Ex: https://atlanticcenturion.wordpress.com
Saul Alinsky
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
New York: Random House, 1971.
Rules for Radicals is [in]famous for its purported influence, and that of author Saul Alinsky, among liberal and left-wing ideologues and politicians in the United States, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The political bent of this classic but reviled work by a community organizer from Chicago is shown on the very first page of the introduction by referencing “Joe McCarthy’s holocaust.” [It should be noted of course that declassified documents have revealed Senator McCarthy was pretty much always right about who was a bolshevik, but I digress].
The catch though is that the book isn’t particularly ideological, even if the author’s sympathies are blatantly clear and he writes from the assumption that you believe in the same things he does. What Rules for Radicals is much more interested in is how to create the most effective community organizers, and how they should communicate if they want to be effective. Think of it as far-left metapolitics manual. There is thus a heavy focus on semantics, networks, pragmatism, and presentation. Being internally honest about power and self-interest in politics, understanding your audience, and using familiar terms rather than alien highbrow concepts are all considered critical. In (((Alinsky’s))) world of hyper-realism and self-rationalizing, things like principles, morals, qualms about the means used to achieve ends, and consistency are baggage and vices, not politically expedient values.
With that in mind it isn’t hard to see why the cuckservative, muh principles crowd that dominates the Republican party seems to be losing ground in our society at every turn. They cry that liberals don’t fight fair. They have what French New Right author Guillaume Faye calls “mental AIDS,” no immune system against the aggressive ideology of their enemies, whom they grant moral hegemony to. But what they do have, if not organized defense, is what social psychologist (((Jonathan Haidt))) calls the moral foundation of sanctity—they can be disgusted by things on the basis of their violation of core values.
(((Alinsky))) knows what disgusts these people. He advises against trampling on the American flag or burning it, for example, since that drives ordinary people away from radical politics. He instead says the radical should frame the values of that flag as having been perverted by the enemy. This is all too familiar a suggestion to readers in the current year, given leftist appeals to the validity of the Constitution of all things, and the redefinition of American history as having always been a march towards the equality of all people on planet Earth: blacks and Whites, men and women, heterosexuals and deviants, legal immigrants and illegal immigrants, documented persons and undocumented persons, etc. The only thing standing in the way are those evil Republicans, who have perverted everything that Hamilton the musical is about. See how that works? A lot better than saying burn it all down—it creates the impression you’ve been robbed of something that should be yours.
The enemy of the cause must be black-and-white. (((Alinsky))) cites the Founding Fathers, who in their Declaration of Independence had not one good thing to say about the Crown, only listing its transgressions. For if one is to make an inspiring case to the people, who will have to risk everything for the cause, it had better be one that leaves no doubts about its righteousness. You can’t be concerned about how Britain provided soldiers to defend against Indian attacks or kept the sea lanes safe for commerce. Making these kinds of black-and-white arguments in and of itself is totally apolitical; they could be for either side.
One insight in particular felt very familiar to me, echoing a Hillary Clinton speech leaked during the campaign which had been privately given to a multinational bank. The Supreme Catlady spoke about needing to have a public face and a private face as a politician, something ((Alinsky))) would readily endorse. In practice, one sells two different positions to two different audiences, which is in line with the whole ends-outweigh-means thing. Of course I am for free trade and open borders. No I am not for “open borders;” that’s a right-wing smear. On that note, (((Alinsky))) says the radical must always advocate for 100% to the community he wants to organize, but as soon as negotiations begin with the powerful, take anything that moves the needle, even 30%. Say one thing and do another, as long as you are on target. That’s the utility of extremism in politics.
Thus, (((the long march through the institutions))) has a road-map that will take it up the mountain, while pseudo-reactionary Republican stonewalling of issues—for as long as is politically required by their constituents until leftward change is a done deal—leads to nothing. There is a reason why some of Bill Clinton’s campaign speeches from 1996 sound like Donald Trump’s in 2016, and it’s because the left has succeeded into converting many Goldwater-Reagan era Republicans into 1990s’ Democrats. Homosexual marriage will soon be a conservative issue when faced with transgenderism. And the latter will in time be accepted as well on the Beltway right. (((Alinsky’s))) methods move the Overton window; cuckservatives merely follow Overton movements.
