All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 29, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
51:56
HUNTER’S TURN Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep716
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This podcast is brought to you by Dr. Kirk Elliott, PhD.
In an uncertain economy, if you're looking for wealth management solutions and financial advice, go to KirkElliottPhD.com and make an appointment today.
Coming up, I'll ask what we can expect when Hunter Biden shows up to testify before the GOP House.
I'll reveal how Disney is finally confessing to shareholders that its political activism is hurting its business.
An attorney and author, Kent Hecken-Lively, joins me.
We're going to talk about how the diversity industry embedded itself in American industry and education with very pernicious results.
Hey, if you're watching on Rumble or listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Hunter Biden has been subpoenaed to appear in person before the House Oversight Committee to answer questions.
And in a newly released letter from Hunter Biden's lawyer, this is a guy named Abe or Abby Lowell, He very brazenly says Hunter will be appearing, but he will be appearing to give public testimony.
I want to quote a few lines from the letter because they show this kind of aggressive posture that Hunter lawyers are taking.
We have nothing to hide.
Our man is completely in the clear.
This is all a big smear. He cannot wait to appear before you and set you people straight.
You need to move on as legislators to more important business. I'll just read a couple of lines here.
Mr. Chairman, we take you up on your offer.
Accordingly, our client will get right to it by agreeing to answer any pertinent and relevant questions.
He will appear at a public oversight and accountability committee hearing.
And your empty investigation has gone on too long, wasting too many better used resources.
It should come to an end.
And it goes on to say the American people should see that for themselves.
Now, what's interesting is Hunter was not subpoenaed to do a public hearing, at least not yet.
Typically, this moves in a two-step process.
And by the way, the two-step process mirrors pretty much any legal case.
If you've ever been in any sort of litigation that goes to trial...
Before there's a trial, there's typically a private deposition.
You sit down with the lawyers for the other side.
They get to ask you a bunch of questions.
This is their ability to find out what your answers are and get background information on you to prepare for trial.
They ask you questions, but of course, you've given sworn testimony in a deposition, so that can be used to impeach you.
So if you say something different, they go turn to page 28 of your deposition.
Didn't you say the exact opposite?
And so the purpose of a deposition is, as I say, it's kind of a way station before the public trial itself.
And so this is exactly what the House Oversight Committee is doing.
They want to talk to Hunter in private.
Record what he says, have him under oath, and then bring him out into public testimony where you can have, in a sense, this trial before the American people, at least a hearing.
So, Hunter's lawyers are trying to get around that.
They're pretending like, no, no, no, we don't want to appear before closed doors.
Some shady business is going to be going on.
No, everything is transcribed.
There's nothing shady that's going on.
Democrats are present at those hearings.
So, in no sense is this some sort of an unfair process.
In fact, the Democrats use the exact same process when they subpoena people, and they've done that exactly.
So, what you have here is Hunter Biden basically saying, let's go straight to trial.
I'm ready to go on.
When there are loans, there are typically interest rates, IOUs, repayment schedules.
Let us get to the bottom of all this and see whether what you're saying is true.
Now, you know when I know that there is a 99.9% probability that Hunter is lying.
He's been running this massive corruption scheme in league with all the other Bidens.
I think the House oversight is like, we pretty much busted you, but we now have an obligation to hear from you.
Maybe, you know, this is a little bit like with 2000 Mules.
Maybe the Mules can come up and give a perfectly good account of themselves.
Yeah, the reason I went from this Dropbox to this Dropbox.
You see, Dinesh, you know, I'm really a guy who likes to stop and take a smoke.
And so I, you know, the Dropbox is kind of a convenient place for me to lean while I light up a cigarette.
And that's probably why my cell phone shows me at all these Dropboxes, because that's my stopping point on these long walks.
I mean, in other words, you might have an explanation.
It could be preposterous.
It could be plausible, but we want to hear what you have to say.
And unfortunately, that never happened with the Mills, but fortunately it is happening with Hunter Biden.
So it looks like James Comer is not, Representative Comer is not going to be sort of suckered by all this.
He's, he realizes this is a little bit of theatrics by Hunter Biden's lawyer.
All he has to say is, no, listen, that's not how the process works.
You either respond to the subpoena, or if you don't, we're going to refer you for criminal prosecution.
This is actually going to put Merrick Garland in an interesting position because he's prosecuted Trumpsters who did not follow subpoena rules, and so he's going to have to give some explanation of why he's not prosecuting Hunter if Hunter does not, in fact, cooperate with the House Oversight Committee.
