Category: US Politics

Richard Andrew Cloward and Francis Fox Piven are two names that are largely unfamiliar to the average American, but, as Mark Levin raged last night during an appearance on Fox’s Hannity show, their historical relevance is being seen all over the country today.

Outspoken conservative Mark Levin fumed at the violation of the Constitution in various states’ ballot collection procedures, blasting that "there’s more evidence of voter fraud than there was ever evidence of Russia collusion… so those that keep saying, let’s see the evidence, where the hell were you for the last four years?"

The Democrats "believed in flooding the system, create chaos, grab power, and accuse your opponent of misbehavior… this is the ideology of two marxist professors – Cloward and Piven."

And now Democrats are calling for unity? Levin adds…

"I’m part of the new resistance, God forbid if our president doesn’t win."

"I am not uniting around [Biden] anymore than they united around our man."

Heated moment now on @seanhannity:@marklevinshow says "I’m part of the new resistance, God forbid if our president doesn’t win."

"I am not uniting around [Biden] anymore than they united around our man." pic.twitter.com/YQag3mHEkB

— Anthony Leonardi (@TonyDLeonardi) November 7, 2020

By way of background, as Brandon Smith detailed previously, in the mid-sixties at the height of the “social revolution” the line between democratic benevolence and outright communism became rather blurry. The Democratic Party, which controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, was used as the springboard by social engineers to introduce a new era of welfare initiatives enacted in the name of “defending the poor”, also known as the “Great Society Programs”. These initiatives, however, were driven by far more subversive and extreme motivations, and have been expanded on by every presidency since, Republican and Democrat alike.

At Columbia University, sociologist professors Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven introduced a political strategy in 1966 in an article entitled ‘The Weight Of The Poor: A Strategy To End Poverty’.

This article outlined a plan that they believed would eventually lead to the total transmutation of America into a full-fledged centralized welfare state (in other words, a collectivist enclave). The spearpoint of the Cloward-Piven strategy involved nothing less than economic sabotage against the U.S.

Theoretically, according to the doctrine, a condition of overwhelming tension and strain could be engineered through the overloading of American welfare rolls, thereby smothering the entitlement program structure at the state and local level. The implosion of welfare benefits would facilitate a massive spike in poverty and desperation, creating a financial crisis that would lead to an even greater cycle of demand for a fully socialized system. This desperation would then “force” the federal government to concentrate all welfare programs under one roof, nationalize and enforce a socialist ideology, and ultimately, compact an immense level of power into the hands of a select few.

Cloward and Piven claimed that this could be accomplished at a grassroots level through community activism, and, that it would facilitate a more compassionate federal authority, however, there are numerous problems with these assertions.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy has nothing to do with grassroots activism, and accomplishes nothing tangible for the downtrodden poverty class. In fact, I would dare to say that Cloward and Piven as well as most social engineers are well aware that the concept ultimately only serves to give even more dominance to the establishment and pilfer even more freedom from the masses.

Cloward-Piven is not limited to the destabilization of state and local welfare programs. It can easily be used against federal level entitlements, and in reality, is much more effective against an entity with the proven tendency towards exponential debt spending. Though the federal government may be able to borrow fiat dollars through the Federal Reserve to prolong welfare rolls while the states cannot, a more volatile threat arises when debt monetization begins to wear down the purchasing power of the currency. Weakened purchasing power results in reduced consumer activity, less industrial growth, less GDP, and obviously, more poverty. The dollar has lost approximately 98% of its purchasing power since 1972, and after 50 years of the so-called “War on Poverty”, nearly one third of the American population now repeatedly slips under the official poverty line.

In the past decade alone, the number of people dependent on food stamps and EBT for their survival in the U.S. has doubled from 25 million people to nearly 50 million people. Those who receive some kind of payment from the government, including those on social security, disability, and veterans benefits, are approximately 100 million. Americans on social security do not consider themselves welfare recipients because they paid into the system, however, the point remains that if the federal money tap shuts down due to overwhelming participation, the checks will stop whether you paid into the system or not.

