Meaningless insults/Alinsky

Many right-wingers seem to believe that association with Saul Alinsky is somehow a terrible insult and an effective way of taking down liberals. This is remarkably silly, because most liberals have never heard of Mr. Alinsky, much less know anything about him, and many of them heard it first from some right-winger using it as an insult.

On reading the Wikipedia entry, he seems like a good guy:

• community organizer
• worked to improve the living conditions of poor communities
• particularly effective in organizing black communities to empower themselves
• wrote a book, Rules for Radicals, outlining how activists could be more effective

When someone considers someone like this to be a negative example, it says more about the speaker's values than the target's.

Usages

• 2014-10-25 Ronald Cole "Is Alinsky tactic #5 all you have left?"