So the The process continues.
It's a little too slow for my liking, but nevertheless, I'm glad it's going on in the first place.
Debbie and I made a New Year's resolution to lose weight, and thankfully, PhD weight loss came to our rescue.
Hey, you can see the result for yourself.
Debbie's lost 24 pounds.
I've lost 27. We're keeping it off.
We're now both on maintenance.
The program is based on science and nutrition.
no injections, no pills, no long hours in the gym, no severe calorie restriction.
Just good sound, scientifically proven nutrition. It's really simple.
They make it easy by providing 80% of your food at no additional cost.
They tell you when and what to eat. And guess what? You can do this without ever being hungry.
The founder, Dr. Ashley Lucas, has her PhD in chronic disease and sports nutrition.
She's also a registered dietitian.
She helps people lose weight and most important, maintain that weight loss for life.
So if you're ready to take the plunge, take the step of losing weight like Debbie and I have, call PhD Weight Loss and Nutrition.
Here's the number, 864-644-1900.
You can also find them online at myphdweightloss.com.
The number again to call, 864-644-1900.
For some time now, the Walt Disney Company, and I even hesitate to mention Walt Disney's name because I think Walt Disney would be horrified if he were to see the sort of perversion factory that Disney has become.
But nevertheless, Disney has been launching a culture war.
You have to say against its own customers, against its own audience, against its own clientele.
Now by any general economic theory, this is insane.
This makes no economic sense at all.
But does it make sense from a different point of view?
Is there a sociological or a non-economic explanation for why Disney is doing what it is?
I think there is. But let's begin with the latest development which is that Disney has now been forced to admit in recent filings with the SEC The filings are, by the way, filings to Disney's own shareholders in which Disney is kind of talking about its business.
And Disney has some explaining to do, which is essentially all its products, one after the other, appear to be bombing.
And we're not talking about one thing.
We're talking about declining attendance over here.
We're talking about fewer people buying movie tickets.
We're talking about one bomb after another bomb after another bomb.
And we're talking about the stuff that you never see even in a movie where the main star of the movie goes out there and starts blasting the movie itself for not being sufficiently woke.
I mean, Disney is out of control.
And as a result, the customers of Disney are like, something weird is going on here.
You know, I thought I was coming here to see Mickey, and instead I see, you know, this weirdo, you know, with a sex change operation.
I see all these men dressed as women handing out things.
And, I mean, right now, when you...
At Disneyland, this is kind of like what, as a kid, you get warned about by your parents if you see a really weird guy who's trying to hand you candy, cross the street, call your mom, run away.
And I think Disney is conveying that atmosphere, which is, this is not a safe place to be.
And by safe, I don't mean in terms of being mugged or something.
I'm talking about... Morally safe, culturally safe, a safe space in which parents can rely on the fact that their children are not going to be indoctrinated, are not going to be morally corrupted.
But that's really what Disney now appears to be all about, social change.
We don't really necessarily want to attract or inspire or entertain our customers.
We want to indoctrinate them, and we want to change their values.
Wow. Wow.
And the market is pushing back against this.
And Disney now knows this.
And we know they know it because it's in their SEC filing.
In fact, here's what they say, quote, We face risks.
This is very bureaucratic language.
It's sort of written to be soft, but you can read between the lines.
We face risks. Risks here means massive losses.
Relating to misalignment with public and consumer tastes.
In other words, the public and the consumers don't like the freak job that we're putting on at Disney.
So there's a little bit of a misalignment.
Public and they're talking about consumer tastes and preferences for entertainment, travel and consumer products.
Then Disney backs up and says, Now, literally what Disney is saying, just a literal meaning of words is, when we produce products that suck, People don't want to buy them.
But Disney here is making a sort of a disclosure.
Now, I think all of this is really significant because...
It creates a possibility for Disney shareholders to file massive lawsuits against the company.
Why? Because this is not a case.
Companies can make bad decisions.
They can goof up.
And as a result, their products don't sell.
They launch something and think it's going to work.
It doesn't work. Now, you can't sue a company over that because you are putting money in that company for them to make those kinds of judgments.
But if the company knows...
We are marching on a political track, and we know that our customers don't want us to go there.
We also know that we're going to lose money if we go there.
And guess what? We don't learn from our experience.
