This man's Big Tory Idea: transformational Marxism
When I read newspaper reports of David Cameron’s ‘big society’ speech, my heart sank. Not because I disapprove of the idea of the ‘big society’ replacing the ‘big state’; on the contrary, I have been banging on about this for years. Having seen the way in which locally administered public services can regenerate a community and its social glue, I am deeply persuaded of the paramount need to get the state out of people’s lives and restore the ‘little platoons’ of civic society.
My heart sank because, once again, Cameron appeared to be facing in two directions at once. Proclaiming his intention to end the ‘big state’, what he actually seemed to be proposing – according to the reports presumably informed by background briefings on his speech – was to a large extent a redirection of state administered funds from centrally delivered to locally administered services. But that doesn’t end the ‘big state’ at all. Instead, it nationalises the voluntary sector and thus extends the size and power of the state.
What the state pays for, it controls. The only way to end that control is to end the taxpayer-funded structure of these services. And even if you look at the most radical of the Tories’ public sector proposals, the ‘Swedish model’ school reforms proposed by Michael Gove, these parent-run schools will still be constrained by state regulation.
So I was disheartened by what appeared to be another example of over-heated spin. But that was before I read the speech itself and, even more astounding, the Tory party’s own story puffing this speech. At this point I fell off my chair. For the party’s puff trumpeted:
Ye gods. Rub your eyes, folks. Saul Alinsky?? Followers of this blog will know that I have written many times about Alinsky and his baleful influence over Obama. For Alinsky-ite 'community organisers' are not good-hearted volunteers serving soup to the poor. I wrote here:The new policies announced as part of the Big Society plan include:
“Neighbourhood army” of 5,000 full-time, professional community organisers who will be trained with the skills they need to identify local community leaders, bring communities together, help people start their own neighbourhood groups, and give communities the help they need to take control and tackle their problems. This plan is directly based on the successful community organising movement established by Saul Alinsky in the United States and has successfully trained generations of community organisers, including President Obama (my emphasis).
The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a ‘transformational Marxist’ in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a ‘long march through the institutions’ by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism. A master of infiltration, Alinsky wooed Chicago mobsters and Wall Street financiers alike. And successive Democratic politicians fell under his spell.His creed was set out in his book ‘Rules for Radicals’ – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the ‘first radical’. It was Alinsky for whom ‘change’ was his mantra. And by ‘change’, he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through ‘people’s organisations’.
Community organisers would mobilise direct action by the oppressed masses against their capitalist oppressors. In FrontPageMagazine.Com John Perazzo writes:
These People’s Organizations were to be composed largely of discontented individuals who believed that society was replete with injustices that prevented them from being able to live satisfying lives. Such organizations, Alinsky advised, should not be imported from the outside into a community, but rather should be staffed by locals who, with some guidance from trained radical organizers, could set their own agendas.
The installment of local leaders as the top-level officers of People’s Organizations helped give the organizations credibility and authenticity in the eyes of the community. This tactic closely paralleled the longtime Communist Party strategy of creating front organizations that ostensibly were led by non-communist fellow-travelers, but which were in fact controlled by Party members behind the scenes...
Alinsky viewed as supremely important the role of the organizer, or master manipulator, whose guidance was responsible for setting the agendas of the People’s Organization... Alinsky laid out a set of basic principles to guide the actions and decisions of radical organizers and the People’s Organizations they established. The organizer, he said, ‘must first rub raw the resentments of the people; fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act.’[40] The organizer’s function, he added, was ‘to agitate to the point of conflict’[41] and ‘to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a “dangerous enemy.” ‘[42] ‘The word ‘enemy,’ said Alinsky, ‘is sufficient to put the organizer on the side of the people’;[43] i.e., to convince members of the community that he is so eager to advocate on their behalf, that he has willingly opened himself up to condemnation and derision.
The British Conservative party has signed up to the revolutionary Marxist politics of Saul Alinsky and his seditious strategy of using ‘community organisers’ to turn the people against the state and against the bedrock moral and social values of their country – and it is almost certainly too ignorant, lazy or stupid to realise that this is what it means.
Unbelievable.
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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power', published by Encounter.
For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here
Melanie Phillips blog archive
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Frank P
April 2nd, 2010 1:14amGood God Melanie! When I posted on Pete Hoskins' thread "Prepare for an Annual Big Society Day" on 31st March at 12.57 pm., the item you quote on the "Conservative" blog had not even been written; that is dated 31st March 2010 hrs:
Here is what I wrote about 8 hours earlier:
>"Straight from Obama's game plan - and Saul Alinski's teachings. God above! Are we really moving towards Gramsci's Guerrillas Mark II in Britain? Have we learned nothing from the past 13 disastrous years?
