remember, those evil reds from moscow became a pretty appealing ally in the face of old adolf hitler. politics (and war) make for strange bedfellows.

and there were certainly others besides orwell who fought fascism and rejected communism.

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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

There was nothing appealing about them. Both the Nazi's and the communists were criminal regimes responsible for complete abrogation of human rights and mass killings. They both invaded Poland but the west chose to ignore the Russians transgressions. Not surprisingly as they knew full well they'd never defeat Germany without them.

Western Europe's weakness led them to "sell their souls" to a lesser evil (by a hair). And sell eastern europe down the volga when it was all over.

Nothing to be proud of there.

- Peter.

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2021 Chevrolet Spark
Formerly...
2000 GMC Sonoma
1981 240D 4spd stick. 347000 miles. Deceased Feb 14 2021
2002 Kia Rio. Worst crap on four wheels
1981 240D 4spd stick. 389000 miles.
1984 123 200
1979 116 280S
1972 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1971 108 280S

well, anyway, for whom the bell tolls is a great book, and hemingway gave time and money to the anti-fascists - in vain - and he was certainly no lover of moscow, comintern, c.p.u.s.a., trotskyites, socialists etc.

and mr. alinsky did also, and that alone makes him seems noble.

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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

So Alinsky claimed he wasn't a communist.....

BFD

Karl Marx claimed he wasn't a Marxist.


If you look through the FOIA files on FBI.gov, you won't find a published file with Alinsky or the Industrial Areas Foundation in the title. I have no doubt that one exists, just not published. If you go digging through the published files on other subversives of that time frame, you will find Alinsky's name all through them, so, no doubt, J. Edgar had his number.

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Palangi

2004 C240 Wagon 203.261 Baby Benz
2008 ML320 CDI Highway Cruiser
2006 Toyota Prius, Saving the Planet @ 48 mpg
2000 F-150, Destroying the Planet @ 20 mpg



TRUMP .......... WHITEHOUSE
HILLARY .........JAILHOUSE
BERNIE .......... NUTHOUSE
0BAMA .......... OUTHOUSE

^^^Now that's funny!

And of course Joseph Stalin claimed he wasn't a Stalinist. LOL!

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'06 E320 CDI
'17 Corvette Stingray Vert

Marx really said that.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/k/karl_marx.html


Alinsky was as red as a well fertilized tomato.

Those who claim he wasn't, know full well what he was.

Same way they know what 0boma is.

__________________
Palangi

2004 C240 Wagon 203.261 Baby Benz
2008 ML320 CDI Highway Cruiser
2006 Toyota Prius, Saving the Planet @ 48 mpg
2000 F-150, Destroying the Planet @ 20 mpg



TRUMP .......... WHITEHOUSE
HILLARY .........JAILHOUSE
BERNIE .......... NUTHOUSE
0BAMA .......... OUTHOUSE

"I am not a Marxist."
Karl Marx

LMAO!!!

__________________
'06 E320 CDI
'17 Corvette Stingray Vert

When asked during an interview whether he ever considered becoming a communist party member, he replied:
"Not at any time. I've never joined any organization -- not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.' If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide." [1]


from playboy interview, 1972

mr. alinsky is being quoted above

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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

And below:

answering the question that was asked before the above question and answer

PLAYBOY: What was your own relationship with the Communist Party?

ALINSKY: I knew plenty of Communists in those days, and I worked with them on a number of projects. Back in the Thirties, the Communists did a hell of a lot of good work; they were in the vanguard of the labor movement and they played an important role in aiding blacks and Okies and Southern sharecroppers. Anybody who tells you he was active in progressive causes in those days and never worked with the Reds is a goddamn liar. Their platform stood for all the right things, and unlike many liberals, they were willing to put their bodies on the line. Without the Communists, for example, I doubt the C.I.O. could have won all the battles it did. I was also sympathetic to Russia in those days, not because I admired Stalin or the Soviet system but because it seemed to be the only country willing to stand up to Hitler. I was in charge of a big part of fund raising for the International Brigade and in that capacity I worked in close alliance with the Communist Party.
When the Nazi-Soviet Pact came, though, and I refused to toe the party line and urged support for England and for American intervention in the war, the party turned on me tooth and nail. Chicago Reds plastered the Back of the Yards with big posters featuring a caricature of me with a snarling, slavering fanged mouth and wild eyes, labeled, "This is the face of a warmonger." But there were too many Poles, Czechs, Lithuanians and Latvians in the area for that tactic to go over very well. Actually, the greatest weakness of the party was its slavish parroting of the Moscow line. It could have been much more effective if it had adopted a relatively independent stance, like the western European parties do today. But all in all, and despite my own fights with them, I think the Communists of the Thirties deserve a lot of credit for the struggles they led or participated in. Today the party is just a shadow of the past, but in the Depiession it was a positive force for social change. A lot of its leaders and organizers were jerks, of course, but objectively the party in those days was on the right side and did considerable good.[/QUOTE]

Kind of funny how the earlier question doesn't appear in the Saul Alinsky Wiki source!

I would be pretty disapointed in an activist of that era who didn't at least claim to be a communist (not necessarily a Communist). If he was some type of moderate "reformer" we wouldn't be talking about him.

