The People You Don't Want in Your Group
Who they are, why they're bad, and how you avoid them.
As I’ve mentioned, most groups have growth and numbers at or near the top of their list of goals, whether they mention it openly or not. Quite frankly, if a group refuses to budge from that point, there’s not much you can do to turn it around. This article isn’t for those groups.
Like it or not, there are rules to recruiting, and there are certain types of people who are (or should be) automatically disqualified. I’ve written about some of these types before in the last few years, including:
The Sloppy Online Guy
The Anger Problem Child
The Vice Lover or Addict
The “Let’s Get It Started” Guy
The Guy Who Can’t Stand Up to His Wife
The Unteachable Guy
The Welfare Recipient Guy
There are a few more you should know about as well.
I explained on Survivalblog a few years ago why the rules matter, and rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ll simply reiterate part of that here.
The rules tend to make people uncomfortable or even angry. “Well, my friend Jack might meet one of those automatic disqualifications but you don’t know him. I do. He’s solid.” Here’s the thing: your knowledge of him doesn’t trump your adversary’s knowledge of how to take a person like Jack and manipulate him into doing things he would not normally do. The bottom line is, are you willing to trust the rest of your life, to be spent in a prison cell, to every person in your group? If you have a “group” of 30, 50, or even 100 people, the answer to that is no; at least, it should be — especially in this age of social media “groups” where you haven’t even MET half the people in the group, let alone had an opportunity to observe them in a variety of situations. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we advocate for such small groups in Basics of Resistance. There’s nothing that says you can’t network with other groups for specific one-time purposes, with the proper compartmentalization.
One of the biggest complaints I hear is that everyone eventually breaks, and will inform on their group if they are threatened. The thing about leverage is that it requires a fulcrum. The point of this list is to remove the standard go-to things that are typically used as keys to infiltrate a group or leverage members into detrimental actions. In other words, make it harder for your adversary to find something to use. If they normally have a 10-item list of openings to choose from, take away 9 of them and hide the 10th. Even in a worst-case scenario, you’ve bought your group some time. Everyone will break, given enough pressure and time — which is why you should go to great lengths to avoid anyone in your group even put in that situation.
Let’s talk about a few more types of folks you should be either distancing from or just blocking from ever getting into your group.
The Martyr
These folks are focused on a very specific goal; they hope to be imprisoned or killed for the cause. They don't go around saying it openly and might even say they “hope it never comes” but they say other things that will tip you off to their true beliefs.
Watch how they talk to or about people who have been jailed for the cause. Watch how they talk about people who have given their lives. You will notice that even if the death or arrest was a direct result of poor decision making on the part of the ‘victim,’ the martyr will often rationalize it and worship them anyway.
In fact, you’ll often see martyrs excuse behavior from someone who has ‘sacrificed for the cause’ even if the action was suspicious or outright dangerous for the group. In short, the sacrifice becomes a currency that someone can use to make groups look the other way when the person does something that anyone else would be immediately removed for. The martyr never wants to admit that perhaps their hero got leveraged or flipped along the way, or even that the fame and privilege went to the hero’s head and made them unteachable.
Conversely, the martyr sees anyone who actively tries to avoid jail or death as being less committed, less brave, less devoted to the cause. Tradecraft, vetting, discretion, OPSEC, even risk management is viewed with suspicion, it's minimized, or even outright ignored. You’ll hear things like, “Maybe other groups want to hide, but that’s not us.” The corollary, of course, is that people who want to be careful = want to hide = cowards. It’s not usually stated openly, but the message gets received just the same.
Certainly dying for your cause requires a level of sacrifice that many do not possess. It’s arguably far more difficult, however, to live for your cause, to ensure that you can engage in activities to further it while also taking measures to protect yourself so that you can keep performing those activities.
During WW2, for instance, resistance members actively avoided arrest and death so that they could keep publishing underground newspapers, provide first-hand intelligence to Allied forces, design and maintain ‘underground railroad’ networks that helped move wounded or trapped Allied forces, and many other functions. All of that would have been impossible if they chose to be loud and proud about their allegiance.
Martyrs will push your group to take unnecessary risks, engage in poorly thought out actions, and will consistently seek danger, taking the rest of the members along for the ride whether they know it or not.
