? Well, they have physical bodies. How can they use them? Now a melange of ideas begins to appear. Use the power of the law by making the establishment obey its own rules. Go outside the experience of the enemy, stay inside the experience of your people. Emphasize tactics that your people will enjoy. The threat is usually more terrifying than the tactic itself."

The above is a good example of the sort of brainstorming you need to engage in.

"With the universal principle that the right things are always done for the wrong reasons and the tactical rule that negatives become positives, we can understand the following examples."

Oh, Alinsky. Never change, you sociopathic bastard.

"Any white coming through the revolving doors would take one pop-eyed look and assume that somehow he had stepped into Africa. He would keep right on going out of the store. This would end the white trade for the day."

The above tactic was used to shut down a department store by packing it with black "shoppers." This is a good example of using a negative (raccism) as a positive (bending a store to your will).

But of course, the tactic is not limited to race or bodies. Imagine packing out a fashionable coffee shop or club with MAGA hats. Or Dads in jean shorts. In short, destroy the cultural capital of an enemy stronghold.

"This is the kind of tactic that can be used by the middle class too. Organized shopping, wholesale buying plus charging and returning everything on delivery, would add accounting costs to their attack on the retailer with the ominous threat of continued repetition."

In the above example, the black shoppers did actually purchase items - and then return everything. Synergy!

"This power cannibalism of the Haves permits only temporary truces, and only when equally confronted by a common enemy. Even then there are regular breaks in the ranks, as individual units attempt to exploit the general threat for their own special benefit. Here is the vulnerable belly of the status quo."

And at the end of the day, this is why the "conservatives" failed us, particularly the Capital branch. The average ultra-wealthy man will sell out the country that made him wealthy at the drop of a hat. Why? That same drive to scramble to the very top of the heap.

Small government and small capital are the bulwarks of freedom, if only because they reduce the advantages of sociopathy.

"I have on occasion remarked that I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday."

As indeed, they have and do. As every mega-conglomerate funding groups that destroy civilization does.

"Any attack against the status quo must use the strength of the enemy against itself. Let us examine this particular boycott—the error was in trying to boycott all, instead of some. Few liberals, white or black, would forgo all Christmas shopping in the most attractive shopping places.

If the same merchandise can be purchased at the same price at another department store across the street, the slight uneasiness that the picket line creates can affect a significant number of customers—they have an easy enough, visible enough alternative: they will cross the street. The power squeeze comes when the picketed department store sees a number of customers going across to its competitors."

Which is why we freeze and isolate individuals (people or institutions) one at a time. True purges are the domain of the dictator, not the Have-Nots.

"...the Have-Nots do not rigidly oppose the Haves, but yield in such planned and skilled ways that the superior strength of the Haves becomes their own undoing. For example, since the Haves publicly pose as the custodians of responsibility, morality, law, and justice (which are frequently strangers to each other), they can be constantly pushed to live up to their own book of morality and regulations. No organization, including organized religion, can live up to the letter of its own book. You can club them to death with their "book" of rules and regulations."

The more recent ideal is to seize control of the rule-making apparatus, make the rules more ambiguous, then club your enemies to death with them while sparing your friends. They can learn!

"We know that the efficacy of any action is in the reaction it evokes from the Haves, so that the cycle escalates in a continuum of conflict."

More conflict means more power for Alinskyites. The original goal is to drive society into permanent chaos so that the real goal can be implemented.

"A conflict that drags on too long becomes a drag...Among the reasons is the simple fact that human beings can sustain an interest in a particular subject only over a limited period of time."

Which is why I'll be cutting off this post after the next bit! But seriously, when you have no authority to force people to obey you, you must adopt something of the carnival barker to drum up interest.

"Once a specific tactic is used, it ceases to be outside the experience of the enemy. Before long he devises countermeasures that void the previous effective tactic. Recently the head of a corporation showed me the blueprint of a new plant and pointed to a large ground-floor area: "Boy, have we got an architect who is with it!" he chuckled. "See that big hall? That's our sit-in room! When the sit-inners come they'll be shown in and there will be coffee, T.V., and good toilet facilities—they can sit here until hell freezes over."

"Now you can relegate sit-ins to the Smithsonian Museum."

Ah, the Free Market at work! And also why simply flipping tactics back onto the Left in slavish imitation doesn't work. You're dragging your group (white-bread conservatives) into an action outside their experience (The Tea Party! Tea-Baggers! Powdered Wigs!) and which the enemy is intimately familiar with. You have to adapt a tactic to make it work for you, not for the last person who used it.

"The lesson here is that a major job of the organizer is to instantly develop the rationale for actions which have taken place by accident or impulsive anger."

One last Alinskyism for today: no matter what happens, you are right and good and have all the angels of paradise on your side. Otherwise, your group's reaction will become the enemy's real action.