Faction (pronounced fak-shun)
(1) A group or clique
forming a minority within a larger body, especially a dissentious group within
a political party, government or organization.
The terms “splinter group”, “breakaway”, “reform group”, “ginger group” et
al are sometimes used as factional descriptors depending on the circumstances
but the more familiar (and sometimes formally institutionalized) are forms like
“right”, “left”, “wet”, “dry” “moderate”, “conservative” et al.
(2) Internal
organizational strife and intrigue; discord or dissension (applied mostly to
political parties but used also to describe the internal workings of many
institutions).
(3) As a portmanteau
word, the construct being fact + (fict)on), in literature, film etc, a form of
writing which blends fact and fiction (though distinct from the literary form “magic
realism); in journalism, elements of faction are seen in variations of the
technique sometimes called “new” or “gonzo” journalism. In reportage, it should not be confused with “making
stuff up” and it’s distinct from the “alternative facts” model associated with some
staff employed in the Trump White House.
1500-1510: From the fourteenth
century Middle French faction, from
the Latin factionem (nominative factiō) (a group of people acting
together, a political grouping (literally “a making or doing”)), a noun of
process from the perfect passive participle factus,
from faciō (do, make), from facere (to make, to do), from the primitive
Indo-European root dhe- (to set; put;
to place or adjust). The adjective factious
(given to faction, turbulently partisan, dissentious) dates from the 1530s and
was from either the French factieux or the Latin factiosus (partisan,
seditious, inclined to form parties) again from factionem; the related forms
were the noun factiousness and the adverb factiously. In ancient Rome, the factions were the four
teams which contested the chariot racing events in the circus, the members
distinguished by the colors used for their clothing and to adorn their horses
and equipment. Because politics and the
sport soon intertwined the meaning of faction shifted to include “an oligarchy,
usurping faction, party seeking by irregular means to bring about a change in
government”. Even after the fall of
Rome, the traditional Roman factions remained prominent in the Byzantine Empire
and chariot racing went into decline only after the factions fought during the
Nika riots in 532 which saw some thirty-thousand dead and half of
Constantinople razed. Faction,
factioneer, factionist & factionalism are nouns, factionalize is a verb,
factional & factionless are adjectives, factionally is an adverb,
factionary is a noun & adjective, factionate is a verb & adjective; the
noun plural is factions.
The use of the word to
describe the literary device which blends facts with fiction faction is said to
date from the late 1960s although some sources suggest it had earlier been used
in discussions held in conferences and meetings but the most usual descriptor
of such works was the earlier “non-fiction novel” which by the mid century
(especially in the US) had become a popular (and in literary circles a
fashionable) form although, as such, it was not originally directly related to
post-modernism. Critics trace the
origins of the form to the years immediately after World War I (1914-1918) and
distinguish the works produced then from earlier texts where there was some use
of dubious material presented as “fact” in that in the twentieth century the
author’s made their intent deliberate.
William Shakespeare
(1564–1616) was well acquainted with the earthly lusts and frailties of men and
in Coriolanus (1605-1608) act 5,
scene 2, at the Volscian camp when Menenius is halted by sentries who refuse to
allow him to see their generals he knew what to say though it did him little
good.
First sentry: Faith, sir, if you had told as many lies in
his behalf as you have uttered words in your own, you should not pass here; no,
though it were as virtuous to lie as to live chastely. Therefore, go back.
Menenius: Prithee, fellow, remember my name is
Menenius, always factionary on the party of your general.
Second sentry: Howsoever you have been his liar, as you say
you have, I am one that, telling true under him, must say, you cannot
pass. Therefore, go back.
Menenius: Hath he dined, canst thou tell? for I would
not speak with him till after dinner.
