I suppose this really has a bearing on the last post, but when I was a young Trotskyist, a phase that lsted for exactly the length of time I was madly, deeply in love with Sue BM, she was a Trotskyist, I was seventeen. What we used to do, there were less than twenty of us, but we would join a protest, such as 250 midwives respectfull requesting slightly higer wages, with as many plackards as possible to hand out, each with our logo on it, but bearing slogans like "More Pay", everyone wanted one. It gave the impression everyone was millitantly left wing, especially if there were red flags to wave, the absolutely best thing was to get to a microphone, especially if one's fellow Trots, understood their job was to cheer loud and hard.
I developed a cunning plan to take over the local Literary Society, which in Guildford had rather nice premises, by getting my friends to join and vote out the existing members.
I can't help thinking these techniques are widely used nowadays in politics, it is much easier with focus groups. I remember discussing this with someone who had done a study on the decline of female religous orders, she saw the same techniques coming into play in the 70s/80s, it was so easy with women who were accustomed to obedience to follow a more radical extremist. I am sure we see it in the catechetical movement of the same period.
In secular groups such as those who form public opinion it is easy for a particular group to take over and give new direction first of all with that group and then to use the the group itself to alter the opinion and outlook of society: the BBC for example?
10 comments:
A timely reminder about the "bad old days" and a brave admission, Father!
My worry is that the "campaign" for the use of the Extraordinary Rite could take on similar methods. In accordance with the wishes of the Holy Father, this must be avoided at all costs. Indeed it must never be seen as a campaign. I saw the "Trots" destroy many worthy things I believed in during my youth through their incompetence and selfishness, and it must not happen again.
I hope the media don't see this! I can just see the headline 'Catholic priest admits to having been a Trotskyist'
Give that man a kewpie doll!! A winnah, ladies and gents, a winnah.
Don't worry too much about your trotskyist days ... various people have been quoted as saying:
"If a man isnt' a liberal when he's 20, he has no heart. If a man isn't a conservative by the time he's 40, he has no brain." US Pundit PJ O'Rourke when through a similar hippy radical phase in his youth. Also got sucked in because he was madly in love with some trotskyist hippy chick. They ran some leftwing paper, and then the really hard line trotsky types tried to take over. The babe ran off with one of them, and PJ started to get some sense filtering through his brain. Eventually.
In the US it's only because of the internet and talk radio that the tactics of the left wing media elites have been exposed. Dan Rather got away for years relying on faulty sources (as well as Cronkite et al) -- he finally got caught, and unceremoniously dumped out. But after years of poisoning the body politic. It still goes on. and Academia is a leftwing wasteland, with pockets of sanity few and far between. Most students kabuki dance around their left wing profs.
Rita: what I see over here is the "campaign" by certain bishops my own included, to make it as impractical as possible for the rite to be said, by deliberately raising the bar higher than what was stipulated.
You are right Father,all these single issue groups are prone to infiltration,the Secret Service can very easily bend peoples minds to their will and then the Government can make more laws.Multi-National Corporations are "at it" and all departments of Government know every trick in the book.
yes nickbris,
We saw these tactics in the last election, the crowds that appeared from Labour Central Office, the same people who seemed to follow Blair around, then in the same group going off to heckle Tories.
Fr. Ray,
Your admission about your youthful political sympathies shows that there is still hope for Eccleston Square!
Speaking of Eccleston Square, perhaps we need to mount a Trotskyite entryism campaign there.
Which group of 'Trotskyists' were you a member of pray tell?
I really can't remember, it was the same as Sue. It was a long time ago.
anon,
It was almost 40 years ago.
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