The Auron MacIntyre Show - Target Blames Extremism to Avoid Bud Light’s Fate ｜ 5⧸29⧸23

00:00:00.000 We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.

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00:00:28.580 See AirCanada.com.

00:00:30.000 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,

00:00:41.300 and other corporations like Target have taken notice.

00:00:44.220 The retailer has recently come under fire as it gears up for the new American Ramadan,

00:00:49.280 also known as Pride Month,

00:00:50.740 by featuring increasingly controversial LGBTQ-themed merchandise.

00:00:55.660 Along with the now-standard Love is Love gear,

00:00:58.440 Target is offering tuck-friendly bottoms used by transitionists to hide male genitalia while wearing 0.89

00:01:04.520 female swimsuits.

00:01:05.580 The swimsuit in question is manufactured by a company called M. Fralins, whose designer,

00:01:11.040 Eric Carnell, is an avowed Satanist.

00:01:14.780 Carnell has designed shirts emblazoned with the slogan,

00:01:17.720 Satan respects pronouns, 1.00

00:01:19.220 and pins in the shape of a guillotine featuring the phrase,

00:01:22.280 homophobe headrest.

00:01:23.600 According to multiple reports,

00:01:25.920 the sudden detention caused Target leadership to hold an emergency meeting this week in hopes of avoiding a Bud Light situation.

00:01:33.680 As I explained in an earlier episode,

00:01:35.740 Anheuser-Busch executives doomed themselves by taking a middle-of-the-road approach to the boycott.

00:01:41.620 Executives trapped themselves between a conservative customer base on one side and the woke mob on the other,

00:01:46.960 hoping to please both.

00:01:48.000 Instead,

00:01:49.220 they found themselves in an inescapable situation where attempting to please either side would be treated as an unacceptable concession by the other.

00:01:57.260 In this no-win scenario,

00:01:58.940 the only thing Bud Light can do is watch their sales plummet and hope the controversy blows over.

00:02:05.000 Target has put itself in a similar situation.

00:02:07.600 The retailer does have a different core customer base than Bud Light,

00:02:11.220 catering to middle- and upper-middle-class suburbanites who don't want to be caught shopping at Walmart.

00:02:15.980 But, like Anheuser-Busch,

00:02:18.440 Target still relies heavily on Red State customers to pat its bottom line,

00:02:22.800 and must, at least to some degree, be responsive to their tastes.

00:02:27.140 Target executives are aware of the dynamic that played out in the Bud Light boycott

00:02:31.560 and have no desire to become trapped in the same way,

00:02:34.700 so they devised a different plan for damage control.

00:02:37.560 The company announced that it will be reducing its pride displays and moving them to the back of the store.

00:02:42.940 A statement from the corporation specified that this will be more common in southern states

00:02:48.600 where the backlash is expected to be more severe.

00:02:51.760 To avoid the perception of giving a concession to conservative pressure, however,

00:02:56.020 Target has released a statement blaming volatile circumstances and

00:02:59.700 threats impacting our team members' sense of safety and well-being as the motivation for the decision.

00:03:05.240 No real specifics were given about the nature or source of these alleged threats,

00:03:10.520 but Target made sure to restate its commitment to the LGBTQIA plus community

00:03:16.900 and dedicate itself to celebrating Pride Month throughout the year.

00:03:21.600 This strategy allows Target to present a head fake where it gives a minor concession to conservatives hoping to satisfy them.

00:03:28.400 At the same time, the company gets to turn to the LGBTQ mob and woke investors with a vague accusation of violence,

00:03:36.880 which allows them to pretend that they're doing this for safety reasons.

00:03:41.000 Target needs to avoid a protracted battle with its customer base,

00:03:44.680 but it also can't be seen as giving deference to the concerns of the deplorables.

00:03:49.540 Framing this as an issue of worker safety allows the company to make minor concessions

00:03:54.840 while reinforcing the violent and dangerous Christian extremism stereotype

00:03:59.020 that the media has been investing in for the last few years.

