EDI stands for ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’. It’s the corporate-friendly, de-fanged version of anti-racism, anti-sexism and all those other things we need do to combat the obstacles neoliberalism sets up against fair play.

The reason most companies spend so much time on business-friendly, colourful beanos like Pride and Stonewall but firmly reject serious campaigns for sex-based or anti-racist endeavours is that EDI doesn’t cost them as much.

Corporate EDI is a marketing tool

EDI is employed to deflect any attempts at fair play that might actually inconvenience big money. The two examples I give above work like this: Pride used to be a gay and lesbian liberation campaign. Now, it sells very expensive space at carnivals that attract high-spending fun-seekers. Stonewall used to be a gay and lesbian organization but, after the battle for civil marriage was won, turned its efforts to selling virtue-signalling badges to big companies. More recently, it has spent most of its time and energy making the ‘trans rights’ campaign into a war on feminists.

If organizations like that can, as Steve Bannon so neatly put it, ‘fill the zone with shit’, it allows companies to look innocent and virtuous without having to give time and money to potentially serious issues such as misogyny, barriers to working class people, or anti-Palestinian racism.

So shouldn’t right-wing, neoliberal billionaires be pro-EDI?

Logically yes, they should, but Trump and Musk are not logical. The fact that EDI makes them spit shows just how badly anti-fair play they are but if we look carefully, we will see a more intriguing lesson here.

Someone was interviewing Musk the other day, and asked him what he’d got against EDI. He started waffling on about how you don’t want sub-standard surgeons. As soon as the interviewer tried to unpack that a bit – with questions like ‘is there any evidence of Black or female surgeons screwing up more often?’ – Musk fell to mumbling inconclusively. Really, the average drunken racist in the pub would have made their MAGA case better than he did, so let’s change the question.

How stupid is Elon Musk?

The interview clip was followed by a commentary by a very, very rare kind of person – a Black, female surgeon, who quoted some stats which demonstrated that in fact, Black and female surgeons are statistically BETTER than white male ones.

This is the moment you see the road fork in front of you

If you are an insecure, under-educated white male, or a loyal ally of such people, you get all panicky and start ranting about the world giving Black and female people unfair advantages that leads to poor quality doctors, airline pilots, politicians etc, look at Diane Abbott, how daft is she? etc etc

If you are, however, a reasonably well-adjusted, reasonably well-educated white male, or a Black person, or a woman, you either already know the answer to that conundrum or else you’re able to think, ‘oh, so how does that come about?’ You’ll probably do a bit of research – or sit down and think it through. It’s not that hard to find the truth…

Racism, sexism and classism do EXACTLY what Trump, Musk and their supporters think EDI does

The reason Black and female surgeons are statistically better than white male ones is that it’s very, very difficult for Black and female students to get as far as qualifying, because of all the barriers society sets up against them. Only the very, very best of them get through – whereas the favours and leg-ups that mediocre males get if they come from the right families and the right schools means you are far, far more likely to get poor-quality white male surgeons.

Trump, Musk and Co are completely blind to that, and only worry that equality quotas might be letting in daft Black/female/gay people. They don’t realise that quotas, where they exist, exist only until they’ve levelled the playing field and anyway, only seek to give competent minority candidates the advantages Mr Average already has.

When people tell you that Black women obviously have unfair advantages because look, Diane Abbott/Dawn Butler/Kemi Badenoch/name any Black/female MP said/did this daft thing, you just need to remind them how we’ve all been ranting for years about how stupid THE AVERAGE POLITICIAN is. Black women MPs most definitely do not have a monopoly on saying/doing daft things.

Trump and Musk are not exceptionally clever, nor are they unusually stupid

Here’s another statistical fact: most politicians, like most billionaires, are fairly stupid. (Kemi Badenoch thinks she’s qualified to speak for ‘the people’ because she experienced being working class when she had a Saturday job in MacDonalds). Most politicians are stupid because unfair advantages got them where they are too easily. (Starmer had zero polititcal experience before he was shipped in for that post-Corbyn leadership campaign). Remove the unfair advantages – in other words, level the playing field for the working class, for women and disadvantaged minorities, and you will get the best candidates in the best jobs. That’s why I’m a feminist, an anti-racist activist and a socialist. I want the best surgeons to get the jobs.

The occasional clever politician does not disprove this – nor does the occasional clever billionaire. That can happen. But frankly, Trump, Musk and Co are doing us a favour. Because they’re one step stupider than most politicians and billionaires, they are actually trying to articulate the ill-thought out, racist, sexist things you hear from the MAGA brigade (and that drunk in the pub I mentioned earlier) which the likes of Biden and Starmer have been quietly utilizing, but avoiding trying to explain, for years. If Trump and Co keep talking, they will prove to the world that racist, sexist and classist ideas really are nonsense and are doing us harm (because we need the best surgeons, politicians etc).

Keep it up, Musk, Trump and Co — every time you open your mouths, more people realize that we’re not in danger of being taken over by Black female surgeons at all. Soon, we’ll all understand that our problem is the world being run by the likes of Starmer, Biden, Trump and Musk, men who have no ideas and no special qualities, so can only rule by fear — be it fear of bombs and jail or fear of Black female surgeons, or lesbians, or Arabs, or whatever likely-looking scapegoats they can find.

The problem is mediocre white males in power-positions. When enough people understand the problem, we’ll solve it.

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By the way, that pic at the top of the article is not a beaver, it’s a musk rat. It’s there because I really did not want to put yet another Trump or Musk mugshot online.

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