The Alinsky/Podesta Strategy: How the Radical Left
Engineered America’s Unraveling
Lionel Nation
The Podesta Playbook discussed in our last email inspired many comments and reactions so I thought it best to follow up, adding the Alinsky take and component.
The Playbook is not a document you’ll find published by Politico or archived in the Library of Congress. It’s not formal policy. It’s not a white paper. It’s a set of embedded strategies—well-worn, battle-tested, and deployed with quiet precision by the radical Left. The phrase refers to the political maneuvering, media manipulation, legal warfare, and social engineering tactics attributed to longtime Democratic insider John Podesta, a key power broker under Presidents Clinton and Obama, and the campaign chair for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
These tactics, largely revealed through WikiLeaks email dumps, campaign leaks, and public “simulation” exercises like the Transition Integrity Project, offer a glimpse into how entrenched power operates—not through democratic consensus, but through manufactured crisis and controlled opposition.
And layered beneath all of it is the ghost of Saul Alinsky, whose radical guidebook, Rules for Radicals, serves as the spiritual backbone of today’s leftist insurgency.
1. Color Revolution Tactics—Made in America
Let’s start with what’s being exported in reverse. John Podesta and his co-conspirator cohorts imported tactics the CIA and State Department once used abroad to dismantle authoritarian regimes. The playbook borrows directly from color revolutions in Ukraine, Egypt, and elsewhere—covert methods to destabilize governments by inciting unrest, delegitimizing elections, and undermining public trust.
Sound familiar?
These tactics include:
- Orchestrating mass protests and violent flash mobs
- Delegitimizing the outcome of democratic elections
- Pitting ethnic and social groups against each other
- Coordinating propaganda through media and NGOs
They’re not just for foreign coups anymore. They’re being being used right here at home targeting cities like Portland, Atlanta, and now Los Angeles.
2. The Transition Integrity Project—Wargaming a Coup
In 2020, Podesta took part in a highly suspicious simulation, the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), where he literally played the role of Joe Biden refusing to concede a Trump victory. In that scenario:
- He suggested encouraging California, Oregon, and Washington to secede from the Union.
- He pushed for widespread unrest and legal challenges.
- The conclusion of the TIP? “Violent conflict is highly likely.”
The media called it “just a simulation.” But to many, it looked like a dress rehearsal for civil unrest, fueled by the very people who claimed Trump would never leave office.
And remember: Trump did leave. Peacefully. Despite this, the narrative was already seeded, the fuse already lit.
3. Saul Alinsky’s Rules in Action
John Podesta didn’t invent this strategy. He inherited it. And if there’s one ideological godfather behind it all, it’s Saul Alinsky.
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals teaches:
- “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.”
- “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
- “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
- “Keep the pressure on.”
Podesta simply digitized and institutionalized these ideas. He weaponized them through modern media, academia, NGOs, and Big Tech. Think about:
- Ridiculing Trump supporters as “deplorables.”
- Freezing ICE agents and painting them as villains.
- Polarizing every national debate into good vs evil, oppressed vs oppressor.
It’s Alinsky—modernized, digitized, and turned into federal policy.
4. Media Messaging and Psychological Ops
The Podesta Playbook relies on a subservient, complicit media. Not just to report stories, but to frame narratives and suppress counterpoints.
The process looks like this:
- Pre-scripted leaks are delivered to CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times.
- Social media “fact-checkers” throttle dissenting views.
- Grassroots movements appear out of thin air, always armed with matching signs and talking points.
- Opposing voices are branded as misinformation or domestic extremism.
The media no longer informs. It performs—as a propaganda arm of a regime propped up by tech billionaires and Beltway ideologues.
5. Legal Warfare and Bureaucratic Occupation
Podesta and his network know that true control isn’t just winning elections. It’s owning the courts, the agencies, and the rulebooks.
This part of the playbook includes:
- Using strategic litigation to block executive orders and jam legal pipelines.
- Stalling border enforcement with lawsuits while filing injunctions at friendly circuit courts.
- Placing ideologically vetted appointees in every agency, ready to resist or sabotage directives from above.
This is not activism. It’s institutional occupation. And it’s been stunningly effective.
6. Why It All Matters—Right Now
As we watch chaos erupt in Los Angeles, it’s impossible to ignore the signs.
The so-called “protests” are coordinated. Pre-staged. Tactically armed. This is not grassroots outrage—it’s color revolution tactics in full swing. ICE agents are under siege. Federal authority is being challenged. And the narrative machine is already working overtime to call it “mostly peaceful.”
Just like the Transition Integrity Project warned, just like Podesta rehearsed.
Meanwhile, Alinsky’s methods are used to vilify, ridicule, and silence anyone who speaks out. Citizens are labeled extremists for wanting law and order. Border enforcement is called fascism. And the media marches in lockstep with the chaos.
The Endgame—Collapse and Control
Here’s the bitter truth: the Podesta Playbook isn’t about protests. It’s about power. The goal is simple:
- Collapse the current system.
- Replace it with an unelected, unaccountable managerial class.
- Use chaos as the excuse for permanent emergency measures.
Sound familiar?
It’s the same formula the CCP uses—except now it’s dressed in American language, pushed by American names, and justified by American media.
And unless patriots wake up, call it out, and demand accountability, the takeover will continue without a shot fired.
This Is War Without Uniforms
We are not witnessing “protests.” We are watching fifth-generation warfare—where the battlefield is the culture, the weapons are ideas, and the victims are the nation’s soul.
The Podesta Playbook, built on the bones of Saul Alinsky’s radical blueprint, is not a theory. It’s happening.
Right now.
In your city. On your screens. In your schools. Through your laws.
The only question left: How long before we fight back with a playbook of our own?
Till it be morrow good citizen.