Reflections on Entryism

[ecosophia]

One of the things I've been thinking about of late has been entryism -- the habit, very common in certain extremist political groups, of having people join some other, larger group with an unrelated focus in the hope of taking it over, or at least using it as a venue for recruitment and propaganda. I noted on this week's post over at the main blog that American secret societies, all through the years when they were large and culturally significant, had to fend off attempts at entryism, and noted with a certain wry amusement that the two groups most famous for entryism back in the day were socialists, on the one hand, and the Ku Klux Klan on the other. 

I wasn't exaggerating. On the one hand, it took the Masons a long bitter fight in the 1920s and 1930s to identify and throw out Klansmen who had joined Masonry with the goal of turning the Craft (that's what Masons call Masonry) into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Klan. On the other, quite a few other lodge organizations had to engage in similar struggles to keep socialists from taking them over -- that's when a lot of lodges started making the Pledge of Allegiance part of the opening ritual; socialists hated that and usually wouldn't say it, which made it easy for them to be identified and rendered harmless in various polite but effective ways. 

The irony?  There are two groups of people who quite frequently pop up on my blog, either trying to post links to articles on their websites unrelated to the topic of the weekly essay, or trying to give my feet a tongue bath because they think they can then talk me into agreeing with their positions. You guessed it: it's either socialists on the one hand, or people from the racist right on the other.

It's interesting that this should still be the case a century after the examples I'd studied. Now of course socialism and racial politics both have ghastly track records -- between them, they're responsible for most of the major genocides of the last century and a half -- and that's got to be a problem for recruitment. Still, given the abysmal historical ignorance of most Americans, it shouldn't be that insuperable. Some sort of subcultural heredity?  Or some other factor? 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, is it OK if I continue to post the monthly kitten, deaths of public figures, and the occasional thing I find so fascinating I just gotta tell everybody I know?

—Lady Cutekitten

[ecosophia]

If I didn't want you to do that, I would have told you. If you start pushing a political agenda, mind you...



...we'll have words. ;-)

[kimberlysteele]

What's so odd is that when I used to run a vegan group, there was a person who came in offering to (ostensibly) help who immediately engaged in entryism. She had lots of great ideas that she wanted me to do the hard work of implementing. Her ideas actually were quite solid and if I had the time, I would have used them. I handled the situation as best I could and about six months later, she popped up and had started her own vegan group with some other women. I was happy for her and reassured her several times that I didn't mind the competition: the more the merrier! Now that my group is gone, I hope they continue with their events and aren't afraid of the Emperor-Governor's social distancing edicts. Moral of the story: I wish people would just go off and do their own thing instead of feeling the need to piggyback off of someone they perceive as "better" than they are.

I'd love to read those disgruntled troll posts that get fed to Fido. Admittedly when you slice and dice the few troll commenters who get through on your blogs it's a guilty pleasure to read...

[syfen]

Sometimes its a matter of confidence. People don't trust themselves to start something new, so they try to piggy-back off others. I've been in the lack of confidence position for a fair portion of my life.

[michaeliangray]

I have found that moderating these folks in an online sense is much more difficult than in the real world. It is the whole keyboard warrior mentality at play. In the physical world they tend to be a little more on guard and stand offish as to play their hand too hard.

A group I used to run ended up being infiltrated by a couple of hard line socialists, their plan was essentially to complain about every issue rather than provide any solutions. There was this one time during the committee elections one of them was going on a notable rant about 'not enough being done in regards to X,Y and Z' - the previous president simply snapped at him and said "If you don't like it, why not run for committee and fix it!". They threw up their hands and were never seen again. Rather than avoid them, we leaned into them.

[ecosophia]

I have an easier time online, but that's a function of my Asperger's syndrome -- I dislike face to face confrontations. Hitting the delete button, on the other hand, or making fun of someone for their online misbehavior -- that's much less challenging for me.

