Thread by @Noahpinion

One interesting thing about the Spanish Civil War was how the Communists were a tiny part of the Spanish Left before the war, but during the war they managed to infiltrate and utterly dominate the Socialists (who were the biggest faction on the Left).

amazon.com/Battle-Spain-S…

The Anarchists (the other big Left faction) resisted Communist domination and were eventually crushed by the Communists, along with some various other non-Communist Marxists.

amazon.com/Homage-Catalon…

If we're to generalize from that experience, the lesson seems to be that a leftist movement is inherently vulnerable to takeover by a faction that specializes in intra-left politics, whose primary purpose is domination of the Left rather than resistance of external enemies.

Interestingly, the Spanish Right never had this problem. The generals selected Franco as their leader because he was the most effective military commander. The various factions of the Right - the fascists, monarchists, and fanatic Catholics - didn't fight each other much.

You can sort of see a dynamic similar to the Spanish Left in the Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviks ousted the Mensheviks. But of course the Bolsheviks proved to be much more capable of resisting external enemies than the Spanish Communists were...

historytoday.com/archive/months…

An interesting (if silly) parallel was the 1969 convention of Students for a Democratic Society. SDS was taken over by a radical faction called PL, who were then ousted by the even more radical Weathermen. SDS, which had been huge, declined after that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Stud…

The problem of entryism by extremist factions specialized in internal politicking isn't unique to leftist movements, of course. The Nazis pushed out the old German right, and more recently the alt-right ousted the "cuckservatives" in the Republican Party.

Another interesting parallel not from the right *or* left was in Iran. The 1979 revolution there was spearheaded by liberal opponents of the monarchic regime, but was then taken over by Islamists.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

Another instance of "specialists in infighting" taking over from "specialists in resistance" might be the Chinese Civil War. The nationalist KMT spent its energy fighting Japan; the communist CCP spent its energy fighting the KMT.

thediplomat.com/2014/09/the-cc…

It seems clear that any change-seeking movement, whether right or left or neither, is vulnerable to entry and takeover by infighting specialists. Seems like a big reason so many revolutions run off the rails. Anyway, seems like something to vigorously guard against.

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