Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the dark side of Indigenous peoples:

Serious historians know that when it comes to war, different parties to the conflict have had different motives, ranging from the just to the unjust. They also know that it is a rare occasion when all sides are equally innocent or guilty. To be sure, some may be more aggressive, but it is a mistake to assume that had the vanquished been in possession of the means to do so, they would not have been as vicious as the victors. Not all the losers in war were noble.

This needs to be said in light of what is now fashionable every October—Columbus bashing is all the rage. Just as bad, some promote the idea that virtually all the Indians were kindly souls who respected the land and treated each other with dignity. This is a romantic fairy tale having no basis in history. The truth is that some were gentle while others were brutal.

It is also part of the conventional wisdom that almost all the Indians were massacred by the white man. Wrong.

Historian William D. Rubinstein, in his book, Genocide, writes that “recent historians sympathetic to the plight of the American Indians at the hands of European settlers from 1492 onwards have repeatedly noted that while 95 percent of Indians living in the Americas perished (according to those historians) over the century or so after the coming of the white man, most of this diminution in population occurred through such factors as the importation of virulent diseases previously unknown in the Americas, the destruction of settled life-styles, enslavement, and the psychological effects of conquest rather than through overt murders and slaughters, although plenty of these took place.”

On the flip side, we have some commentators who want to portray the Indians as savages who never contributed to America’s greatness. They, too, are wrong.

The Indians served with distinction in World War I and World War II. Indeed, during World War I they enlisted in the Army in greater numbers, proportionally, than non-Indians. In World War II, tribes with strong warrior traditions volunteered, again with “disproportionate numbers.”

Before detailing the dark side of Indigenous peoples, as a corrective to the prevailing notion that only the white man acted unjustly, it is important to note that the term “Indigenous” is misleading. The Indians were immigrants who came here from Asia. In “prehistoric times,” they “crossed the land bridge across the Bering Strait to the lands of the Western Hemisphere.”

The following is a selection of practices that were common to some Indian tribes.

