SEEING THE RULE

Polarizing the other side is a very common tactic of Alinsky and his followers. Many professors are notorious for “calling out” students publically in class, using rhetoric to create a “caricature” of an idea to poke fun at it and radicalize it. This often changes other students’ minds, and often prevents other dissenters from tipping their hat. Fear of being targeted as a “polarizing figure” will often keep young dissenters silent.

When you see this “calling out” being done to someone in class who you agree with, be bold and seek to turn the tables on the professor. But be careful to maintain your ethic here. Move as quickly from general to personal specificity as possible, but do not become mean yourself. Do two wrongs make a right? An effective communicator must engage people, not just ideas. Many ideas are sold (or lost) based on the character of the presenter. You must concern yourself with your reputation and tone as well as the content of your arguments.

USING THE RULE

These rules actually will help you more than they will help the Establishment. With this particular rule, you will often have to target someone with power. According to Alinsky, this may lead your ideological opponent to ask: “’Why are you centering on me when there are others to blame as well?’ When you ‘freeze the target,’ you disregard these rational but distracting arguments…. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the ‘others’ come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target….”

In using this rule, you must believe you are in the right. This is what Alinsky is talking about when he says, “One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.”

You may think that it is wrong to make a person central to a campaign. And at times it clearly is. On the other hand, sometimes ideological bullies make themselves the justifiable target in a contest of ideas. They hold themselves out as the champion of a specific agenda, and fire on the ideological opposition in a way that requires return fire on themself. Here is a powerful example from the College of William and Mary about how Rule #13 can be used to depose an ideological bully:

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