Another important (((Alinsky))) insight is that you need to have something of a “vague” vision of a better, inspiring future. At the same time, don’t become a single-issue organization. While 88-point policy plans may win over wonkish autistes, if you actually want to create a large community organized around common goals and oriented towards a common opponent, you need to go broader and less specific on the details. Consider the mental gymnastics that fiscally conservative Republicans go through to sell trickle-down economics—lower taxes on people and corporate persons who are responsible for providing employment so that they can expand operations and recruit more human capital, owing to their higher net income from reduced taxation of their business. Democrats simply run on a platform of doling out free shit to net tax recipients, including but not limited to a better economy jobs, social programs, and universal pre-kindergarten. Or they just blather about equality for 20 minutes and call it a historic speech. That’s a lot easier than talking about family values, national interest, civic virtue, trade policies, foreign affairs, etc. Just say we all deserve to be equal and my agenda is to make it happen. It’s an easy sell and no one really cares about the particulars other than critics. So, long live the ethnostate. What ethnostate? Doesn’t matter yet.
The long discussion on means versus ends is particularly useful. (((Alinsky))) talks about how people lionize Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi as a pacifist, but notes that pacifism was really the only means available in the first place of resisting the British at the time. He jokes that Gandhi must have noticed how Indians seemed to sit around all day in prayer or mediation, and then told them to shout slogans while they were doing it. Probably not the exact chain of events, but that is effectively what happened—multitudes of people engaging in sit-in protests. Which India banned almost immediately after independence—since those who usurp power generally, and correctly, wish to keep it and prevent the next batch of revolutionaries from unseating them in the same way they did in their predecessors. (((Alinsky))) also cites Lenin’s remarks about how the bolsheviks had to say they were for peace—well until they didn’t have to say they were for peace. In other words, the chosen means are just the most effective ways of reaching an end. If they don’t work, you don’t use them. If they stop working, you change them. And if they’ve never worked, you are doing it wrong.
(((Alinsky))) tactics work and continue to work for the left. Whether it’s calling every opponent a racist, or framing the enemy as always being a fascist, or having no attachment to anything that doesn’t effectively further the political power of their faction, the left we are dealing with now is smarter on culture, coalition, and community outreach than movement conservatives have ever been. The left, in true (((Alinsky))) style, sees itself on the side of “angels,” while its enemies are “devils.” The Beltway right only uses the term “crusade” to refer to tax policy adjustments.
The crucial question—Why I am writing about Rules for Radicals? Simply put, the Alt-Right is a radical movement that is interested in community organizing and propaganda. (((Alinsky))) wanted to organize “Have-nots” and “Have a little, want mores” against the “Haves,” and for them to meme effectively to that end. The Alt-Right wants to organize White people against the occupation government (a globalist coalition comprised of Davos men, Hart-Celler Americans, and overseas Israelis), and for them to meme effectively to that end. Reading Rules for Radicals won’t change anything you believe ideologically, since (((Alinsky))) never really makes the case for what he believes in anyway. (Even if he did, if you are reading this you already know he is wrong). But hopefully, young radicals, you will take some lessons from it about how to better approach your task.
Probably the most important section for our purposes is the author’s drill-down of how he believes power works. He gives us 13 rules: I will attempt to give some translation:
- “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” – I have read innumerable articles in recent months from the lying press about how the GOP is full of crypto-White nationalists. Sounds good. Big if true.
- “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” – We’re not going to get most people to do things they have no habit of doing. We need to play to the strengths of our existing human resources.
- “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” – This and the above rule are standard Sun Tzu; know the enemy and know yourself or else you will be defeated. We must always stay abreast of the opposition, always be more informed, and always make them look stupid.
- “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” – There are two key forms of this: concern-trolling and malicious compliance. Doing so will stress them out by increasing their cognitive dissonance load, bleed them of resources, and generally waste their time and energy. You can also bait your opponents into producing specific outcomes if they are inflexible and dogmatic enough.
