"I forget where, but I once read something about a trap for activists being where they easily become dependent on the thing they are supposedly against. Do they then genuinely want to see its demise, given that they rely on its existence for their own and for funds to flow to them? So they end up in a kind of symbiotic / parasitic relationship instead."
Booker T. Washington observed something similar in his movement.
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
― Booker T. Washington