We keep doing it. One movie bombs, guess what?
We'll make another woke movie.
And that bombs, we'll make another one.
So why would a company engage in apparently suicidal behavior?
The... Here's one potential answer, and that is that even though this is very bad for Disney, and by Disney here I mean it's very bad for Disney shareholders, it's bad for the Disney brand, it is good for the individual wokesters at Disney...
Who are seen as cool for doing this, who ultimately are celebrated by the media.
And by analogy, and I get this from Jonathan Turley, who uses the analogy of Bud Light, he says, you know, there was a disastrous decision made by Bud Light involving the trans, you know, Dylan Mulvaney.
Alyssa Heinerscheid, who was the marketing, vice president for marketing, got booted.
They were like, you've lost us a whole bunch of money.
But she became kind of a cult star in the media.
Oh, she's this brave woman.
She's battling stereotypes.
She doesn't want Bud Light to be seen in a certain stereotypical light.
She's trying to attract new customers.
Well, obviously, she is one of the worst marketing people in corporate America.
But nevertheless, she is celebrated for her social passion, for her willingness, ultimately, to sort of defy corporate expectations.
So, the point here is this.
It could be that what's going on at Disney is that the real war is between the Disney employees.
In other words, the freak show that we're seeing in the Disney products reflects the freak show of the people working at Disney.
And those are people who want to be woke, they want to be cool, that's more important to them.
So even though the company is going downhill, their individual reputations, their social coolness, their profiles in the media continue to be accentuated, continue to be celebrated.
And that's why you have this terrible phenomenon of a once beloved, once unifying, once inspiring corporation that reflected Americana.
Now having to take big losses, now sinking basically into the slime, and having to fess up to the SEC, were doing, from an economic point of view, a terrible job.
Debbie and I are on a really good health journey, but we still struggle to eat enough fruits, veggies, and fiber, and those are a requirement.
Now, lucky for us, we discovered Balance of Nature, and there's no better way to get all your fruits and veggies plus fiber than with Balance of Nature.
This is Balance of Nature's fruits and veggies in a capsule, so easy to take, made from fresh, whole produce.
The produce is powdered after an advanced vacuum cold process, which stabilizes the maximum nutrient content.
And this is Balance of Nature's Fiber and Spice, a proprietary blend of fiber and 12 spices, for overall and digestive health.
Join Debbie and me, start your journey to better health right now.
Call 800-246-8751 or go to balanceofnature.com.
You'll get 35% off your first preferred order by using discount code AMERICA.
Again, it's balanceofnature.com or call 800-246-8751.
Get 35% off your first preferred order by using discount code AMERICA.
I'd like to talk about Elon Musk's trip to Israel.
Very interesting Elon Musk going to Israel to see for himself what is going on and also to hear for himself from the Israelis about the full extent of the carnage that occurred on October 7th.
We might just begin by noting how unusual this is for a business tycoon to do this kind of thing.
Elon Musk is clearly in a class, in a category by himself.
He undertakes these kinds of voyages, like fact-finding missions, if you will.
And ask yourself, does Bill Gates do something like this?
Not really. Does Bezos do it?
Or Larry Ellison at Oracle?
No, they live a very different kind of life.
But with Elon Musk, he has this sort of public spiritedness about America.
He'll do a trip, for example, to the border.
Let me go see for myself what's going on on the border.
And here he is now in Israel.
And he is probably seeing for himself.
In fact, he's probably being shown some of the videos that Debbie gets.
Debbie's on some of these telegram feeds where she gets from Israel and these are coming by and large from people connected with the IDF or connected with the Israeli authorities, videos and they're not just all Israeli videos.
In fact some of them remarkably are Hamas videos because the Hamas people took videos and sometimes live streamed things and so there's Israeli authorities now collecting this information and actually when we were coming to the podcast this morning Debbie showed me one, it was just a simple, very gruesome, you've got a dead Israeli soldier lying on the ground sideways and some guys like stomping on his face.
And this was obviously a Hamas video.
Why? Because who else was there?
The Hamas people were the people who did it.
No Israeli troops were present at the scene.
Hamas made the video, probably posted it somewhere, and it's now been culled.
So here we are. We've seen a lot of these.
I've only seen a few. But they leave an impression on you.
And so... So I was thinking about this.
Elon Musk is probably getting a pretty good diet of this kind of stuff.
And he's made some public remarks, and I want to quote a couple of them because, again, they're unusual.