- “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” – Most of the Alt-Right’s troll ops consist of making a mockery of things. Ditto for our memes and critiques, e.g. cuckservative. It will probably go down as one of the greatest political slurs of all time: implying that your opponent gets off to watching his country be destroyed while his wife’s son votes against him. Cuckservative captures perfectly, and ridiculously, how the target serves every interest but the national.
- “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” – Trolling. Shitposting. Meme magick. It never gets old because there is always something new to provide a perspective on, or some new journalist to troll, or a comments section to raid, or a viral media campaign to be fought.
- “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” – I think the only area the Alt-Right sees diminishing returns on is putting out too blackpilled of a message, or being too gloom and doom. People don’t really want to hear that all the time, even when it has to be said. Things getting worse is after all part of the sales pitch as to why the Alt-Right’s solutions are necessary. On the other hand, we have to have a positive and future-oriented message to put out, and that reaches a bigger audience than commiseration.
- “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” – I tend to think this won’t be much of a problem because there is nothing the regime can offer us that would be satisfying other than its resignation.
- “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” – This certainly works in our favor given how (((neurotic))) the people we are engaged in holy memetic warfare with are. Even the implication of our presence somewhere or in something is enough to produce media hysteria and maelstroms of kvetching.
- “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” – At the moment this is our endless streams of daily content across multiple platforms, something we should continue to scale up and diversify.
- “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” – We want to get to a point where being labeled by the establishment as a racist, sexist, or antisemite is a sign of having done something correct, being that bad people are saying it about you.
- “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” – In other words, to win you actually need an answer to the issue. It can’t just be about opposition. We must be more than reactionary.
- “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” – This is my favorite and I think Alt-Right troll ops have done this quite well. First you get ahold of a luegenpresse journalist’s attention. Then you apply the other above tactics to him or her. Finally you get some sort of overdone reaction from them AND their supporters against you, which helps reinforce your own battle lines by showing that the issue you are up against is supported by x and x-plus, all of whom are against you. Many journalists noted during the 2016 presidential campaign that if one were of a Semitic surname (or known to follow a cult of volcanic demonology) and said something critical of Donald Trump, that he or she would be targeted and harassed on their social media or in the comments section. They began to reach out to one another about this and write about the responses they were getting, many going as far as labeling themselves with the triple parentheses symbol in solidarity. So what had basically happened was that our argument all along that overseas Israelis were uniquely opposed to nationalism in the United States was proven—by getting them to band together and admit that they were, and that they were proud about it too. See, all those people who hate Trump have (((something in common)))!
I think the Alt-Right is already in something of an unholy alliance with (((Alinsky))). That our trademark tactic is trolling while that of our enemies is banning and/or overreacting says something about how much society has been restructured since the 1960s. We’re the ones causing headaches for the regime, we’re the ones doing the culture-jamming, we’re the ones speaking on behalf of a marginalized class, we’re the ones tipping the sacred cows, and we’re the ones calling for revolutionary change. The meme war favors the offense.
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The French intellectual historian Francois Richard identified three primary currents within the wider philosophical tradition of anarchism. The first of these is the classical socialist-anarchism that I have previously described that has as its principal focus an orientation towards social justice and uplifting the downtrodden. A second species of anarchism is the radical individualism of Stirner and the English and American libertarians, a perspective that posits individual liberty as the highest good. And still a third tradition is a Nietzsche-influenced aristocratic radicalism, or what the French call “anarchism of the Right” which places its emphasis not only on liberty but on merit, excellence, and the preservation of high culture.
Perhaps the most famous intellectual associated with the Conservative Revolution was Ernst Junger, a veteran of World War One who became famous after publishing his war diaries in Weimar Germany under the title “Storms of Steel.” Much later in life, Junger published a work called “Eumeswil” which postulates the concept of the “Anarch,” a concept that is modeled on Max Stirner’s idea of the “Egoist.” According to Junger’s philosophy, an “Anarch” does not necessarily engage in outward revolt against institutionalized authority. Instead, the revolt occurs on an inward basis, and the individual is able to retain an inner psychic freedom by means of detachment from all external values and an inward retreat into one’s self. In some ways, this is a philosophy that is similar to currents within Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies.
