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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Saul Alinsky, A Gift From America?

Soros foundation, USAID's partner in Macedonia, distributing 'Rules For Radicals' in the Balkan nation
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Over the last five years, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has funneled $5 million to the small Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, through George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. That seemed strange to me. I thought USAID was all about spending money to fight poverty and disease abroad. Shows you what I know. USAID does fight poverty and disease, but it considers promoting Western-style liberal democracy to be part of that. From USAID’s website:

Similarly, our cross-cutting efforts in promoting democracy, rights and good governance, empowering women and girls, advancing prosperity, building resilient societies, and mitigating climate change are all essential to ending poverty.

Resilient, democratic societies don’t simply maintain stability: they are essential to sustaining development progress. Resilient, democratic societies feature broadbased economic growth; healthy, well-nourished, and educated populations; and environmental sustainability. They embrace not only elections, but also legitimate, inclusive, and accountable institutions that effectively deliver services to all of their people, respect and promote human rights, and strive to advance freedom, human dignity and development. They have the ability to manage conflict, mitigate the impact of natural disasters, and forestall crisis that otherwise roll back development gains. These societies are equipped to ensure that pathways out of poverty are sustained.

That sounds … okay. I mean, which American wouldn’t want to see all nations develop civil society institutions, and to see nations advance in freedom, human dignity, and development? Ah, but what do those words really mean here? As I wrote last week, USAID is using taxpayer dollars to hire mercenaries to fight the culture war in Macedonia, on behalf of Western liberals.

That culture war also includes the publication and dissemination of propaganda. In 2014, Soros’s Macedonian foundation translated and published Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals, and promoted it with an event in Skopje, the nation’s capital, livestreamed around the nation on the Internet. Look:

 

 

You’ve probably heard about Rules For Radicals, given that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were influenced by it. But you probably haven’t read it. It’s a tactical manual of subversion, a book of direct advice for radical street organizers who want to change things. It included “rules” like:

“Whenever possible, go outside of the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

With that last line, Alinsky means that whenever you can, identify a person as your enemy, and make them responsible for whatever policy or practice you seek to change. By personalizing it, you expose the network of that person’s defenders within the system, and cause polarization within it, weakening it. Alinsky explains that you cannot be fair to the target, not if you want to win.

You can read the entire text of Rules For Radicals here.

I don’t have clear evidence that USAID money went into translating, publishing, and disseminating this manual for subversion within Macedonia. I’m trying to confirm that. Still, the Soros organization in the country is unapologetically doing this, with the clear intention of undermining Macedonian values and institutions that conflict with its left-wing secular worldview. National Review‘s Jay Nordlinger went to Macedonia last year, and wrote about it:

Macedonian conservatives say that we have picked sides in the politics of their country: the SDSM or “post-Communist” side. They say this has happened during the presidency of Barack Obama. We have tilted sharply and shamefully to the left.

Others say, Nonsense. The United States does not choose sides — its only side is democracy. Americans are an honest broker in Macedonia, holding everyone to account. The Right should stop complaining and scapegoating, and get its own house in order.

Be that as it may, Macedonian conservatives are wounded — pained — I can tell you. They are distressed at American relations with Macedonia in the Age of Obama. “We’re the pro-American, pro-Western party!” they say. “The Left has always been with Moscow. And you’re driving us conservatives into the arms of the Russians!”

You should read Polish dissident Ryszard Legutko to understand how the West is treating the postcommunist East. What USAID is engaged in here is blatant cultural imperialism, and, with its partnership with the Soros people, a flood-the-zone attempt to change the political and social reality in Macedonia, under the guise of spreading democracy and aiding a developing nation. We like development, so long as these countries develop to become more like us secular liberal Westerners.

US taxpayer dollars are going to undermine traditional religious and moral values in Macedonia, and to support a left-wing philanthropy spreading radical propaganda to teach Macedonian citizens how to overthrow the traditions and institutions of their society. Amazing.

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