It's unusual to hear someone like Elon Musk saying these things.
He goes,"...there's no choice but to kill those who insist on murdering civilians.
There's no choice.
They're not going to change their mind." So what Musk is saying here, really, is that when you have somebody who is a terrorist, and by a terrorist is distinguished from a soldier, in that a terrorist targets civilians.
The civilian is the target.
And Musk goes, can you...
It would be good if we could talk him out of it.
It would be good if we could bring this to an end in some other way.
But is there another way to bring it to an end than to target the terrorist himself and get rid of him?
I mean, quite literally, to blast him to smithereens.
Elon Musk is willing to say I think again I cannot think of another kind of leader of major corporation I mean think of it here's a guy who's you know the founder and CEO of Tesla can you see the founder and CEO of General Motors saying something like this never here's more from Musk it was troubling to see the joy experienced by the people that were killing the innocent civilians kids and It's one thing if civilians die accidentally.
It's another thing to revel in the joy of killing civilians.
That's evil. A very important moral distinction here that Elon Musk is making between...
Hey, I bomb an enemy communications facility and some civilians die.
I don't mean to kill them.
They're not my target. But they are collateral damage or they are incidentally harmed.
And... Not only targeting the civilians, including women and babies, but showing a particular satanic exuberance in what you're doing.
There's no other word but evil.
And here is Elon Musk again in a gray world where people are reluctant to call the difference between good and evil.
He's calling it out.
I think another important aspect of this trip, and this is more subtle, is it does a lot to undercut the accusations of antisemitism, absurd as they were, absurd as they are.
There's nothing antisemitic about Elon Musk.
But there's been a smear campaign driven by Media Matters, actually driven by some powerful corporations that want to undermine Elon Musk.
They're pulling their advertising.
All of this is going on.
It's a coordinated smear.
And then here's Musk.
He's like, I'm supposed to be the anti-Semite?
Well, here I am with Netanyahu.
Here I am with the chief rabbi.
Here I am with this guy.
Here I am with that guy. They're all embracing me.
They're welcoming me to Jerusalem and to Israel.
So I think that this is a...
In some ways, a very effective rebuttal.
Without even raising the issue, without saying a word, Elon Musk is spiking the people who are preposterously but nevertheless in a very sly fashion trying to portray him as an anti-Semite.
Mike Lindell just keeps on introducing great deals. He's featuring the new MyPillow MyTowels.
Save 50% off on the six-piece towel set, the regular price $59.96. But now for a limited time only $29.98 with promo code Dinesh.
Debi and I have Mike's MyTowels all over the house. We love them for ourselves. We also like giving them away as Christmas presents. Great idea to think about. MyTowels six-piece set includes two bath towels, two hand towels, two washcloths. The towels are really amazing. The long staple length of the Sherpa cotton fibers makes them very soft.
Because of the long fibers, they can wrap around each other more easily, creating a smoother and softer fabric.
Softer the touch, but without the lotion-y feel and also super absorbent.
So take advantage of the 50% off on the six-piece towel set.
Call 800-876-0227.
The number again, 800-876-0227.
Or go to MyPillow.com.
To get the discounts, you need to use the promo code.
It's D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
I was thinking about the issue of antisemitism, which we're hearing a lot about in the aftermath of October 7th, and its connection with the issue of racism.
Because although those two terms, antisemitism and racism, are used synonymously, And, well, you know, racism is hostility toward black people and brown people, and anti-Semitism is hostility toward Jews.
So there you go. They're kind of the same thing, just aimed at a different target group.
But no, there are subtle but important differences between the two, and I want to talk about that now.
First of all, racism typically involves looking down on people, by which I mean looking upon people as inferior to your own group.
So, racism is a doctrine of biological inferiority.
You see these other groups as lesser than you, and as a result, you have a certain kind of contempt for them.
Now, anti-Semitism is a little different.
Even if you listen to the Nazi rhetoric against the Jews, or even these days to people who are denouncing Jews, whether Islamic radicals or leftists on campus, they don't believe that Jews are inferior in that way.
They hate them. They, in some ways, envy them.
And I think this is an important aspect of anti-Semitism.
Jews are very successful, in fact, arguably the most successful group in the world.
They have the most Nobel Prize winners.
they have massive, they've accumulated per capita more wealth than I think any other group.
There are some other groups that have done also well, but this well, they dominate fields, again, not because they're oppressors, but because they out-compete everybody else.
