Rules For The Radical Right? An Interview With Alinsky’s Biographer

M: How familiar are you with the ACORN videos?

I’ve only seen a snippet or two. I’ve never seen the ACORN videos in their entirety. I’ve just been following the news accounts, so that’s the extent of my familiarity. So I’m aware of them. I think I’ve seen about 10 or 15 seconds of one of the videos.

M: Some quick background: the videos were shot by two activist filmmakers who went into these ACORN offices undercover and pretended to be a pimp and a prostitute — if you’ve read the news accounts, you know that the short of it is, they managed to ultimately get the Senate to vote 83-7 to strip funds from ACORN and get the House to vote 345-75 to do the same thing — so in that sense they were effective.

The reason I bring them up is because James O’Keefe, who’s one of the guys behind the ACORN videos, he considers himself an Alinsky follower, in some respects. On his Facebook page, in the “About Me” section, he has a block quote about Alinsky setting up the Back of the Yards initiative.

Just of what I’ve read of him, which is not a lot, I do appreciate his sense of humor, and I especially like his gambit at his college — was it Rutgers?

M: Yup, Rutgers.

When he went in — he’s apparently anti-affirmative action — he went in to complain that there was a leprechaun on some product that was available on campus [Lucky Charms] and it was clearly demeaning to Irish-Americans, and he was Irish American and he wanted this to be banned or something to that effect. And in his views — I’ve read his account of this — he was taking Alinsky’s rules about how if you make the opposition live up to its own rules, you can beat them every time. And I thought that it was pretty creative on his part as a college student, and nervy. So I give him points on humor and having some balls.

M: How about the ACORN videos themselves?

Alinsky never — I can’t think of anything Alinsky did that is a close parallel to surreptitiously recording somebody, and I’m not at all a fan of that. I think that taking advantage of low-level employees is way below the belt. Whether ACORN has violated laws as an organization, that’s a whole other issue, and if somebody has evidence of it they ought to come forward with it, but the tactic that O’Keefe used going into the offices is not one of Alinsky’s, and should not be replicated by others anytime soon.

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Helen Zhang helped transcribe this interview.