They have seen a meteoric rise in recent years. Their sister/front organisations like ANSWER, Codepink, People’s Forum, BTnews have all become household names. When I look at protests in the U.S., it seems so many of them are organised directly, or indirectly, by them. In comparison, organisations like the CPUSA or the DSA are lacking behind.
How and why?
Sorry I meant weed out cops/feds. My observation from the outside is they try to get to know the person well and put candidates through several layers of probation before letting them assume a leadership role. lots of reading and studying.
I’m not sure what else they do but it seems to work. Part of it might be an attitude thing. Like members always have it in mind to be cautious about cops that it makes cops wary about even trying.
We actively study COINTELPRO and other infiltration/repression tactics. And the way our decision making works and our meetings are structured means the “waste time on pointless arguments” tactic simply flounders and goes nowhere. If you derail our meetings with dumb arguments over the line, you’re out of the party. We got shit to do.
Even with high security culture, it is extremely likely PSL is infiltrated at some level. I’m not saying that to discourage people from joining PSL or so members stop participating, but that should always be kept in the back of our minds as a possibility with ML organizations in this country. We shouldn’t get too comfortably certain about having prevented infiltration. Even Stalin didn’t catch Khrushchev, if Furr is right. Be cautious, Comrade.
Oh yeah I’m sure there are fed informants or cops. But that infiltration hasn’t manifested into anything like arrests, splitting, leaks, or whatever typical stuff you’d expect. Yet.
Or at least, there’s nothing public that I know about. There used to be a group of “Maoists” around here who would show up to PSL events to rip down posters or confiscate signs. I assume they were cops. And I’m guessing a lot of branches have problems with informant troublemakers who try to derail projects or stir the pot.