And even some of the, the Jews dominate banking, the Jews dominate the legal field, the Jews dominate Hollywood.
Well, to the degree that there's Jewish over-representation, the Jews have done well in those fields.
They came in as outsiders, and they've been really successful.
So people hate them for that reason.
And that's the peculiarity of antisemitism.
It's almost like it's a hostility, not by looking down, but by looking up.
You're looking up at those Jews and go, how did they get so powerful?
How did they get so strong?
You know, there must be something. It's not because they're more hardworking.
It's not because they're smarter.
It's because they're wicked. Historically, anti-Semitism was associated with a religious hostility to Jews.
Jews are the people who killed Christ, and therefore they're seen as sort of the enemies of the Christian faith.
They are reluctant to convert.
And so we saw, we've seen hostility to Jews, for example, in the time of the Spanish Inquisition that was religiously based.
But interestingly, Modern antisemitism is largely secular.
It's not based upon that. In fact, it's not based upon...
Because think about it. If you were a Jew who's being despised for a religious reason, what happens if you convert to Christianity?
What happens if you say, okay, well, I'm not going to be a Jew in that sense anymore.
I now accept Christ.
The antisemitism would immediately go away.
Why? Because it's only based upon the fact that you are a member of another religion.
But modern antisemitism isn't like that.
The Jews can't get away from it by doing anything.
Why? Because the enmity, the anger, is at the fact that they are Jews.
That they are, if you will, God's chosen people.
Debbie's always highlighting the sort of biblical ancestry of the Jews.
And the fact that this biblical ancestry, these biblical claims about the Jews, that they will be despised, they'll be dispersed, they'll then come back...
Have been vindicated in actual experience.
In other words, you don't have to take it on faith.
The Bible says it, and here it is.
You can actually look and see that the things that the Bible says have actually happened.
It's very tricky when you're talking about antisemitism and Israel because I don't think that simply to be a critic of Israel or even to denounce Israel is automatically to be antisemitic.
But what makes the matter complicated is that Israel is the only Jewish state in the world.
There are numerous Muslim states, for example, Muslim countries, and so you might denounce Iran for doing this, and yet you have no problem with Egypt because they're not doing that.
So you're not anti-Muslim.
But when you denounce the one Jewish state in the world and imply that it shouldn't exist...
Or you portray it in unfair terms as a kind of oppressor, colonial, settler regime, even though guess who was there first?
The Jews. You know, when you engage in this kind of systematic attack on the Jewish state, it's not hard to see why many Jews go, that's anti-Semitic.
Christmas is coming up and one of the best gifts that you can give yourself is feeling good again.
Hey, that's even better than getting a new car.
Here's an idea. Relief Factor.
It's the gift that helps people relieve pain and feel good once again.
Relief Factor is a daily supplement that helps your body fight back against pain.
It's 100% drug free.
ReliefFactor was developed by doctors searching for a better alternative for pain.
ReliefFactor uses a unique formula of natural ingredients like turmeric and omega-3s to help reduce or eliminate the everyday aches and pains you are experiencing, whether it's neck, back, joint, or muscle pain, ReliefFactor can help you feel better.
Unlike pills that simply mask your pain for a short time, ReliefFactor helps support your body's natural response to inflammation so you feel better all day, every day.
See how Relief Factor can help you with their 3-week quick start kit.
It's only $19.95 and it comes with Relief Factor's Feel Better or your money-back guarantee.
So what do you have to lose?
Visit relieffactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF. The number again, 800-4-RELIEF or go to relieffactor.com.
When you feel the difference, you know it works.
Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast a new guest, Kent Hecken-Lively.
He's an attorney and science teacher, also a successful and respected New York Times bestselling author.
His new book, The Diversity Con, it's available on Amazon.
Once again, the book is The Diversity Con.
Kent, welcome to the podcast.
Yeah, I see you're holding it up.
It's got a really nice cover.
And this is, of course, a really important topic today.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion.
And then you have the very benign inclusion, as if to say that this is going to benefit everybody and count everybody.
And yet, as you say in the title of your book, it's a con.
So, where's the...
If you had to put your finger on it, what's the con?
What's the con? Well, here's the con.
So my co-author, David Johnson, who's a project for a toss whistleblower, went undercover at a lot of these training sessions, and he found a regular pattern.
So let's say there's a three-day conference, okay?
