TIME's Alinsky Attack on Breitbart

by Dan Riehl 

If one closely examines Sally Kohn's weak attempt to smear Andrew Breitbart and his media company, it's Saul Alinsky, or at least part of what he advocated, in action.

But first, I'm extremely puzzled as to why Sally Kohn would be so foolish as to characterize advocating for a free flow of information as anti-American. All Andrew Breitbart - and now Breitbart Media - is about in taking up the issue of Derrick Bell and his potential influence on Barack Obama, is airing information that Obama and the media admittedly kept from the electorate in 2008.

 

Unless she's reading a different Constitution than the one most of us know and love, it would actually be Kohn who is behaving in an anti-American fashion by trying to smear us for doing absolutely nothing more than that. She never does get around to demonstrating how we are allegedly smearing him. She's merely upset that we are revealing him. Sorry about that.

Breitbart From The Grave
A posthumous smear attempt is what's anti-American—not the beliefs of Professor Derrick Bell
Now, a few weeks after Andrew Breitbart’s death, bloggers for his site have released a video of that rally that Breitbart was preparing and have written numerous articles arguing that, because Professor Bell highlighted racial injustice in America and advocated for the equal treatment of blacks, he was somehow anti-white and by implication anti-American — the Jeremiah Wright of this election season.

I'm unaware of anything Breitbart has published that claims Bell was "anti-white." We are exposing his views and his relationship to Barack Obama. We haven't changed, or distorted Bell in any fashion. What is so wrong in doing that? If they had done their job in 2008, we wouldn't even be having this discussion now.

Perhaps that we're also pointing out their shortcomings by doing it is what has them so angry. Now, if Kohn's reaction is all about our pointing out that Bell saw America as a nation of white supremacy, ala Soledad O'Brien, I'll defer to Cass Sunstein of the Obama administration on that:

Both Bell and Ogletree argue forcefully that Brown should be understood to require not color blindness but an end to white supremacy and the subordination of African-Americans.

Kohn is also being ridiculous for suggesting Bell isn't broadly viewed as radical. It's a well established fact, something noted by other black professors and pundits formerly of Bell's acquaintance. It's as if she wants to simply put her fingers in her ears and say, "unh uh, no he's not"  -- that's not an argument, it's ignorance. I'm also unaware of where anyone has claimed he was aggressive; though that's where Kohn gives her real agenda -- it's actually Saul Alinsky's -- away. I'll conclude with that shortly.

I had the privilege of being Derrick Bell’s student and teaching assistant years later at New York University School of Law. His most aggressive posture was in trying to play matchmaker among the young people in his classes. He was always proud when any of his pairings resulted in marriage. If Professor Bell was a radical in any way, it was in being radically inclusive —in wanting to create an America in which all people were treated fairly and justly. That is precisely the kind of legacy I hope any president and anyone serving in politics would embrace.

There was nothing inclusive about Bell. Even Cass Sunstein acknowledges that; at best his views meant separate but equal. How is that suddenly inclusive? No, Bell wasn't radical at all, now was he?

If Brown was destined to fail, as Bell believes, what would he have had the Supreme Court do in 1954? Surprisingly, he argues that the Court should have reaffirmed Plessy and permitted segregation to continue—but should have insisted that separate must be genuinely equal.

This is why Kohn gave herself away when she used the word aggressive. See Andrew McCarthy at NRO. And there you have it. Kohn is using pure Alinsky-ite tactics to smear Andrew Breitbart and his media company. She throws out the buzzword "inclusive" (because it works) to define a man who was not, as he believed in separate but equal and that America will always be a nation of white supremacy as long as it is majorly white. She doesn't want people to acknowledge that his views, like Obama's, are radical, because then they might not get what they want: to radically change America from powerful positions within her government. And by simply exposing, but not judging Bell, progressives fear it will set them back because America might reject them at the ballot box.

In Alinsky’s view, the only radicalism that had a chance to succeed was the one that could bore inside bourgeois institutions, co-opt the language, and move the mainstream in the radical direction — but only as fast as political conditions would allow. Remaining radical but being coldly pragmatic kept the Alinskyite both effective and viable, allowing him to keep coming back for more.

Of course Derrick Bell wasn't too agressive, though he was more than some. From his Harvard protests, to Obama gaining the White House, what Alinksyi-ite progressives do is reveal only enough of their radicalism, or real agenda, that the political environment will allow at any one point in time. If Obama had been vetted in 2008, he may well have not won the White House. So, they didn't let it happen. Sorry, Ms. Kohn. That, and nothing more than that, is precisely what is happening now. Deal with it; or put your fingers back in your ears and say, "nuh uh."

Unfortunately, that didn't work for you this time, otherwise you wouldn't be so weakly attempting to smear Breitbart and his websites now.