A DANGEROUS NEWCOMER TO THE LEFT’S WAR AGAINST TRUMP & AMERICA

The agendas of David Brock’s organization, Shareblue.

FPM

A key participant in the political war by which the Left is currently fighting to delegitimize and ultimately destroy the Trump presidency is a relatively new organization called Shareblue, which grew out of Blue Nation Review (BNR), a pro-Democrat entity that once described Hillary Clinton as “one of the most ethical political leaders in America.” In 2015 David Brock, a former-conservative-turned-leftist, purchased BNR and rebranded it as Shareblue. From the outset, his objective has been to develop Shareblue into a progressive media outlet that speaks directly to grass roots Americans, who are, in Brock’s estimation, “avidly and unabashedly pro-Hillary.”

Shareblue first outlined its major objectives in a 44-page confidential memo that set the agenda for a January 2017 conference at Florida’s luxurious Turnberry Isle resort, where Mr. Brock addressed some 120 wealthy Democratic donors and tried to map out a course of action by which leftists could effectively “kick Donald Trump’s ass” during the next four years. Specifically, the memo indicated that Brock plans to use Shareblue as a forum for “partisan combat” against Trump and his agenda.

Shareblue identifies its top priorities as follows:

  • “Calling out signs of authoritarianism and kleptocracy”;
  • “[Providing] nonstop coverage of the influence of Vladimir Putin and Russia on Trump and his administration”;
  • “Exposing Trump as a weak, thin-skinned ‘loser’ vulnerable to goading”;
  • “Relentlessly beating the drum that [Trump] has no mandate, lost the popular vote, and is the least popular president-elect in modern American history”;
  • “Spotlighting the Trump administration’s vast ties to white nationalists and the ways in which they explicitly empower white supremacy”;
  • “Tracking and fighting back against odious GOP legislation in Congress”;
  • “[Providing] morale-boosting coverage of the grassroots opposition and resistance efforts outside the beltway”;
  • “[Providing] positive coverage of Democrats who boldly call out Trump and aggressively work against him [and] hold him accountable”; and
  • “Fighting outrage fatigue.”

Shareblue has also indicated that yet another Brock organization, the American Independent Institute, will award, on Shareblue’s behalf, grants to fund the efforts of “top investigative journalists to cover, expose, and damage the Trump administration and its allies.”

Though Shareblue is a relative newcomer to the political scene, by no means is it a minor player in left-wing circles. Indeed, the organization’s website drew 162 million unique viewers during the second half of 2016 ? a 50 percent increase over the preceding 6 months.

In addition, Shareblue recently announced its plan to develop a premium service where subscribers can pay a fee to participate in a Twitter-like forum open only to leftists and progressives. By Brock’s telling, such an ideological echo chamber will provide “a powerful way of merging our connection to the grassroots with our platform.”

Shareblue’s overarching objectives are to become “the go-to news outlet” for “grassroots Trump opponents” and “opposition leaders”; to force “Trump allies … to step down or change course due to news we push”; and to embolden Congressional Democrats to “take more aggressive positions against Trump.”

At its heart, Shareblue is rooted in the philosophy and tactics of Saul Alinsky, the famed socialist community organizer whose profound influence on both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has been well established. Alinsky made it clear that left-wing radicals should constantly strive to “rub raw the resentments of the people,” “fan … latent hostilities to the point of overt expression,” and “agitate to the point of conflict.” Moreover, Alinsky explained, these radicals must cultivate unity against a clearly identifiable enemy ? in this case, Trump ? who can be caricatured as the very personification of evil.

Alinsky summarized it this way: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it…. [T]here is no point to tactics unless one has a target upon which to center the attacks” ? so as to effectively cultivate in people’s hearts a negative, visceral emotional response to the face of that target wherever it is seen. Further, Alinsky advised leftists to avoid the temptation to concede that their opponents are not “100 per cent devil” ? i.e., that those opponents may possess certain admirable qualities like being “churchgoing” or “generous to charity.” Such qualifying remarks, Alinsky said, “dilut[e] the impact of the attack” and amount to “political idiocy.”