[deansmith]

JMG,

My thoughts on why these groups infiltrate established groups.
There are two things that come to mind in nature. Parasites o the one hand and the picture you posted, wolves in sheep's clothing.. the latter to get into a group to feed off of them covertly. But parasites seem to make more sense. Feeding off the life force of an established organism to give life to their goals. Either way it takes vigilance to spot and get rid of the threat. Perhaps this is the only way these types of polar views can start to infiltrate the consciousness of the masses at large? By feeding off of or drawing power from the masses if successful? Hmm?

[ecosophia]

Exactly. Both extremes have very little chance of getting a hearing for their views, so they try to find way to co-opt audiences that aren't interested in their hobby horses.

Differing Definitions

[(Anonymous)]

Please define socialist. Thank you.

Re: Differing Definitions

[ecosophia]

Ooh, a genuine dictionary troll! It's been at least a year and a half since I had one of those; I was beginning to think they were an endangered species.

Look it up for yourself. You're welcome.

[violetcabra]

Didn't Dion Fortune write somewhere about propaganda that to make it really effective the mage has got to pull in a lot of images of sex and death? Point being, it seems to me that the racialist right and the socialist left both have really ace propaganda going back for well over a hundred years. From Fourier onward there's an erotic component to socialism and especially of the Rev. I remember we discussed in some comments section how dreams of mass death have an element of 'le gran mort', that is, they tend towards a certain level of over-the-top erotization. I've seen that socialists want to convert other socialists....and then date them. I would go as far as to say that this desire to have sex and do interesting things accounts for a huge number of the evangelical push.

Likewise, with the racialist right and their hang-ups, with their hang-ups on "kith and kin" with their talk of sexual traditionalism, with their nonstop talk around breeding, really, the racialist right has a huge series of erotic fixations that are embarrassingly similar to the unexpurgated froth one finds all throughout the pages of The Arabian Nights. As for entryism, I think that the reasons are clear: they want to convert more people so that they can have more sexual partners. This accounts for the insensate rage one sees in many quarters still regarding the image of blond women using their sexual freedom to date brown people. Quite obviously there is resentment on account that the woman in question --- a woman as lovely as the Moon, Scheherazade would doubtless say --- is no longer is sexually available.

Point being, both socialism and the racialist politics of the right seem to me reworkings of the Christian myths in which one has the mythic structure of that faith especially the Apocalyptic portions but with a mindless suction of erotic energy cast off from Christianity as a portion of "the world" and now finding its force in frankly pornographic politics.

Even more to the point, I would even go farther and say that 'entryism' could be a basic euphemism for the erotic act. I've known quite a few 'entryist' men who will say literally anything to enter into conjugal relations with a good looking dame. These men may lack the sophistication of the politically cognoscenti, but the behavior is the same and I'd argue has the same biological imperative as other forms of "entryism". What makes the political entryism so much more appealing to so many folks is that it combines the desire to fornicate with the desire to enact violence. This desire for tribal violence is, as Fortune noted, very attractive stuff. I notice the way that young men stand up straight with their shoulders back when discussing tribal violence; I notice how women's face become luminous as they open themselves like a road as they discuss tribal violence. Obviously, when certain subjects come up many people lose the ability to reflect on their own thoughts and motivations, and simply let their base impulses guide them towards...er...entryism. Socialism and rightist racialism are, to my mind at least, simply the two most popular veneers for covering over the sort of egregiousness I've parodied in this comment. Two popular, contending ideological justifications in which the ends always justify the means, and the ends are the basest impulses that people have decked out in stolen, sanctified drag.

[ecosophia]

"For therein are mysteries with which Freud would have a field day." Yes, I would agree with the general thrust of your argument. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

Well, for socialists, it's part and parcel of (badly masked) totalitarianism of the whole revolutionary project. Where all of super-structure (jargon for cultural institutions and norm) is just another battlefield. Every sword that is not in hand of the Marxists is - at least in said Marxist's mind - a sword not properly used. Every institution not aligned with socialism is servant - witting or unwitting - of the enemy engaged in delaying action against inevitable revolution.

So for socialists entryism would be part of cultural (super-structural?) DNA.

-changeling

[ecosophia]

Is it masked at all? Totalitarianism is the conviction that every part of human life should be subordinated to political ideology. Socialism has a very bad case of that.