• Long before the Salem Witch Trials, the Navajo believed that witches ran rampant and caused all manner of destruction. This belief filled the tribe with a sense of fear and foreboding. To counteract this, anyone believed to be a witch (usually someone on the fringes of the tribe) faced violence and death. Frequently witches were scapegoats for anything that negatively impacted the tribe.
• The Chumash Indians, who lived on the Channel Islands off southern California, had an established class system in which the upper class owned slaves. Because the Chumash had no established agriculture, their food came from fishing, hunting, and gathering, they appeared to own slaves for no other purpose than for wealthy tribe members to flaunt their power.
• Among the Yanomamo Indians of Venezuela, women were forbidden to have intercourse with their husbands throughout pregnancy and until the child was weaned. To avoid extended periods of celibacy, Yanomamo couples would kill their infants.
• Inuit adults encouraged children to kill small animals and birds by torturing these defenseless creatures to death. Even their sled dogs, vital to their ability to cross the vast icy expanses, were not spared abuse. Sled dogs were frequently kicked and abused for no reason. If a dog was injured during a journey across the tundra, the dog would be mercilessly beaten and then abandoned to die alone in the frozen wilderness. Although some have claimed that this might have been done to direct aggression away from humans and towards animals, the Inuit were prone to outbursts of lethal violence and killed one another at alarmingly high rates.
• The Hudson Bay Inuit believed that boiled meat was “man’s food, too good for women to have.”
• The men of the Mehinaku tribe in Brazil frequently used threats of gang-rape to assert their dominance over their women.
• The Kwakuitl people of Canada practiced an extremely hierarchical society. About 15 percent of the population lived as slaves and the sole property of the chief. The chief’s family subsisted entirely off the labor of their slaves. The economic productivity of the tribe went primarily to the chief. Further, the Kwakuitl would war with neighboring tribes to capture more slaves.
• The Aztecs sacrificed as many as 250,000 people per year to appease their blood-thirsty gods. Victims had their beating hearts ripped out of their chests, and their corpses were eaten by the Aztec nobility. Most of the sacrificial victims were either prisoners of war or tribute from surrounding tribes to avoid war with the Aztecs. The Aztecs were constantly at war or using their military to intimidate tribute from nearby tribes. Although they had acquired many riches through their strength of arms, the average Aztec received none of the spoils of war. Instead, wealth remained in the hands of the nobles. Commoners lived impoverished lives, and the poorest among the landless peasants would sell themselves into slavery. Today, in California schools, as part of their multicultural curriculum, children are told to chant prayers to the same Aztec gods who demanded human sacrifices. They are now being sued for crossing church and state lines.
• The Tonkawa Indians of central Texas were cannibals. They would raid other tribes to take captives. Unlike other tribes, the Tonkawa would eat these captives without any religious ceremony.
• From 1622 to 1626, the colonists in Virginia fought the Second Powhatan War. After initial conflicts between the colonists at Jamestown and the Powhatan Confederacy, peaceful cohabitation existed between the two groups. However, on March 22, 1622, without any provocation from the colonists, the Powhatan attacked the colonists. Of the 1,250 settlers, the Powhatan massacred 347 in a single morning. The Powhatan had hoped the colonists would abandon Jamestown, but instead the settlers dug in and fought back. The war ended in a peace that favored the colonists, and due to the vicious initial attack, English colonies adopted harsher policies in dealing with the Indians.
• From 1640 to 1698, the Iroquois Confederation, dominated by the Mohawk tribe, waged war on the Algonquin tribes and their French allies in the Great Lakes region in what is known as the Beaver Wars. In the 1620s, the Iroquois began trading furs at the Dutch trading post on the Hudson River. This gave them access to European weapons. With powerful trading connections and a new arsenal of superior weapons, the Iroquois sought to expand their power by taking rich hunting grounds away from the surrounding tribes. The war began in 1640 when the Iroquois drove the Huron out of New York. By the 1650s, the Iroquois began attacking French settlements. In this phase of the war, Iroquois war parties would raid isolated settlements, swooping down suddenly, wielding tomahawks and knives used for scalping to slaughter the inhabitants. In some cases prisoners were taken either as slaves or were slowly tortured to death. Some Iroquois would torture their victims to death in communal religious ceremonies because they believed it was a way for the tribe to harness the spiritual power of the enemy. Further, some of these victims were eaten in hope that Iroquois warriors could harness the strength of their enemies. The Mohawk, in particular, were known for their cannibalism. The Algonquin word for Mohawk meant “flesh-eater.” In the 1660s, the Iroquois and French agreed to a ceasefire once the French brought over regular troops from Europe. In the meanwhile, the Iroquois began a military campaign of expansion to the West. With superior arms, the Iroquois came to control the rich hunting grounds in a region extending from the Colony of Virginia up to the St. Lawrence River pushing west to the Mississippi River. They displaced several tribes including the Petun, Erie, Shawnee, Sisquehannock, and Lakota. Hostilities resumed with the French in the 1680s when the French sought to begin hunting in the region controlled by the Iroquois. The French adopted similar tactics to the Iroquois and had curtailed the Iroquois expansion. In 1698, the French and Iroquois made peace because the French wished to use the Iroquois as a buffer against English expansion in North America. As part of the peace, the several tribes displaced by the Iroquois were allowed to return to their ancestral lands; however, many were so wiped out by the war that only a handful of the inhabitants ended up returning.
