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June 30, 2021 - Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor
25:08
Crucified by the Church
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Hello, I'm Jared Taylor with American Renaissance.
Today I have with me a special guest, Frank Borzellari.
Frank is a victim of the cowardice and bigotry that go under the name of political correctness.
Victims of cowardice and bigotry are always tragic, but Frank's case is especially tragic because it was the Catholic Church that turned against one of its own Frank's story is a fascinating one and it goes back to 1993 when he was first elected as a school board member in Queens,
New York.
He quickly became the most famous school board member in the entire United States through his open advocacy of traditional patriotism and a Eurocentric curriculum.
For 11 years, Frank was voted back on the school board with ever-increasing majorities until New York City reorganized its system and eliminated local school boards.
From 1997 until 2002, Frank was also a columnist for the Queen's Ledger chain of newspapers.
He wrote honestly and boldly about such questions as race and immigration, Frank was also associated for a time with my organization,
American Renaissance.
He spoke at a number of our conferences with his last appearance in 2002.
Frank then made a major career shift.
After the abolition of his school board, after his career as a columnist, he went back to school, picked up two different master's degrees, and became an educator.
In 2005, he was hired to teach in a Catholic high school.
This was a natural career move for a man who himself was a devout Catholic and who had attended Catholic schools all the way from kindergarten through two graduate degrees.
Two years after his teaching career began, in 2007, a jealous colleague tried to get him fired by digging up his old columns.
Which he claimed were racist and white supremacist.
They were very easy to find because Frank had published them in the form of two books.
In fact, I wrote the forward to one of those books.
The church then made an official study of Frank's writings and pronounced them compatible with church teaching.
Frank had been an exemplary teacher and so when the church cleared his columns he got a promotion.
And he was made Dean of Discipline at St. Barnabas High School.
He continued to do excellent work, and two years later, he was made Principal of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School.
This was Frank's ideal job, one he loved.
All this came to a crashing end two years later in 2011.
A different jealous colleague, more angry than ever because of Frank's continued success, Fed information about Frank's"racist past" to a reporter at the New York Daily News.
She wrote a thoroughly dishonest hatchet job about his past views.
Frank knew that the piece was in the works, and he told the church what to expect.
He got the strongest possible assurances from his boss that his job was safe.
And yet, just 24 hours after the story appeared, Without even a hint of any kind of public reaction, Frank was fired.
This was nine years after his last newspaper column.
Nine years after his last appearance at an American Renaissance conference.
And these were grounds for firing a man who was by all accounts a first-rate teacher and for firing him for writings the church knew all about.
Please note, Frank had many black and Hispanic students, more than he had white students.
He was loved by them all.
There was never a hint of any kind of bias or favoritism.
Frank has lost the best job he ever had.
And because he was fired for alleged racism, he now wears the scarlet letter R and will probably never get a teaching job again.
Frank needs your help.
He has sued the New York Daily News for its recklessly dishonest article about him that cost him his career.
His lawyer is representing him for free, but there are always costs, all sorts of costs.
But I'm going to shut up now and let Frank tell his story, but please write down the address that you see on the screen.
This is where you can send Frank the help that he very badly needs.
That is to say, Box 780142, Maspeth, New York, 11378.
Frank has written up his astonishing experiences in this remarkable book, which he will send as a token of his thanks to any supporters.
But let me now turn to you, Frank.
And the first question I have for you is, of all the columns you wrote, you wrote over 100 columns.
What was the worst dirt that this New York Daily News reporter could come up with?
What was so shocking about what you'd said back in those days?
Well, this specific quote in the defamatory libelous hatchet job, as you put it, was in one of my columns I had written that diversity is a weakness.
And what's very interesting about that quote is, first of all, of course, the reporter does not allow for any elaboration at all on that quote, just uses soundbite journalism to make it sound very incendiary, portraying as if that I'm against all sorts of non-whites in general by pointing out the accuracy.
Of diversity often being a weakness.
But what's even more interesting is that some 13 years earlier, when this reporter was a child, the Daily News itself had run an article about some of my columns, which was actually a balanced and fair article at that time.
So the Daily News reporter, with her really sinister agenda...
of trying to defame me actually wrote something that Daily News itself had covered years earlier and frankly in a fair manner.
But the worst I could find on you is that you said diversity is a weakness?
And my association with American Renaissance.
Boy, oh boy.
