“Entryism” – a new word describing the path to micro-minority control.
Do you ever wonder why an organization or group of people suddenly burst out with an opinion totally at odds with the objectives you thought they followed? A recent example was a comment by the principal administrator of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. She reacted to reports of arson at some provincial churches with the advice to “burn them all down!”
Here is how it happens; find an existing organization that has high purpose and whose membership rules allow an external organized group to infiltrate and take over its management and its credibility, and where possible control its assets.
The broad membership is left looking on as their organization disappears off on a totally foreign trajectory. It is not only organizations whose purpose can be corrupted. Activists have done effective work with school boards where a minimal turn out of voters in Vancouver allowed a “progressive” slate to take control. Its objective is the cancellation of programs (in the name of equity), that were designed to encourage the most gifted students to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex world.
If entryism is not enough of a new word, try these offerings from the National Education Association, the American teacher’s union. It is committing itself to the critique of “empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.”
It is a sharp reminder that for as long as there has been freedom of anything, there has been someone who does not want it to happen.