The purveyors of Cultural Marxist agitprop currently running amok in America are about to take a long-cherished scalp. The NFL’s Washington Redskins, pressured by home stadium sponsor FedEx and official league uniform and apparel supplier Nike, have announced that they will conduct “a thorough review” of their once iconic team name. Ian Rapoport, “National Insider” for the NFL Network and NFL.com, has reported that, “based on conversations with several sources,” a “change is likely.”
Activists who claim the name is a vicious slur on Native Americans had repeatedly indulged in pained public histrionics on the subject in an ebb and flow pattern since February 1992, when the Redskins won their last Super Bowl. The latest clamor conveniently ties itself in with the floodtide of polarizing racial strife that has engulfed the nation since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.
As Real as Artificial Turf
Those pushing a change would like you to believe this is an organic effort fully supported by the vast majority of American sports fans. A cursory examination, which you will never see conducted by establishment media outlets, reveals it instead to be just another campaign promulgated by leftist radicals seeking to sow seeds of division and racial unrest wherever and whenever they can. Everything is political for the left, and the enormous popularity of professional sports makes it an ideal target for cultural subversion.
Here’s what happened.
An activist organization with substantial corporate ties known as First Peoples Worldwide led an effort in which “investor groups and foundations representing more than $620 billion in assets” sent letters to NFL sponsors Nike, FedEx, and PepsiCo. The letters urged these corporations “to terminate business with the Washington D.C. franchise if it does not stop using the racial slur ‘R*dsk*ns’ as its name.” That is how the group put it in a June 30 statement.
Awash in the frenzy of cultural wokeness that has swept over so many major corporations at the moment, Nike promptly pulled all Redskins team gear from its online store, and FedEx issued a statement calling on “the team in Washington” to change its name. An orchestrated operation was underway.
First Peoples Worldwide is a self-proclaimed advocacy group for “Indigenous Peoples” that got its start in the 1990s when Rebecca Adamson, founder and longtime president, received a $25,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. Its financial backing is hard to track, given that much of its online history appears to have been scrubbed from the internet. In 2016, however, the organization received a $250,000 grant from the hard-left Tides Foundation. Tides is perhaps best known for being one of the key financial supporters of the progressive media “watchdog” organization Media Matters.
Adamson sits on the board of directors for the Women’s Media Center, an organization co-founded by Gloria Steinem that has received considerable funding from the Ford Foundation. To get a feel for Adamson’s brand of Native American spirituality, check out the birthday wishes she sent to Steinem in 2019, when the feminist icon turned 85:
“Every month during the full moon, many Native women hold ceremonies of thanks to Grandmother Moon. She is a powerful and sacred entity who brings balance, cycles, and direction to us. Grandmother Moon teaches us about our sacred role as the Life Givers and the heart of our nations — for without women Life and our nations can not go on. Grandmother Moon must have sent us Gloria to give us direction and light our way out of the darkness of patriarchy.”
Adamson retired from First Peoples Worldwide in 2017 and handed the organization off to the University of Colorado, asking it to continue the group’s “important work,” according to a post on the First Peoples’ website, which is part of the university’s official site.
‘People of Color’ Policing
Entirely in keeping with Adamson’s progressive agenda, First Peoples has expressed its solidarity with Black Lives Matter and backed its call for the defunding of police departments throughout America. In a June 9 statement, the group declared:
“In the wake of the tragic death of George Floyd and the important rising awareness of the plight of our Black brothers and sisters, we are cognizant of ways in which people of color must reclaim policing in their communities to ensure that this cycle of violence, racism, and death be permanently eradicated.”
Imploring “the United Nations to convene a special session to address this ongoing human rights crisis in America,” First Peoples issued a demand “for full restoration of tribal court and police jurisdiction in Indian Country, and unilateral action in every community to end the unfortunate narrative that policing is only effective when communities are not empowered to set their own norms for accountability, peace, and justice.”
These are the people who were able to instantly and effortlessly persuade corporate goliaths Nike and FedEx to attempt to bully Redskins owner Dan Snyder into ditching the Redskins name.
That he now appears willing to do so is a sign of just how far off the deep end the NFL has gone since Black Lives Matter roared back onto the scene. This is a league that has decided to play “Lift Ev’ry Voice And Sing,” a song that is “traditionally known as the Black national anthem,” before the U.S. National Anthem at every opening game this season, ESPN reported on July 2.
Less than a month ago, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees was pilloried for saying he didn’t like to see the American flag disrespected. Willingly or not, Brees then engaged in a humiliating display of self-flagellation submission to seek forgiveness. Now, black players will salute their own “national anthem” before week one NFL games. One shudders to think what August will bring.
A money-obsessed NFL, supported by many of its players, is eager to placate Black Lives Matter. League sponsors continually trying to one-up each other to win a bizarre Woke Corporate Sweepstakes. Together, they have cleared the way for the progressive left to poison the supposed meritocracy that is athletic competition at its highest levels. Buckle up, NFL, because you are opening up Pandora’s Box. If you think the Marxist jackals driving this stupidity are going to be satisfied with one franchise changing its name, I have some Christopher Columbus statues in blue cities to sell you.
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