Well, one thing I know that they made a big deal of was the fact that this alleged racist Was presiding over a school with lots of blacks, lots of Hispanics.
Tell me some of your experiences about that.
Sure. And just to get the record clear, in the six years that I was an educator in the Catholic schools, it was all the Archdiocese of New York.
So I always had the same bosses, all in the Archdiocese of New York.
And outside of the Vatican itself, you don't get more official Catholic.
Then the Archdiocese of New York, the most powerful diocese in all of Catholicism in all of the world.
So I had worked one year at Blessed Sacrament High School.
Then I transferred to St. Barnabas High School for two years, where after one year I was promoted.
And then...
After three years at St. Barnabas, I was promoted to a different school as principal.
So even though I worked at three different schools, it was all within the Archdiocese of New York.
And as you say, one of the schools was over the Bronx border in Westchester, and two were in the Bronx itself, and they were overwhelmingly black and Hispanic.
Schools. And my experience with the students was actually wonderful both as a teacher and as principal and also of course as a Dean of Discipline.
That's ironic.
You were Dean of Discipline.
Now, if you had had some sort of bias, presumably it would have all come out.
Tell us about being Dean of Discipline.
Absolutely correct.
If anyone understands how teenagers behave, when they are in trouble, when they get in trouble, First thing they do is they try to get out of it.
And they would use any means they can to get out of it.
And it would be very convenient to claim Some sort of racial bias on the part of the person administering the discipline.
So for all the complaints that students had about trying to get out of trouble, never once was there ever a complaint that I was discriminatory or biased on account of race when meeting out discipline.
And that would have been the perfect opportunity to use an accusation of racism.
So not one time did somebody that you meted discipline out to say,"Oh, he's doing that because I'm black." Not once.
And not only that, you have to understand also, Jared, that frequently parents will be very upset when their child is disciplined.
And most of the time, parents would be supportive of me.
For whatever discipline that I meted out, even if it would be a suspension or some detentions.
But even in the rare occasion when parents were upset with me for the kind of discipline I gave their children, there was never once an accusation of racial bias or animus because of the discipline that I was meeting out.
And I never had a complaint against me on racial grounds.
As a teacher, as dean, or as principal.
I had evaluations by my bosses in six years in the Archdiocese excellent across the board from all of the bosses that I had.
Obviously, you wouldn't have been made a principal of a school if you hadn't had an exemplary record.
And the other aspect about this that really shocks me...
Is that the Church had not done an official study of your columns.
They looked at the books, they looked at what you've written, they looked at your association with the American Renaissance, and they said it's okay.
Tell me about that.
Sure. Well, again, what you have to understand is the Church down here on Earth is run by human beings who are obsessed with political correctness.
So anyone who thinks that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, and remember, you're talking to a devout Catholic Of some five decades here.
As you said, kindergarten through two graduate degrees.
The Catholic Church makes decisions not based on what Jesus would do, but based on money and political correctness.
Now, this is the key point about this story, and you articulated it well.
Many people are under the general impression that the Daily News did an article, exposed my writings, and then when the church saw those writings, they said,"Aha!
We can't have this racist guy as one of our principals," and they fired me.
That's not what happened at all.
The first time someone tried to get me fired because of my writings, it actually turned out to be what I thought at the time was a good break for me, because it brought all of this information out in the open.
The church...
Took a hold of both of my books, which contained roughly 150 columns that were largely about race and immigration.
One of those books, as you said, Forward, was written by Jared Taylor.
The Church was not only in possession of these books...
But they had them officially reviewed by a particular monsignor whose job it was to vet writings and to make sure that they are compatible with Catholic teaching.
And the person's title is a Latin term called censor librorum, which essentially means censoring books or looking through the writings to see whether or not they violate Catholic teachings.
So the very writings for which the Church fired for, claiming that now suddenly They were incompatible with Catholic teaching.
Four years prior, had officially reviewed those books, and I have it in writing that the books did not violate Catholic teaching.
See, this is what's so incredible to me.
They go through this official church procedure.
They have this censor of books.
Read what you had written, because this jealous colleague had said, here's a bad guy, get rid of him.
You present everything that you've done.
They go through it top to bottom and say, He's okay.
He's okay.
And now when it comes out in the Daily News, then they get all upset and pretend they never knew.
There's your answer.
So, in other words, when the Daily News came out with this article two weeks before...
The article came out.
We knew that the article was coming out.