It certainly has the stamp of Antonio Blond on it:
http://www.labourlist.org/blond-v-blonde-iron-lady-will-defeat-red-tory-anthony-painter." <
So at last the truth is out, what I have been saying for the last year or more (and have been castigated for, by many on the Speccy blogs) is now an admitted policy from the horses' mouths: the Cameroons are singing to Saul Alinski's hymn sheet.
Even if Cameron wins the election, we now know that he will merely grasp the baton from Gordon Brown and the Long March will continue. Utter madness! This eclipses even the Neather revelations. The two main parties of this country are vying to further the causes of neo-Marxist subversives. Can we assume that Fraser Nelson and the crew are all working to the same game plan? And Andrew Neil? Certainly I have suspected it for some time? What is to be done? This must receive the widest publicity.
Is it an April Fool spoof or something?
Robert of Ottawa
April 2nd, 2010 1:59amBugga me, the socialists have taken over. In the US and UK!
...I will not despair, even though I walk through the valley of death and socialism....
Robert of Ottawa
April 2nd, 2010 2:01amBTW I've never seen a community organization group that was of "the community"; rather of the hard-core supporters who get paid if they are zealous enough.
Robert of Ottawa
April 2nd, 2010 2:04amThe British Conservative party – is almost certainly too ignorant, lazy or stupid to realise that this is what it means.
This is what they lernt at univeritee; wo' you expeck?
r.camillo
April 2nd, 2010 2:12ammelanie , i totally agree with you..as an australian, i see the same policies carried out by our current prime minister,but here i have to dissent with you on your past blogs, ie that in general the broad community tends to get it right. i do not agree. the oz community are generally a bunch of morons and the english community even more so.
Roy
April 2nd, 2010 5:54amIs the British political imagination of the right so deplete as to go borrowing ideas from the deepest recesses of Americas anti establishment apparatchiks? Are they so dumbfounded and stumped for a cure for Britain? Are they so blind as they cannot see or hear what the country is screaming out to them? Have they talked themselves hoarse, blathering on about everything except knowing what to do about the country? This latest by Melanie is the surest sign they are dead wood whether they gain office or not.
Worried
April 2nd, 2010 6:11amTerrifying comes to mind too.
Huw Thornton
April 2nd, 2010 8:48amI'm not sure it's so surprising, Melanie. I think that the Tories are so keen to emulate Obama's path to success that they will pick up any detail, however outlandish. It's just that "time for a change" may be less of a vacuous slogan than people think - it may mean the deliberate ending of any distinctive Conservative position on anything.
Man With A Very Hot Bladder
April 2nd, 2010 9:44amYes, Melanie. Unbelievable is the word.
GeoffM
April 2nd, 2010 10:44amIf anyone wants to get behind the Community Organiser Marxist activities in the US then just watch Glen Beck on Fox news (Sky 509).
Needless to say here, in the Birthplace of Democracy, we have no such analysis of the attacks upon our Rights, Culture, social cohesion and national identity.
I have long suspected Cameron - his support for the UAF and his Multiculturalist policies - of being a closet Marxist.
It seems we are set to continue "The Project" regardless of who gets in.
This will not end well !
Graeme Thompson
April 2nd, 2010 10:56amWhatever the result of the election it will be a disaster for Britain.
If Cameron gets in the Gramscian subversives who dictate the terms of political discourse in this country will be yapping at his heels at every moment to get him jumping through hoops for them like a pet poodle, and he will. The country's degeneration will accelerate under Cameron, not lessen.
Thomas
April 2nd, 2010 11:15amHi guys
My name is Thomas and I'd like to say, I think it's very good what David Cameron is doing for our country. I study politics at university so I've learned many things about politics, and I know that Saul Alinksy was a good man who had lots of amazing ideas for how to change the world. The world is a terrible place, and it's because of old fashioned people with their old ideas. The old ideas will break the world. We shouldn't just be allowed to do what we want, and the state and Marxism are a great way to stop bad things like poverty and climate change. Did you know climate change will destroy the world in fifty years? It's true. In conclusion, I would like to say I think we should all have faith in the state and in Marxism and in David Cameron who is changing the Conservatives for the better.
