Target Blames Extremism to Avoid Bud Light’s Fate ｜ 5⧸29⧸23
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
151.11914
Summary
The retailer Target has come under fire as it gears up for Pride Month by featuring increasingly controversial LGBTQ-themed merchandise. Along with the now standard Love is Love gear, Target is offering tuck-friendly bottoms used by transitionists to hide male genitalia while wearing female swimsuits. The swimsuit in question is made by a company whose designer, Eric Carnell, is an avowed Satanist.
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:00:10.720
Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
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Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
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Conservative boycotts have proven largely ineffective in the past,
00:00:33.420
but Bud Light's attempt to push LGBTQ propaganda on their customers
00:00:37.140
has created a sustained backlash that has tanked the company's profits,
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and other corporations like Target have taken notice.
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The retailer has recently come under fire as it gears up for the new American Ramadan,
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by featuring increasingly controversial LGBTQ-themed merchandise.
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Target is offering tuck-friendly bottoms used by transitionists to hide male genitalia while wearing
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The swimsuit in question is manufactured by a company called M. Fralins, whose designer,
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Carnell has designed shirts emblazoned with the slogan,
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and pins in the shape of a guillotine featuring the phrase,
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the sudden detention caused Target leadership to hold an emergency meeting this week in hopes of avoiding a Bud Light situation.
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Anheuser-Busch executives doomed themselves by taking a middle-of-the-road approach to the boycott.
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Executives trapped themselves between a conservative customer base on one side and the woke mob on the other,
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they found themselves in an inescapable situation where attempting to please either side would be treated as an unacceptable concession by the other.
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the only thing Bud Light can do is watch their sales plummet and hope the controversy blows over.
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The retailer does have a different core customer base than Bud Light,
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catering to middle- and upper-middle-class suburbanites who don't want to be caught shopping at Walmart.
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Target still relies heavily on Red State customers to pat its bottom line,
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and must, at least to some degree, be responsive to their tastes.
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Target executives are aware of the dynamic that played out in the Bud Light boycott
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and have no desire to become trapped in the same way,
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so they devised a different plan for damage control.
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The company announced that it will be reducing its pride displays and moving them to the back of the store.
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A statement from the corporation specified that this will be more common in southern states
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where the backlash is expected to be more severe.
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To avoid the perception of giving a concession to conservative pressure, however,
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Target has released a statement blaming volatile circumstances and
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threats impacting our team members' sense of safety and well-being as the motivation for the decision.
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No real specifics were given about the nature or source of these alleged threats,
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but Target made sure to restate its commitment to the LGBTQIA plus community
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and dedicate itself to celebrating Pride Month throughout the year.
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This strategy allows Target to present a head fake where it gives a minor concession to conservatives hoping to satisfy them.
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At the same time, the company gets to turn to the LGBTQ mob and woke investors with a vague accusation of violence,
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which allows them to pretend that they're doing this for safety reasons.
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Target needs to avoid a protracted battle with its customer base,
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but it also can't be seen as giving deference to the concerns of the deplorables.
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Framing this as an issue of worker safety allows the company to make minor concessions
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while reinforcing the violent and dangerous Christian extremism stereotype
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that the media has been investing in for the last few years.
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And who knows, there may have actually been customers who acted rashly,
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but this has never been a problem for Target before.
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Multiple stores belonging to the retail chain were looted or vandalized during the BLM riots of 2020,
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but far from worrying about the safety and security of their employees,
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Target doubled down on its support for the rioters.
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Apparently, concern for employee well-being is entirely dependent on political affiliation.
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As we get deeper into Pride Month, expect to see a lot more of this approach.
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Companies and organizations will use the new anti-grooming protections
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red states have put into place as cover to scale back the excesses of pride displays
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Make no mistake, this isn't a retreat by woke activists,
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When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?
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When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.
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When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.
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When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.
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Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.
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So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes.
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Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.
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Just a few years ago, people were outraged about the very idea of children being at a pride event at all.
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These events were seen as no-holds-barred Mardi Gras-style celebrations,
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Now the dialectic has advanced to a discussion on how explicit pride events can get while still being considered child-friendly.
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but there seems to be a pretty obvious path that this rhetorical game will take.
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The Biden administration will use the vague specter of violent backlash,
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as a justification to crack down on any real grassroots opposition to the LGBTQ-ification of every cultural space.