The Baader-Meinhof
faction
Founded in 1970, the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction
(RAF)) was a left-wing, armed militant revolutionary group based in the Federal
Republic of Germany (The FRG or West Germany (1949-1990)) which, for almost
thirty years, undertook assassinations, kidnappings, robberies and bombings and
although actually less active than some other terrorist cells, the RAF was
better known and most influential in the early-mid 1970s. The RAF was dissolved in 1998 although, in
the nature of such things, some members continued to use their skills in
criminal ventures including drug-trafficing as a form of revenue generation. The RAF always used the word Fraktion, translated into English as
faction. The linguistic implications
never pleased RAF members who thought themselves the embedded, military wing of
the wider communist workers' movement, not a faction or splinter-group. In this context the German doesn’t lend well
to translation but closest single-word reflecting the RAF’s view is probably “section”
or “squad”. German journalist Stefan Aust (b 1946) also avoided the word, choosing Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (the Baader-Meinhof Complex) as the title of his 2008 book because it better described how the organization operated.
Andreas Baader &
Ulrike Meinhof
In the era they were
active, a common descriptor in the English-speaking word was the Baader-Meinhof
Group or Gang, named after two of its members Andreas Baader (1943–1977) and
Ulrike Meinhof (1934-1976) and the media’s choice of “gang” or “group” may have
reflected the desire of governments for the RAF to be depicted more as violent
criminals and less as revolutionaries. The
popular press however certainly preferred Baader-Meinhof to RAF because of the
drama of the story, Meinhof having been part of the gang which freed Baader
from prison. Both later killed
themselves and, although they were never the star-cross'd lovers some
journalists liked to suggest, it added to the romance and the Baader-Meinhof
name survived their deaths and although the media, politicians and security
agencies adopted the eponymous title, it was never used by the RAF. In the tradition of Marxist collectives, the
members regarded the RAF as a co-founded group of many members and not one
either defined by or identified with two figureheads, apart from which, the
dominant female of the group was actually Gudrun Ensslin (1940-1977).
Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin in court, "Department store trial" (Galeria Kaufhof GmbH), Frankfurt am Main, FRG, 14 October 1968.
The early years of Gudrun Ensslin would have given little hint of how her life would unfold but at 16 comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) entered the Tiflis Theological Seminary to train as a Russian Orthodox priest at the Tiflis Theological Seminary so things can change. In her youth, Fräulein Ensslin had been a scout leader and assisted her parish priest in work such as organizing Bible studies; her school reports all record her as a diligent, well-behaved student but according to her father (who, as a priest may have some bias), all that changed when “she became erotized” and discovered the charms of dating boys. By 1967 she was engaged and had given birth to a son when she met Andreas Baader who had arrived in Berlin four years earlier to evade the attention of the Munich police force which had shadowed his dissolute life of petty crime, youth detention centres and prison. He'd also gone "underground" to escape conscription and rapidly he and Ensslin became lovers; she abandoned her child and with some other discontented souls, the pair decided to escalate their fight against the system, their early attempts to undermine bourgeois capitalism involving fire-bombing the Galeria Kaufhof department stores they considered citadels of "consumerist materialism". Later they would expand their activities to include kidnappings, bank robberies, bombings & murder and it was in 1968 the German journalist, Ulrike Meinhof, “joined the fight”, writing in the Konkret (published by her husband Klaus Rainer Röhl (1928–2021)): “Protest is when I say it does not suit me. Resistance is, when I make sure that what does not suit me, no longer happens.” The German konkret can be translated as “concrete”,
“specific” or “tangible”, depending on the context. In the sense of Herr Röhl’s (who styled
himself “K2R”) magazine, “Konkret”
carried the connotation of “real” or “practical”, a nod to Marxist
revolutionary principles which tended to discount abstract theoreticians or
those who dreamed of utopias; the focus was on what should be done and what
could be achieved. Herr Röhl certainly
had a practical understanding of German accounting law because Konkret provided him with a Porsche 911
as a company car. Because the KPD (German Communist Party) was banned in the FRG
(Federal Republic of Germany, the old West Germany, 1949-1990), Herr Röhl's membership was clandestine, as were the payments Konkret received from the GDR (German Democratic Republic, the old East Germany, 1949-1990) and Moscow although funds also came from the FRG. It must have amused him that Moscow was, in effect, paying for his Porsche, villa and pleasant lifestyle while simultaneously Bonn was contributing to what might be its own overthrow.
Police inspecting the stolen Porsche 911S Targa, Frankfurt, June 1972.