• From 1675 to 1676, the colonies in New England fought the King Philip’s War against the Wampanoag Indians and their allies. The war began after years of border tension between the Wampanoag and the colonists. In January of 1675, a Christian Indian, John Sassamon, came to warn the colonists that the Wampanoag were planning to attack; however, soon after Sassamon was found dead on the orders of the Wampanoag chief, King Philip. A trial was held for several of the Indians responsible for the murder, and they were found guilty by a jury of colonists and Indians, and they were hanged. Enraged that his supporters were executed for murder, King Philip waged war on the colonists raiding many settlements and killing as many people as he could. The colonists responded by sending militias to destroy King Philip’s home village on Mount Hope, Rhode Island. This brought other tribes into the war to aid King Philip. In September of 1675, around 700 Nipmuc Indians ambushed a wagon train of colonists and their militia escorts. The Indians massacred the colonists, killing almost every member of the party, in what is now known as the Battle of Bloody Brook. In retaliation for Bloody Brook, Plymouth Colony’s Governor Josiah Winslow, ordered an assault on an Indian fortification near the Great Swamp in West Kingston, Rhode Island. An estimated 300 Indians died in the attack or from exposure to the winter weather following the battle; several Indians were burnt at the stake. After the fight at the Great Swamp, King Philip moved his camp to New York to win the support of the Mohawk. The Mohawk were traditional rivals of the Wampanoag and the other tribes supporting King Philip. The Mohawk massacred the main Wampanoag camp in New York and began raiding King Philip’s camps in New England. The brutal attacks from the Mohawks convinced several of the tribes supporting King Philip to make peace with the colonists believing they would get better terms from the colonists than they would from the Mohawks. In early 1676, the Indians continued to raid, plunder, and kill colonists throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine. In one instance known as the “Nine Men’s Misery” incident, a group of King Philip’s warriors ambushed a group of 60 colonists and 20 Christian Indians. The warriors killed almost all of them in the fight, while nine men were taken and slowly tortured to death. In the spring of 1676, the colonists began to gain the upper hand, and the war finally concluded when King Philip was killed by a Christian Indian fighting with the colonists on August 20, 1676. King Philip’s body was decapitated, and hanged, drawn, and quartered, and his head was displayed in Plymouth Colony for almost two decades following the war. King Philip’s War is considered the bloodiest war per capita in U.S. history causing the deaths of several hundred colonists and destroying dozens of settlements. Thousands of Indians were killed, wounded, or captured and sold into slavery or indentured servitude as a result of the war.
• During the French and Indian War (1754-1763), there were many acts of violence committed by all parties. Perhaps the most famous instance of the war was the Massacre of Fort William Henry. In 1755 a large force of French and Indian soldiers pushed into New York. They began a siege of Fort William Henry held by a few British soldiers and American colonial militia. Without any hopes for reinforcements, the fort would soon fall. Seeking to avoid a pitched battle, the French commander offered terms to the British allowing them to retreat to Fort Edwards further south in exchange for Fort William Henry. The British accepted the terms, but while they were marching south they were set upon by the Indians who were part of the French coalition. The Indians brutally killed and scalped 185 soldiers and took hundreds more back to Canada as prisoners. The French had told the Indians that they were to let the British retreat; however, the Indians felt they were robbed of honor and the spoils of war so they attacked anyway. In some reports, the desire of the Indians to take spoils of war was so great that they desecrated the fort’s cemetery to take additional scalps, not only a sign of honor but also to receive a bounty, and any clothes or blankets that were buried with the dead. This atrocity was immortalized in the novel The Last of the Mohicans. Among the Indians involved in the massacre were the Huron. The Huron were known to torture and eat their captives. Women captives were frequently used as slaves while men were slowly tortured to death in religious ceremonies. If a captive showed particular courage, either in battle or during torture, the tribe would eat him in a religious service hoping to acquire his strength. It was not uncommon for the heart of a captive to be roasted and given to young men and boys to eat. The chief would usually consume the captive’s head.
• Between 1811 and 1924, the United States and Indian tribes west of the Mississippi fought a series of wars. These wars were brutal and atrocities were committed on both sides. Two of the most famous incidents were the Battle of Little Big Horn and the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Battle of Little Big Horn was part of the Great Sioux War of 1876. In the battle, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry engaged a much larger force of Lakota, Dakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Custer and 268 of his men were killed. As was common during these conflicts, the Indians mutilated many of the bodies to send warnings to other Americans not to venture west. In response to this great defeat, the United States increased its military activity against the Indians. This culminated in the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29, 1890. A reformed 7th Cavalry attempted to disarm a group of Lakota Indians camping at Wounded Knee. In the process of disarming the camp, a gun went off. Fearing a repeat of Little Big Horn, the Cavalry troopers began firing on the camp. Since most of the Lakota had given up their guns, they had little means of defending themselves. More than 250 Lakota men, women, and children were killed while 51 more were wounded.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on what will be celebrated on Oct. 11th:

