He was a lifeguard, but that didn’t save him from a society drowning in wokeness. In fact, 18-year-old Alex Katsnelson’s poolside job with his Vermont town’s parks and recreation department was just deep-sixed because he dared question pseudo-elite orthodoxy: He voiced opposition to Critical Race Theory (CRT).
It’s a prime example of how no one is safe from cancel culture. After all, if even a teen lifeguard can’t dissent and keep his position, who can?
“The brouhaha began when 18-year-old Alex Katsnelson read a prepared statement at the Essex public CRT discussion event,” reports the Vermont Daily Chronicle’s John Klar. “Like a sad-sack sitcom, the Essex Parks & Rec [EPR] bullies pounced on the kid, parsing out his words to contrive imagined sleight.”
As to this, Klar related the EPR as stating in a June 10 letter to Katsnelson, “While all of your comments are concerning, several of the comments you made publicly stand out — the first being: ‘the residents of Essex and Westford will not stand idly by as anti-whiteness invades our school system.’ The second being: ‘what you people plan to do is redistribute opportunity based solely on individual identity.’ The third being: ‘This is why we have fifth graders coming home and saying they wish they were black.’”
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The EPR first claimed it was concerned that Katsnelson couldn’t adhere to its “core values.” But perhaps realizing this wouldn’t pass legal muster, it later claimed that his words constituted “perceived threats” that “cause legitimate concern around” his “ability to equitably look out for the safety of everyone who attends our pools.”
Alright. Now, listen to Katsnelson’s comments (video below; relevant portion begins at 14:32), and ask yourself how threatening they are.
Obviously, the young man exhibited calm conviction; he’s hardly a zealot. Moreover, with intellectual maturity that clearly more than matches his 20-ish appearance, he’s just the kind of responsible teen you should want as a lifeguard. Instead, the EPR, obviously engaging in political persecution, justified its ideological bullying with Soviet-style reasoning. As Klar also quotes the EPR as writing:
The first comment mentioned above could be taken as a threat against the school and/or our community. It is aggressive and threatening and nature, while also being vague enough to elicit fear. The second comment mentioned above uses an offensive phrase “you people” while also being very vague and intimidating in nature. The third comment, along with the rest of the public comments we have referenced, shows that you do not possess, and that you cannot uphold, the Village core beliefs and values around racial equity, diversity and inclusion.
…We have made the determination that your public comments cause legitimate concern around your ability to equitably look out for the safety of everyone who attends our pools. In addition, we feel that your public comments are likely to cause future disruption with our residents. Your comments have already begun to cause disruption amongst your peers who have seen them. Your position by its very nature requires a degree of public trust, not often found in other instances of public employment. We cannot create an unsafe environment at our pool, nor can we create a situation where any of our residents feel unsafe or unwelcome at our pool.
Note here that in accordance with Vermont norms, Essex County is 96.3 percent white and 0.6 percent black. But insofar as non-whites would frequent its pool, does the EPR really believe that Katsnelson’s expressed beliefs mean he’d hesitate to save someone of a different race?
Of course not. Rather, the young man’s termination is driven by hatred and/or, even more malevolently and in accordance with cancel culture’s spirit, a desire to stifle dissent.
We’ve seen this before, too. Just consider what LifeSite’s Jonathon Van Maren told us in 2015, relating what a tour guide in Hungary told him about how that nation’s Cold War-era communists handled Christians. “It wasn’t that you couldn’t be a Christian, she said,” he wrote. “You could pray at home, worship at home with your family, even get baptized and go to church. However, you had a choice. ‘You could either be a Christian,’ she told us, ‘or you could be successful.’”
Replace “Christian” with “Christian/conservative” (and there is overlap), and it well describes America today. For instance, Van Maren provides examples of how certain professions in Canada have attempted to purge Christians. And it seems that every week we hear about another person who’s “cancelled” for daring to oppose our leftist orthodoxy.
As for Katsnelson’s dissent, he had good reason to oppose CRT. Congruent with its anti-white nature, its proponents have made claims such as “rugged individualism,” “a can-do attitude,” “hard work,” and “striving towards success” reflect “white male culture” and that planning for the future and punctuality are “white norms.” And as I explained in “Democrats’ War on Blacks,” this hurts blacks and Hispanics as well because it serves to alienate them from the above success-breeding qualities.
Klar believes that if Katsnelson sues EPR, past court rulings that his type of speech is protected will make his case a slam dunk. This is no doubt true and will remain so — until and unless the Left can further transform the courts.
In fairness, every civilization has its “cancel culture,” social norms that you can’t violate without scorn and ostracism. For example, being an avowed Nazi or Marxist in 1950s America could certainly end your career. But the question is whether those social norms encourage the upholding of Truth or elevate a lie. Increasingly in America it’s the latter.
The only way to turn this tide is to rally behind, en masse, the persecuted and seek to cancel the cancel cultists themselves, as “the best defense is a good offense.” Remember here that, to quote what Ben Franklin reportedly said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
