Fishy Logic

“Another View” (The Times Rerord, March 20, Page A4) opens with a puzzling quotation “attributed to Joseph Goebbels” and “included in” Saul Alinsky’s influential 1971 Rules for Radicals, a guide to community organizing. In his critique of social media’s supposed efforts to manipulate the news, Ackerman compares Facebook’s policy to the Nazi’s. The icing on this weird comparison is the insinuation that the activist Alinsky somehow endorsed the Nazi’s idea. Ackerman implies that Goebbels and Alinsky are equivalent, and that Facebook is aligned with these two “reprehensible” individuals. It is a familiar move on the part of right-wing commentators: mis-characterize activists from the 60s to smear liberals today. But this is very attenuated logic. It has been a long time since I read Alinsky’s book, but I found it hard to believe Alinsky would have favorably cited an idea from Goebbels.

So, I did what I wish the writer of “Another View” would have done: I reread the book. I find no reference to Goebbels or the idea “attributed” to him. So where does the passage and attribution come from? The beauty of reputable print sources is that they provide citations which can be checked. Alinsky makes clear his sources: he cites the Bible, Jefferson, John Adams, Hamilton, Lincoln, Gandhi, Churchill and other great thinkers from Socrates on forward. He does not borrow ideas without attribution. He is also clear in opposing the policies of both the Nazis and the Soviets. So where does Ackerman get this linkage? Something seems fishy. Maybe Ackerman was relying on internet references to Alinsky as the “American Goebbels,” a charge from the right. Whatever the source of the garbled reference, this opening “quotation” undermines the larger argument he attempts to make. How reliable are the rest of his references and unsupported assertions? How is his argument free from the charge of media manipulation? With Cambridge Analytica in the news, it might be that Mr. Ackerman and his group of conservative Republicans would do better to look to their own house first.

Kathryn Flannery

Arrowsic

Regarding Gun Violence

No civilian should be allowed to own an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. They were designed for one military purpose: to kill people. That is a given. Civilian ownership of AR- 15s should be banned. They serve no civilian purpose.

The recent op-ed piece by Cynthia Allen of the Fort Worth Star- Telegram agrees but also correctly identifies at least three other factors behind school shootings: (1) today’s youth are consumed by violence in games, movies, and social media; (2) school size has become so large that students have become faceless statistics; and (3) shooters have typically come from unhappy and/or fatherless homes. Outlawing AR-15s will reduce the carnage, but will not stop shootings as long as the other factors continue to be ignored.

Cliff Kilfoil,

Brunswick