In 2019, the National Education Association (NEA) announced that it “believes that the history of colonization needs to be recognized and acknowledged in every state.” To that end, it said “the name of the current holiday known as ‘Columbus Day’ should be renamed and recognized as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” Its position remains unchanged.

The NEA was only partially successful. Some cities and states have adopted its stance, but many others have not.

On October 11, some schools will be closed in observance of Columbus Day; some will be closed in observance of Indigenous Peoples’ Day; some will be closed in honor of both days; others will recognize neither day and will remain open. Click here to see the breakdown.

This is not a healthy situation. A country that cannot agree on who to honor is in trouble. Worse, a country whose public officials take no action against those who destroy statues on public land of those who have made significant contributions to American society are sending the wrong message. When a nation’s historically renowned figures become part of our throw-away culture, it does not bode well for instilling patriotism in young people.

Judging past historical figures through today’s lens will likely mean that some of those in favor of excising tributes to legendary persons will themselves be erased from history. So be it.

We at the Catholic League are taking off on October 11th, in honor of Christopher Columbus. Sorry NEA, you carry no weight with us.

In recognition of Columbus Day, October 11, we are offering a three-part series on this subject.

Today we will address the origins of the assault on Columbus. Tomorrow, we will offer a review of how schools across the nation are addressing this day. On Friday, we will take a politically incorrect look at Indigenous Americans.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue considers the intellectual origins of the war on Columbus:

In the 1990s, Yale University gave up $20 million given to them by Lee M. Bass: he wanted the money spent on efforts to expand the Western civilization curriculum, but highly politicized members of the faculty wanted to replace it with a multicultural program. The faculty won and Bass got his money back.

The fact is that many professors, especially in the humanities and social sciences, hate Western civilization; they have a particular animus against the United States. That this is happening at a time when many poor people from Latin America are crashing our borders is perverse. Yet the  pampered professors still keep railing against the U.S. They just don’t get it.

The attack on Columbus, and on Columbus Day, is traceable to the ideology of multiculturalism. Pope Benedict XVI rightly observed that multiculturalism has bred not only a contempt for the moral truths that adhere to the Judeo-Christian ethos, it has led to “a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological.”

No intellectual is more responsible for distorting the historical record of Columbus than Howard Zinn. His 1980 book, A People’s History of the United States, sold millions of copies and has been the go-to book for left-wing faculty and students for decades. He is the inspiration behind the attacks on Columbus Day and the one most responsible for replacing it with Indigenous People’s Day. The Zinn Education Project, which disseminates his work, is the force behind the Columbus bashing in the schools.

Zinn is falsely regarded as a man who hated oppression. He did so only selectively. He found it almost impossible to condemn atrocities committed by the Communist regimes of Stalin and Mao, owing, no doubt to his membership in the Communist Party. According to Ronald Radosh, one of the most prominent students of Communism, “Zinn was an active member of the Communist party (CPUSA)—a membership which he never acknowledged and when asked, denied.”

Mary Grabar, who wrote the definitive book exposing Zinn as a fraud, Debunking Howard Zinn, notes that there are plenty of glaring omissions in his writings. Zinn would never acknowledge what Carol Delaney, a Stanford University anthropologist had to say about Columbus. She maintained that Columbus acted on his Christian faith and told his crew to be kind to the Indians.

It is not as though Zinn was unaware of this side of Columbus—he just glossed over evidence that contradicted his thesis. Here’s a quote from Columbus he never mentions. “I want the natives to develop a friendly attitude toward us because I know that they are a people who can be made free and converted to our Holy Faith more by love than by force.”

Another one of the left-wing intellectuals who has contributed mightily to the assault on Western civilization is the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. In 1970, he released his bestselling book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. His Marxist-inspired volume, which has been used to train teachers beginning in kindergarten, holds that society is divided between the oppressors and the oppressed.

This is the kind of thinking that appeals to children and intellectuals. Children understand black and white, night and day, good guys and bad guys. Intellectuals do, too, the only difference is that they get to decide who the good guys are (the oppressed like Indians) and who the bad guys are (oppressors like Columbus).

Any objective scholar knows that the ideas of Marx and Lenin were put into play by Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro. To Freire, just like Zinn, they are his heroes. That’s right, the same man who is known for sympathizing with the oppressed adores some of history’s most vicious oppressors.

