Are You A Right-Wing Extremist?
Un-rigging The Game
You labeled me, I label you. - Metallica
Do you want to understand the radical left? Do you want a peak behind the curtain on why current events are transpiring the way they are? Do you want to read the playbook that apparently all institutions are now following like the Bible or Quran? Then read Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals.
I’ve read this multiple times, and each time I do, I’m fascinated by how it truly is a religious book, more relevant and applicable to the age we live in in the West than possibly any other book, including the aforementioned Bible or Quran.
Just like the Bible has the 10 Commandments and the Beatitudes, or the Quran has The Five Pillars, Rules for Radicals provides us with a similar set of tenets for the fundamental transformation of a society. These tenets are being followed and implemented with a fundamental religious devotion that would make the most traditional religious zealot blush. The twelve tenets - rules - are as follows:
RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”
RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.”
RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”
RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”
RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.”
RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.”
RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”
RULE 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
I’m going to expand on one of those rules - Rule 12 - here. Rule 12 states:
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it
Want to know why the Trump era appeared to break so many brains? Want to know why right now, YOU are probably being lumped into a “right-wing extremist” category, despite the fact that you may have grown up apolitical, liberal, libertarian, or just a plain regular person wanting to go to work, save some money, raise good kids, BBQ in the back yard, and take a vacation from time to time?
It’s because YOU are now the target.
Why are YOU the target?
Plain and simply, you are the target because you value individual freedom. You have some modicum of critical thinking left. You want less government, not more. You believe that no other human has the right to tell you how - and sure as hell not force you - to live your life, how to raise your kids, what to think, how to feel, what to put in your body, etc.
Not too long ago, this way of life was valued and encouraged in much of the West.
However, while the mainstream West was peaking, and demonstrations of personal freedom were breaking out all over the place, there was a growing number of Alinsky-ites fervently attending covert church meetings. As these congregants assembled and looked around, they smiled and sang Kumbaya together with their Marxist, Communist, and power-hungry brethren, praying deliriously to the god of Control.
As their power and unity grew, they moved from the “finding each other and organizing” stage to the “crusade” stage. They went from figuring out and firming up their basic universal doctrines of faith into the evangelism phase of religion. They went on the offensive.
Using this Alinsky proverb, they went to work.
They began a full-frontal assault on politics, pulpits, board rooms, class rooms, court rooms, ad agencies, science labs, accounting offices, and all of the bureaucracies. (Forgive me for sounding like Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive).
They realized violent tactics and burning bras in front of cameras on the Capitol steps would cause more harm than good and ultimately destroy their crusade.
So they assimilated. They became the chameleons and secret double agents necessary for the cause. They moved into the suburbs and smiled and waited, working feverishly at their mission.
Little by little, day by day, they began to capture the institutions. They started taking ground at a rapid pace, because it was easy ground to take. No one was really looking. It’s easy to take a stronghold when there’s no one defending it. While the establishment was fighting a traditional battle with a Cold War mindset, and the regular citizens were busy chasing their pursuit of happiness, this new religion infiltrated key installation after key instillation, practically unabated and unchallenged.
Once inside, they went to work on their crusade, making converts and changing minds. At first, it was “mostly peaceful”, but then as they felt their power growing and their organization getting stronger, they began to exert their influence in more pronounced ways.
The term “political correctness (PC)” - used in the Marxist-Leninist vocabulary following the Russian Revolution in 1917 - began to come to the forefront. Oddly enough, it was used by a lot of conservative commentators in the early 1990s, tongue-in-cheek, to describe the indoctrination that they were observing on the college campuses. However, it became one of the first significant signals that worked its way into the social consciousness that there was indeed something profoundly changing in the way things were being done. A major philosophical shift was taking place, bubbling up first in the universities, then into politics. It created a name for this new religion.
Fast forward to today, and we’ve had several iterations of this “political correctness”, including Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) in the late 2000s-2015ish, into what we’re now calling Woke. At this point, it’s pretty clear how this religion has evolved and converted more than just some college kids. It’s also pretty clear how this religion has gone from whisperings in the campus lecture halls to aggressive and militant intimidation of the masses.
What started in the quiet areas of a professor’s seminar has now spread to nearly every HR department, social media company, school board, nightly news program, and now, maybe most frightening, the strongest military on earth. Seemingly everywhere we turn, we’re being lectured and re-educated on race, gender, identity, justice, tolerance, diversity, and equity.
If it just stopped there, I could live and let live. I could tune out. I’m pretty libertarian, and if you want to live your life a certain way as an individual, I will give you that respect. It’s your freedom and decision to do so. If you want to drown yourself in alcohol or drugs or food or sex, I don’t agree with that as the most optimal lifestyle, but I’m not you. I don’t have to suffer those consequences that you will of making your own poor decisions. At least I shouldn’t.
And that’s the problem. Not only are you asking me to accept your decisions and the consequences that come with those decisions, you demand it. You threaten. You bully. You litigate. You make me become an outlaw.
We have roaming gangs framed as mostly peaceful protests rolling through the streets, destroying property, and intimidating innocent bystanders.