In the end, it is the Federal Government itself that is most vulnerable to the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and I believe the goal is to set fire to ALL social structures in the U.S., then assimilate them into a new globalist system.

But, as ominous as that all sounds, we need to back a little further since it was Saul Alinsky, an American community activist and political theorist in Chicago, that was the inspiration for Cloward and Piven.

Alinksy grew impatient with the new leftist activists in the 1960’s. In his book ‘Rules for Radicals,’ (which is dedicated to Lucifer), he states, “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules” (Alinsky, 1972).

When forced to do that, human agendas inevitably fall short. This gives the opportunity to replace the capitalist ‘rule book’ with a socialist one.

The strategy was to mobilize people in poverty en/mass to overwhelm the government agencies with a flood of demands beyond these agencies’ capacity.

This creates gridlock, and the aim was to bring the system down.

Alinsky had contact with Hillary Clinton. You can see her letter to him in 1971(freebeacon.com). Clinton wrote her college thesis on ‘Alinsky and His Organizing Plan.’ Also, Barack Obama taught Alinsky 101 at the University of Chicago. How much Allinsky’s concepts actually influenced Clinton and Obama is open to debate. See David Horowitz’s book ‘Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model’ for more information.

Other organizations rose up, such as Acorn, with the issue of “voting rights.” These organizations received support from people like George Soros (but that is another story).

Now, let’s look at the playbook that developed from Cloward and Piven’s ideas.

These steps have been incorrectly attributed by many to Saul Alinsky. While it is true that he didn’t write them, this much is true: the actual plan is real. It was inspired by Alinsky and enumerated by Cloward and Piven.

Some people will react to this list; others will say that some of the steps are desirable goals.

Nonetheless, you can quickly see how they fit into the socialistic goals of far-left politicians and others today.

The 8 Steps to Create a Socialist State.

1. Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people. HAPPENING NOW

2. Poverty – Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live. HAPPENING NOW

3. Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty. HAPPENING NOW

4. Gun Control – Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state. HAPPENING NOW

5. Welfare – Take control of every aspect of their lives. (Food, Housing, and Income) HAPPENING NOW

6. Education – Take control of what people read and listen to us“ take control of what children learn in school. ALREADY DONE

7. Religion – Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools. ALREADY DONE

8. Class Warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor. HAPPENING NOW

Right now, as Geoffrey Grider explains, steps 1-5 and 8 are being executed right now in how our government is reacting to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, with steps, 6 and 7 already having been implemented since 2008. The American economy is being split into pieces right now by the combination of a $2 trillion dollar bailout with more coming, Americans under stay-at-home orders, and with more people right now on unemployment in two weeks of the coronavirus crisis than in the second year of the Great Depression of 1929.

In fact, as Geoffrey Grider explains, the Cloward-Piven plan to collapse the American economy first began under President Obama.

We thought we dodged a bullet with the election of Trump in 2016, but the last nine months of chaos in America was the rebirth of the Cloward-Piven strategy… And this does not end well… (as Brandon Smith previously noted):

If we allow ourselves to fall into the trap of making the developing crisis about a singularly unimportant thing; then the elites get exactly what they want – an angry and desperate citizenry out for the blood of a middleman and out for the blood of each other, while they sit back, relax, and wait to swoop in as our financial saviors with strings attached.

For those naïve enough to assume that Cloward-Piven is just a well intentioned activist method, it is important to understand that even if that were so, the effect of the Cloward-Piven Strategy will never achieve the goal its creators claimed to support. In my view, it is probable that they never really intended for it to produce wealth equality or an increased quality of life.

