Ideas and Ideals

Hillary Rodham Clinton, оne of the candidates in the presidential elections of 2016, received her first lessons in political philosophy and practice from the founder of a new direction in social engineering – social organizing – Saul Alinsky (1909-1972).  Despite Clinon’s defeat in the recent presidential elections and the real threat of destruction of Obama’s political legacy, the philosophy of permanent revolution started by Alinsky and his package of social technologies are very much alive in American political culture. The article analyzes the lessons learned by Hilary from Alinsky during and after college that helped to form her political personality. Among these lessons were social technologies which help circumvent existing laws, democratic institutions and procedures as well as instruction in the principles and rules guiding radical activists. The article also analyzes the reasons why social technologies which helped Obama win the presidency and be reelected did not work for Clinton. The goal of the article is to look into the Clinton’s early focus on Alynsky and communications with him crucial to her political development, and to explain how Alinsky’s techniques combined with modern electronic technologies were used in her presidential campaign.

Various factors affect the socio-economic and socio-political situation in society. It largely determines the change in the level of social tension. Increasing the level of social tension to a critical level leads to the formation of protest moods in the community, which, logically, increases the probability of the various protests, such as: gathering signatures, rallies, demonstrations, pickets, hunger strikes, and others. Protest potential can lead to aggressive actions of certain groups of the population. The article deals with the study of a model of protest moods, the empirical basis of which is the change in the level of protest activity in the city of Krasnoyarsk in the last 6 years. As have shown results studies, a significant impact on protest activity of the population have regional factors. Environmental and personal safety factors affect a large extent, which can lead to self-organization of the population and the large-scale protests. The article presents the confirmation of the hypothesis that if the social and political factors do not directly affect the personal safety of the population, despite the crisis phenomena in the society, the level of protest moods in the region could be stable and remain at a low level.