> On 10/24/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hey, Yoshie, do you ever join any Muslim forums and try to recruit
> > the members to socialism? I'd be curious what reaction you've gotten
> > if you have.
>
> Dude. You never, ever actively recruit. You set a stellar example of being
> an admirable intellect, etc. Or, you work in a small team, demonstrating
> comradeship among the grouplet. People observe and want some o' that, then
> they become socialists.
What makes you feel so strongly that active recruiting is such a bad thing? Sure, I have received my share of creepy recruiting pitches from various sectarian elements in the past, but those have always been a turn-off because they're creepy -- not because they're recruiting pitches, per se. So is your objection to recruitment a principled one or a tactical conclusion you've drawn from your own experience?
At the moment, I'm of the opinion that leftists need to take a page from the Evangelical playbook -- develop our own social, cultural and intellectual infrastructure and use that as a recruitment tool. I haven't checked, but I suspect there's a vast amount of Evangelical literature on how to start churches, etc. that could be tweaked to suit our own purposes.
-WD