Mao murdered 77 million of his own people, yet according to Freire and his professor clones, China’s Communist genocidal maniac is to be exalted and Columbus condemned.

To top things off, those who are bashing Columbus are simultaneously lauding the legacy of Indigenous peoples. Yet a closer, and independent, examination of their historical record raises serious questions about their assigned “oppressed” status. But given the Manichean dualism that is operative—the good guys are non-whites and the bad guys are white—the outcome is predictable.

We will have more to say about this subject over the next few days.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a report on sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church:

There are many media reports on the release of a report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in France that are misleading, incomplete or simply wrong. While the full report is not yet available in English, I have read the Summary of the Final Report, “Sexual Violence in the Catholic Church.”

The Report found that over a 70-year period, 1950-2020, approximately 3,000 molesters allegedly abused an estimated 216,000 minors. Contrary to some news stories, not all were priests: one-third of the offenses were committed by those who worked in Catholic schools, youth programs, and other agencies.

No one would know anything about this had it not been for French bishops asking the French government to conduct such a probe. That was three years ago. The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church was launched to do the investigation with no strings attached. There was no budget—the Church paid for everything—and full access to Church archives was allowed.

Before proceeding, there is no institution in France, or anywhere else, that has asked the government to probe sexual misconduct among its employees. None.

Some aspects of the methodology are sound, but not all are. While the credentials of those who did the report are not in question, the fact that the Commission was entirely staffed by 21 volunteers is problematic: self-selection raises serious questions about bias. How do we know that those who chose to be on the Commission were not tainted by an animus against the Church? After all, news reports on anti-Catholicism in France are not hard to find. This possibility was not even mentioned in the Report.

To cull its findings, surveys were taken of the Catholic population, including anonymous online ones. Granting anonymity may be attractive to respondents, but it has obvious drawbacks. Worse, the use of a hotline is clearly unscientific: there was no screening of accusers. How do we know that this didn’t play into the hands of the 6,500 persons who called in saying that either they, or someone whom they know, was abused. No attempt to validate these accusations was made.

Even the survey that was conducted of 28,000 persons over the age of 18 raises issues. Self-reporting has its methodological limitations. In this regard, what is particularly damaging is the constant use of the word “victims.” It should read “alleged victims.” Again, no screening was done to validate the accusations.

The Report found that 2.5 percent of the French clergy and lay Catholics working for the Church since 1950 were accused of sexually abusing minors; this makes up less than four percent of all such abuse in France. Most of the abuse took place between 1950 and 1968; the 1960s was the heyday of the sexual revolution.

The Report found that 80 percent of the victims were boys, so this rules out heterosexual priests. At one point it says that most of the victims were “pre-adolescent boys,” but nowhere does it define when adolescence begins.

This is not unimportant. The Report’s finding that 8 in 10 cases of abuse were male-on-male sex cannot escape the conclusion that homosexuals were the offenders.

Indeed, Jean-Marc Sauvé, president of the Commission, admitted as much when he said, “we can say with a high degree of certainty that within the Catholic Church, the abuses mainly concerned men and not women, unlike society.” His use of the word “men” is telling.

The Report contains pages of recommendations. Some are quite good; others are banal. The authors should have been more careful not to intrude into the internal affairs of the Church, such as making suggestions on how to deal with Confession. Just as clueless, the Report concludes that “the paradoxical obsession with Catholic morality on issues of sexuality could be counterproductive in the fight against sex abuse.”

It is not the Church that is obsessed with sex—it is those who work in the media and education that have sex on their brain. No matter, the Commission just doesn’t get it. To wit, if Catholic sexual ethics had been exercised by those who abused minors, there would have been no scandal.

The real paradox is the sight of French authorities and elites lecturing the Catholic Church on the sexual abuse of minors. No country in the world harbors more intellectuals who have justified man-boy sex than in France. Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir were not only sexually promiscuous in their own lives, they, and many other left-wing writers, have long advocated eliminating laws  barring sex between adults and children.

Author Gabriel Matzneff is a hero to French intellectuals. He is a well-known sexual predator who molested boys and girls as young as 8-years-old, and he did so for decades, garnering the applause of the literati.