Here in Pittsburgh in 2020, there was an incident involving a BLM rally where demonstrators intimidated an older couple just sitting and having drinks outside. A cyclist got smacked in the head with a skateboard. I tried looking up the raw footage on YouTube (wasn’t there anymore), but instead found this amazing spin by the local news.
We have fabulous adults twerking to 5 year olds and reading wonderful stories of gender deconstruction to elementary kids.
If you’re an adult, and you are peacefully, legally and ethically trying to live your own life, regardless of what I think of your lifestyle, go for it. If you want to organize, demonstrate, use the courts, use your social media to promote your beliefs, go for it, regardless if I agree with it or not.
BUT. Here’s the flip-side.
I get to disagree with you, and I get to oppose you with every tool that you also have available to you. It’s not a one-way street for you.
But here we are, and that’s the crux of this post. The MOMENT you set up a standard for yourself that you no longer afford to me, then you’ve become the very oppressor that you claim to be justly and passionately fighting against. You are no longer a victim. You’re fair game. Just because you don’t like the game doesn’t mean you get to change the rules.
I love sports, specifically hockey, because it’s two sides going after each other in a (mostly) neutral and fair competitive environment. There are winners and losers. Only one team finds the glory they set out to capture. Then next year, they have to defend that glory, and if they have what it takes, they do. If they don’t, there’s another winner.
And one of the BEST things about hockey is that regardless of how severely one team beats another or how brutal the competition is, at the end of each playoff series, both teams line up, shake hands, and show a mutual respect for the competition. It’s one of my favorite moments in all of sports.
What our current society is doing to us in this era of Woke is saying
We’re going to put two teams on the ice. I get to do whatever I want, and you have to stand there and let me. Otherwise, if you compete, I get to yell at you. I get to fight you. I’m allowed to cheat. The point is, I’m going to win, and you’re not allowed to stop me. So just don’t play, loser.
This scenario that many of us find ourselves in feels much like watching the Harlem Globe Trotters play the Washington Generals. The outcome’s been pre-decided. We’re simply the foil. There’s no handshake line because there’s no competition. The other team has ZERO respect for you, they rigged the game, and they bought out the refs.
So now we come to the phase where Rule 12 is evident: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it
In order to “win” - whether it’s BLM, Anitfa, Drag Queen Story Hour, that senate seat, getting vaccinated, or insert item here - the opposition picks the target (non-compliant), freezes it (a photograph, a social media post, one reference from 30 years ago in an author’s book), personalizes it (this photograph, post, reference done by this villain speaks for ALL those who remotely hold some agreement or perceived agreement), and then polarizes them (aren’t they the WORST? A threat to democracy, all of them! Villains!)
So with this formula, anyone who’s ever agreed with one single thing someone like Donald Trump has said or done is now a “radical white right-wing extremist”.
It’s a really neat trick, because once you isolate, slap a label on, and throw that package into the propaganda blender, you take the knees out from under your competition.
The good thing - the hope - is that this is completely unsustainable. Eventually you run out of fingers to point and eventually end up pointing back at yourself. We’re still at the point where if enough people understand this game and say “wait a minute, I don’t like the rules. I CAN compete, and I CAN win”, there’s a good chance that we can come back to a real, genuine, competitive playing field.
The terrifying thing is that if we DON’T change this game ASAP, and every single supposedly impartial “ref” gets bought or co-opted (military, law enforcement, legislature, etc.), there will never be a fair game again.
This religion doesn’t care about anything or anyone besides winning. They will turn you - a reasonable, thoughtful, principled, normal human just trying to live your life - into nameless, faceless, mass of vile and terror spawned from the pit of hell. It doesn’t matter where you come from, what your background is, what your politics or religious beliefs are.
None of that matters.
All that matters is that you conform to the religion, or you become cast out.
Saved this one.
What I loved about playing hockey, it seemed a perfect balance between brutality and grace.
Gretzky could be in the right place at the right time effortlessly, while others less skilled in scoring would be there to knock a man to the ice who just caught a pass. They could fight and bloody each other and still line up and shake hands.
The scary thing is, these wokesters have aligned with the globalist transhumanists, and they want to use currency and pharmaceuticals to crush free thought. I wrote a bit about that today too, as it relates to Climate Change. It helps to use their tactics against them.
https://williamhunterduncan.substack.com/p/q-do-you-believe-in-climate-change
Fantastic article … I sense you believe the fight is still winnable. I’m afraid I do not. In any fight I would always take the unscrupulous over those who believe in fair play …. The moral simply cannot compete with the amoral on a field of battle - they haven’t the tools. Morality, dignity, humanity, honesty and dare I say Faith have all been weaponized by the left against us. They recognize those things severely constrict our available responses. They are not interested in fair play, which is why they rig the game in the first place. There are no rules in War. All is fair. Until such time our side recognizes this and abandons the moral boat anchors we are carrying around (and the enemy is bludgeoning us with) I suspect the Great War is un-winnable. I hope I’m wrong.