If anyone thinks this is a unique situation - this has happened so many times. The easiest example is the Nazis, or the “national socialists” because socialism was popular back then so they used the term despite starting with killing union workers and leftists.
Vincent Bevins talks in depth about this in his book If We Burn, where he discusses why (certain) protests fail by going through real life examples of movements that were hijacked by right wing extremists. This is not new or novel, this is going by the playbook on how to fight against movements that ask for justice, peace, more democracy, economic equality, and so forth.
Well, the Nazis didn’t just randomly co-opt that term, they were the result of a merger of two different political parties, one far right and the other far right but with some ✨ socialist characteristics ✨ (if you’re ethnically German). On the Night of the Long Knives, all of the socialist-leaning elements of the new NSDAP were murdered in cold blood by the SS.
If anyone thinks this is a unique situation - this has happened so many times. The easiest example is the Nazis, or the “national socialists” because socialism was popular back then so they used the term despite starting with killing union workers and leftists.
Vincent Bevins talks in depth about this in his book If We Burn, where he discusses why (certain) protests fail by going through real life examples of movements that were hijacked by right wing extremists. This is not new or novel, this is going by the playbook on how to fight against movements that ask for justice, peace, more democracy, economic equality, and so forth.
Well, the Nazis didn’t just randomly co-opt that term, they were the result of a merger of two different political parties, one far right and the other far right but with some ✨ socialist characteristics ✨ (if you’re ethnically German). On the Night of the Long Knives, all of the socialist-leaning elements of the new NSDAP were murdered in cold blood by the SS.