The tactic can only decrease wealth security by making all citizens equally destitute. As we have seen in numerous socialist and communist experiments over the past century, economic harmonization never creates wealth or prosperity, it only siphons wealth from one area and redistributes it to others, evaporating much of it as it is squeezed through the grinding gears of the establishment machine. Socialism, in its very essence, elevates government to the role of all-pervasive parent, and casts the citizenry down into the role of dependent sniveling infant. Even in its most righteous form, Cloward-Piven seeks to make infants of us all, whether we like it or not.

The key to achieving this is simple:

“Don’t waste a crisis”?

That is exactly what has happened in 2020, especially as it involved more that one crisis.

The COVID-19 Crisis

This pandemic has affected the lives of everyone. It has been 100 years since we have had anything like it. Tragically, people have died, and hospitals and the health care system have sought to overcome it. It has wrecked the economy, which was doing incredibly well before the pandemic. COVID-19 has been a major crisis.

George Floyd’s Death

The death of George Floyd, while in the custody of police officers in Minneapolis, in May, set off a firestorm of protests that have, in certain places, resulted in violence and destruction of property. In turn, this has resulted in issues related to police reform, law and order, etc. This, too, has been a major crisis.

Now put these two crises together, and people, both in the community and in politics, have sought to promote wholesale changes in society. Not just ‘defunding the police,’ but more radical socialist goals for society.

Remember, Black Lives Matter, which has been so easily endorsed by individuals and organizations, was founded by Marxist communists, who embraced socialist beliefs and positions.

Simply put, that there are some who are taking advantage of the current crisis’ in America to promote far-reaching socialist goals that would change society radically for years to come.

Don’t believe us, here’s an interview with Frances Fox Piven from earlier this month as she discusses why disruption must be central to protests, the thorny questions of violence and property destruction…

…this wave of protest is remarkable, and such a relief, to tell you the truth, because it really did look as though we were marching down the road to fascism.

…

It was the coming together of this [the killing of George Floyd] kind of inciting, outrageous act with the underlying conditions — and underlying conditions not only of hardship but also of gross incompetence on the part of the government in charge — which contributed to the sense that people could win something, that they could make an impact on their society.

…

Everybody seems to agree that we have to be nonviolent. I think that’s a judgment that has to be made for each movement action. I do agree that the public that we play to doesn’t like violence. But at the same time, the violent capacity of the crowd is an important way of defending its ability to exercise disruptive power.

…

This movement, Black Lives Matter, in particular, is very open to electoral activism. After the 1960s, activists drew a sharp line between protest activity and electoral activity, as if doing one meant you couldn’t do the other. What they did not keep in full view was the way in which protest activism affected electoral activism and the way in which electoral victories encouraged protest. We can see that pretty clearly now. I don’t think we’ll get a classical realignment, but I think we have to look forward to the destruction of the Republican Party…

…Certainly a revolutionary transformation, yes. Something like a revolution. It’s hard to imagine a revolution in the old style, the French style, in the United States. But a revolutionary transformation in the United States, and in European countries as well.

To be clear, this is not the majority of the protestors. The extreme left-wing is not the majority of people on the left within the Democratic Party.

As Jason Brown notes, reflecting on the current crisis in America, we must acknowledge that there is an organized effort, by bad actors, foreign and domestic, that want to see the destruction of our republic.

We cannot be intimidated by those that want to call us conspiracy theorists, or make fun of us and our “tin foil hats.” We have to speak truth to our elected officials and remind them that they work for us, and that we are not their subjects. 

Putting an end to these revolutionary insurgents, is only possible if we recognize them for what they are. The first step to solving a problem, is acknowledging that you have one. We need to be united as a people because together we are strong. When we are divided along lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, and political ideology we are weak as we fight each other, rather than push back against those that are doing the damage to this country. We need to realize this and stop sabotaging our fellow Americans.

That is America today. We are in the valley of decision, and we have to make a decision which way we want to go as a nation to become a full-blown socialist nation or hold fast to our present system as a free enterprise nation.