[(Anonymous)]

This obviously has its parallel with one’s mind which one can see as one’s own secret society. No doubt this why you are always extolling us to chuck the teevee out the window and to practise discursive meditation so that our personal secret societies can more easily tell when a new member - a thought - is welcome and benign or is an “entryist.” With time we can learn to be more selective and impose our own password system for access to our inner circles.

The current wokism and cancel culture seem to me to be a massive entryist assault on our minds to the point that many no longer know which way is up or what is sensible and just. When they detect a non-woke idea in their psyche they hunt it down McCarthy-like and start to drive themselves insane.

How very Neptunian.

[ecosophia]

Good -- as in the macrocosm, so in the microcosm.

[(Anonymous)]

“Extolling” should read “exhorting” in the post I just submitted. Spellcheck, grrr!

[ecosophia]

I highly recommend turning off your spellchecker and keeping a dictionary handy. It saves a lot of embarrassment.

[aldabra]

People who think they're right but have no traction look for traction. It's the Green problem; if you think ecosystem viability is the main issue but the practical effect of voting Green is splitting the left vote and electing people who will accelerate the trashing of the ecosystem you eventually get disillusioned with that and look for a route towards having a positive effect. The most promising route looks like Labour/the Dems, so you try that, and if you get anywhere at all then everyone else who is caught in the same bind notices.

I don't think you even need deliberate co-ordination for that to happen. I'm that kind of entryist in Labour at the moment; I joined when it looked like they were moving in a direction I agreed with, and I haven't got around to leaving yet despite them repudiating it, because there isn't a better option.

When I was at Oxford there was a legend about how the Conservative Association had organised to join the Liberal Society en masse, in order to have enough of a majority at the AGM to vote to close it down. Obviously that kind of entryism happens too, and in that case it's a conspiracy. But finding the most congenial home in a hostile environment isn't conspiracy. (Setting up your own home instead is fine in frontier territory, but stops working by about the third generation because the assets are all allocated. You can't, in the US, set up a viable third party without significant donor-class support, and the donor class are well served by the existing parties.)

[ecosophia]

That's a good point. On the one hand, you have entryism; on the other hand, you have cooptation -- the environmental movement, for example, has been coopted by the Democrats here in the US, and the anti-abortion movement by the Republicans; neither party does anything for the groups they've coopted, because they can simply wave the other party around as a bogeyperson come election time and get the coopted groups to line up meekly and vote for another candidate who won't do a thing for the causes they favor.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder what a feline specionationalist movement would look like, and how would its activists be spotted? Or possibly striped.

[(Anonymous)]

And their rhetoric would be catty...

😄

—Lady Cutekitten

[(Anonymous)]

If you think about it, it makes sense that Globalism vs Nationalism would be the key lasting conflict of the industrial age. The increase in production and ease of transportation ope to 'change the world'

[ecosophia]

Yes, but it's more than that. Does power rest with political structures, which are divided into nations, or with corporate structures, which are international? That's the great fault line. In practice, "globalist" means "supporting corporate power," after all.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know about the entryism, but I do know that many on the far left are very "ideological" persons. It's part of the subculture to *constantly* talk politics, and your ideology becomes part of your basic identity. "I'm a Trotskyist in the International Committee tradition". Sometimes, it's a form of evangelizing. In other cases, the leftist doesn't want to convince anyone but it's still seen as important to let everyone know his ideology. Some people feel right at home in this milieu. There is also a kind of ideological purism or purity involved. I suspect the "traditional far right is similar, while the new Alt Right seems more chaotic and frankly bewildering...

Tidlösa (Sweden)

[ecosophia]

Spengler pointed out that secular ideologies are always religious sects with the serial numbers filed off, and this is a great example. How much difference is there, really, between saying "I'm a Trotskyist in the International Committee tradition" and "I'm a Reformed United American Free Will Baptist?"

[(Anonymous)]

As for the genocide part, "it wasn't real socialism" is an argument that works, since of course there are always idealistic socialists persecuted by the cynics who "betray" the revolution. Trotskyists and anarchists come to mind. There is therefore always a strong hope that it really is different this time...

There are also pretty extreme groups which probably imagine *they* would do all the killing post revolution...