00:04:03.000 And who knows, there may have actually been customers who acted rashly,

00:04:06.600 but this has never been a problem for Target before.

00:04:09.420 Multiple stores belonging to the retail chain were looted or vandalized during the BLM riots of 2020,

00:04:16.180 but far from worrying about the safety and security of their employees,

00:04:19.760 Target doubled down on its support for the rioters.

00:04:22.400 Apparently, concern for employee well-being is entirely dependent on political affiliation.

00:04:29.760 As we get deeper into Pride Month, expect to see a lot more of this approach.

00:04:35.700 Companies and organizations will use the new anti-grooming protections

00:04:39.700 red states have put into place as cover to scale back the excesses of pride displays

00:04:44.500 which have become increasingly controversial.

00:04:47.440 Make no mistake, this isn't a retreat by woke activists,

00:04:51.260 but instead, a turning of the ratchet.

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00:04:58.120 When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.

00:05:02.960 When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.

00:05:05.640 When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.

00:05:09.360 Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.

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00:05:18.740 Service fees exclusions and terms apply.

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00:05:22.360 Groceries that over-deliver.

00:05:24.700 Just a few years ago, people were outraged about the very idea of children being at a pride event at all.

00:05:32.500 These events were seen as no-holds-barred Mardi Gras-style celebrations,

00:05:38.100 which were explicitly adult in their nature.

00:05:40.760 Now the dialectic has advanced to a discussion on how explicit pride events can get while still being considered child-friendly.

00:05:50.680 Making predictions is always dangerous work,

00:05:54.100 but there seems to be a pretty obvious path that this rhetorical game will take.

00:05:58.480 The Biden administration will use the vague specter of violent backlash,

00:06:04.220 dutifully advanced by the media, of course,

00:06:06.860 as a justification to crack down on any real grassroots opposition to the LGBTQ-ification of every cultural space.

00:06:15.440 This backlash will be linked to white nationalism,

00:06:19.020 which Joe Biden and his administration officials have repeatedly declared the most significant domestic threat to the country.

00:06:26.320 If it strikes you as strange that some really tan neo-Nazis started showing up in the news this month,

00:06:34.200 hopefully that'll help you do the math.

00:06:36.780 The media has also specifically pushed the term Christian nationalism for this reason.

00:06:42.540 They wanted any resistance to wokeness or any suggestion that Christian values have a legitimate role to play

00:06:49.160 in our nation's social norms to be rhetorically linked to fascism.

00:06:53.460 Conservatives remained dormant in the culture war for far too long,

00:06:58.720 but the direct attack on children launched by gender activists has awakened a sleeping giant.

00:07:05.120 Steps are finally being taken by red states to stop this madness, 0.81

00:07:09.540 and these legal protections present a threat to progressive hegemony.

00:07:14.160 Out ruling elite need to erode what remains of traditional morality and social structures

00:07:19.640 because they compete with the power of the regime.

00:07:23.260 Corporations and government institutions are eagerly working hand-in-hand

00:07:27.760 to facilitate this hedonistic liquidation of traditional bonds through both legal and cultural means.

00:07:35.520 Individual states creating effective regional barriers to this expansion of power threatens the agenda,

00:07:42.140 and the central government will seek the means to crush it.

00:07:44.940 Corporations like Target will go along,

00:07:48.640 feigning concern for the safety of their employees if that provides them political cover.

00:07:53.460 But conservatives shouldn't be dissuaded from continuing to apply pressure.

00:07:58.640 States have every right to protect children from predation.

00:08:02.160 Conservatives have every right not to hand their money to corporations who hate them.

00:08:06.540 If the right can't stand for these basic principles,

00:08:09.180 then it stands for nothing at all.

00:08:11.900 I wanted to go ahead and update you at the end of this.

00:08:16.820 I originally wrote this piece on Thursday,

00:08:19.680 but there has been news over the weekend before I got to make this video.

00:08:25.240 According to reporting from the Daily Mail,

00:08:27.560 at least one Target store in Utah was evacuated due to a bomb threat,

00:08:32.800 and several other stores were named in the same threatening email.

