I guess almost every doper knows that this was a bit from Monthy Python’s “The Life Of Brian”, parodying political and/or ideological groups that have schisms about very petty things, but hate each other’s guts. Splitter!
Now, there’s a wonderful example at the fringes of German politics: we have two communist parties (actually, three, but in the case of the Marxist-Leninist Party the name isn’t so fittingly funny), the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, Communist Party Of Germany) and the DKP (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, German Communist Party). I don’t know exactly what their beef is, but I always think of the Life Of Brian and chuckle a bit when I hear about one of those parties (which isn’t often, they are both unimportant anywhere politically and in elections). Do you have similar examples?
Well, there are the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (formed by the merger of a couple of the 20 or so splinters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) such as the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) People’s War and the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Naxalbari, but not the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, for instance), as well as several others. Caveat: I may have confused a few of the details
There is the Orthodox Church in America, which traces its origins back to the Russian Orthodox missionaries in Alaska. They are recognized by the Patriarch of Moscow, but not by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.
There is the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, or the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Their chain of command theoretically goes up to the Patriarch of Moscow, but during the Soviet era, they did not consider the Soviet-approved patriarch to be the legitimate holder of the office. After the fall of communism, they re-established communion with Moscow. I don’t know how the Ukrainian situation will affect that.
There is the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, whose chain of command goes up to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.
Many US states, maybe even most or all, have restrictions on naming political parties to prevent confusion on the ballot. There have been occasional problems with candidates having similar or even identical names in the US and it maybe more common in other countries. It doesn’t make much sense for multiple parties to have similar names. At best misdirected votes balance out in the end but all the parties take the risk that they could be the one coming up short. The party with the most members takes the biggest risk, they have the most people who can check the wrong box.
I should add that one of the ancient traditions of Orthodoxy is that each nation is supposed have its own national church. Ideally, there is supposed to be one Russian Orthodox Church, one Albanian Orthodox Church, one Bulgarian Orthodox Church, etc. With all of the USA’s immigrant groups, the USA is a hodgepodge. Russian immigrants want a church with a ROC priest, Albanian immigdrants want a church with an AOC priest, etc. They have been trying for decades to set up a single church for the USA, but they keep ending up with more and more splinter groups.
Republican vs Democrat? In a democratic republic, I don’t know what difference in fundamental political position you might expect based on the names alone.
Not actually on the ballot, but on California’s voter registration forms, one of the options you can choose for your party affiliation is the American Independent party. They are a far right fringe party, basically the remnants of the old pro-segregation Dixiecrat party. It’s widely believed that the vast majority of the people who are registered under this party checked that box by mistake, thinking they were registering as independent voters, as in no party affiliation. California actually calls that option “no party preference” in an attempt to avoid that confusion.
There are 4 major boxing sanctioning organizations; WBA, WBO, WBC, and IBF. They all do exactly the same thing, but are all competing to make a dollar from the sport.
During the heyday of the National Wrestling Alliance from the '40s to the '80s, its member territories all agreed to recognize only one “World Championship” and one “World Tag Team Championship”, but there was no restriction on the United States Championship, so eleven different promotions across the country had their own championship by that name at various points in time. One of them, the Mid-Atlantic US Championship, is still active today, having been inherited by WCW and then WWE.
And just to complicate things further, there’s also a Japanese United States Championship, which NJPW created in 2017 when they started promoting shows in the US.
That’s just within the NWA. Look at the enormous number of people who have claimed the title of a wrestling World Heavyweight Championship in different organizations all at the same time. Any number of them will be billed as the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World at the same time. And all from numerous wrestling organizations usually known by a TLA or XTLA containing at least one W.
Pretty much anywhere you go in the extreme revolutionary left you see this, not sure why. The original case is the various socialist parties in Russia leading up to the revolution.
In fact the terms we use to describe the parties (or some of them) in that revolution come from exactly that kind of split: Bolsheviks and Menshevik. They were both originally part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, which then split based on policy differences (the names were a careful bit of propaganda by Lenin that stuck, Bolshevik meaning majority and Menshevik meaning minority). After the split you then had Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolshevik) and Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (United) ;
There’s the Emo Philips joke of the phenomenon in religion, of course, and if I remember commentary from the Pythons the whole bit in Life of Brian was directly inspired by groups in Britain. I tend to figure it’s all the narcissism of small differences.
There is also the Anglican church in the US, which is super confusing. In the UK (and elsewhere in world I think) the official Church of England is called Anglican. In the US it is referred to as Episcopalian (IIRC because calling something Anglican did not go down so well after the revolutionary war). But then the various conservative break away churches in the US that split from the Episcopalian church over the years (because of women priests or bishops, gay priests or bishops, etc.) started called themselves Anglican to distinguish them from mainstream Episcopalian churches.
The Anglican church was known was also known as the Protestant Episcopal church and an episcopate (the collection of bishops) and other names even prior to the revolution. I’m not clear on just when the name Episcopalian church became popular here in the US. The American Revolution created some kind of chaos in the Anglican church affecting the church on both sides of the Atlantic. There may have been some residual discontent toward the Anglican church prior to that when many US religions such as the Puritans and Congregationalists joined the Anglican church as those religions declined but those members were used to more local autonomy in their prior religion. Some kind of intertwining of politics and religion caused plenty more discomfort after the revolution. The church clearly had to split though because American members would no longer swear loyalty to England. They may have just used an alternate existing name based on “Episcopalian” instead of “Anglican”.
There’s the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which is subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which established its independence in 2018.
I think this phenomenon is very common in fringe political and religious groups, with the “Splinters” often becoming so tiny that nobody outside their immediate circle of friends ever noticed their existence.
Check out the wikipedia page “List of Communist Parties”. I can’t quote from it because the whole article is basically a collection of links itself, but Spain seems to be the clear winner with 25 active Communist splinter groups!
