Disney Works Alongside Genocidal Gov't, Pushes Racial Essentialism, Scapegoating While Feigning 'Inclusivity'
In a statement sent out on Tuesday, the Walt Disney Co. claimed to stand for “acceptance,” “tolerance” and “inclusivity.”
The statement was issued in response to a series of leaked documents, obtained by City Journal’s Christopher F. Rufo, exposing the company’s series of so-called diversity and inclusion training. This training forwarded the highly controversial philosophy of critical race theory, which teaches racial essentialism and racial scapegoating, among other concepts that deem certain races to be socially superior or inferior to others.
Examples of racial essentialism and scapegoating found within the program include the term “white privilege,” which teaches individuals to view others as more or less privileged based solely on their skin color; “systemic racism,” which forwards the notion that all achievement gaps between racial groups must be due to the supposed forces of racism; and “white fragility,” which posits that all white people are inherently racist and that denying this is merely a defense mechanism used to uphold white supremacy.
Responding to accusations that described the training as racist, Disney claimed the documents had been “deliberately distorted.” Nevertheless, on Tuesday, it appears the company completely scrubbed the antiracism program from its website.
WINNING: @WaltDisneyCo has removed its entire antiracism program from the company’s internal portal. pic.twitter.com/nLTO9FOVxf
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) May 11, 2021
In response to Disney’s statement asserting the company’s commitment to “inclusivity,” Rufo was quick to point out how he believes the entertainment giant has repeatedly failed to live up to such a standard.
Disney claims to value “inclusivity,” but the company has:
-Used slave and child labor in poor countries
-Filmed ‘Mulan’ near Uighur concentration camps
-Censored content for the CCP
-Shrinked a black actor in Chinese promotional materialsThe Magic Kingdom is a house of lies.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) May 10, 2021
Perhaps the most obvious example provided was the fact that Disney “[f]ilmed ‘Mulan’ near Uighur concentration camps” in the Xinjiang region of China.
Xinjiang, known as the Uighur Autonomous Region, is home to China’s Muslim-majority ethnic minority population, the Uighurs.
Multiple reports from news outlets and other independent organizations have confirmed that the Chinese Communist Party is enacting a cultural genocide of this Uighur population.
This includes rounding up and sending Uighurs to concentration camps, wherein they are forced to undergo re-education, mandatory labor, systemic rape and forced steriliziation. Mysterious population declines have even led some foreign policy experts to believe the prisoners are being murdered in large numbers.
“Detainees are subject to military-style discipline, thought transformation, and forced confessions. They are abused, tortured, raped, and even killed,” a July 15 report in Foreign Policy said.
Officials from the current and previous presidential administrations have admitted the current crimes against Uighurs in China constitute genocide.
Despite these abuses, Disney was not only fully willing to work alongside the CCP when it came to filming the live-action “Mulan” remake in Xinjiang — the very region where this genocide is taking place — but it also allowed the CCP to change the story of the film.
According to a Sept. 2 report in The Wall Street Journal, Disney “worked closely with China’s government” so that the story was more in line with what the Communist dictatorship believed to be “faithful Chinese values.”
This isn’t the only example of Disney appearing to abandon its commitment to “inclusivity” when doing so appeases the Communist government.
In Chinese promotional materials for 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” characters played by non-white actors — including John Boyega, Lupita Nyong’o and Oscar Isaac — were noticeably minimized or removed in comparison with Disney’s U.S. promotional materials, according to a 2015 report from Variety.
Star Wars’ Finn (who happens to be black) and Chewbacca (happens to be Wookiee) get shafted in China. HT @asmuniz pic.twitter.com/ATpvcd51L6
— Ray 鄺羡華 (@raykwong) December 1, 2015
Of note, a person close to the Disney marketing campaign told The Wall Street Journal these decisions were made “to make room for attention-grabbing spaceships and explosion” and the Chinese state-run Global Times claimed “the change has nothing to do with racism,” according to CNN — albeit China has been accused of mistreating and discriminating against its African population on numerous occasions.
Regardless of whether this specific example was intentional, Disney’s overall relationship with and tacit approval of the Chinese government has left pro-Uighur human rights groups frustrated, given the company’s supposed commitment to “social justice issues.”
Corresponding with The Western Journal via email, the World Uyghur Congress asserted as much.
“Our position is that no organisation should endorse a genocide or the country committing it, especially not the organisations or companies that are so outspoken on social justice issues. Selecting which cause to support when it aligns with financial and political interests is hypocritical,” a representative said.
“The Uyghurs and Turkic people are facing genocide and companies who are indirectly or directly linked to these crimes are going to be remembered for it.”
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