Thank you,
Thomas
Archie
April 2nd, 2010 11:30amRobert of Ottawa: Last time I checked, Canada was Political Correctness Central! Don't take my word for it, see here: http://www.steynonline.com/content/blogcategory/15/100/
je threbb (17)
April 2nd, 2010 12:49pmThomas @ 11.15am -
its so sort of great to read the thuoghts of, you know, a great thinker like yourself.
but people are to set in thier old ways to understand independant free thinkers like us. dangerous subversives like you will never be recognised.
freternal peace, comrade
Dee Ranged
April 2nd, 2010 2:00pmFrank P
How correct you are!
Both Cameron and Cleff have signed up to cultural Marxism.
Cameroon is even wooing the pink vote now.
See www.gayconspiracy.info
.
Neil Craig
April 2nd, 2010 3:26pmThis is the problem with having no basic principles - somebody hires some out to you.
Georgina Pascale
April 2nd, 2010 3:58pmIn Britain I would like all those council offices and those government offices to get the hell out of the capital, this people are ignorant and don't know what they are doing also they are getting paid to destroy the country closing down parks, schools, cinemas, swimming pools and everything nice so they can build ugly housing multicultural states for criminals and losers, why we are paying high taxes? no schools for our kids the closest higher education schools are in a distance between New york and New Jersey in a bad neighborhood, the government will say send the kids to public transport I would not imagine sending children to a public transportation by themselves, no one complains about anything
everyone put their head down because they don't care
Are you blind?
April 2nd, 2010 4:23pmThomas,
If this is what you learn at university then I suspect it would be best for you and your ilk to to study such 'life lifting' greats as Pol Pot, Mao, Hugo Chavez and Stalin, and you can add Mr 'Hopey-Changey' BHO to the list as well.Marxism - it's a long slow march away from life and love to death and destruction.
Robin
April 2nd, 2010 5:06pmThomas:
You are, as they say, "having a laugh"?
P.H.
April 2nd, 2010 6:24pmIs Cameron knave or a fool?
Both. ...But more the latter than the former. He's a clueless to-the-manor-born toff, desperate to gain office, who has never had to worry about principle or consequence. I doubt it occurs to him to check out Alinsky's pedigree.
...By the way, if you now vote for the Tories, then you too are either a knave or a fool.
Happy Bank Holiday.
Michael Booth
April 2nd, 2010 7:18pmThomas - very funny.
Melanie, once again spot on. Feel deepening despair: yes, I can't wait to see Brown and Co kicked out, but no, I have no faith or hope in what might follow with Dave.
C. Gee
April 2nd, 2010 7:22pmEurope is a Community Organization.
The idea that small, local Communities are less despotic than big international ones is exactly what Alinsky hopes to foster.
Collectivist dreams can be realized on an animal farm.
Organized Communities used to be known as "Soviets".
Baron Pippin II
April 2nd, 2010 7:36pmThomas @ 11.15:
bit too obvious, but you’ll learn what with studying politics and at university.
you wrong on global warming though, read Prince Charles’s essays on the subject. If memory serves, the world will end at 4PM give or take few minutes on June 11th, 2017. Good news for you in that if it were to end in fifty years you’ll be what? Old with old ideas?
Baron
April 2nd, 2010 8:02pmMelanie, am a great believer in the eternal wisdom of the unwashed. They’ll deliver again in May, and the boy will be gone.
Rose
April 2nd, 2010 10:13pmSurely Cameron hasn't taken on any Alinsky ideology! He has just sifted some ideas! He wants the top job but unfortunately he is quite shallow and not over bright so he has to over rely on PR packaging and stealing ideas.
But Cameron a covert Marxist,a Machiavellian figure with a hidden agenda.
I don't think so!
Edward Huxley
April 3rd, 2010 11:41amIf David Cameron becomes p.m. every adult in the country would be expected to join a neighbourhood group to carry out good deeds in their community, these to be run by a "community" organiser trained with government funds. For "government" read "taxpayers`", governments do not have any money, only what they take off us in taxes.
There would also be a Big Society Day, held on a Saturday.
Another quango, truly an Orwellian scheme. We want less state interference, not more.
Unpublished letter to the Telegraph, following an article on this.
Jim Rogers
April 3rd, 2010 12:16pmI have to say I was alarmed myself when I read he was in favour of something Saul Alinsky came up with, also the way he keeps praising the communist Obama does not fill me with hope either.
George Earle
April 3rd, 2010 12:41pmEdward Huxley is quite right.I think this policy has been sprung on us at a suspiciously late date. UKIP now need to question this severely in their campaigning.
Nani
April 3rd, 2010 3:04pmAs ever, Melanie, you have been well ahead of the pack in bringing these ideas to people's attention. I never thought I'd see them resurface in the British Conservative Party, though.
