I am again working on research abt n*zi propaganda, and I am stricken by the (esp. in pre-1933 texts) pervasive appropriation & twisting of the language of socialist critique and liberation, stripping it of semantic content and coherence, and I am again thinking abt the CIA ad

that spooked so many ppl into renouncing “intersectionality.” Would they short-circuit the second they heard Goebbels give a speech abt “the reactionary bourgeois class state,” and “working proletarians” and “the means of production”?

To me it is obvious that the woke CIA ad is serving partly the same purpose as Goebbels railing against the “bourgeoisie,” which is to intentionally divorce the signifiers from the signified and make it impossible to discuss liberatory politics by appropriating the language

Of then-popular movements in social criticism, stripping it of its social-critical content and context, and redeploying it as nothing but empty signifiers utilizing emotional valency and moralistic associationism in the service of domination.

Goebbels’ use of “socialist” language is incoherent to the point of being gibberish, but that’s kind of the point?? To turn social criticism into gibberish that serves the empire. Would the “the n*zis were socialist” crowd not eat that shit up if they ever bothered to read?

The same is true for anti-wokes who ate up the CIA ad as proof that the CIA is woke actually and “intersectionality” is a CIA trick to divide the working class with identity politics or whatever. They didn’t detect the incoherence in the CIA’s appropriation of “woke” language bc

they never actually understood the content or context of the language of liberation so they don’t notice the obvious deliberate emptiness of the signifier, just like RWers who think the n*zis were socialist because “it’s in the name.”

Tbh I think a lot of the anti-woke “left” ppl would indeed be unable to process n*zi propaganda’s use of “bourgeois, proletarian, revolution, capitalism, people’s comrades,” etc. bc if the CIA using the words “cisgender” or “woman of color,” causes you to immediately renounce

the language of liberation struggle as a bourgeois academic ploy, wtf would you do when confronted w/ leaders of a genocidal fascist empire talking about fucking “seizing the means” (while simultaneously calling Marxism a bourgeois academic ploy btw)??

Anyway I have once again accidentally composed a much longer tweet thread than I originally intended, thank you to the 2 ppl who will read it lol