As revolutionaries, I’m sure we have all experienced times when our organizations are infiltrated by reactionaries or other unsavory people and/or those whose membership does not have a positive net contribution to the goals and/or aspirations of the organization. Here are five signs that the time has come for you to conduct purges of your group’s members.

The first and most obvious sign is constant arguments and distractions from the topic at hand. A member who tries to confuse every debate or steer every discussion off topic is not better than an infiltrator working for the CIA. This is a common infiltration tactic as well as used to neutralize revolutionary organizations, so regardless of whether the person is genuine or not, this behavior is disruptive and should result in a purge if it stops the group from being conducive to its purpose. If there are many people involved, you will need to create a list of names before purging them all in order to be thorough.

The second sign is adventurism and/or entrapment by authorities. They may be technically two different things, but the end result is the same of encouraging activities that go against established principles and/or endanger the members of the organization by creating legal precedents for the members to be detained by authorities. When you get that one member who openly talks about making bombs or encourages violence for some incomprehensible reason, they are either not mentally sound or want to encourage something to be done that authorities could then use to crack down on your organization. These are usually easy to spot because their suggestions are things that would rarely ever gain support of the masses, and would even subvert the goals of socialism if attempted.

The third sign is general ideological incompatibility that cannot be reconciled. Someone that incorrectly applies the ideology one or two times is not likely to fall into this category, but some statements prompt swift action. Real examples I have experienced are statements such as “Israel is holy to me” “Japan was liberating East Asia” or “Mussolini was the man”. Anyone who says something like this is painting a target on their forehead to be purged. Make sure to ask them questions to allow them to further incriminate themselves in front of the comrades.

Regardless of whether communications are conducted in person, online, or other platforms, you should purge members exhibiting this behavior and prevent them from sabotaging the movement from the inside. Failure to do this will allow a communist cell to be hijacked by reactionaries such as the CIA , Zionists, or other right-wing extremist groups and their sympathizers.