Mother Jones illustration; Kenny Holston/Getty
“You hear ‘DEI’ and you probably think of your job’s HR department,” explains Kat Abughazaleh. “But for your QAnon uncle, ‘DEI’ is an activation phrase to send the most unhinged memes in the family group chat.” In her new video for Mother Jones, Kat dives into the right’s obsessive co-opting of the term “DEI”—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—to attack Donald Trump’s new 2024 foe, Vice President Kamala Harris:
Kat dissects how this innocuous little acronym became the latest dog whistle for Fox News hosts and elected Republicans, drawing parallels to Nixon’s Southern strategy, which also deployed coded language to appeal to old bigotry.
Earlier attempts to caricature Kamala Harris caught right-wing pundits somewhat flat-footed, when compared to their other misogynistic masterpiece: their attacks on Hillary Clinton (a phenomenon documented by Kat in her first video for Mother Jones). But in the days since Harris locked up enough delegates to be the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, talking heads have filled the airwaves with what is now considered a three-letter epithet, twisted by figures like Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk to mean people who got jobs even though they are talentless and incompetent, especially from minority groups. Harris is their new prime example.
“Because, sure,” explains Kat. “You can hold six elected offices, you can have an entire law career before that, you can even be the Vice President of the United States, but if you just add those three little letters, DEI, it is instantly invalidated by the assertion that every single one of your accomplishments is because of how society treats your race and gender rather than despite it.”
With DEI being used as a scapegoat term for societal issues, from bridge disasters to aviation policy failures, the pundits have found their term d’art and appear to be sticking with it.
“Now it’s in the hands of right-wing assholes,” Kat jokes. “So like Pepe the Frog, fedoras, and the okay symbol, these losers have perverted another innocuous thing.”