And I was called down to the Archdiocese headquarters for a top-level meeting.
The superintendent who answers only to the Archbishop himself.
This is how important the Archdiocese thought of this Daily News article was coming out.
They were very worried about the article.
And we met ostensibly to talk strategy about how to handle.
The article when it came out because they sensed that it was going to be some sort of a hatchet job.
So ostensibly we were all on the same side at this particular time.
Not once in this meeting was there ever talk at all about me being fired.
It was simply about how to handle the article when it came out.
And as I document in this book, I was being praised at the meeting.
I was being told what a fine principle I had been.
My direct boss, who had read my writings himself, who had read Articles from American Renaissance that I had sent him.
He liked them.
In this book, I have documentation, reprinting of emails, where he said that a Jared Taylor article from American Renaissance was very interesting and thanked me for it.
Never expressed any revulsion.
Never said, how could you send me this?
Okay, so all of this I have documented.
And at this particular meeting, he continued to support me only when the Daily News article came out.
A hatchet job, defamatory, exposing nothing new at all, writings from 10 to 15 years ago that the church knew about, but based on the bad publicity from the article, they convened an emergency meeting, and as a public relations matter only, they destroyed a man's career.
And when I was fired, and I met with the priest, my direct boss, who fired me, and I said to him, What about everything you've been saying for the past few years?
Hadn't he promised you that he would fire you only if the Archbishop gave him a direct ecclesiastical order?
Correct. And just for people who don't understand the way the Catholic Church works, the Catholic Church is a monarchy.
The Pope is a monarch, and the bishops answer only to the Pope.
They have unreviewable authority, unilateral authority.
Pastors report only To the archbishop, so they don't have to answer to a board of directors either.
So my direct boss, my pastor at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, where I was principal, was...
Close to me in a personal way, close to my family, had given me assurances that he would never fire me, and he said that the Daily News article was a hatchet job and that I would never fire you, and even if they pressured me to fire you, I would never do it unless I got a direct order from the archbishop himself.
And even if that happened, he would have demanded a meeting with the archbishop with me there, and he would have gotten that meeting.
Instead, he folded.
Like a cheap camera, and he is now a man who I describe as the most dishonest, most dishonorable man that I've ever known.
And I said to him the night he fired me, which as you say, was 24 hours after the article came out.
I said, what about everything you've been saying for the past three weeks?
What about all your promises?
What about your assurances?
And all he said was, there's nothing that I can do for you.
This is so typical.
This is so typical of the cowardliness, the close-mindedness, and in this case, just the outright lies.
These guys who pretended,"Wow, this is all news to us.
We never knew Frank Borsalera had said such things." Not only did they know, they had studied you left to right, top to bottom.
They'd said you're okay.
And apparently this guy even approved of some of the things that you said.
And that's what they don't want you to know.
What they don't want you to know.
What I don't want the people to know is that they knew about the writings in advance.
And what I'd like to do is just show I had a political cartoonist who took such an interest in my case that he actually did His own cartoons for my case, and we're going to give a close-up of this, but this was about the scales of justice, where the priest who fired me is weighing things in the balance,
and in my favor is, I was the author of six books, a great defender of the Catholic faith, a dedicated principal, all of my employee evaluations were excellent, I had a 4.0 perfect grade point average, two master's degrees,
25 years of Catholic education and excellence in school leadership awards from St. John's University, a Catholic university.
All of that in my favor, but the one thing against me was...
That I violated political correctness, and that was more important than all of my accomplishments.
Well, see, to me, I suppose I'm not a Catholic, but I'm favorably disposed towards the Catholic Church.
I like to think of it as being run by well-meaning people who care about goodness, truth, and beauty, and for them, not only to have folded under pressure, but to outright lie about it.
That just is shocking to me.
Well, it's a lot less shocking to me now than it would have been at one time.
And what you have to understand is that I would estimate 90 to 95 percent of the employees of the Archdiocese of New York are on my side.
And sympathize with me.
Unfortunately, those are never the people who hold the reins of power and make these decisions.
Now, I don't know what comes first, the chicken or the egg.
Are you a total political animal, and that's how you get to that high position in the archdiocese?
Or do you get the position, and by the nature of the job, have to become a political animal?
I can tell you that many, many employees of the archdiocese Have helped me behind the scenes after I was fired and given me their prayers and given me their support and said some really horrible but accurate things about the bosses in the Archdiocese.
And I want to tell you this.
