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"Cornell student Austin Franco was doxxed by Jewish business leaders after explaining that he “didn’t want to work for a Jew,” claiming his experiences with Jews were not “pleasant,” after a NYC startup he had applied to reached out to him three times.":
Subsequently:
a literal Trump Admin official announces that he's going to dedicate his life to ensuring this student never works again
the British Daily Mail ran an article calling this random 19 year old an "entitled Cornell student"
FOX ran multiple stories on this kid, with one contributor demanding that his "life be ruined" while another compares being jewish among goys to being a human amongst the Planet of the Apes.
I was told that "woke is dead" but it seems cancel culture is alive and well on the kosher Right. How is one supposed to take any of the clowns seriously attacking "woke leftists" when they act like this? Why is "student doesn't want to work for jews" worthy of being elevated to international news?
It’s very unclear what happened here. As best I can understand, the startup guy tried to recruit him and spammed him with internship offers on some college hiring platform, he refused, and then told the guy it’s because he’s Jewish?
Even if you have no investment in someone’s views on antisemitism, hiring a guy who instead of a polite refusal and block goes straight for the racial/religious insult when rejecting business or a job / internship offer is surely a pretty dumb move. This is not the behavior of someone agreeable enough for daily workplace life.
It also clearly implies he prefers grandstanding for dissident right Twitter over behaving in a normal way. There are plenty of people I wouldn’t work for, I wouldn’t insult their race to their face.
Lots of people have that problem, but very few have it escalated into a national scandal, where senior members of the administration get involved.
If you do have an opinion on antisemitism, particularly one that says you'd like to see it reduced, whipping up such scandals is probably counterproductive.
It’s manifestly hypocritical when
Some woke biracial girl studying labor relations or whatever refusing an internship by saying “not interested in working for a white person. Thanks” and being doxxed by the would-be employer would be celebrated on the dissident right and MAGA more broadly, and certainly the employer would be applauded for sharing it.
It would be completely unsurprising, even expected, for “senior members of the administration” - including most likely the second most senior of all, JD Vance - to comment on it publicly and criticize the person in question.
What is the actual objection from the DR here? There isn’t one, really, except to the fact that some guy might suffer career consequences for his comment. All the company did was share a rude and unnecessary message sent under his real name.
Can you give an example of this actually happening? I'm pretty sure if you got a beat-by-beat replay of this situation, except with whites instead of Jews, a good deal of Jewish people who are celebrating this would be screeching about thr "Woke Right".
Portraying "let me know if he ever gets hired, and I will RT" as "publicly critizing" is also not very productive to thr cause of fighting antisemitism.
Give an example of reactionary Twitter trying to cancel someone for anti-white comments?
Why is there an expectation that when engaging in clear attention seeking behavior like telling someone you won’t take their job offer because you refuse to work for a Jew that you won’t get attention for your comment?
Think about it, there’s zero reason for Franco to have ever sent this message (rather than ‘no, sorry’, ‘not interested’, or just ignoring and blocking him) other than to grandstand. I would guess he immediately posted a screenshot of the ‘sent’ message to a friendly Discord, forum, whatever to show how based he was. Now the travesty is that his grandstanding got him the attention he was clearly seeking?
By the way, I agree with you that Jews should try not to draw attention to antisemitism. It is and always has been a losing game. But the actions the DR is criticizing weren’t unreasonable, they would applaud the same done by their perceived in-group, and this drama is just a lot of hypocritical faux outrage on their part.
Of someone woke got fired for being anti-white, and it got whipped up into a national scandal, where senior administration officials pledged to put pressure on anyone who might hire them.
That's not what happened. For one, as per your own summary, if he was getting spammed, it sounds more like he was looking for a way to get them to fuck off. He didn't pick the wisest way of doing that, but then again, he's 19.
Secondly, the tweet didn't say "I won't take their job offer". It said that if someone does take his offer, he will pressure them to get him fired.
Do we know that this actually happened? I thought the drama came out from the would-be employer side. If so, if anyone is seeking attention it's them.
Low-key blackballing him would have been fine. Making a public example out of him is what people are objecting to.
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