Day one is just a lot of really interesting information that all of us could say, oh, that's really interesting.
I didn't know that.
Okay, wonderful. Day two is where a couple strange ideas are put forward, but it's still kind of within the bounds of like, oh, okay, you know, we're having a thoughtful intellectual discussion.
Day three is where it gets crazy.
It's where they usually introduce the transsexual agenda.
It's where they'll say things like, gee, this professor at a New York university took naked pictures of her seven-year-old playing with himself and put it in a show as art.
And gee, wasn't it terrible that she was prosecuted for child pornography?
And so it really is a con, and you have to be Wary of the way that the propaganda is given to you because it never starts out as let's be a weird person.
It starts out as let's be a fine inclusive person and then it gets shifted to these really Terrible ideas.
I think the DEI is really a civilization-destroying idea, because it's not like the formulation of Dr.
Martin Luther King, that let's be judged by the content of our character and our actions.
There are immutable characteristics which we can never overcome.
What is the goal of the DEI advocates and activists, the people who really know what the agenda is?
In other words, not the kind of kind-hearted person who just goes to a pride parade and thinks that they're being tolerant and open-minded.
I'm talking about the people who have devised this agenda, that have packaged it, that have developed the three-step process that you just described.
If you let them play it out...
Where are they going? Well, I think there are a couple different groups here.
And I think one of the things that we came up in our book was we had David go undercover to these really comical DEI trainings.
And we'd say, okay, they're using a lot of Marxist language.
In their trainings.
And then we said to ourselves, well, this makes no sense.
Because who is funding this?
because this seems to be a really well funded operation.
And so we did a deep dive into the financial stuff. I mean, I like to think that I'm doing some of the same thing that Peter Schweitzer does as in going beyond the surface. And what we found is there's a group out of San Francisco called the Aids Foundation.
Which I think is important that everybody understand.
So what the Tides Foundation does is it steams money to all these organizations.
And so, in a sense...
It gives a layer of deniability to the Tides Foundation.
So how big is the Tides Foundation?
Well, in the 2020 election, this nonprofit received over $500 million in donations.
And gave out about $600 million in grants to all these groups, Black Lives Matter being probably the most prominent example.
Tides Foundation had been working with Black Lives Matter since approximately 2014.
Okay? And what the Tides Foundation does is it takes...
So you're a rich person, you give money to them, and you can park your money in some funds for a couple years.
So you get a nice rate of return, and then you're this rich guy, and you say, hey, Tides Foundation, could you give $3 million to Black Lives Matter?
Well, that $3 million doesn't come from you, the billionaire.
It comes from the Ties Foundation.
Who is donating to this?
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, George Soros, Open Society, Rockefeller Foundations.
Ford Foundation, I think, has given over $150 million over the past decade to this group.
So, what's happening is I kind of liken it to what the British Empire did before they had a really good navy and they were to go against the Spanish Main.
They gave letters of lark to these privateers who would then go and raid the Spanish Main.
And so, what's happening is you have this This entire system to give money to the most radical organizations.
Now, these billionaires are not Marxists, but they're using Marxist tactics, I believe.
To destroy their competition.
Look what happened during COVID. We had a destruction of small businesses.
Everybody was terrified in their homes.
They're ordering from Amazon.
They're ordering from the big ticket organization.
So I think of it as, well, we really need to be looking at it.
Are these Marxist robber barons?
They're not really Marxist, but they're using Marxist tactics to create monopolies.
Very fascinating. We'll be right back with Kent Hecken-Lively.
We're talking about his book, The Diversity Con, available at Amazon.
With the new movie Police State out, it's a great time to check out and join, in fact, become an annual subscriber to my Locals channel.
If you do, you get this movie and a bunch of other things included.
I post lots of exclusive content on Locals, including content that's censored on other social media platforms.
On Locals, you get... Dinesh Unchained, Dinesh Uncensored.
You can also interact with me directly.
I do a weekly live Q&A every Tuesday.
Did a really fun one. Actually, Debbie joined me last night.
No topic is off limits.
I've also uploaded some cool films to locals, documentaries and feature films.
My films, also films by others.
2,000 Mules is up there.
And I mentioned the new film Police State.
In fact, just today I put up...
Some extended content from the film.
This is the full interview with Darren Beatty.
A small part of it is in the film, but a bigger part of it is now on Locals.
And hey, if you're an annual subscriber, you can stream and watch these movies.
