So-called Anti-Woke, Anti-DEI policy catch-all

[nycfan]

Hegseth Uses His First Town Hall to Attack Diversity​

The defense secretary, speaking to the Pentagon work force, defended his “unconventional approaches” to an audience that included women and people of color.

Hegseth Uses His First Town Hall to Attack Diversity

The defense secretary, speaking to the Pentagon work force, defended his “unconventional approaches” to an audience that included women and people of color.

www.nytimes.com

“…
Speaking to a room filled with African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and white Americans, both men and women, he offered a full-throated attack on the military’s decades-long efforts to diversify.

“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’” said Mr. Hegseth, who served in the U.S. Army National Guard from 2001 to 2021 and is a former Fox News host.

He later added that he dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion policies at the Pentagon because they “served a purpose of dividing the force as opposed to uniting the force.”

… In recent years, the Pentagon has sought to increase the numbers of women and racial minorities in the military’s officer corps, so that it could become more representative of the enlisted force it leads. Mr. Hegseth has said such policies are unfair. …”

 

[altmin]

Revealed: how a shadowy group of far-right donors is funding federal employee watchlists

Project 2025 architects are among those behind the American Accountability Foundation and their blacklists targeting people of color

www.theguardian.com

A rightwing non-profit group that has published a “DEI Watch List” identifying federal employees allegedly “driving radical Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives” is bankrolled by wealthy family foundations and rightwing groups whose origins are often cloaked in a web of financial arrangements that obscure the original donors.

One recent list created by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) includes the names of mostly Black people with roles in government health alleged to have some ties to diversity initiatives. Another targets education department employees, and another calls out the “most subversive immigration bureaucrats”.


The lists come amid turmoil in the US government as Donald Trump’s incoming administration, aided by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has sought to fire huge swathes of the federal government and purge it of DEI and other initiatives – such as tackling climate change – that Trump has dubbed “woke”.

While the publication of the personal details of government workers – whom the website describes as “targets” – has reportedly “terrified” many in federal departments, the Guardian has discovered that some current and former employees of AAF have taken pains to conceal their affiliations with the group on LinkedIn and other public websites.

One of the donors to the AAF is the Heritage Foundation, the architects of Project 2025, which has been a driving ideological force behind Trump’s re-election and first weeks in government.

Heidi Beirich, chief strategy officer of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), said: “It’s not surprising to find a vile project such as this backed by Project 2025 entities and far-right donors who have it out for public employees.”

Disclosure documents show that the AAF has been closely involved in training Republican staffers in collaboration with the affiliated Conservative Partnership Institute, in sessions that promise to train rightwing operatives in skills including “open source research” and “working with outside groups”.

 

[altmin]

Nothing could go wrong with right wing groups making lists of non-white people, could it?

 

[wmheel1287]

Fantastic post and I agree with all of it. Well done.

I find this reply to be entirely in bad faith. You acknowledge that you vote with the social majority on pretty much any issue when it pits that social majority against a minority group. You do so even when it is a single issue vote designed to strip said minority group of rights. Furthermore, even when you ostensibly change your personal opinion about those singular issues down the road, you neither regret nor disavow your previous position. Finally, you continue to vote for leadership that does hold and press for the previous positions you supposedly no longer support.

Explain to me how that pattern is someone who agrees in:

1. Not singling out groups
2. Uplifting all of society for equal treatment

Thinking that Democrats should be more quiet on minority treatment because it allows them to achieve an ultimate goal of electibility is NOT the same thing as thinking they should be more quiet just because you personally don't want to hear it.

 

[HeelYeah2012]

I find this reply to be entirely in bad faith. You acknowledge that you vote with the social majority on pretty much any issue when it pits that social majority against a minority group. You do so even when it is a single issue vote designed to strip said minority group of rights. Furthermore, even when you ostensibly change your personal opinion about those singular issues down the road, you neither regret nor disavow your previous position. Finally, you continue to vote for leadership that does hold and press for the previous positions you supposedly no longer support.

Explain to me how that pattern is someone who agrees in:

1. Not singling out groups
2. Uplifting all of society for equal treatment

Thinking that Democrats should be more quiet on minority treatment because it allows them to achieve an ultimate goal of electibility is NOT the same thing as thinking they should be more quiet just because you personally don't want to hear it.

Which minority group are you talking about here that I am so opposed to? I assume you are talking about transgender people, but I’m not sure I would say I am “opposed” to them even if I think it’s silly. Frankly I don’t care how they live their life or what they believe in their own mind, I just disagree with trying to force the rest of society to play along with the idea of it in various ways.

The thing Paine said that is on the money is an important lesson for many here. The Democrats have left working class whites behind with all their culture wars. All the Democrats want to talk about is prosperity for certain genders or races instead of having a message about uplifting all of society.

I’ve made similar points in the past about how the politicians on both sides make sure the poor whites and poor blacks are always divided. Because as long as those folks are divided, no real meaningful change will happen and the status quo will remain in tact for the elites from both parties.

 

[superrific]

The Democrats have left working class whites behind with all their culture wars.

Please stop. This administration consists of outright white supremacist racist pieces of shit. No administration post Civil War has been more openly and viciously racist as this one. That you think it's the Dems who started the culture wars says so much about you that you don't realize. You blame Dems because you think Pubs are the norm.

 

[Duke Mu]

We ain't got time for that now.

This ain't no party. This ain't no disco.