The Messenger
This guy thinks that he is literally doing God’s work; I don’t mean that he is a man of faith, and that faith informs his actions. I’m talking about the guy who believes that he is chosen, by the Almighty, to do the actions he is doing, and others have not been chosen in this way. These folks are the televangelists of the movement. Lots of social media, lots of attention, carefully crafted image, and a lot of followers that would do just about anything to even hang out with them.
The messenger often claims that God told him or showed him the future, and it’s usually a positive vision involving victory for him and his followers, if only they can do X or Y. Just like their televangelist counterparts, they also ask for a lot of money from their followers. The more advanced ones get a small core group of faithful to do their panhandling for them.
The problem with this type of person in a leadership position is that their so-called faith is often hiding something else: narcissism, mental disorders, or even sociopathy. Deception analysis easily shows them to often be consummate liars and manipulators, always looking for the next angle, the next way to get more donations, more attention, more followers.
You’ll see cult-like behavior in groups run by a messenger as well as other toxic group types, and we’ll talk about that in detail in a later issue.
The “My Cause is a Business” Guy
One thing I tell people all the time is “Don’t trust a group or organization that, if they actually reached their goal, would work themselves out of a job.” Even if the org’s stated goal is a good one, if they accomplished it, what would happen?
Here’s a dirty little secret: that’s why there are so many vague jingoistic ‘goals’ floating around in political activism groups. If the goal is ethereal enough, it will never actually be accomplished, and there’s always a new fight to get people fired up emotionally (and opening their wallets) for.
“Taking back the country” is a goal that will never be fully realized because it’s not even definable in an objective way. So are goals like fighting for human rights, or ending hunger, abuse, poverty, or a disease. Political groups that have goals like this will never ‘win,’ and that creates the perfect environment to make an ongoing, lucrative business.
Enter the business guy. He sees an opportunity to make money, and leverages it to the fullest. He might find a way to monetize his current situation, requesting donations to get through some Bad Scenario he’s in—which is never his fault, of course; it’s always the fault of some other person or organization/entity. Keep in mind that if he does get through that situation, he will have to create more to keep the money rolling in. You’ll also notice the ante getting raised as well. He needs to escalate to keep getting that cash.
It’s not always that scenario though; others come up as well. Several years ago I knew someone who came up with the idea to create a national training database for everything from radio training to firearms to medical. Whatever kind of preparedness training you could think of, he wanted to make a single site that listed it all. Then he explained the rest of the plan; he wanted to also allow people to register for the various trainings right there on his site, and he would take a cut off the top before sending the rest to the individual instructor.
The problems with this were staggering, and his answer was simply, “There’s no reason why I can’t make a living from patriotism.” If that made you squirm a bit internally, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, he’s not alone either, and there are quite a few Business Guys out there looking to make a buck with their group.
There’s nothing wrong with making a living sharing your skills, training people, etc., and to say that everyone should be giving everything away for free is idiotic. The difference is that the Business Guy monetizes the cause itself, and specifically preys upon those who want to identify with it.
But how are we supposed to make a group if we say no to everyone?
I hear this a lot, along with rationalizations about how no one is perfect. Guess what? That’s true—and oddly enough, it’s exactly why you should be paying close attention to what I’m saying.
Every one of us has a weakness, or two, or five. Maybe it’s booze, maybe it’s mental illness, maybe it’s a toxic relationship at home, maybe it’s ego or a secret affair or a gambling problem or a million other things. These exercises aren’t meant for you to go stomping out of your group—or kick out everyone else—and feel smart because you’re the only one who’s worth anything. In fact, to someone else, your weakness might be something they aren’t willing to take a risk on.
The point of all of this is to minimize and mitigate the risks you choose to take. Do you lock the doors and windows of your home? Do you take steps to ensure it remains secure? Obviously you can’t think of everything, and even with your efforts there may come a day when you have an intruder in your home, or a fire, or some other catastrophe—and then you have a plan to deal with that. But I would bet you money that you’re taking steps already to prevent these things in the first place, or at least cut down on the situations that can result in them. You do that because it’s prudent and wise to protect yourself and your family so you can keep being a family.
That’s exactly what we’re doing here.
In the next issue I’ll discuss how to recognize the people you do need. Subscribe today!