I was a principal in the Archdiocese of New York.
In the Bronx alone, there were over 250 principals.
And the Archdiocese is more than just the Bronx.
It also includes Manhattan, Staten Island, some counties upstate.
Hundreds and hundreds of principals.
When you become a principal, You start to know, you begin to know how decisions are made at the Archdiocese headquarters in the upper echelons.
And if you ever asked any principal in the Archdiocese of New York, and you asked, how are the decisions made at the upper echelons of the Archdiocese?
Are they made based on considerations of politics?
Or are they made on considerations of what would Jesus do?
The principals wouldn't even answer you right away because they would be falling on the floor laughing.
They wouldn't even take the question seriously.
Every principal would tell you, of course, the decisions are all based on politics and money.
No one sits in the archdiocese headquarters and says, well, we're going to make a decision.
What would Jesus do?
They don't say that.
This is very disappointing.
I'm sorry to hear that.
But, well, since then, you've tried to get other jobs, right?
But now you're wearing the red...
Well, what I had said, again, the night I was fired, and the priest who fired me, and I said, you realize that I could never get a job as a Catholic principal again.
Everything that I've worked for, all this tens of thousands of dollars I had spent on student loans and getting these master's degrees, didn't care.
It was more important to be politically correct than to worry about a man's career.
And I would even add this.
If the Archdiocese of New York had to come up With another reason, and pretend they were firing me for a different reason.
They couldn't come up with one.
The problem they have is that I have documentation in writing of all of the excellent evaluations that every boss I ever had there had given me.
Well, you know, when you think about it, you could have probably had your hand in the till.
You could have, I don't know, you could have been chasing after some woman.
All of this is probably more easily forgiven than having been a, quote, racist.
Well, it's interesting, and we were talking about this.
Everyone remembers the former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.
Right. And he was on a talk show last week, and I was listening.
Now, if you believe...
The best about Mike Tyson, there is what he himself admits and what's documented.
Here's a guy who served time in jail for rape.
Here's a guy who was physically abusive to women and towards his own wife.
Here's a guy who had robbed houses to support a drug habit.
That's the best about Mike Tyson.
And yet, he's now treated as a celebrity.
No one ever brings this up in interviews.
Mike Tyson has the world at his feet.
I, on the other hand...
If you believe the worst about me, never committed a crime of any kind and can't even become a principal, which is what I'm most educated and qualified to do.
Well, and you really loved that job.
You miss it, I guess.
I miss it very much.
It was the greatest job in the world.
And again, I had the support of students, of parents in this very lawsuit.
We have...
Affidavits from black and Hispanic students saying how I was so fair to them, both as a teacher and as their dean, that I was a mentor.
It's very heartwarming to have that kind of support.
Well, this is now the world, the country we live in, that if you say the slightest unorthodox thing...
About race.
You are thrown into the outer darkness, to use words from the Catholic Church.
It's really, it becomes a crime worse than real crimes.
In any case, it's a pity that you can't sue the Catholic Church, but I'm delighted that you at least have a chance to go after the Daily News.
And we're going to have to wrap up here pretty soon.
Is there anything more that you'd like to add about the suffering you've gone through?
I would.
Yes? And I'm glad you made the point about not suing the Church.
What I want to make clear to people, and that I really need the financial help for this lawsuit, is that I would love to sue the Catholic Church, and they deserve to be sued because what they did to me was morally reprehensible.
However... As a matter of law, we wouldn't really have a legal case.
So I don't want to institute a lawsuit that cannot be won legally.
And I wouldn't ask people for financial help for something that can't be won.
But the libel defamation suit, I am vowing to take this.
Even if we have to appeal all the way up to Albany, we are committed to do that.
So we really need the help.
And it's something that if you believe in righteousness and if you believe in really just...
Doing the right thing morally, then we need your help.
I think our viewers certainly do believe in doing the right thing.
So could you tell them once more, what's that P.O. Box that they can send a check to?
The P.O. Box is 780-142.
That's MassPeth.
New York, 11378.
And we'll also be putting a link on the website, on the American Renaissance website, where they can pay by PayPal or credit card to make a donation to this.
Great, great.
So, you viewers, this is a chance to fight back.
This is a chance to strike a blow against the tyranny under which we all live.
So please be generous.
This is a worthy and noble cause.
Well, Frank, thanks so much for being with us.
It's been a great pleasure talking to you.
Thanks for having me.
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