In short, the French need to clean up their own house before pointing fingers at anyone else. As even the Report notes, the Church has made great progress handling this problem. It is now time for French intellectuals to take their cues from the Catholic Church and stop idolizing molesters in their midst.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on recent recipients of the “Genius Grants”:

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation annually present a Fellowship to those deemed worthy of what is known as their “genius” award. The winners this year have much in common: 72% of the winners are hard-core left-wing writers, artists and activists. In keeping with the zeitgeist, almost all are consumed with race, and do not look kindly on the United States.

Many are socialists, though none will turn down the $625,000 grant that was made possible by the capitalist system that they abhor.

The superstar of this year’s awards is Ibram Henry Rogers, better known as Ibram Xolani Kendi. His main contribution to America is promoting racism in the name of fighting it. He likes to boast how much he hates capitalism, though that hasn’t stopped him from charging $20,000 an hour for one of his virtual presentations. He is filthy rich.

Here is a list of this year’s “geniuses.”

Hanif Abdurraqib, music critic, essayist, and poet

• Abdurraqib focuses heavily on the subject of race. In one piece for The New Republic, he complains that Ohio has embraced white supremacy. Also his social media is littered with accusations that America is a racist country.
• Abdurraqib has also been critical of American efforts in the War on Terror. “There is no retaliation like American retaliation, for it is long, drawn out, and willing to strike relentlessly, regardless of the damage it has done. Sept. 11 is used as a tithe in our church of brutality, even 15 years and endless bombs down the road.”

Daniel Alarcón, writer and radio producer

• Alarcón is critical of America defending its border. While most of his social media is in Spanish, there are several accusations that American border security is racist and harmful to oppressed immigrants.

Marcella Alsan, physician-economist

• Alsan contends that legacies of discrimination perpetuate racial disparities in healthcare usage and health outcomes. She once tweeted that “CDC Director Declares Racism A ‘Serious Public Health Threat.'”
• In a 2006 article, Alsan complained about the Catholic Church is opposed to using condoms to combat AIDS in Africa, thus subjecting them to hardship.

Trevor Bedford, computational virologist

• During the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests/riots in 2020, Bedford took to social media to say that they did not increase the potential risk of spreading Covid-19. He also tweeted that systemic racism and police brutality were greater threats to public health.

Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet and lawyer

• Betts maintains that the American justice system is racist. An ex-con, he says “we live in a country that’s too punitive when certain people commit crime.”
• His social media is full of accusations that America is a racist country.

Jordan Casteel, painter

• Casteel invites the viewer to consider “blackness” as a concept and social construct through her experimental use of color. She uses her art to call attention to systemic racism.

Don Mee Choi, poet and translator

• Choi focuses on grappling with the effects of military violence and the U.S. imperial legacies on the Korean Peninsula. She blames American imperialism for much of the suffering in the world.

Nicole Fleetwood, art historian and curator

• Fleetwood is a prison reform activist who has called to “abolish the carceral state.” She regularly praises BLM and condemns the police as racists.
• In a 2020 interview with Asia Art Tours, Fleetwood spoke out against the “extractive capitalism” present in both prisons and museums.

Cristina Ibarra, documentary filmmaker

• Ibarra uses her films to unearth and portray complicated colonial legacies and cross-border tensions that continue to exist in the community. Her films depict intergenerational life, displacement, labor struggles, and community violence, often from the perspective of Chicana and Latina youth.

Ibram X. Kendi, racist expert

• When Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice, Kendi attacked her for adopting two children from Haiti. He likened her to “white colonizers” who “adopted” black children so that these “savage ” children could be “civilized.”
• “When I see racial disparities,” Kendi opines, “I see racism.” However, “racial discrimination is not inherently racist.” Indeed, he argues that “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” He wants to defund the police.

Daniel Lind-Ramos, sculptor and painter

• Lind-Ramos art embodies social history and religious rituals. His work focuses on the Afro-Antillean heritages and promoting multiculturalism.
• Lind-Ramos’ art also focuses on religious aspects. Some of his works involve the inclusion of altars that are a tribute to the afro-Caribbean religions worshipped by Cuban Yoruba slaves, and are meant to unveil the taboos on colonial history that continue to produce anxiety and divide the Puerto Rican society according to skin color and dependency complexes.