It is also interesting to note that some of the late twentieth century proponents of individualist anarchism such as James J. Martin and Samuel E. Konkin III, the founder of a tendency within libertarianism known as agorism, were also proponents of Holocaust revisionism. Indeed, when I was doing research on the modern libertarian movement, I discovered that Holocaust revisionism was actually popular among libertarians in the 1970s, not on anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi grounds, but out of a desire to defend the original isolationist case against World War Two. Konkin himself was actually associated with the Institute for Historical Review at one point.
Dorothy Day was an American radical, a religious pacifist, and advocate of social justice, who combined anarchism and Catholic traditionalism. She was the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, and considered herself to be a supporter of both the Industrial Workers of the World and the Vatican.
I note with amusement the statements on the value of a Russian alliance, the unreliability of a French guarantee, and the perfidy of Albion, observations which would no doubt resonate with many people in later centuries. Plus ça change !
What happened in Libya and Syria is simply a manifestation of a very dangerous mindset known as progressivism. Progressivism amounts to a blind faith that government force can improve any given situation. It is usually associated with domestic policy but progressivism also operates in foreign policy. Progressives ignore costs and consequences. Progressives plunge into situations they do not understand, heedless of the consequences. When progressives fail, they invariably attribute the failure to not using enough government force. Thus, Obama, explaining his failure in Libya, stated, “I think we underestimated... the need to come in full force.”
Second, people in foreign lands have never approved in any way the progressives’ intervention into their own country. Third, that being the case, while domestic intervention has a number of tools at its disposal, foreign intervention has only one primary tool, war. War involves killing people and destroying property. Not only does this directly engender resistance and retaliation but it also strips away the protective coating of propaganda that usually cloaks state action. For example, since most people comply with tax laws, the state only rarely has to use actual force to collect them. Thus, the violent nature of taxation is hidden underneath the usual avalanche of birth-to-death progressive propaganda. For example, it is based on voluntary compliance; it is the citizens’ duty, and it’s all good because it was democratically approved. While all these rationalizations are nonsense, it is not easy to cut through the propaganda when the audience spent twelve years in a government school being brainwashed. In sharp contrast, when a bomb blows up an apartment building and kills thirty people, the facts are plain and the ability of propaganda to make people think that black is white, is minimal. Naturally, they tend to react, resist and retaliate.
Certains (par exemple, Robert Cramer) tentent de justifier cela en prétextant que nous vivons une situation un peu particulière et que c’est dans l’urgence que le pouvoir doit agir en attendant de pouvoir modifier la constitution (RASA et son/ses éventuel(s) contre-projet(s)). Pour ceux qui préfèrent que les choses soient dites concrètement, cela signifie que nous vivons un moment dans lequel une partie de la constitution est suspendue, que nos autorités disposent d’une situation de plein pouvoirs en la matière. Cela porte un nom : « dictature » même si personne n’ose le dire clairement.
En Relations Internationales, rien n'exprime mieux le succès d'une théorie que sa reprise par la sphère politique. Au XXIe siècle, seuls deux exemples ont atteint cet état : 
De là naît la nécessité pour les Etats, et principalement les Etats-Unis, de définir une véritable stratégie de puissance, de smart power. En effet, un Etat ne doit pas faire le choix d'une puissance, mais celui de la puissance dans sa globalité, sous tous ses aspects et englobant l'intégralité de ses vecteurs. Ce choix de maîtriser sa puissance n'exclue pas le recours aux autres nations. L'heure est à la coopération, voire à la copétition, et non plus au raid solitaire sur la sphère internationale. Même les Etats-Unis ne pourront plus projeter pleinement leur puissance sans maîtriser les organisations internationales et régionales, ni même sans recourir aux alliances bilatérales ou multilatérales. Ils sont voués à montrer l'exemple en assurant l'articulation politique de la multipolarité. Pour ce faire, les Etats-Unis devront aller de l'avant en conservant une cohésion nationale, malgré les déboires de la guerre en Irak, et en améliorant le niveau de vie de leur population, notamment par la réduction de la mortalité infantile. Cohésion et niveau de vie sont respectivement vus par l'auteur comme les garants d'un hard et d'un soft power durables. A contrario, l'immigration, décriée par différents observateurs comme une faiblesse américaine, serait une chance pour l'auteur car elle est permettrait à la fois une mixité culturelle et la propagation de l'american dream auprès des populations démunies du monde entier.