Although a
left wing revolutionary, Andreas Bernd Baader liked fast cars owned usually the
class enemy and that he never held a drivers licence didn’t deter him from stealing
or driving these status symbols of the system he planned to destroy. His favorite cars by the early 1970s were the
Porsche 911 and the BMW E9 coupé and one note in the police reports on him
notes that he liked to have a tennis racquet on the passenger seat, the
thinking apparently that it was such a middle-class symbol that just the sight
of it would make him less suspicious to police.
At the time the Baader-Meinhof gang were active, his automotive taste clearly
had been imposed on his fellow revolutionaries because “BMW” came to be
understood as “Baader-Meinhof-Wagen” (ie Baader-Meinhof car), the vehicle of
choice for the senior gang members whereas newcomers were permitted to drive
nothing more elevated than an Audi 100. Baader-Meinhof
had its own class structure and the proletariat was relegated to FWD (front
wheel drive), surely as demeaning a humiliation as any inflicted by the plutocracy.
The stolen Iso Rivolta IR300, Frankfurt, June 1972.
For someone
trying to avoid the attention of the authorities, Porsches and the big BMW coupés
may seem a curious choice given one could more inconspicuously move about in a
beige VW Beetle but Baader also affected his style in other ways, his fondness
for velvet trousers and designer sunglasses (a thing, even then) mentioned in
police reports. Nor was his taste
restricted to German machinery because he also stole an Italian Iso Rivolta IR 300,
another inadvisable choice for someone with habits which would have been better
pursued with a low profile because of the 800-odd made between 1962-1970, only a
reputed 50 were in the FRG when one fell into his (legal but unlawful)
possession in 1972. Apparently he was
about to inspect the Rivolta (which he’d yet to drive since the theft) when he
was arrested, emerging from the purple (aubergine in the Porsche color chart) Porsche
911S Targa which had been painted its original yellow when he’d stolen it some
months earlier. He and two fellow
terrorists had made themselves quite an obvious target, sitting in the aubergine
911, parked facing the wrong way in a middle-class neighbourhood where nobody
ever parks in an unapproved manner. Pleased
with the opportunity presented, a police marksman ensconced in a building across
the street shot Baader in the thigh and the trio were arrested. Stashed in the
Porsche and the garage in which sat the Iso were self-made hand grenades, a
bomb in the form of a welded cash box, ammunition, detonators and cables.
Ulrike
Meinhof (left) and the cover art for Marianne Faithfull’s album Broken English (1979, right).
Ulrike
Meinhof came to public attention for her part in the operation which freed Baader
from custody and the escape vehicle used was a silver-grey Alfa Romeo Giulia
Sprint GT, a model in which he’d never expressed any interest but which he
presumably came to hold in high regard.
Subsequently, for years, Meinhof, the Baader-Ensslin couple and the rest
of the RAF left a bloody trail of attacks and bank robberies in their wake and,
as a footnote, most of their prominent victims drove Mercedes-Benz, a
coincidence of economic circumstances and market preferences. The title track of Marianne Faithfull’s (1946-2025)
album Broken English (1979) was
inspired by the life and death of Ulrike Meinhof.
Broken English by Marianne Faithfull, Dave Genn,
Matthew Good, Joe Mavety, Barry Reynolds, Terence Stannard & Stephen York.
Could have
come through
Anytime
Cold lonely
Puritan
What are
you
Fighting
for?
It's not my
Security
It's just
an old war
Not even a
cold war
Don't say
it in Russian
Don't say
it in German
Say it in
broken English
Say it in
broken English
Lose your
father
Your
husband
Your mother
Your
children
What are
you
Dying for?
It's not my
Reality
It's just
an old war
Not even a
cold war
Don't say
it in Russian
Don't say
it in German
Say it in
broken English
Say it in
broken English
What are
you fighting for?
What are
you fighting for?
What are
you fighting for?
What are
you fighting for?
What are
you fighting for?
What are you fighting for?
Factionalism
Factionalism is probably
inherent to the nature of organizations and it really needs only for a structure
to have two members for a faction to form.