Monica Muñoz Martinez, public historian

• Martinez specializes in histories of racial violence, policing on the US-Mexico border, Latino history, women and gender studies, and restorative justice. She is also “cofounder of the nonprofit organization Refusing to Forget, which calls for a public reckoning with racial violence in Texas.”
• Martinez’s book The Injustice Never Leaves You in 2019 was named a Five Books Best Book on white supremacy. She has also claimed the Texas Rangers are an institution of white supremacy.

Desmond Meade, civil rights activist

• Meade has worked to change disenfranchisement laws and other barriers preventing formerly incarcerated citizens from fully participating in civic life.
• He has complained about a Florida law that returns voting rights to felons only after they have paid all the financial debts they have incurred because of the crimes they have committed calling it an example of “racist Jim Crow policies.” He has also used social media to promote the notion that whites are racist and America is a racist nation.

Safiya Noble, internet studies and digital media scholar

• Noble supports Black Lives Matter and defunding the police. Further, she wants to ensure that governments and law enforcement cannot use technology to promulgate racism and other forms of injustice.

Alex Rivera, filmmaker and media artist

• Rivera is best known for his films about labor, immigration, and politics. His works primarily focus on downtrodden immigrants suffering at the hands of border enforcement policies
• Rivera’s social media has multiple complaints about Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol. He also has many tweets advocating for amnesty and other measures to mitigate the “hardships” endured by immigrants. He frequently frames the argument that white “Anglos” are oppressing poor Hispanics and other immigrant groups.

Jacqueline Stewart, film scholar, archivist, and curato

• Stewart’s work focuses on black-made movies, black movie-goers, and systemic racism in film
• In a 2020 opinion piece for CNN, Stewart argued in favor of HBO Max to continue streaming Gone with the Wind because the film show cases America’s racist attitudes and offered a perfect teaching moment for whites to confront their deeply held racist beliefs. In the same piece, she complains about police brutality and praises the rioters for calling attention to systemic racism. Following the piece, HBO Max invited her to provide a new forward to Gone with the Wind and a warning that the film is deeply racist and apologize for past abuses.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, historian and writer

• Taylor is the author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016). In this work, locates the origins of BLM not just in police and vigilante violence, but also in the growing polarization between black politicians and ordinary black people. Taylor argues that black elected officials are often complicit in perpetuating systemic racism. Embedded within the dynamics of capitalist democracy, they create policies that support the economic status quo rather than the needs of their black constituents.
• Taylor was a member of the International Socialist Organization, a revolutionary Trotskyist non-profit.
• Taylor wants the police to be defunded and argues that America is a systemically racist country. Also, conservatives are the root of all evil. In one tweet, she shared a video of Amy Coney Barrett with the caption “White Power.”

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, choreographer and dance entrepreneur

• In 1984, Zollar founded Urban Bush Women (UBW). This is an activist group that uses dance to fight back against inequality.
• In 1993, UBW put on a performance called LifeDanceIII… The Empress (Womb Wars). The performance takes up women’s cry against sexual violence, medical butchery, and the denial of women’s rights to control their own bodies, and Zollar recounts her deeply personal experience with abortion. Womb Wars presents abortion as a spiritual act.

These award winners are basically apolitical or at least not radicals.

—Ibrahim Cissé, biological physicist

—Joshua Miele, adaptive technology designer

—Michelle Monje, neuroscientist and neuro-oncologist

—Taylor Perron, geomorphologist

—Lisa Schulte Moore, landscape ecologist

—Jesse Shapiro, applied microeconomist

—Victor J. Torres, microbiologist

John D. MacArthur, whose capitalist ventures are responsible for the Foundation, was not a race-baiting anti-American left-wing activist. He was a businessman who created Bankers Life, a prominent insurance company. But like so many other successful capitalists, he did not lay down guidelines for his Foundation, and like so many others, what he created was hijacked by the Left and turned into a radical enterprise.

What we are witnessing is the sabotage of America by the ruling class. Their penchant for national suicide is stunning. They have become the enemy of the common man.

Contact Kristen Mack, Managing Director, Communications at MacArthur Foundation: kmack@macfound.org