Lifeboat! Anybody?
As you have also said before: what is the Conservative party for? Well, now we know. Nothing. As we were. Just let the the state get bigger, fatter, more nasty and aggressive.
Labour may not agree with the Conservative Party's free market economics but it has left that more or less well alone, knowing that it can put its Marxian acid to much better use in the culture wars.
With the arguments on free market economics intact, there is only one argument that needs taking forward: the scaling back of the state, yet David Cameron - and this really shows you the level of so-called intelligence in the Conservative Party - embraces the very creed that has been destroying this country for the last 13 years and seeks to enlarge it.
The Conservative Party is quite simply full of people who are as thick as a brick.
The saddest part of what you says is, indeed, that the Conservative Party "is almost certainly too ignorant, lazy or stupid to realise that this is what it means".
On a not dissimilar theme, Simon Heffer wrote a quite extraordinary essay a few weeks ago on liberalism and autonomy, which had about four times more comments than he usually gets, such was the interest in this subject. It really chimes with what Ms Phillips writes here and pays a second reading:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/7459220/Labour-has-taken-13-years-of-diabolical-liberties-with-Britain.html
Verity
April 3rd, 2010 4:44pmI'm with Rose (although that doesn't dilute Melanie's points in any way) and think Dave just isn't one of the brighter lights in the harbour.
He got his job at Carlton through patronage (a family member, if memory serves), but the notion that being head of a PR department indicates sufficient gravitas to lead a great political party to victory is lunacy.
It would not surprise me to hear that he didn't actually know who Saul Alinsky is. I'm betting David Dim just thought that "neighbourhood organisers" sounded like a good, "caring Conservative", touchy feely idea and was much employed by his hero Obama.
Archie
April 3rd, 2010 8:33pmSo Cameron has an article in The Telegraph today, portentously titled for this holiday. He should finally find out what the electorate - or at least that section who are Telegraph readers - think of him and his "policies".............if he takes the trouble to read the replies, which based on previous form is less than likely.
Cassandra Troy
April 4th, 2010 3:52pmWell, perhaps this was only to be expected with Cameron hiring two top Obama advisors, one of which Anita "Mao Tse" Dunn, a follower of both Alinsky as well as, well - Mao: http://blogs.wsj.com/iainmartin/2010/02/25/cameron-hires-obama-advisers-for-tv-debates-with-brown/
Geoff T.
April 5th, 2010 11:17amEvery time Cameron opens his mouth I am driven further to the right,this is not the Tory Party I grew up with!!!
Stuart Rose
April 5th, 2010 2:48pmGiven all that has been written in U.S. conservative media about Alinsky and Melanie's pieces, it is surreal that the Conservative party hold ups Alinsky as a model.
Melanie is right to say that ignorance, laziness, and stupidity swim freely in the minds of Tory bigwigs.
Larwood
April 5th, 2010 4:54pm"If David Cameron becomes p.m. every adult in the country would be expected to join a neighbourhood group to carry out good deeds in their community"
This sounds like an excellent idea. Far better than Little Englanders and not-in-my-backyard types cowering behind their net curtains and locked front doors. Oddly enough, there is such a thing as society.
Derek BLADES
April 5th, 2010 7:05pmEdward Huxley wrote ""If David Cameron becomes p.m. every adult in the country would be expected to join a neighbourhood group to carry out good deeds in their community"
When I was last Washington I stayed with affluent friends in a chique neighbourhood in Virginia. Around 11:00 pm the husband excused himself explaining that, as his duty with a neighbour watch group, it was his hour to drive around the block looking for suspicious characters.
What a way to live! Mr Cameron's idea is that neighbours should be something other than vigilantes and I tend to agree with him. What about you Huxley?
David Gress
April 6th, 2010 1:58amNani appears to believe that the Tories are in favour of free market economics. They're not. If they were, we wouldn't have heard of this asinine proposal Melanie reports.
That Cameron is a superficial, clueless, self-satisfied and utterly ignorant fool is news to no one. (The same can be said of most other politicians, of course). The problem is that, just as with McCain vs. Obama in the US, his loss, which he fully deserves, gives you Brits five more years of NuLabour. There just is no good choice!
SimonP
April 6th, 2010 10:22amSome people who would vote Tory "no matter what" are hoping that Cameron's previous lack of announcing his policies is because Labour might (or, would) copy them.
My response to this has been, "If Cameron actually had *conservative* policies, then Labour couldn't copy them.