You can get all of this content for free.
So check out my channel. It's dinesh.locals.com.
I'd love to have you along for this great ride.
Again, it's dinesh.locals.com.
I'm back with author Kent Heckenlively.
We're talking about his book, The Diversity Con.
Kent, you were making this really fascinating analysis of these business tycoons who are appropriating Marxist, maybe, rhetoric, But you say for kind of a non-Marxist purpose.
They're not trying to create the egalitarian society, the communist paradise, necessarily.
They're trying to obliterate their economic opposition.
Now, here's my question to you.
How does funding a culturally radical agenda, let's take Black Lives Matter, let's take trans-extremism...
Thank you. Achieve the goal for these robber barons that you were describing.
So I think those strategies that you talk about would be so blatant to the public that the public would reject it.
I mean, we see that we seem to be a center-right country, so if it was that nakedly obvious, I believe that it would fail.
But, and I really, I focus my book on these liberal organizations like Black Lives Matter.
I hope that they read this book because if history is any guide, what happened to the privateers who were working under letters of Mark from the British empire, it's when the British empire made peace with Spain. Those privateers were out of business, okay? And that's when the British Navy went after them. So these liberal organizations have
to understand that these people who are funding them are not interested in their cause, in furthering the cause of under successful minority groups, but let's just say that white groups who have not achieved the full measure of the American dream, they're not interested in them.
They will be cut loose.
Eric Adams in New York City is a perfect example.
He starts to depart from the democratic orthodoxy and suddenly there's a sex claim against him from 20 years ago and he's being investigated for campaign irregularities.
This is the kind of thing that happens.
What I like to say is I am completely in favor of the American dream of great success for all groups and all individuals.
And that's what I'm doing.
So we ought to be in this together.
I mean, and I think what we're seeing today is that woke has become a joke.
And how badly it's failing is probably not better illustrated than Disney having to tell its shareholders that they've lost probably $800 million from their most recent movies.
Park attendance is dropping so much so that they've got to raise ticket prices 21%.
So these forces that are pushing DEI, like I said, I describe DEI as like a smoothie with a dash of sentinel in it.
There's a lot that they put in there that's interesting to us.
And I say this, I'm really a classic liberal arts guy.
I believe that good storytelling...
Shrinks the distance between people.
And my complaint about this diversity agenda is that it increases the distance between people.
It makes us not taught to each other.
Classic storytelling brings people together.
This narrative is splitting us apart, and I have to be 100% against it because of that.
It seems that it relies on very subtle sleights of hand, and let me identify two of them that at least I've observed over the years.
One is, let's start with diversity.
Typically, what college administrators will say or business consultants will say is, America is no longer like a predominantly white society.
The demographics of the country are changing.
Minorities are having higher birth rates.
In other words, they will start with the fact of diversity, the fact that the country is becoming more diverse.
Which no one really disagrees with.
You're like, okay, that is a factual proposition.
But pretty soon that slides into, let's call it the ideology of diversity, which is a very controversial response to that fact, but by no means the only conceivable response, and yet the second is presented as a natural outcome of the first.
As if to say that if you accept the fact of diversity, you have to go along now with the ideology, even though the ideology is a whole different matter.
And similarly, with equality and equity, the words are close enough that they seem synonymous, and yet, upon examination, they have a very different meaning.
So, do we have here a group of very...
Clever, rhetorical con artists who have been deployed as part of the scheme you describe to really flummox and confuse well-meaning people into going along with this nefarious agenda.
Yeah, and I think we have to be just as clever in response.
We need to say, okay, diversity, great.
How many conservatives do you have there?
Equity, okay.
So do we have equity among all groups?
Do we have inclusion?
Oh my God, do we have inclusion of Trump supporters?
Do we have inclusion of this group?
I say we use the left's rhetoric against them.
We show how they are failing with their own stated objectives.
So, in other words, how many evangelical Christians on the Harvard faculty?
100%. Hey, why are you discriminating against evangelical Christians?
Yeah, very interesting.
The book, guys, is called The Diversity Con.
The author is Kent Hecken-Lively.
Kent, a real pleasure.
Thanks for joining me. Great looking book and very important content as well.
Thanks very much, Dash.
We're now going into a kind of a new section of the Gulag.
In fact, I'm jumping over a chapter that focuses on life in the prison cell.
The chapter itself is quite interesting, goes into some details about life in the Soviet prison cell.