For this reason, in the words of Carl Schmitt, liberals have an undeveloped sense of the political, an inability to think of themselves as members of a political entity that was created with a clear sense of who can belong and who cannot belong in the community. Having a concept of the political presupposes a people with a strong sense of who can be part of their political community, who can be friends of the community and who cannot be because they pose a threat to the existence and the norms of the community.
Eventually, liberals came to believe that commerce would, in the words expressed by the Scottish thinker William Robertson in 1769, “wear off those prejudices which maintain distinction and animosity between nations.” By the nineteenth century liberals were not as persuaded by Hobbes’s view that the state of nature would continue permanently in the international relationships between nations. They replaced his pessimistic argument about human nature with a progressive optimism about how humans could be socialized to overcome their turbulent passions and aggressive instincts as they were softened through affluence and greater economic opportunities. With continuous improvements in the standard of living, technology and social organization, there would be no conflicts that could not be resolved through peaceful deliberation and political compromise.
The negation of the political is necessarily implicit in the liberal notion that humans can be defined as individuals with natural rights. It is implicit in the liberal aspiration to create a world in which groups and nations interact through peaceful economic exchanges and consensual politics, and in which, accordingly, the enemy-friend distinction and the possibility of violence between groups is renounced. The negation of the political is implicit in the liberal notion of “humanity.” The goal of liberalism is to get rid of the political, to create societies in which humans see themselves as members of a human community dedicated to the pursuit of security, comfort and happiness. Therefore, we can argue with Schmitt that liberals have ceased to understand the political insomuch as liberal nations and liberal groups have renounced the friend-enemy distinction and the possibility of violence, under the assumption that human groups are not inherently dangerous to each other, but can be socialized gradually to become members of a friendly “humanity” which no longer values the honor of belonging to a group that affirms ethno-cultural existential differences. This is why Schmitt observes that liberal theorists lack a concept of the political, since the political presupposes a view of humans organized in groupings affirming themselves as “existentially different.”
De Particratie is een werk van de aanstormende intellectueel Arnout Maat. Vanuit zijn achtergrond in geschiedenis, politicologie en politieke communicatie presenteert hij een relaas over het huidige politieke bestel. De essentie is dat politieke partijen al een eeuw lang een véél grotere rol spelen in de representatieve democratie dan ooit door onze grondwet is bedoeld. ‘De particratie van binnenuit omvormen to een democratie, zoals D66 ooit poogde te doen, is onmogelijk: alsof men een rijdende auto probeert te repareren’, zo vat Maat zijn relaas op de achterflap samen.
La politique est cette « 
La relation privé - public, attribuée au « Julien Freund libéral », définit la frontière de la sphère privée au sein de la société, celle où l'individu est libre de ses choix, en tout cas par rapport à la collectivité. La position de cette frontière peut certes fluctuer selon les lieux et les époques, mais de même que pour le principe de puissance, il est impossible de s'en débarrasser. Même dans les régimes totalitaires, il existe toujours quelques activités et relations qui échappent au contrôle de l’État. Sous cet angle, l'histoire de l'Occident semble animée par une aspiration permanente à étendre cette sphère privée, alors que le totalitarisme est un effort pour effacer la distinction entre privé et public. Cette dialectique entre sphère privée et publique est vitale, car c'est elle qui est source de la vie et du dynamisme de la société: ce ne sont pas les institutions encadrant le génie et l'activité individuelles qui produisent les innovations, mais à l'inverse, sans ce cadre, les initiatives individuelles ne pourraient s'épanouir et bénéficier à l'ensemble de la société.
