Yogurt Is Not White Enough for These White Nationalists

The alt-right diet is a sure bet for weight loss.

<p><a href="http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/a-bowl-of-white-greek-yogurt-and-a-spoon-gm453528615-25734075?st=_p_greek%20yogurt" target="_blank">AD_photo</a>/iStock</p>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The alt-right movement—a catch-all name for the once-fringe band of white supremacists now basking in the tangerine glow of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—has a beef with Chobani, a popular brand of Greek yogurt.

According to the New York Times, the company’s founder, Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant of Kurdish descent, “has stepped up his advocacy” for the rights of immigrants and refugees, by “employing more than 300 refugees in his factories, starting a foundation to help migrants, and traveling to the Greek island of Lesbos to witness the crisis firsthand.” 

For his trouble, Ulukaya has inspired death threats, the Times reports, as well as such thoughtful Twitter interventions as:

But why stop at #BoycottChobani? Seems like the principled stance would be to swear off all foodstuffs that rely heavily on immigrant labor. Such an America-first diet would not only count as an eloquent statement of xenophobic rage; it would also likely result in rapid weight loss. Followers of Pepe the Frog, here are some foods to avoid.

• Dairy: Boycotting just a single brand of yogurt is for milquetoasts. According to a 2015 study commissioned by the National Milk Producers Federation, “Immigrant labor accounts for 51 percent of all dairy labor, and dairies that employ immigrant labor produce 79 percent of the U.S. milk supply.”

• Meat: According to a recent Washington Post piece:

“Little Somalia” neighborhoods are sprouting up in dozens of towns across the Great Plains, and slaughterhouses are hiring Somali translators for the cutting floors and installing Muslim prayer rooms for employees. Ahmed was now just one in a wave of several thousand Somalis being lured to the meatpacking floors, ready to take jobs that—at $13 or $14 per hour—easily marked the best-paying work they could find.

As for poultry slaughterhouses, about half of workers are Latino and “a quarter do not possess legal documents to work in the United States,” according to the National Center for Farmworker Health.

• Seafood: Around 90 percent of seafood consumed in the United States is imported—from countries like China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Chile. As for robust domestic fisheries like the Gulf of Mexico and New England, processing facilities are largely staffed by immigrants.

• Fruits and vegetables: According to the latest US Department of Agriculture numbers I can find, nearly half of US crop farm workers are undocumented migrants, and another 20 percent are immigrants with papers.

• Restaurant food: According to a 2014 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, 29.9 percent of cooks in US restaurants are non-citizens, as are 33 percent of dishwashers and 25.8 percent of table-bussers. 

Once they’ve purged their diets of such impure foods, perhaps these folks can document what they do manage to eat and come out with a book. The Alt-Right Diet won’t likely do much to make America great, but it certainly would help make its followers skinny, and fast.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate