Taking On The System: The Must-Read Political Book of the Year

[Joanne98]

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga Is Our Era’s Very Own Saul Alinsky


By Al Giordano
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
August 19, 2008

The release date for Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era, by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (2008, Celebra) was moved up from early September to tomorrow, August 20 – in the nick of time for the Democratic National Convention to be held next week in Denver. Howard Dean would do well to put a copy of that book on every delegate and candidate’s convention seat, as it is a roadmap for how to organize – on and off the Internet – to win political battles.


The advice offered in this 256-page hardcover applies beyond electoral politics to non-electoral and even anti-electoral movements, and to the desires of creative individuals – artists, musicians, writers, journalists – and communities everywhere to, in Kos-speak, “bypass” or “crush the gatekeepers” that place themselves between us and the wider public.

Six years ago, as most Democratic Party leaders and legislators were joining George W. Bush in the fear-driven post-September 11 rush to war in Iraq, a then-31-year-old Moulitsas started a blog with the simple sentence: “I am progressive. I am liberal. I make no apologies.” Today you know that blog as The Daily Kos, with 173,616 registered participants, called the “Orange Satan” by some of its critics (mainly people like Fox News clown Bill O’Reilly who have felt the sting of its thousands of keypads swarming upon them). On the political Internet, it’s simply the biggest tent in town, and a daily read for national political reporters who regularly pick up stories there and drive them into the national debate.

Simultaneously dedicated to building the Democratic Party in the United States, but also to brooming out its corporate masters, “Kos” (a nickname he picked up while serving in the military during the first Gulf War), is as responsible as anyone for that party’s retaking of Congress in the 2006 elections. Mobilizing his readers and co-diarists, Kos raised millions of dollars of “early money” in small contributions for start-up Congressional and Senate candidates, many in districts where Washington insiders opined they didn’t have a prayer, and many of them are – surprise, surprise – members of Congress today.

Five years ago when I first stumbled upon the Daily Kos, I found it both attractive and repulsive: like the first experiment with a mind-altering drug. (As author Richard Klein has writ: the sublime is, by definition, “a negative pleasure.”) Kos and most of his co-diarists were enthusiasts of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign (and had a lot to do with his pioneering success at low-ticket online fundraising). And those that were not with Dean were mostly behind Wesley Clark’s presidential bid that year. They skewed white and male, almost all of them posted anonymously, with the trademark lack of accountability that one might expect from such a gathering-of-invisibles. And yet I couldn’t resist jumping in: In late 2003 I began making the case there as to why I thought John Kerry would win the Iowa caucuses and go on to win the nomination. To say that I encountered resistance would be an understatement. Still, the often rough-and-tumble exchange was irresistible: in the opposing winds from the Dean and Clark true believers, I was forced to refine my own thinking, sharpen my arguments, and adhere them even closer to demonstrable facts. Participating in The Daily Kos turned me into a better communicator with a much greater grasp of how to utilize the Internet to turn new ideas into widely accepted truths (Narco News’ own participatory Narcosphere was, in fact, inspired by it): It’s poetic that this online boot camp was started by a liberal military veteran.

Beginning in 2006, many of Kos’ own co-diarists decided they wanted to meet face to face and the first “Yearly Kos” convention was held. After two such gatherings, Kos – not entirely comfortable with the event bearing his name – convinced them to change the title. It’s now Netroots Nation. That “real life” version of the online community has led to some important self-correction by the movement that calls itself “Netroots.” This year, they had a successful scholarship fund that helped bring more African-American and Hispanic-American bloggers into the mix, the gender disparity has lessened, and the “nation” that Kos founded looks more and more like America every day.

Now, on to the book:

Kos dedicates Taking on the System to his wife and kids and also “for Saul Alinsky… The tactics may change, but the soul of the radical endures.”

The work also begins with an Alinsky quotation: “Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society.”

The book, purposefully and transparently, is a 21st century update of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971, Random House). Where Alinsky summarized community organizing techniques in phrases quick enough to fit on a bumpersticker (“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules,” and, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon”), so does Moulitsas (“Bypass the gatekeepers,” “Raise an army,” “Target your villain,” “Craft your hero,” etcetera).

Moulitsas’ distaste for those he calls “gatekeepers” is what got him into the battle:


“I started the site for a simple reason – I felt ill-served by the undemocratic gatekeeping mentality so prevalent in our society. And, at that time, we seemed to be on an inexorable march toward war with no avenue for dissent. There was an assumption by the powers that be that the rest of the citizen body couldn’t think for ourselves. That we needed self-appointed and so-called experts to tell us what to think, what to do, and what we should – or should not – know. For far too long, these gatekeepers controlled the national conversation.”

Kos expands his anti-gatekeeper view of politics to other key sectors of society: the media, the music industry, and Hollywood among them. Don’t presume that this is a book about Democratic Party politics: It is only marginally so. It’s about organizing in any and every field where creative individuals and communities must learn to bypass or to crush the self-appointed wardens (what, a dozen years ago, when confronting the problem in my own profession of journalism, I called “the middlemen”).

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