Tidlösa

[ecosophia]

That is to say, you have socialists who succeed in seizing power and then commit atrocities, and you have socialists who fail to seize power and so can claim that the atrocities are all the fault of the other guys. Got it.

[(Anonymous)]

One more. You *do* realize that from a Marxist perspective you are a...shall we say, petty bourgeois eclectic who is objectively reactionary? I believe Plekhanov in passing attacked fin de siecle occultism, including "Sars and Druids" so there is even a proof text handy!

Tidlösa

[ecosophia]

Good heavens -- I want to find that Plekhanov quote! The "Sars" is a jab at Josephin Péladan, who took the Babylonian title "Sâr," and anything that puts him and the Druids in the same category warms the cockles of my reactionary heart.

[(Anonymous)]

An article about Brexit and the wider picture of decline on this blog that mentions your good self JMG -I shall call it the entryism of good sense as an attempt to be on topic!

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/12/14/the-final-curtain/

The subsequent article is also worth a read:
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/12/15/this-doesnt-end-well/

[ecosophia]

Nice. I'd like to see "collapse now and avoid the rush" get more distribution, as it's one of the few useful strategies available just now.

[(Anonymous)]

Entryism was the subject of a legendary Tweet by David Burge, which stated:

1. Identify a respected institution
2. Kill it
3. Gut it
4. Wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect

I tend to think that entryism only works on institutions that are already well into the decline stage, which is why so many august and official bodies have been effectively taken over by woke idealogues. That's to say that the left's entryism has in formal terms been very successful. However, the problem is that once the institution has been captured, people outside inherently sense that something is wrong, and the institution begins to be drained of credibility.

[ecosophia]

I've seen entryism happen just as effectively in organizations that were just getting under way, for what it's worth. Still, you're right that entryists are parasites that kill their host.

Gendryism

[bendithfawr]

Thanks for this, JMG! We have a similar phenomenon currently here in Germany of (trans-)gender activists entering unrelated progressive causes and demanding gender activism from the group. If the group declines, they are Bad People. If they yield, they lose support among otherwise sympathetic supporters and get generally confused themselves which activism is their actual agenda.

For instance, someone I know started a very popular referenderum for bike lanes and was subsequently thrown out of his own campaign for not furthering gender-related causes. Now the campaign writes newsletters that are a pain to read because of their newspeak and they lost support among conservative groups that were actually in favor of bike lanes.

Regarding newspeak: German has gender-specific nouns and gender activists famously demand asterisks * everywhere to make sure that the male and gender-neutral version refers to women and every kind of trans-gender bicyclist as well - "Radfahrer" (meaning male bicyclists or - usually - all bicyclists) becomes "Radfahrer*innen". Multiply that by every noun that refers to a group of people and it quickly becomes quite an asterisk-fest.

Re: Gendryism

[ecosophia]

That's going on all over the Western industrial world. I wonder if the transgender activists have realized what a huge advantage they're giving to the Right, which can now take over bike lanes as their own cause and attract all those people in the middle who are in favor of bike lanes but not in favor of the extreme transgender agenda.

[(Anonymous)]

I had put down my coffee before reading this, otherwise I would spill it all over the computer when you mentioned people trying to give your feet a tongue bath.
On a more serious note, perhaps anyone could make a secrete society to enter all political parties and force them to see eye to eye.
Whispers

[ecosophia]

I wish!

[isaac_hill]

I think it comes from how people identify with beliefs. Like how some folks get so into a sports team, some folks go whole hog into their political identity, and go further, it becomes who they are. Their whole life revolves around it, and they judge everyone based on whether they affirm or contradict that identity (GOOD people or BAD people.) It's very hard for them to see anybody who isn't either on their side or one of the bad people. I see this often in my acquaintances who have gotten Facewashed. I see this also in people who are really into their identity as a "vegan" or a "christian" - but right now the political sphere is so pronounced, these other identities are subsumed into the political. The other thing is, I believe these folks know in the back of their mind that there's something wrong with this identity, so they have to act out to prove to themselves that they really are that identity that they believe they are,that gives them meaning, purpose, definition. The more extreme the beliefs are, the more they have to double down to prove to themselves that they're right.