By following Alinsky’s prescriptions for political combat, Shareblue takes its place alongside a host of aggressive left-wing allies who are likewise engaged in the battle to paint President Trump and his advisers as quasi-satanic figures, and to permanently enshrine the Democrats as America’s overlords.

March 31, 2017 | 21 Comments »

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21 Comments / 21 Comments

  1. @ MELECH david:
    Blood type astrology is popular in Asia, as in the romantic comedy some years back, “My Boyfriend is Type B”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIkvBfpVQGY

    And then we have the same tiresome genre we have here of do-gooder vampires who won’t drink blood, as in Blood (2015)

    https://www.viki.com/tv/24437c-blood?locale=en

    But nobody can top Lugosi’s hilarious line, “I never drink…wine.”

    https://youtu.be/BMBdUzv_yjk

    This is the 21st century guys. Cut the bloodline crap.

    That’s probably why in days of yore, Jews didn’t have last names — except for Cohens and Levys, of course — just “ben” for son of — usually couldn’t go back more than 4 generations — and still can’t — don’t keep family genealogies in bibles. Because what matters is that we are all children of Israel, whether by birth or conversion no matter, and whether or not your mother was raped by a goy.

    Which reminds me of the old chestnut about when Jews were forced to get last names. This was in the Austrian Empire where the Jews got German names. One guy says to his friend coming out from the town hall, “what name did you get?”

    “Schweisshundt.”

    “Schweisshundt?” Why, that’s a terrible name.

    “Are you kidding me? You know how much I had to pay for the “W”?

    [Apropos of nothing, there are two great Asian dramas called, “W”

    W (Korean)

    https://www.viki.com/tv/30854c-w?locale=en

    and the Tragedy of W (Japanese)

    https://www.viki.com/videos/225156v-the-tragedy-of-w-episode-1?locale=en

    No doubt this influenced the development of the idea of democracy. The founding fathers of America were Hebraists. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, authors of the “Federalist Papers” and the U.S. Constitution, used the nom de plume, “Publius.”

    Given Name PUBLIUS. USAGE: Ancient Roman. PRONOUNCED: PUWB-li-uws (Ancient Roman), PUB-lee-?s (English) [key] Roman praenomen, or given name, meaning “public” in Latin.
    Behind the Name: Meaning, origin and history of the name Publius
    https://www.behindthename.com/name/publius

  2. Edgar G. Said:

    My own bloodline is far, far, far…. better than anyone of those mentioned….I’m actually descended in a straight line, from King David..

    you and j.c.

  3. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    xx

    Now you’re talking my language. I have that Jimmy Durante record, a 10″ vinyl. although haven’t played it for over 30 years. i think that it includes that crack about becoming famous, where Mozart became famous only 400 year after he died, Beethoven became famous only 300 years after he died, ….

    “but I can’t wait that long, I only have 2 changes of underwear”…. @ Michael S:

    I hope you were only kidding. I know all the history of David, Bathsheba, Joab Absalom Solomon, Rehoboam etc, and much much more. If we had more who proliferated like David, there would be a billion Jews controlling the world right now.

    As for my “Davidic habits”…. I was joshing. Perhaps in my single days,-within limits- but as soon as I met my future wife that all stopped completely. I was also able to give up cigarettes “cold turkey” after having smoked for 12 years…… and always shunned drugs, never touched marijuana and even alcohol, although I grew up in Ireland and generally went pub crawling 2-3 nights a week..Never got drunk or even tipsy…… that I can recall. Haven’t had a drink for maybe 45 years, except kiddush wine. No bottles hidden under the bed or in the toilet tanks etc.

    My comments are all in good fun. I get that way sometimes.

  4. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    xx

    Now you’re talking my language. “Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go, that you wanted to stay , that you wanted to go…”, etc.(I can’t remember if he ever does say where he wanted to go). I have that Jimmy Durante record, a 10″ vinyl. although haven’t played it for over 40 years. it may-or may not- include that crack about becoming famous, where Mozart became famous only 400 year after he died, Beethoven became famous only 300 years after he died, ….

