Co-Optation Quotes

People have used my views for purposes which are very different from mine.

So many stories have been told about Black Lives Matter. The beauty of building out a decentralized network, the beauty of building out something that's a hashtag, is that so many people can take it and run with it. The bad part about that is so many folks can take it and run with it - and misuse it and co-opt it.

If you get into the establishment, they would coopt you … I finally decided though that I could do more from the inside than I could do from the outside.

What we've seen is an attempt by mainstream politics and politicians to co-opt movements that galvanize people in order for them to move closer to their own goals and objectives. We don't think that playing a corrupt game is going to bring change and make black lives matter.

If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it.

A wise soul once declared that the ultimate power of the writer is that he has the choice of whom he wants to be co-opted by.

Before the election, I reported on a story about a counterintelligence officer from another service sending reports to the FBI saying that his sources in Russia were saying that Moscow tried for years to cultivate and co-opt Donald Trump. I'm not saying that happened. I'm saying I hope the FBI took a strong look, because it is really hard to believe that a president-elect would be so callous in how he approaches this issue and so dismissive of the seriousness of it.

Mandela was a guy who didn't come in and just eviscerate the existing institutions. He sought to co-opt them. He brought white South Africans into his government.

The incentive for the outsider is to attack the system right up to the moment he is co-opted by it. The incentive for the insider -and this took some getting used to- is to allow yourself to be attacked, and then co-opt your most ferocious attackers, and their best ideas. The effect on the system as a whole is to make it more stable, because everyone winds up working on its behalf.

They sought out rap music to attack, but you don't hear that anymore because it made too much money. They use Che Guevara to sell soft drinks. If something comes out that is radical and it's successful, then it's no longer radical. It's co-opted.

In the '90s, indie movies could get financing, because financers gave money straight to directors... Now it's a different system. Indie movies got co-opted by the studio system.

Revolution is profitable. So the capitalists sell it... The hip capitalists have some allies within the revolutionary community: longhairs who work as intermediaries between the kids on the street and the millionaire businessmen.