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)]

Is the Klan still even a thing? I heard there were something like 100 members in the whole USA, all of whom are three letter agents.

[ecosophia]

It's no longer a single organization, but there are several dozen Klan offshoots still active, some with up to a thousand members or so. Of course it's massively infiltrated by federal and state police agencies, but that's been true for a long time.

[deborah_bender]

The Southern Poverty Law Center has been suing them for decades, and winning judgements frequently. According the the SPLC, one consequence of that is that has been that the Klan has broken up into a bunch of smaller outfits with similar goals but different leaders. Once a year the SPLC does an issue of their magazine Intelligence Report with a list and map of all the groups they classify as hate groups and it always contains multiple Klan organizations with slightly different names. I didn't keep this year's, but the information might be on their website.

Last year or this year, the SPLC booted their long time head Morris Dees and replaced him with a woman who is making some changes in the organization. Their 2020 annual report is narrative. It mentions "Neo-Confederates" and Proud Bois, but I didn't spot any mention of the Ku Klux Klan, so I guess their activity has diminished.

[stcathalexandria]

I think a lot about something talking head Jesse Kelley says - Liberals control public schools, universities, Hollywood, social media, internet companies, corporate board rooms, and government bureaucracy and they see that as a failure. In their view they only have 90% control of all of society. They won't settle for anything less than 100% control. Regular people who dislike conflict think "Oh I'll just give in on this one issue and they'll be happy with that and go away." And they are never satisfied and they don't stop asking for more control.

As someone who is constantly trying to figure out how we can all get along, I never considered the viewpoint of someone on the extreme feeling like they failed unless they got 100% compliance from others. I suppose it's like that for all extreme beliefs.

[(Anonymous)]

Is reverse entryism used as a tactic to break group cohesion? Call out a group as racist or socialist to either make them focus on responding to the charge, and not continuing with the work, and/or chip away at the less committed supporters to reduce the base level of support.
We get called socialists on a fairly regular basis by Americans for having a universal health care system or a large exporter that is co-operatively owned. No one pays much attention because its obvious that their interest is in getting a US corporation in to 'help'. But in a smaller group setting I can people flinging false accusations around as a tool get their way.

[ecosophia]

Of course. That's become a very standard tactic here in the US.

[(Anonymous)]

It sounds like a lot of the Entryists are true believers of one sort or another. I wonder if its sometimes a matter of the gods playing chess, with us as the chess pieces.

I am thinking here about the very early history of Christianity. Maybe the apostle Paul could be looked at as an Entryist. Paul was a latecomer, never actually followed Jesus around during his itinerant prophet days. Paul became one of the prime movers, promoting Christianity in his region, and innovated bringing Christianity to non-Jewish people. The leadership of many local Jewish congregations assumed that the new folks Paul was bringing in would conform to all the usual regulations. Paul thought differently and made many enemies.

Looking at it from the perspective of gods--
You have an established religion that is based on pleasing its god with the physical sacrifice of animals.

Maybe another god uses his followers to invade the territory of the first god and convince the followers that sacrificing animals is no longer needed.

Sovereign citizen entryism

[(Anonymous)]

In Hillsborough, Or., the local grange was briefly taken over by anti-government activists in 2018.

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2018/12/as-sovereign-citizens-take-the-mic-at-hillsboro-grange-community-leaders-sound-an-alarm.html

I thought it was kind of strange, at the time, but the comment about churches being “entried” by the woke helped me make sense of it. The grange seems to have handled the situation now, at least.

[(Anonymous)]

Something clicked for me yesterday after watching some videos by "Survive the Jive" (alt right history stuff) and "Philosophy Tube" (socialist philosophy stuff).

They believe the future is either fascist or socialist. There are no other options.

[ecosophia]

Too funny. Whereas fascism and socialism are practically two peas in a pod -- fascism was evolved by Mussolini as an alternative to socialism that still permitted the private ownership of the means of production, under tight government "coordination" -- and both of them have by and large been abject failures in practice. I expect them to have about as much staying power in the future as, oh, the divine right of kings.

a Word! a new Word!

[chaosadventurer]

Thank you my fine Druid friend

The word Entryism is one I hadn't tripped over before, while having seen the behaviour before. Now when helping others with online groups/forums, I have The Word to go with why they need some of the protections of those "I Agree to the rules of this group" and such little tricks to help keep the group on its focus.

The comment threads that followed are such a wonderful example of how well ideas can be shared and flourish when kept on topic like you do. I just wish I had the time to follow more of your posts' comments.

My previous thoughts after being hit enough with this summer's BLM was "One Cause to Rule Them All" where I sporadically post such things
https://chaosadventurer.blogspot.com/2020/07/one-cause-to-rule-them-all.html