Q: 
Baroness Thatcher’s view of humanity as a sum of particles and atoms is in stark contrast with the sense of social solidarity expressed by the Chinese nurse attending a child pulled from the ruins of a school, after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. While being interviewed by an American chain she was asked: - And what is your name? - My name is China.
Sismondi is often listed as the first socialist philosopher, because he discerned the surplus value (mieux value) of salaried labour, because he spoke about class struggle and requested state intervention to protect workers, because he proposed a minimum wage, job security and workers protection through sickness and old age, and still other social measures. All of them are today part of a socialist platform, but he addressed even more modern concerns, like the way to fairly distribute the progress on science and technology, which tends to harm employment and job security and exclusively favours capital owners.
As all the historicists, Sismondi objects that once applied to the real economy the Anglo-Saxon theories cause economic distortions and tend to concentrate wealth on an elite, at the expense of the rest of society. As them, he believes the social and economic cost of such unbalance to be immense, because its inherent unfairness causes contagious crisis that disrupts and sets back economic growth at both, national and international level. They all agree in the paramount importance of a closer balance in incomes, because as Sismondi said “ The salary given to a worker has the same effect as the seed entrusted to soil”
Sinngemäße Aussagen von Zeitgenossen, die aus anderen Parteien nach langer Mitgliedschaft, nach kleinen, mittleren und großen Parteikarrieren ausgetreten sind, gibt es ohne Zahl. Sie sagen im Kern alle: Meine frühere Partei ist 
Verwaltungen und Bürokratien allgemein, staatlich wie privat, stellten Studien schon vor...
Fonctionnaire à la CEE vers la fin de sa vie, choix qui releva chez lui d’un nihiliste apostolat, Kojève s’est efforcé de comprendre pourquoi nous allions vivre des temps ennuyeux. Voici comment il définit la Fin de l’Histoire dans ses notes sur Hegel, écrites en 1946.
En observant ce qui se passait autour de moi et en réfléchissant à ce qui s’est passé dans le monde après la bataille d’Iéna, j’ai compris que Hegel avait raison de voir en celle-ci la fin de l’Histoire proprement dite. Dans et par cette bataille, l’avant-garde de l’humanité a virtuellement atteint le terme et le but, c’est-à-dire la fin de l’évolution historique de l’Homme. Ce qui s’est produit depuis ne fut qu’une extension dans l’espace de la puissance révolutionnaire universelle actualisée en France par Robespierre-Napoléon.![gustave-le-bon-by-MaNaR[243314].jpg](http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/media/02/00/882218475.jpg)
Der Linken galten Comtismus und Positivismus als eine Abart des Konservatismus, der „Szientismus“ war für sie „reaktionär“. Konservative witterten in ihm ein sozialrevolutionäres Ferment. Dieses Janusgesicht, mal konservativ bzw. reaktionär, mal sozialrevolutionär zu sein, ist ganz charakteristisch für den Positivismus. Das hat aber nichts mit der Dialektik des Konservatismus zu tun, der in fortlaufender Auseinandersetzung mit der „fortschrittlichen“ Gegenwart dahin tendiert, revolutionär zu werden. Selbst innerhalb zeitbedingter äußerer Wandlungen behält der Konservatismus sein ihm eigenes Pathos. Und gerade diesem Pathos stellt der Positivismus sein Ethos entgegen: Der Positivismus ist grundsätzlich „sachlich“ und „tatsachenorientiert“, im Gegensatz zu jeglicher Affektgeladenheit ist er objektiv. Überhaupt sind den Positivisten Objektivität und Vernunft einerlei, Vernunft besteht für sie darin, mit der Zeit zu gehen, und nicht etwa zurück – oder nach oben, gen Himmel –, nicht ins eigene Herz, sondern nur vorwärts zu schauen.