    “but I can’t wait that long, I only have 2 changes of underwear”….

    I think also on that record is the skit (taking a liberty with the names as I can’t recall exactly) … “They said Rachmaninoff was mad, they said Schubert was made they said Louis was mad…”… his audience roars..”WHO’S LOUIS”..and Jimmy says,

    “my uncle, he WAS mad..”

  5. His hair, at first, Reminded me of this scene with Cameron Diaz’s hair in “Something About Mary” (1998)
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129387/

    https://youtu.be/9NesjZbF1Ls

    I remember teaching a class in the Bronx, of mostly Latino kids, who had wild names that I wondered if their parents had thought of while on a bad trip at Woodstock. Except for one African-American kid named, “Norman”. There was one set of twins, a boy and a girl, named, I kid you not, Dejeuner and Tajeuner. I didn’t have the heart to tell Dejeuner her name meant breakfast in French.

    In one of Paul Tabori’s books, “The Natural History of Stupidity” originally, “The Natural Science of Stupidity” (1959)

    https://www.amazon.com/Natural-History-Stupidity-Paul-Tabori/dp/1566192404

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tabori
    Not a very good wikipedia article, leaves out a lot of his books, like his history of the left hand and biography of Maria Theresa and his son became a famous tv or movie writer or director, I forget.

    [I knew him when I was a kid] he wrote about how during the French Revolution, the law that children had to be named after saints in the Catholic calendar was abolished and then restored in a different, secular, form after some parents went wild with the naming, such as one father who named his three daughters after the three venereal diseases, Syphilis, Gonorreah, and Herpes. There was a recent case like that. A U.S. judge ruled that parents had to give their child either one or a combination of their last names. The parents wanted to name their daughter, “Allah.” They are suing and The ACLU has taken their case.

    http://www.myajc.com/news/atlanta-family-battling-state-over-right-name-daughter-allah/E6us5J5Qa9XR771wkJ0UTM/

    But, his expression is definitely Andy Warhol. Sort of older Andy Warhol on a bad day with just a touch of rigor mortis

    https://www.google.com/search?q=andy+warhol&safe=active&rlz=1CAACAO_enUS736US736&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiXz6zLroPTAhXq7IMKHRO4DzoQ_AUIBigB&biw=1536&bih=792

  6. @ Edgar G.:
    Hi, Edgar

    I haven’t ever met two people exactly alike. Thank God! My “kind” begins and ends with me; and I’ve been changing all my life, at that. I think my wife would prefer that I keep changing in the right direction; but women do tend to be optimists in this regard.

    I’m sorry to hear about your habits with women. His involvement with Bathsheba cost David dearly:

    2 Samuel 12:
    [10] Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.
    [11] Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun.
    [12] For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.

    I was on the receiving end of a broken marriage: My father left when I was three weeks old, and I never saw him until I was 16. He died three years later. Infidelity is taken lightly in our society; but it is EXTREMELY hurtful. Just ask a small child who has lost his father, how he feels about it.

    On the upside, God forgave David, though this did not free him of the personal consequences of what he did. The royal line of Judah came from his union with Bathsheba.

  7. @ Michael S:
    xx

    That’s an interesting remark, that Sebastien is “one kind” and you are “another kind”….. why didn’t you cut the suspense and tell us WHAT KINDS….? Blue skinned Martians perhaps…??, 3 eyed Venusians maybe…?

    It’s like the picked-up phonecall, “Hello”? ..”you don’t say”…”you don’t say”.. for another couple of minutes. His friends, consumed by curiosity, roar WELLL WHO WAS IT…??….. “He didn’t say”… Old, clean and humourous,, to me anyway.@ Michael S:
    xx

    My own bloodline is far, far, far…. better than anyone of those mentioned….I’m actually descended in a straight line, from King David..I even have his habits concerning women, which are a bit of a handicap in these modern times, but you can’t fight heredity…

    Or maybe from Jacob -which means from Abraham, …..

