DIGGING DEEPER: Robin DiAngelo Admits Getting Duped by Matt Walsh, Cites Smear Factory in Attacking Him
Tyler O'Neil /
Robin DiAngelo, the notorious “anti-racist” activist and the author of “White Fragility,” admitted in a blog post Thursday that The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh tricked her into filming a scene in which she pays “reparations” to a black man in the satirical documentary “Am I Racist?” In her statement on the issue, she resorted to citing the discredited left-wing smear factory the Southern Poverty Law Center.
DiAngelo did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about why she cited the SPLC, but Walsh did respond to her decision to cite that organization.
“Robin DiAngelo is so entrenched in a leftist bubble that she got duped by me in a wig. No wonder she thinks the SPLC is a reliable source,” Walsh told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday.
‘Am I Racist?’
“Am I Racist” launches in theaters Friday. The film’s Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) description reads: “A man investigates diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, exposing absurdities through undercover social experiments.”
The film exposes the absurdities of critical race theory, a lens through which activists such as DiAngelo interpret American society as systemically racist, and where black people are inherently oppressed and white people are inherently oppressors, despite the decades of civil rights law guaranteeing equal rights and despite the success of certain minority groups that do not fit that stereotype.
Critical race theory—rebranded “anti-racism” for a broader audience—has spread in academia and corporate America.
In her blog post, DiAngelo recounted how the film team introduced themselves last year. The Daily Wire team told her they were making a documentary film called “Shades of Justice,” and that they “planned to interview anti-racist activists, authors and thought leaders in service of supporting the cause of racial equity.”
She admitted taking $15,000 for an interview, a sum she claims she has since donated to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
DiAngelo recalled that Walsh introduced himself as “Matt” and “presented himself as someone new to anti-racist work and seemed earnest, and his questions did not come across as adversarial.”
She then described a scene in which Walsh asked if she supported reparations and when she said, “yes,” he persuaded her to hand a black member of his team some cash. She went on to say she was “unsettled by the way [Walsh] manipulated this last scene,” and she asked the Daily Wire team not to include it in the film.
“I had been played,” she admitted. She condemned “Am I Racist?” as a “‘Borat’-style mockumentary … designed to humiliate and discredit anti-racist educators and activists.” (“Borat,” a 2006 dark humor mock documentary, followed a fictional Kazakh reporter in the United States.)
After describing how she discovered the truth, DiAngelo asks, “So, who is Matt Walsh and what is his—and his backers’—agenda? Luckily for us, he has clearly answered that question, without shame, time and time again.”
She then proceeds to quote the SPLC. The SPLC claims Walsh “frequently demonizes LGBTQ+ people and promotes racist and anti-transgender conspiracy theories.”
What Is the SPLC?
DiAngelo appears not to have questioned the reliability of her source. As I wrote in my book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC has faced numerous scandals and routinely weaponizes its “hate” accusations against conservatives, in part to silence any dissent against its own leftist agenda.
The SPLC published a “hate map” that lists mainstream conservative and Christian organizations alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. It uses this “hate map” as a reputational weapon to silence those who dissent from its woke agenda. While the SPLC’s education arm Learning for Justice pushes critical race theory and gender ideology, the “hate map” smears parental rights groups such as Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education as “extremists.”
Conservative Christian groups that advocate religious freedom and define marriage as between one man and one woman appear on the SPLC map as “anti-LGBTQ hate groups.” National security experts who warn against radical Islamist terrorism find themselves branded “anti-Muslim hate groups.” Advocacy groups that call for the enforcement of immigration law and oppose open borders appear on the map as “anti-immigrant hate groups.”
This year, the SPLC even added an openly homosexual group—Gays Against Groomers—to its list of “anti-LGBTQ hate groups.”
In 2019, the SPLC fired its co-founder and saw its president resign amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal. At that time, a former employee called the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.”
The SPLC unionized after that scandal. Earlier this year, the SPLC Union broke the news of mass layoffs at the organization in June. The SPLC “gutted its staff by a quarter,” laying off more than 60 union members, including five union stewards and the union’s chair.
Last month, 90% of the SPLC Union voted to demand the SPLC fire its president and CEO, Margaret Huang, accusing her of “union-busting.” The SPLC has stood by Huang, but the union has launched a petition that has gathered more than 5,000 signatures.
The SPLC also currently faces a defamation lawsuit that crossed a major legal hurdle last year.
If DiAngelo wants to discredit Walsh, she should choose a more reputable organization to cite.