 

[Calheel]

Which minority group are you talking about here that I am so opposed to? I assume you are talking about transgender people, but I’m not sure I would say I am “opposed” to them even if I think it’s silly. Frankly I don’t care how they live their life or what they believe in their own mind, I just disagree with trying to force the rest of society to play along with the idea of it in various ways.

The thing Paine said that is on the money is an important lesson for many here. The Democrats have left working class whites behind with all their culture wars. All the Democrats want to talk about is prosperity for certain genders or races instead of having a message about uplifting all of society.

I’ve made similar points in the past about how the politicians on both sides make sure the poor whites and poor blacks are always divided. Because as long as those folks are divided, no real meaningful change will happen and the status quo will remain in tact for the elites from both parties.

So you are ok dividing people by class, just not race? Got it. No wonder you like Paine.

 

[Paine]

So you are ok dividing people by class, just not race? Got it. No wonder you like Paine.

Class divisions are a natural product of capitalism. Are you implying that they wouldn’t exist if mean socialists like me didn’t point them out?

 

[wmheel1287]

So you are ok dividing people by class, just not race? Got it. No wonder you like Paine.

HY doesn't "like" Paine or his ideas. He likes that Paine gets in the face of the rest of us from time to time. He likes any criticism of Democrats. If Paine were running for office, HY would label him Mao or Stalin before the sun set.

 

[Lando]

I find this reply to be entirely in bad faith. You acknowledge that you vote with the social majority on pretty much any issue when it pits that social majority against a minority group. You do so even when it is a single issue vote designed to strip said minority group of rights. Furthermore, even when you ostensibly change your personal opinion about those singular issues down the road, you neither regret nor disavow your previous position. Finally, you continue to vote for leadership that does hold and press for the previous positions you supposedly no longer support.

Explain to me how that pattern is someone who agrees in:

1. Not singling out groups
2. Uplifting all of society for equal treatment

Thinking that Democrats should be more quiet on minority treatment because it allows them to achieve an ultimate goal of electibility is NOT the same thing as thinking they should be more quiet just because you personally don't want to hear it.

Also given how Republican support for gay marriage has fallen once they found they could attack trans people, I don't buy those opinion changes.

 

[superrific]

So you are ok dividing people by class, just not race? Got it. No wonder you like Paine.

Not fair to Paine.

 

[rodoheel]

The Democrats have left working class whites behind with all their culture wars.

Oh really? You think it's the Dems who spend all their time fighting culture wars? Tell me, how much does it help working-class whites to ban gender-affirming care and kick like 12 transgender people out of NCAA sports? Or to issue executive orders about Afrikaners in South Africa being an oppressed minority? Or to whine every time someone says "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"?

 

[Duke Mu]

Class divisions are a natural product of capitalism. Are you implying that they wouldn’t exist if mean socialists like me didn’t point them out?

I mean we have...DATA on this, including mobility data.

 

[Duke Mu]

One of the issues that often eludes superficial analysis on how working, middle class wages don't keep up. Over time People in the upper middle class retire, including those who have moved up in income over their career. They are replace by young, working class, and middle class people. upward mobility has become more sticky as infrastructure and hiring dynamics have changed.

Billionaire Bros., including Pres. Musk would like to remove the ladders in society that provide scaffolding for upward mobility and set up a 21st Century proletariat state, including low wage immigrants in the tech field.

Stuck on the ladder: Wealth mobility is low and decreases with age

Ariel Gelrud Shiro, Christopher Pulliam and Ember Smith expand on their findings in our new report on intergenerational wealth mobility in the United States by examining when opportunities for wealth occur during working years, and when those opportunities decline.

www.brookings.edu

To tear down government function and support for working and middle class in upward mobility is the intent. Musk is looking for low-age near you! ...or India.

rates of absolute mobility have fallen from approximately 90% for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980s

The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940 | Opportunity Insights

opportunityinsights.org

 

[Duke Mu]

Oh really? You think it's the Dems who spend all their time fighting culture wars? Tell me, how much does it help working-class whites to ban gender-affirming care and kick like 12 transgender people out of NCAA sports? Or to issue executive orders about Afrikaners in South Africa being an oppressed minority? Or to whine every time someone says "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"?

It's largely MAGA that's fighting the Culture Wars. Dems just milquetoast by and clutch their pearls.

 

[UNCBAdookJD]

West Point eliminates list of student organizations:

As a former professor at West Point this one pisses me off like no other. They didn’t disband the French, German, Italian, or Polish clubs, but they disbanded all of these? Insane.

 

[finesse]

Class divisions are a natural product of capitalism. Are you implying that they wouldn’t exist if mean socialists like me didn’t point them out?

Class divisions seem to be endemic to any system of government. Ask the helots of Sparta or the serfs of medieval Europe.

The biggest single cause division ,if you consider religion single cause, is race hate. That's pretty much caught up in the whole concept of being the select of God. Not too hard to move from there to narrower definitions of just who that select is.

That's also the biggest separator between the the white working class and the Democratic party.

 

[Paine]

Class divisions seem to be endemic to any system of government. Ask the helots of Sparta or the serfs of medieval Europe.

The biggest single cause division ,if you consider religion single cause, is race hate. That's pretty much caught up in the whole concept of being the select of God. Not too hard to move from there to narrower definitions of just who that select is.

That's also the biggest separator between the the white working class and the Democratic party.

I mean, there is a system of government and economics that is predicated on abolishing class.

 

[finesse]

I mean, there is a system of government and economics that is predicated on abolishing class.

Can you point me to a working model?