Factions can be based on ideology, geography, theology, personalities
(and factions have been formed purely as vehicles of hatred for another) or
just about basis and the names they adopt can be designed to denigrate (redneck
faction), operate euphemistically (centre-left (just right wingers who didn’t
want to admit it)) or indicate a place on the spectrum (left vs right, liberal
vs conservative et al). They can also be
modified by those wishing to demonize (lunar-right, hard-right, religious right
etc). The labelling can also be linguistically
productive In the UK during the 1980s, “the
wets” was an epithet applied within the Conservative Party to those who opposed
the government’s hard line policies, on the model of the slang “a bit wet” to
describe those though effete or lacking resolve. The wets responded by labelling their
detractors “the dries” to which they responded with “warm and dry”, words with
positive associations in a cold and damp country. The names constantly evolve because fissiparousness
is in the nature of organizations.
Of human nature
Cady's Map by Janis Ian.
The human race does seem inherently fissiparousness and wherever cultures have formed, history suggests divisions will form and folk will tend to coalesce (or be allocated or otherwise forced) into factions. Usually, this is attributed to some defined or discernible difference (ethnicity, skin color, language, tribal affiliation, religion et al) but even among homogeneous groups, it's rare to identify one without sub-groups. It does seem human nature and has long since become institutionalized and labelling theory practitioners can probably now build minor academic careers just by tracking the segregation as it evolves (boomers, gen-X, millennials etc). The faction names of the cliques at North Shore High School (Mean Girls, Paramount Pictures 2004)) were Actual Human Beings, Anti-Plastics, The Art Freaks, Asexual Band Geeks, Asian Nerds, Burnouts, Cheerleaders, Cool Asians, Desperate Wannabes, Freshmen, Girls Who Eat Their Feelings, J.V. Cheerleaders, J.V. Jocks, Junior Plastics, Preps, ROTC Guys, Sexually Active Band Geeks, The Plastics, Unfriendly Black Hotties, Unnamed Girls Who Don't Eat Anything, and Varsity Jocks. Given the way sensitivities have evolved, it’s predictable some of those names wouldn’t today be used; the factions' membership rosters would be much the same but some terms are now proscribed in this context, the threshold test for racism now its mere mention, racialism banished to places like epidemiological research papers tracking the distribution of morbidity.
The factions of the
Anglican Church
Fissiparousness is
much associated with the modern Church of England, factions of which some time
ago mostly abandoned any interest in God or the message of Christ for the more
important matters of championing or decrying gay clergy, getting women into or
keeping them out of the priesthood, and talking to or ignoring Rome. Among those resistant to anything beyond the
medieval, there's even an institutional forum, the Global Anglican Future
Conference (GAFCON) which holds meetings at which there is much intrigue and
plotting; it's sort of an anti-Lambeth Conference though the cucumber
sandwiches are said to be much the same.
Under the stresses inherent in the late twentieth-century,
fissiparousness saw the Anglicans coalesce into three factions, the low &
lazy, the broad & hazy and the high & crazy.
Overlaps in the Anglican Church factions
The Low & Lazy
Like the high
churchers, the low lot still believe in God but, their time not absorbed
plotting and scheming or running campaigns to stamp out gay clergy and opposing
the ordination of women, they actually have time to pray, which they do,
often. The evangelical types come from
among the low and don’t approve of fancy rituals, Romish ways or anything
smelling of popery. Instead, they like
services where there’s clapping, dancing and what sounds like country &
western music with sermons telling them it’s Godly to buy things like big TVs
and surf-skis.
The Broad & Hazy
The broad church is
more a club than a church, something like the Tory Party at prayer. The parishioners will choose the church they
(occasionally) attend on the same basis as their golf club, driving miles if
need be to find a congregation acceptably free of racial and cultural DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). They’re interested not at all
in theology or anything too abstract so sermons need to be brief and sufficiently vague to please the
bourgeoisie. The broad church stands for
most things in general and nothing in particular; finding most disputes in
Anglicanism baffling, they just can't see what all the fuss is about.
The High & Crazy
The high church has
clergy who love dressing up like the Spice Girls, burning incense and chanting
the medieval liturgy in Latin. They
disapprove of about everything that’s happened since the 1662 edition of the
Book of Common Prayer and believe there’d be less sin were there still burnings
at the stake. Most high church clergy
wish Pius IX (1792–1878; pope 1846-1878) still sat on the throne of Saint Peter and some act as though
he does.