00:08:36.300 Now, the twist here is that the threats did not come from protesters.

00:08:41.920 It did not come from people who were opposing these pride displays or the products being sold inside the Target.

00:08:48.340 Instead, the threat came from people who claimed to be frustrated with the fact that Target had turned its back on the LGBTQ community.

00:08:56.220 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.

00:09:10.220 Instead, it came from the very community that they were attempting to please with those pride displays.

00:09:16.040 Now, it looks like canine units were sent to the Target in Utah, and luckily no explosive device was found.

00:09:25.320 But an email was received by a local news station, Cleveland 19,

00:09:30.440 that threatened five different Target stores in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.

00:09:35.980 Sections of that email read, quote, 0.99

00:09:38.640 Target is full of cowards who turn their back on the LGBT community and decided to cater to homophobic right-wing redneck bigots 0.98

00:09:47.140 who protested and vandalized their store. 1.00

00:09:50.080 We won't stand idly by as the far right continues to hunt us down.

00:09:54.720 We are sending you a message.

00:09:56.100 We placed a bomb in the following targets. 0.99

00:09:58.380 We will continue to bomb your targets until you stop cowering and bring back your LGBT merchandise. 1.00

00:10:04.660 We will not be erased. 0.97

00:10:06.360 We won't go quietly.

00:10:08.640 End quote.

00:10:10.500 Now, who knows what the validity of these messages are.

00:10:14.600 So far, we haven't seen any explosive devices at these locations,

00:10:18.920 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.

00:10:27.760 But, of course, it is the contrast here that is so stunning, right?

00:10:31.140 When we got accusations of maybe a pride display getting pulled down by somebody,

00:10:36.860 that was supposed to be very dangerous.

00:10:38.860 That was something that scared employees, made them fear for their safety, made Target take action due to the safety of the employees.

00:10:45.260 But when actual threats of violence are made by the LGBT community, apparently, there's no response. 0.99

00:10:53.540 There's no lectures about the safety of their employees.

00:10:56.920 As I insinuated in the piece, it was always politically motivated.

00:11:00.940 They never really cared about this stuff.

00:11:02.600 They were never really worried about the safety of their employees.

00:11:05.780 They were never taking those actions.

00:11:07.200 Because of that, they simply wanted to further a story of fiction about right-wing extremism,

00:11:13.240 even though the actual extremism, the actual threats, again, apparently, look like they came from the left.

00:11:20.900 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. 0.93

00:11:30.660 They'll ignore this, just like they ignored the trans shooter in Nashville

00:11:34.760 and the other one who is planning to shoot things up in Colorado Springs.

00:11:38.620 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.

00:11:46.780 Even though it's very clear when we look at the evidence here, what's happening, they don't care.

00:11:53.100 It's about furthering their political narrative.

00:11:54.900 It was never about being worried about what would happen with violence.

00:11:58.920 It was never about being worried about actual threats to the safety of Target employees.

00:12:03.620 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.

00:12:12.780 The narrative was the point and they don't actually care because when real bomb threats happen,

00:12:18.160 when actual threats come from the LGBTQ community, it's utter silence.

00:12:23.300 It was never, ever about the actual safety of these people.

00:12:27.020 It was always about advancing a narrative to avoid the consequences of what they were doing

00:12:33.040 and to ensure that they can use that political narrative as a weapon against those that oppose them.

00:12:57.020 And when you do, if you leave a rating or a review, that really helps with all the algorithm magic.

00:13:02.540 If you'd like to follow me on Twitter or Gab or Substack,

00:13:05.880 if you'd like to watch these videos on Rumble or Odyssey,

00:13:08.620 the links to do all of that are down below in the description.

00:13:11.800 And of course, if you want to read any of my articles or watch any of these shows,

00:13:15.700 you can catch them over at The Blaze.

00:13:17.980 Thanks for watching, guys, and as always, I'll talk to you next time.

00:13:21.020 Thank you.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - May 29, 2023

Target Blames Extremism to Avoid Bud Light’s Fate ｜ 5⧸29⧸23

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