LESSONS OF SAUL ALINSKY IN AUSTRALIA BY ROGER FRANKLIN
Insights from Quadrant https://quadrant.org.au/
Predictably, but not less galling for being so, an upcoming gathering of conservatives in Sydney, the CPAC conference, has come under attack for — yes, you guessed it! — homophobia, Islamophobia, gynophobia and assorted etceteraphobias, which is the way the Left rolls whenever those with non-progressive perspectives attempt to air their views, even if only among themselves. It works like this: some diligent elf at GetUp! or a piece of human office equipment in a Labor/Greens backroom picks over the listed speakers, googles “name” + “critics”, and quickly finds what others have said by way of denunciation.
This information is then shopped to hack reporters along with the demand that the targeted individual be denied entry to the country. If all the pieces click, the event will be besieged by the feral and violent Left — as has happened to Geert Wilders, Milo Yiannopoulos, Jordan Peterson, Bettina Arndt, the Australian Christian Lobby and any number of others — eager to implement Saul Alinsky’s advice:
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
With the CPAC conference now mere days away, you just knew a dose of Alinsky’s devious medicine was about to be injected into the body politic. Well today it happened, trumpeted with homepage coverage by the ABC, SBS, and Nine newspapers , we read that failed premier, failed federal byelection candidate and camera-ready Sussex Street sweetheart Kristina Keneally has demanded that CPAC speaker Raheem Kassam be denied a visa.
“We should not allow career bigots — a person who spreads hate speech about Muslims, about women, about gay and lesbian people — to enter our country with the express intent of undermining equality,” Senator Keneally said on Tuesday.
Q: What must one do to qualify as a “career bigot”? A: Utter that which is true but must never be said about those high in the hierarchy of contemporary victimology. Islam, for instance, which Kaseem described to a BBC interviewer as “a fascistic and totalitarian ideology” — an observation which enjoys the distinction of being entirely true.
But what of other religions? Like Kaseem, a former Muslim, Ms Keneally puts it about that she is an ex-Catholic in all but name, urging others to deny the Church their financial support while spurning its teachings on women priests, abortion, gay marriage and every other trendy issue to stir the souls of every Q&A audience. About Catholicism she has said:
if we really want to solve the problem of the child sexual abuse by Catholic religious (priests, brothers and nuns) then we should name it appropriately… It’s Catholic extremism. It’s killing and terrorising Australians.
One law for the media-approved Left, another for those who dwell in and resent a world of bag-checks and body-wanding at the MCG, of bollards of peace and Anzac Day parades cancelled for fear of that (ever-unnamed) spigot of terror.
But hypocrisy aside, Ms Keneally’s greater and more immediate sin is what many will see as an implicit call for, and endorsement of, the skirmishers of the Left turning out for three days of jeering and mob abuse as conservatives go about their peaceful business in the heart of Australia’s greatest city.
If CPAC is marred by more of the standard-issue leftoid thuggery, Ms Keneally will be one of the mob’s leaders whether or not she is there or not.
— roger franklin
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