Also, it might be right now, at the end of this particular 200 year cycle and the beginning of another, that these two groups that were formed during this period get one last hurrah before they fizzle out. Maybe not. They've both been attacked by the mainstream - some folks call everyone they don't like "Nazis" and some folks call everyone they don't like "socialists", so, it has become fashionable again.

In any case, converting other people to their cause is a way of propping up their identity, and entryism is a great way to potentially convert a whole group to one's cause.

[ecosophia]

I think you're right -- it comes down to too many people not having the inner resources to construct an individual identity for themselves, so they take one off the shelf from some ideology or other, and then try to bully everyone else into accepting the same ideology because that's a way they can distract themselves from their own awareness that the ideological identity they've borrowed is false. Sartre talked about that at some length -- people adopt ideological identities in an attempt to be something the way a rock is a rock, and avoid the immense challenge of being an individual, with all the choice and freedom that's implied by that.

[stuartjeffery]

"Socialism ... responsible for most of the major genocides of the last century and a half". Do you mean communism rather than socialism?

[ecosophia]

Heavens, don't you know your Marx? Communism only happens some generations after socialism is in place, and it arrives via the withering away of the state and so on. Socialism was the official ideology of the Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao, and Cambodia under Pol Pot. It wasn't the Union of Soviet Communist Republics, after all...

[(Anonymous)]

Good lord, I can tell I'm going to have to get to reading the comments section this week over at the other blog. Did that nasty habit rear its ugly head there again this week? Makes sense given the jealousies that truly empowering social movements like lodges must inspire in any unwavering loyalists to failed utopias, that end up disempowering all foolish enough to believe them. If they can corrupt their competition, they imagine they won't look so dreadfully bad in comparison. "The problem isn't our own failures, it's anybody else's successes!"

Well, that certainly puts the whole weighted-grading, no-grades, grades-are-racist agenda in a clear context. If the realities of your own immense failures are too intolerable to face, then lash out at anyone not failing quite so badly for making you look like a failure. But don't cancel your reservation for that nice padded room; you'll still be needing it. Jealousy truly darkens the soul. The whole cancelling/Karening fad is another frenzy to obliterate any evidence of how ineffective and miserable its perpetrators have made themselves.

I'm again reminded of H. L. Mencken: "Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Count your blessings that they consider you someone successful enough to try to co-opt and destroy in their Puritanical rage. I think they dream of somehow growing up and becoming you. At least you get a foot bath out of it!

— Christophe

[ecosophia]

Nah, I got some serious entryism on the Great Reset and Fourier essays, and I had somebody try to post a link to a racist-right essay on the "Santa Must Die" post here -- no, it wasn't even relevant to Santa! I referenced entryism in the post on lodges, and that usually keeps entryists at bay; like Rumpelstiltskin, they only have power until someone utters their real name.

As above so below?

[(Anonymous)]

What if more souls incarnated here in human form increases the likelihood of recent and new souls experiencing this reality for the first time? These 'entryists' attempt to grasp and put meaning to the world in the ways they are capable but the 'notes' they add to the 'tune' add a particular 'tempo' to the spirit of the times and this expresses itself in certain ways?

What if the Klan and the woke are both of the same 'pitch' and the nature of that energy causes patterns to ripple but can also be an effective boot to the rump for others. That those subsets are a fractal of something bigger (etc etc), and this current reality we experience as a species, and the opportunities presented to us are 'tuned' towards certain possibilities where we have choices to make in a particular 'class' of existence; then, the rhyming of history and human behaviours expressed would be as predictable as the rise and fall of civilisations.
The civilisations are irrelevant and it is the choices made by the individualities where the interesting stuff might be found and civilisations manifesting is just a by-product.

Reality here is groundhog day but with infinite variations on certain themes - but those infinite varations play out in a constrained reality (vibrational pitch) and it is only when we can develop more awareness that new 'tunes' will present themselves.
Or a merry-go-round.
The earth is a spinning merry-go-round spinning around a star that is also on it's own journey. Gears within gears within gears.

