Editing Factional Colony Ecology (section)

== Modern Day ==

In the modern day, the most common form of a factional colony is one with various radical online members and a few respectable front-men who either joke or make occasional forgivable mistakes. The typical form of this is that the front-men do not, as a rule, disavow the radicals, who devoutly avow the front-men. Enemies of the faction frequently equate the front-men with the radicals and this always falls flat because the front-men never express the radical opinions. The purpose of the radicals' support is to communicate back that they are aligned with the front-men since private communication of alignment would disrupt the value of the colony structure.

The only true mechanism of cracking open this organism is to reveal the association or to break up the relationship. Methods doomed to fail are the aforementioned equating, but also claims of hypocrisy or [[wikipedia:Whataboutism|whataboutery]]. This structure arises not out of a conscious desire by some mastermind but simply because it is adaptive in the factional combat ecology: factions that don't adopt this all die because they are overtly immoral (radical-dominated) or ineffective (front-men dominated).

=== Roles ===

Radicals have the function of galvanizing the faction. They [[use whatever technique is viable]]: fear if that's what works, anger if that's what works. They also ensure that the vast body of the faction stay in line: with purity rituals, or overt oaths of loyalty. Many of them will also provide labour for action for the faction's cause.

Front-men have a few functions:

* convert the neutral and opposition to the cause
* draw out the opposition to a place where they can be struck
* make [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/ isolated demands for rigor]