But we're talking about something that is particularly Soviet, particularly Russian.
And I think of a little less interest to us But I now want to go into Solzhenitsyn's later chapter.
This is toward the middle of the book.
The chapter is just called That Spring.
And it's a reference to a remarkable phenomenon that happened in World War II, which is the emergence of a liberation army, Within the Soviet Union that was actually allied, or at least sought to be allied, with the Nazis.
Now, this is all so out there and so interesting that we need a little bit of background explanation.
So, let's go through this.
Sotinsson begins by talking about soldiers who fought in the Red Army.
By the way, he was one of them, fighting to repel the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
I think by just way of history, we know that there was a pact between the Nazis and the Soviets.
This was the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
And this was essentially an alliance that Stalin made with Hitler.
And then Hitler double-crossed Stalin and launched a blitzkrieg or a sudden invasion of Russia.
The Nazis underestimated the tenacity of the Soviets, and ultimately the Soviets were able to turn the tables and invade German territories from the north.
Ultimately, the war ended when Soviet troops met up with allied American and British troops in now-occupied Germany.
But earlier in the war, you have Red Army soldiers fighting against the Nazis.
And Solzhenitsyn talks about the fact that they are in a very precarious position.
Because if for any reason they get captured or they lose a battle and have to return to the Soviet Union...
Basically, they are in massive trouble.
So if they get captured, the Soviet Union immediately disavows them, shows no interest in them, does not try to get them back, does not lobby for better prison conditions for them.
Nothing like that. It's like, okay, you're now in the hands of the enemy, and let them do with you as they will.
And Solzhenitsyn contrasts this.
With, for example, British prisoners, American prisoners.
And by the way, the American British prisoners were treated by the Nazis as prisoners of war.
And of course, German prisoners in American captivity were also treated as prisoners of war.
And by prisoners of war, what I mean is subject to the normal rules of war.
So thus, given certain types of protection, you can't be wantonly tortured, you can't be arbitrarily killed, you have to be, even though you are imprisoned, you have to be fed, you have to be clothed, you have to get basic health care, and so on.
And this was being done.
But Solzhenitsyn goes that of all the armies in the world, he says, the only soldier in the world, I'm not quoting him, who cannot surrender...
It's the soldier of the world's one and only Red Army.
So, even if you're defeated, the Soviet instruction is, just fight until you're killed.
Don't surrender. And...
This is outrageous because in every other army, it's recognized, okay, if you've lost the battle, there's nowhere to go.
You are, let's say, encircled by the enemy.
So, there's no point in just being unnecessarily killed.
At this point, you have to give up.
You don't have another choice.
And so, let's just, you go into captivity, we'll try to get you back, basically, at the end of the war.
He's just trying to show that there is a level of indifference on the part of the Soviet leadership and And so, he says that if you get captured by the enemy, you are considered, he's now quoting, he goes, according to some Soviet document, a traitor of the motherland.
And he goes, first of all, they don't mean a traitor of the motherland.
They mean a traitor to the motherland.
But, nevertheless, they treat you as you have now betrayed communism.
You've betrayed the Soviet cause.
You should never have been captured, or at least if you were encircled, you should have just been killed.
And so what soldier needs is getting at is what's in it for the soldier.
You've got these people who are defending their homeland, who are putting everything on the line and yet are being treated as enemies by their own government.
By the way, all of this is very interesting, I think, to us because we are now in this country at a time where our military is undergoing a sort of a woke remaking in which a lot of traditional people who fought in the military, Southern guys, white guys, country music loving guys, are now suddenly treated as sort of this group that needs to be indoctrinated.
We've got to make these people wear high heels.
We've got to change their culture and so on.
So in other words, it raises a really interesting question.
If you are a Southern guy, you are a white guy, you're a patriotic guy.
Does it make sense today to go into a military, which in which you are viewed from the beginning with hostile eyes, in which they talk about things like, you know, the systemic racism in the military.
I mean, the military is headed by a black guy, Austin.
And so the idea that somehow the military embodies whites, it's just absurd.
But nevertheless, when your own government makes you, and this is the phenomenon that Solzhenitsyn is describing, your own government is turning into an enemy.
And then when we pick this up tomorrow, we'll see that a group of Soviet soldiers decided communism is evil, our own government is evil, it's not much better than the Nazis, and we might need to ally with the Nazis to defeat the Stalinist regime right here in Russia.
▲
Export Selection