I would have expected O to have been influenced by more recent (and more radical) activists, but he is really just a mainstream politician. Progress is sometimes slower than we would like. At least it's now safe for a politician to associate himself with a "communist" from 50 years ago without any negative reactions from anyone who matters.

without any negative reactions from anyone who matters.[/

i see that kind of thinking as a game changer and this coming NOV -- they on the left who dont matter the public will show them just how much

You don't have to wait until November.
The Mass. Senate race, this Tuesday will be an interesting indicator.
That a republican candidate is even close is astounding, and if the democrat party were not so arrogant, it might act as a warning that they need to do like Bill Clinton, and move toward the center.
If a republican can win the Mass. Senate seat, what does that mean on a national level?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

You, may be correct. Personally, I don't really care who wins which seat in 2010. I do think the democrats will end up with less than 60 seats because it's a midterm election (which is probably a good thing), but you can never underestimate the stupidity of the current republican leadership.

I was simply saying that I would be very disappointed in anyone who claimed to be a progressive/liberal candidate and had not been influenced by some pretty extreme activists.

As I said, I don't really care who wins american elections, but I very much doubt this type of nonsense is going to influence many people; although it may influence small numbers at each lunatic fringe (left and right) who normally wouldn't bother to vote.

I do understand the political strategy in MA; when the republican candidate comes fairly close and the libertarian takes a few percent in a traditionally democratic state, the conservative talking heads will declare victory and say that they would have actually won a two-way race, etc. The current "news" stories are just prep for that spin. We could probably both write the fox story for Wednesday and come very close to their actual story (jz would need help with the spelling). This isn't rocket science, and fox isn't that clever.

As much as anyone who is only a spectator can!

The story about this Massachusetts special election is that voters who in the last election cast their lot with the HopeeChangee’s have now decided in significant numbers to at this opportunity to bite this same apple now to avoid the worm ridden portion and take their chance on a seemingly less blemished side.

Obama carried the Nov 08 election here in MA by 60+%, despite the Killer Ted affection and nostalgia Martha Coakley will be lucky to come within 10% of Obama’s numbers only fifteen months ago. Massachusetts electorate roughly has about ½ registered as independents, 3/8 registered democrats and 1/8 registered republicans. Recent polling of likely voters shows 17% of registered democrats voting for Scott Brown!

This will be a repeat of exactly what happened in Virginia and New Jersey former Obama voters at their next opportunity casting their votes with someone other than the designated Obama team player.

Here in Massachusetts the electorate has been twice burned by David Axelrod products, the present Governor Deval Patrick will likely be reelected but only because he’ll win the three way competition with the 34% needed, a virtually unknown republican candidate and the former democrat State Treasurer Tim Cahill is challenging his own party’s sitting incumbent Governor and polling close behind him.

The Dear Leader is scheduled to appear on Coakley’s behalf on Sunday presumably, which can be interpreted a number of ways. Maybe nation democrats are desperate, maybe they think Coakley will win and it will then be attributable to Obama’s magic, my personal belief is that they are desperate and Obama has to demonstrate to those lined up on the plank that he will do what he can to save them even if it’s a futile effort.

As an anecdotal story, I live on Cape Cod Kennedy Country, solid moon bat psycho liberal, my neighbors are Robert Jay Lifton and Howard Zinn and his son Jeff, my kids went to a private school run by the former president of the Woman’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Zinn and Noam Chomsky regularly speak on weekends at the public library.

About three weeks ago I bought 1000 Scott Brown for US Senate signs and they where made available to anyone who wanted them, the entire 1000 signs where picked up by people who took the time and made the effort to drive to get them, all gone in less than eight hours! A week later I bought a second thousand and they where similarly distributed in less than five hours! The only announcement was a mention of the availability at a certain place and time on a local radio station both times. Sign don’t vote but people making these kinds of efforts do and the demand has only been increasing. On the streets here its probably 15 or 20 to 1 Brown signs vs. Coakley signs if you can even find Coakley signs!

For the past month there have been so many people wanting to volunteer at Browns Hyannis Campaign office people are limited to 3 hours once a week chosen by lottery and you’ve got to wait until everyone has a chance to do it a second time, no one gets a second opportunity for weeks now!

This is in communities where you can go to the supermarket on any given day and find a dozens if not hundreds of vehicles not only with Obama/Biden bumper stickers, but Kerry/Edwards and Gore/ Lieberman aplenty. These people wear their liberal screed as a badge of honor. The only bumper stickers that outnumber these types are the one’s that express hatred for Bush/ Cheney and all things GOP/Conservative/religious/Palin!

So the real story is not that a republican wins/might have won but for/etc. the real story is the electorate is dissatisfied with the fraud they we sold the last time around and while they might be fooled again by the new guy/gal they aren’t being fooled again by the last guy, here or almost anywhere else from the results on record! It will be interesting to see what effects these portents of election futures will have on the Blanche Lincolns in Arkansas who face reelection in this year and the conservative democrats in red districts across the country. Will they fall on their swords in the name of Transformational Change or will they act in their own self interest and save their own careers! You know at least Arlen Specter is sitting there these days wondering in the same tenor and tone “My God What Have I Done!” ala’ David Byrne, Once in a Lifetime, Talking Heads.

I posted this in another thread regarding the politics of healthcare also!