And now the lid is fully off, we can have no doubt what is in Cameron's barrel of powder:
"Heir to Blair"
"Another Obama"
"Vote for Change"
"Community organiser"
"Saul Alinsky"
Can anyone right-of-center vote for NuCon? I used to think so.
Will the government shift to the right or more to the left under Cameron? Cameron now says a vote for him would be a vote for Saul Alinsky's revolutionary Marxism.
NuCon has been arguing, "Vote for Cameron; it's the only way to get Brown and NuLab out." This has been the only argument that I heard from them, which once had enough weight of itself to persuade me to vote for the Conservatives.
I would almost vote for anything on the right to get NuLab out of government. (Not including BNP; anyway, it's not on the right.)
But it's clear to me now that I can't include the Conservatives in that "anything on the right." It looks like the "long march through the institutions" has hollowed out the Conservative Party and filled it with leftists.
Or - would the "vote Conservative no matter what" brigade now argue, that it is merely that Cameron would employ the tools of revolutionary Marxism (Saul Alinsky, etc.) but without adopting the political philosophy of Marxism, in order to undo Britain's current slide into socialism?
My answer: You can't fight cancer with cancer, Mr Cameron.
They also argue, "Please don't vote UKIP! UKIP splits the Conservative vote. A vote for UKIP is a vote for Brown."
My answer: "Now it's looking to me like a vote for Cameron is would be vote for Alinsky, and Marx."
RR
April 6th, 2010 3:55pmDo you think any of the eejits in the conservative party ever read the blogs. Do they realise they are as despised as the party currently in power and that this member of the great unwashed will not be voting for any party with the syllable "con" "our" or "atic" in it. UKIP looks better by the minute
Bohodotcom
April 7th, 2010 5:31pmThese Etonians have form when it comes to Marxism. I wouldn't worry too much, it's better than the Stalinist alternative, and at least an OE will want to maintain traditional British standards.
Tim Carpenter LPUK
April 8th, 2010 12:20pm"Unbelieveable"
I disagree, it is totally believable, given Cameron.
David Bouvier
April 8th, 2010 11:25pmThe tin-foil brigade might want to consider the possibility that Cameron is looking to use Alinsky's method to promote Conservative ideology.
One thing I note is Cameronian conservatives seem to have a genuine commitment to volunteer and charity work, which is less obvious with the pull-up-the-drawbridge brigade.
W Smith
April 10th, 2010 3:15pmJust Common Purpose by another name. The role of the "community organisers" will be to implement EU policy handed down via the unelected regional assemblies (Parliament will be redundant)and to stifle dissent and improper thinking.
Benson
April 10th, 2010 10:34pmGood Lord. Your conservative party would be too far left for many Democrats (outside of the Obama Administration) here in the states.
Steve
April 22nd, 2010 1:27amhttp://www.michaelsavage.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=11129
From Churchill to No Will
Elections in the United States are months away, but in England, they’re going to be voting next month. And today they had a debate between the leaders of the parties. This was the first televised national debate between party leaders in Britain. In England, the equivalent of the Democrats is the Labour Party, headed by Gordon Brown, who is the current prime minister. And the equivalent of the Republicans is the Conservative Party, headed by David Cameron.
Now just a few months ago, the conservative party was up 20 percent in the polls over Gordon Brown and his socialist Labour Party. Today, the polls show that they lead by only a couple of percentage points. How did this happen? How did Gordon Brown – who was discredited by scandal after scandal, by his far-left politics, and by his banning of Michael Savage from the U.K. – manage to draw even in the polls with the conservatives? Because conservative leader David Cameron, like his Republican counterparts in the United States, is moving as fast as he can to the left. He’s taken a page out of Obama’s playbook and promised Britons “Change [they] Can Believe In.” he fully supports Britain’s socialist national health-care system. And worst of all, the conservatives have hired Anita Dunn, Obama’s former communications director, the woman who claimed that one of her heroes was Chinese Communist leader Chairman Mao.
British voters can see that the British Conservative Party, just like the Republican party, has no will to be really conservative. They’ve have gone from Churchill to no will in one generation. And so the few real conservatives left in England are opting not to support the party. It’s exactly what’s happening in the United States. The Republicans are backing off their promises to repeal Obamacare, Republicans are saying Hillary Clinton would be a good Supreme Court nominee, Republicans are saying Nancy Pelosi is a nice lady. The weakness and liberality from so-called right-wing parties on both sides of the Atlantic is stunning. And nothing will change for the better here or in England until conservatives have real conservative leadership.