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This backlash will be linked to white nationalism,
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which Joe Biden and his administration officials have repeatedly declared the most significant domestic threat to the country.
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If it strikes you as strange that some really tan neo-Nazis started showing up in the news this month,
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The media has also specifically pushed the term Christian nationalism for this reason.
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They wanted any resistance to wokeness or any suggestion that Christian values have a legitimate role to play
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in our nation's social norms to be rhetorically linked to fascism.
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Conservatives remained dormant in the culture war for far too long,
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but the direct attack on children launched by gender activists has awakened a sleeping giant.
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Steps are finally being taken by red states to stop this madness,
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and these legal protections present a threat to progressive hegemony.
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Out ruling elite need to erode what remains of traditional morality and social structures
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because they compete with the power of the regime.
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Corporations and government institutions are eagerly working hand-in-hand
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to facilitate this hedonistic liquidation of traditional bonds through both legal and cultural means.
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Individual states creating effective regional barriers to this expansion of power threatens the agenda,
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and the central government will seek the means to crush it.
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feigning concern for the safety of their employees if that provides them political cover.
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But conservatives shouldn't be dissuaded from continuing to apply pressure.
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States have every right to protect children from predation.
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Conservatives have every right not to hand their money to corporations who hate them.
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If the right can't stand for these basic principles,
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I wanted to go ahead and update you at the end of this.
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but there has been news over the weekend before I got to make this video.
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at least one Target store in Utah was evacuated due to a bomb threat,
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and several other stores were named in the same threatening email.
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Now, the twist here is that the threats did not come from protesters.
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It did not come from people who were opposing these pride displays or the products being sold inside the Target.
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Instead, the threat came from people who claimed to be frustrated with the fact that Target had turned its back on the LGBTQ community.
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So it looks like we did indeed see an escalation, a radicalization, a threat of violence.
00:09:03.940
However, that threat did not come from the community that Target singled out as the reason that it pulled its pride displays.
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Instead, it came from the very community that they were attempting to please with those pride displays.
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Now, it looks like canine units were sent to the Target in Utah, and luckily no explosive device was found.
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But an email was received by a local news station, Cleveland 19,
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that threatened five different Target stores in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.
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Target is full of cowards who turn their back on the LGBT community and decided to cater to homophobic right-wing redneck bigots
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We won't stand idly by as the far right continues to hunt us down.
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We will continue to bomb your targets until you stop cowering and bring back your LGBT merchandise.
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Now, who knows what the validity of these messages are.
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So far, we haven't seen any explosive devices at these locations,
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and we've seen so many hate hoaxes that I'm very hesitant to place any credence on any of these anonymous emails with no action taken.
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But, of course, it is the contrast here that is so stunning, right?
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When we got accusations of maybe a pride display getting pulled down by somebody,
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That was something that scared employees, made them fear for their safety, made Target take action due to the safety of the employees.
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But when actual threats of violence are made by the LGBT community, apparently, there's no response.
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There's no lectures about the safety of their employees.
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As I insinuated in the piece, it was always politically motivated.
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They were never really worried about the safety of their employees.
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Because of that, they simply wanted to further a story of fiction about right-wing extremism,
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even though the actual extremism, the actual threats, again, apparently, look like they came from the left.
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And just so you watch, we won't hear anything from the FBI or from Joe Biden about the rising domestic terror threat from the LGBTQ community.
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They'll ignore this, just like they ignored the trans shooter in Nashville
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and the other one who is planning to shoot things up in Colorado Springs.
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They're going to ignore all of this violence and they're going to continue to further the narrative about Christian intolerance or right-wing violence.
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Even though it's very clear when we look at the evidence here, what's happening, they don't care.
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It's about furthering their political narrative.
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It was never about being worried about what would happen with violence.
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It was never about being worried about actual threats to the safety of Target employees.
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It was always about finding an excuse to back out of this and to blame it on a rising tide of right-wing or Christian extremism.
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The narrative was the point and they don't actually care because when real bomb threats happen,
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when actual threats come from the LGBTQ community, it's utter silence.
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It was never, ever about the actual safety of these people.
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It was always about advancing a narrative to avoid the consequences of what they were doing
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and to ensure that they can use that political narrative as a weapon against those that oppose them.
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00:13:02.540
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00:13:05.880
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Thanks for watching, guys, and as always, I'll talk to you next time.