Story at a glance
- The video shared on the agency’s Twitter account on April 28 features a Latina CIA officer, Mija, describing her own experience.
- Former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright on Tuesday told “Fox & Friends” the agency had pushed “woke propaganda.”
- On the left, critics accused the agency of co-opting progressive language.
A recruitment video from the CIA intended to boost and tout diversity at the agency is being criticized by pundits across the ideological spectrum for trying to get “woke” points with its audience.
The video shared on the agency’s Twitter account on April 28 features a Latina CIA officer, Mija, describing her own experience.
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“I am a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cisgender millennial, who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder,” she says in the video while walking through CIA’s Langley headquarters.
“I am unapologetically me. I want you to be unapologetically you, whoever you are. Whether you work at #CIA, or anywhere else in the world.
Command your space. Mija, you are worth it.”
— CIA (@CIA) April 28, 2021
“I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise,” she says.
“I used to struggle with imposter syndrome, but at 36 I refuse to internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be,” she adds.
The video prompted accusations that the agency was weaponizing progressive language to gloss over its unsavory history and pandering to those on the left.
Former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright on Tuesday told “Fox & Friends” the agency had pushed “woke propaganda.”
“What happens when you hire a bunch of folks who are wokesters going out into the world that is not woke?” Wright asked.
“As an analyst, are they going to bring nuance to their analysis or are they going to bring any degree of unbiasedness to their job? Of course not. They’re activists now.”
Former secretary of state and director of the CIA Mike Pompeo said the U.S. couldn’t afford to risk national security to “appease some liberal, woke agenda.”
“When I was Director of the CIA, we valued individuals based on their talent and skill, not their race or sexuality,” he tweeted Tuesday.
On the left, critics accused the agency of co-opting progressive language.
“The job for the US & UK intelligence services, and, indeed, for other centers of establishment power, is to transform the Woke wolf into a domesticated Woke dog. I’m betting they succeed,” David Rieff, author and policy analyst, tweeted.
Comedian Blaire Eskine, who’s known for videos spoofing right-wing political figures, posted a parody video saying women in the CIA “could do murder too.”
“I’ve never done what the patriarchy wanted me to do,” Eskine says in the video. “When I was a little girl playing Marco Polo in the pool with my friends, I would hold their heads underwater and make them tell me where Polo was. You know what I mean?”
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