On trouve trace du « projet » chez un Rousseau qui dans son Contrat social expliquait que le « grand législateur » est celui qui ose « instituer un peuple » (C.S. II,7). Instituer, c’est-à-dire « fonder » et « créer ». Ce grand législateur doit être le « mécanicien qui invente la machine » en changeant la « nature humaine », « transformant chaque individu », lui rognant son « indépendance » et ses « forces propres » pour en faire une simple « partie d’un grand tout » (C.S. II,7). Tout y est déjà !
Rappelons simplement que l'Etat moderne en tant que tel, fondé historiquement, entre autres notions juridiques, sur celle de « persona ficta » et adossé au principe de représentation politique, phagocyte le modèle de la cité. Ce dernier repose, quant à lui, sur le souci initial d'une « chose commune » et sur l'exigence de sa maîtrise par une communauté concrète (c'est-à-dire par une « Gemeinschaft » et non par une « Gesellschaft », selon les catégories de Tönnies). La cité naît même de l'exigence d'une telle maîtrise, comme l'indique Cicéron qui, dans une période troublée où le politique semblait privé de boussole, rappelait dans le « De republica » que « la cité est l'institution collective (con-stitutio) de la communauté (populus) ». C'est la communauté qui institue la cité et non l'inverse. Laissons de côté le fait qu'en pratique, la genèse de la cité et celle de la communauté qui en est l'assise sont des processus complexes qui interagissent. L'idée principale réside ici dans cette conscience vive, chez l'illustre sénateur, que la dynamique politique se déploie dans un sens précis, c'est-à-dire à partir des solides liens internes d'une communauté humaine donnée, avec son territoire, ses coutumes et ses représentations mentales collectives (toutes choses auxquelles renvoie la notion de « populus » dans le droit public romain) et que, dans les moments de crise institutionnelle, c'est sur cette base qu'il faut reprendre appui avant de procéder aux réformes nécessaires. Dans la cité, le rapport entre gouvernés et gouvernants est déterminé par la communauté politique qui, de ce fait, maîtrise ses choix. Sans que le régime soit nécessairement démocratique pour autant (de fait, il l'a peu été) et sans que fasse défaut la verticalité du principe d'autorité, bien au contraire.
Furthermore, in the decades following World War 2, we have seen student political movements whose precise goal was radical individualism, masquerading as communism or socialism. Thus you find statements like that of 60s radical John Sinclair who demanded, “Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope, and fucking in the streets.” The roots of this style of thinking lie in the Situationist movement, which influenced the Punk subculture (Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren was notably influenced by the movement). Situationism emerged from the anti-authoritarian left in France to advocate attacking capitalism through the construction of “situations,” to quote Debord, “Our central idea is the construction of situations, that is to say, the concrete construction of momentary ambiences of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality.”2 These situations took the form of radical individual liberation and experimentation, avant-garde artistic movements, and the celebration of free play and leisure. While Situationism situated itself on the communist left, it replicated the individualism of capitalism, as Kazys Varnelis notes3:
Deliberately obscure, Situationism was cool, and thus the perfect ideology for the knowledge-work generation. What could be better to provoke conversation at the local Starbucks or the company cantina, especially once Marcus’s, which traced a dubious red thread between Debord and Malcolm McLaren, hit the presses? Rock and roll plus neoliberal politics masquerading as leftism: a perfect mix. For the generation that came of age with Situationism-via-Marcus and the 
But there was also another Mai 68, of strictly hedonist and individualist inspiration. Far from exalting a revolutionary discipline, its partisans wanted above all “forbidding to forbid” and “unhindered enjoyment.” But, they quickly realized that doesn’t make a revolution nor will “satisfying these desires” put them in the service of the people. On the contrary, they rapidly understood that those would be most surely satisfied by a permissive liberal society. Thus they all naturally rallied to liberal capitalism, which was not, for most of them, without material and financial advantages.
Recensé : Hamit Bozarslan et Gaëlle Demelemestre, 
« Aujourd'hui, à l'heure où j'écris cette page, la une du New York Times contient huit informations importantes. Quatre d'entre elles, soit la moitié, sont de la propagande. Le lecteur naïf pensera sans doute qu'elles portent sur des faits d'actualité, et pourtant… »