00:28:06.400As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from early this week to hear the entire thing.
00:29:34.220He is a hero to the Democrats, a hero to the left, an icon.
00:29:37.840He was a union organizer for the United Farm Workers, and he is revered, except for the fact that that famed right-wing publication, the New York Times, just published an expose that for years he was raping little girls.
00:29:55.640And they come with the receipts that he had raped little girls year after year after year, and the left had covered it up.
00:30:03.780They'd covered it up because they agreed with his politics.
00:30:06.200And I got to say that there's a really good opinion piece that the Daily Wire ran by a woman named Ariana Guajardo, who's a Texan and a Latina.
00:30:17.000And here's what she wrote. I want to read a good chunk of it because it actually is a good insight.
00:30:22.140It's entitled, The Left Hid Cesar Chavez's Rapes and Turned Him into a Saint.
00:30:27.800she begins when I was in college I passed the Cesar Chavez statue every day on my walk to class
00:30:35.760at the University of Texas now Cesar Chavez is the name of the road I take to work and it's a big
00:30:42.040road right in downtown Austin for years Chavez was presented as the figurehead for Mexican Americans
00:30:49.100a symbol we were expected to revere but he represented a collectivist ideology that
00:30:55.960perpetuated ethnic tribalism. After the New York Times broke the story of his sexual abuse of
00:31:02.520young girls, this false idol is finally toppling. My only hope is that he is not replaced by another.
00:31:10.960Chavez has long been celebrated as a symbol of the civil rights era and as a champion of labor
00:31:15.880unions in America. He co-founded the United Farm Workers Union to fight for better condition for
00:31:21.560migrant laborers. But in truth, he exploited the very people he claimed to protect, while tying
00:31:28.120Mexican Americans to socialist ideology, which is of course what the Democrats want. He carefully
00:31:33.980crafted a public image as a family man devoted to Catholic social teaching, but the reality
00:31:40.320was much darker. Chavez's philosophy echoes Marxist rhetoric about the proletariat and the
00:31:47.240bourgeoisie. At a UFW convention in 1981, Chavez proclaimed, I would not take one cup of coffee
00:31:56.700from a grower, and he means a farmer. There's not a good one. I hate them. A few presents, a little
00:32:03.580talk, then the noose. That's how capitalism works. This is the hero of the left. It isn't just his
00:32:12.760rhetoric that sounds alarm bells. Early in his career, he worked with Saul Alinsky, the community
00:32:18.620organizer who defined the modern leftist playbook in Rules for Radicals. Chavez and the UFW later
00:32:25.620implemented Alinsky's tactics, fostering confrontational, divisive organizing. Then
00:32:31.840there is the recent revelation of his extensive sexual abuse of minors. The behavior is not
00:32:39.140distinct from other far left figures such as joseph stalin to mao to kim jong-il communist
00:32:45.840and socialist leaders often share a troubling connect connection to sexual predation we should
00:32:52.320not be surprised that evil ideology attracts evil people by the way that's a sentence worth
00:32:59.860remembering. We should not be surprised that evil ideology attracts evil people. If the warning
00:33:09.480signs around Chavez have existed for decades, why did he become the face of an entire ethnicity in
00:33:16.180America? Partly because he was effective at mobilizing Mexican Americans in California,
00:33:20.920using rhetoric that created a lasting us versus them mentality. But how did that ideology extend
00:33:29.560to Texas. Chavez never belonged to the Tejano heritage the same way he does in Chicano culture.
00:33:37.080The Chicano culture and movement are a direct outgrowth of the California Hispanic labor
00:33:43.140movement in the 60s and 70s. On the other hand, the Tejano culture traces back to the Mexican
00:33:49.540settlers of Texas prior to Texas independence and is a component of what created the Texas identity.
00:33:56.080That history is also tied to farming and a cowboy ethos that is incompatible with Chavez's ideology.
00:34:05.940Texas agriculture thrived because of ranchers like my ancestors who embraced a free market approach, not because of unions or collectivist movements.
00:34:17.460Before the New York Times expose, one could argue that Chavez fought for Mexican-Americans and deserved gratitude.
00:34:23.960Yet his legacy has encouraged a troubling mindset. To be loyal to one's Hispanic heritage, one must embrace left-wing ideology. On campus, I was often labeled a, quote, race traitor at conservative events, accused of, quote, wanting white approval or dismissed as, quote, too white passing to comment on border and immigration issues.
00:34:47.140By the way, Jorge Ramos on Spanish television accused me of being a traitor to my race, so I'm quite familiar with that.
00:34:56.960The type of tribalism promoted by Chavez is just like any other kind of identity politics, limiting and stereotyping the people it is intended to empower.
00:35:07.560In the political climate in which Texas Hispanics are considering Republicans on the ballot, it is clear why the left is feeling threatened.
00:35:17.140So why is the street in Austin named after Cesar Chavez?
00:35:20.800Why did his statue watch me as I walked to class?