  8. @ Michael S:
    xx

    That’s an interesting remark, that Sebastien is “one kind” and you are “another kind”….. why didn’t you cut the suspense and tell us WHAT KINDS….? Blue skinned Martians perhaps…??, 3 eyed Venusians maybe…?

    It’s like the picked-up phonecall, “Hello”? ..”you don’t say”…”you don’t say”.. for another couple of minutes. His friends, consumed by curiosity, roar WELLL WHO WAS IT…??….. “He didn’t say”… Old, clean and humourous,, to me anyway.

  9. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    Hi, Sebastian.

    Andy Warhol’s blonde hair was a wig. I knew him without the wig, in 1970-71 in San Francisco. He impressed me as a typical weirdo; I didn’t know at the time, that he was rich. So, he was “rich weird”. He thought I was strange, by the way, being sort of normal. It takes all kinds, to make a world. You and I are two of them.

    BTW. Hillary’s supporters are “grass roots Americans???” What sort of grass is Brock talking about? Whacky tobacky?

  10. @ futuret:
    My bloodline is more “blue” than those of Trump, Obama, Clinton, Reagan, Ford, Carter, Nixon, Kennedy, Eisenhower and Truman. Only the Bushes and Roosevelt are better connected, as far as I know. I’m a retired (often unemployed) Chemist, of a blue-collar background. The connection of bloodlines is therefore… what???

    The “bloodline” business is BS. What IS pertinent, is what the author said,

    “Alinsky summarized it this way: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it…. [T]here is no point to tactics unless one has a target upon which to center the attacks” ? so as to effectively cultivate in people’s hearts a negative, visceral emotional response to the face of that target wherever it is seen. Further, Alinsky advised leftists to avoid the temptation to concede that their opponents are not “100 per cent devil” ? i.e., that those opponents may possess certain admirable qualities like being “churchgoing” or “generous to charity.” Such qualifying remarks, Alinsky said, “dilut[e] the impact of the attack” and amount to “political idiocy.””

    That is what we are seeing every day in the US press.

  11. Obviously this guy is an out of work “British Israelite”…”

    Brock was born in Washington, D.C., and was adopted by Dorothea and Raymond Brock.[8] He has a younger sister, Regina. Brock was raised Catholic. His father was a marketing executive, whom Brock has described as “a Pat Buchanan conservative.”[

  12. xx

    Obviously this guy is an out of work “British Israelite”…”genealogist” who can prove, by convulsions of fantasy and outright manufacture, that “Biddie Mulligan The Pride Of The Coombe” was a direct blood descendant of “Finn MacCool” and “Herne The Hunter”, combined by Herne marrying Finn’s 3rd cousin 27 times removed, the ceremony having been performed by the King of the Leprechauns, at Stonehenge, to where they all travelled by magic winged horses, this important event being conducted by Sharia Law, without divorce allowed.

    I’m reminded..faintly… of the story of the genealogist who, when informed that Mrs. O’Reilly was a descendant of Kings of Ireland, made the mistake of asking “from whom have you sprung”….to which the Missus roared…

    “Us O’Reillys (only one by marriage but very proud of it) never shprung frum ANNYWUN..we shprings att’em”…. Ah well,I thought it worth a laugh..annyway.

  13. Abolish has competition, it seems.

    Actually, you know, Charlemagne was, in fact, the author of the first TSS. Yes. He got all the warring parties around a big round table he’d got at a fire sale in Camelot, and said, “You may think I ‘ave a lot of Gaul, but lemme be Frank. Less not fight no more. Less all be Friench (silent i). And so zey were!

    Back to the article, it seems that this guy is trying to take a page out of Trump’s campaigning playbook; he’s going to win with the strangest bleach blonde haircut, I guess that’s the Andy Warhol influence.

    Well, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Let’s freeze, polarize and personalize his ass. Actually, I wonder if Alinsky got that idea from McCarthyism, because that is actually the way it operated. And very successfully. I see “Rules for Radicals” was published in 1971, just before Alinksy’s late and unlamented death.