Rolling Stone used to be anti-establishment. Now, all they do is defend the establishment. Maybe they should cry harder.
‘A Scary Future for Them’: Elon and Pals Turned DEI into Far Right’s New Boogeyman Not even two weeks into the new year, and it looks as though far-right agitators have honed in on the scapegoat of the season: DEI, shorthand for “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives and policies that can be implemented in workplaces and educational institutions.Although long included in the litany of vilified concepts that conservatives like to complain about — from “wokeness” to gender fluidity to Critical Race Theory — DEI has taken a new place of prominence after being scapegoated for two incidents that made headlines in early 2024. One was the ouster of Harvard University president Claudine Gay, the first Black person to lead the Ivy League school, just six months after she assumed the role. The other was an Alaska Airlines flight during which a door plug of the Boeing 737 Max 9 jet blew off the fuselage, causing cabin depressurization and necessitating an emergency landing.Originally, neither story had any to do with DEI. The initial calls for Gay’s resignation stemmed from her perceived failure to address antisemitism on the Harvard campus. It was only after she faced the allegations of plagiarism that would ultimately unseat her that prominent critics, including hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman and right-wing activist Christopher Rufo (who first accused her of academic misconduct), argued that she was unqualified for the job of president and had been appointed solely because of her race and gender. As for the malfunctioning door plug on the Boeing, it was manufactured by Spirit AeroSystems, a company already facing a lawsuit over “quality failures” of its parts. Yet Elon Musk, now closely aligned with the reactionary right, implied in a tweet that “DEI hiring” at Boeing was to blame, and Chaya Raichik, known on X/Twitter for her anti-LGBTQ hate account “Libs of TikTok,” fumed that Alaska Airlines was jeopardizing passenger safety by focusing on diversity and inclusion and “making their planes gay.”This moral panic, DEI consultants tell Rolling Stone, mirrors the unfounded paranoia in recent years about Critical Race Theory, or CRT, being taught to young students.
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