So, as the emotional maelstrom of the astral plays itself out in the physical/material of this world, this is what the choices are about: that the work we do in the world is about the opportunity to develop potential of the mental plane etc (as you have been exploring in CosDoc?)

Souls come in, visit a while, then move on to other experiences if and when they become capable of that.

Using your analogy of 'humans being pretty low on the scale between pond-scum and the gods', then the likelihood of golden times could be a vision of potential but beyond the possibilities for this realm since the souls moving in other directions are replaced by those who are new here or still have things to do.

Meaning the fundamentals of this place are likely to oscillate between extremes but expressed as infinite possibilities constrained by a certain set of potentials... there is only so much that can be done at this level - if we want more, we need to grow (a mental body)

So this reality is perfect as it is for giving what it needs to, and this is why things seem to go in cycles of similarity and sameness. Reading Marcus Aurelius writing about people, things (behaviours) do not seem much changed between then and now; if there was an equivalent from 100,000 years ago, I wonder if we'd see the same things playing out? It''s not the canvas of reality but the moves we make.

We are here with certain attributes and over lifetimes have the opportunity to grow if we pay attention, avoid pitfalls, and develop beyond base emotional levels.

What methods work at any time depends on various matters - one person's method can also be another's madness/foolishness and can act as a barrier to development of the mental and other more subtle bodies.

I thought you put it well the other day about certain mystic paths (and I probably paraphrase badly here): stunning the lower selves into quietude which sometimes allows the higher self to be used as the vehicle for perceiving this world... but with inherent instability, so fleeting.

We appear to have good times and bad times, most of those who can move on do so, some stay to help a while, others take over their mantles (a station rather than a person [THE Merlin], but we get cycles of certain vibration where the woke and klan and the rest of the illusory left/right themes (of our time) play themselves out with predicable bloody results - souls either learn from it and develop, or do not.

Periodically, the slate gets swept clean and off things go again.

Walking in the world at the moment is like being a ghost - I am here but my attachments with people are thin.
Apologies for the stream of consciousness rambling!

[earthworm]

Re: As above so below?

[ecosophia]

As I see it, human beings are about halfway between pond scum and gods -- not that low on the scale, but not that high on it. That said, yes, basically -- being human includes, among other things, being vulnerable to ideological crazes and their consequences.

Distributions

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps you are just seeing tail behavior on a normal distribution. If you measure almost any personality trait across a large group you'll almost certainly get a normal/guassian distribution, and I would expect the same if you were to look at whichever trait has conservatives on one end and liberals on the other. The majority of the population will fall in the middle somewhere (moderate) and a tiny number of people will be way out on the extreme fringes of either tail. The thing with people on the tails is that they have extreme positions/thinking/behaviors and they tend to make a lot of noise and attract attention. So even though the majority of the population is behaving itself, the small number of extremists at the tails will have an outsized impact on the dynamics, making them appear more prominent than they are. I'm sure that applies to all groups/populations including secret societies and archdruid commentariats.I imagine the topics of discourse impact which trait distributions are highlighted.

Re: Distributions

[ecosophia]

Maybe so, but not all fringe groups engage in the specific behavior I'm discussing. Druids, for example, are way out there on the fringe, and yet we don't go in for entryism. I'm curious about what inspires these two fringe groups, more than any others, to engage in this specific behavior repeatedly over more than a century of history.

[(Anonymous)]

If you look back at American history, the same theme keeps popping up. The Know-Nothing Party back in the Nineteenth century followed pretty much the same pattern. They began as a secret society, then morphed into a political movement trying to fill the vacuum after the Whig party imploded. Both the temperance movement and the KKK can trace their roots back to the Know-Nothings.

As for why these currents keep surfacing, the desire to control others has always been a chronic problem for our species, along with the desire to justify oneself to cover up any secret guilt feelings (ie: slavery, native genocide) or just puff up a flaccid ego. In stressful times like these you can always count on these nasty little gremlins to crawl out of the woodwork. Eventually they'll crawl back in after they've done their share of damage, only to resurface when the times are right again.

Carnelian Palpitating Piglet/JLfromNH