I truly believe that one day Mathew Blanchfield of Albuquerque, NM will be viewed as an American hero and patriot in the vein of Joseph Welch, who famously stood up to Joseph McCarthy. In the meanwhile, Blanchfield is suffering smears and threats from the right wing and condescending ridicule from Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Blanchfield, owner of an internet marketing company called 1st in SEO, has declared on the company website that it will not serve Republicans or Donald Trump supporters:
America has elected Donald Trump, a racist, sexist, fascist, to be our next president. 1st In SEO will no longer do business with any person that is a registered Republican or supports Donald Trump. 1st In SEO will also not do business with business interests that support either the Republican Party or Donald Trump. 1st In SEO obviously has no actual means of determining our clients’ or prospective clients’ political standing. We will rely on the integrity of the men and women who are our clients currently to find another Search Engine Optimization provider if they are Republicans, voted for Donald Trump or support Donald Trump. If you are a Republican, voted for Donald Trump or support Donald Trump, in any manner, you are not welcome at 1st In SEO and we ask you to leave our firm.
1st In SEO will do everything in our power to ensure that we break ties with any person or business that supports Fascism. We will communicate our political stance clearly to all prospective new clients. We will also aggressively advertise the fact that 1st In SEO will not do business with Republicans or anyone who supports our country’s president elect.
Blanchfield goes on to say that his company will continue working with any Trump supporter until a new provider can be found and then work to ensure a smooth transition.
But Carlson, who thinks it’s “fascism” to force bakeries to prepare wedding cakes for same-sex marriages, offered no respect to Blanchfield. In fact, Carlson did his best to humiliate him. Blanchfield said he has received death threats and other harassment. Let's just say that the comments on his company's Facebook page do not suggest that Trump supporters are part of what makes America great.
But I think Blanchfield held his own quite nicely. What do you think?
Watch it below, from the November 23, 2016 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Here in Italy, we shall be voting in a referendum on constitutional reforms and I’ve just seen a poster that got my blood boiling; “If you can’t stand Renzi (current head of government), bring him down by voting ‘No’.”
Not a word on substance (I actually don’t like the proposed changes), only a stupidest-of-stupid appeal to emotion (hatred). Welcome to the world of post-truth politics, where emotion and pre-conceived ideas carry more weight than facts (cf. Oxford Dictionary on this year’s neologism of the year)
What a “little prick”, as we would refer to him as in my high school days. A real wuss.
Carlson — it’s not the news anchor who makes $3 million a year who was denied access — it was the American people who were denied access.
Making out the rich anchor people as the sole victims is a pathetic and fascist way of skewing the argument …
http://aclu-co.org/court-rules-bakery-illegally-discriminated-against-gay-couple/
But refusing to do business with someone based on their political beliefs is not.
That said, I always thought it a mistake for people to sue bakeries, etc. that did not want to be involved in gay weddings.
Imagine if it caught on… parallel economies with one side having exclusive access to the WWF, Duncan Doughnutz and Racist Flags ‘R Us but forever blocked from Broadway, the library and every museum except Ken Ham’s creationist one in Kentucky.
When the true extent of the meanness and viciousness of this group starts to play out, I would not be surprised to see many Americans taking their leave. The biggest kicker will be the destruction of the ACA – that alone may drive people north.
I don’t think the Trump people are going to let off the accelerator for even a second. They have no intention of toning anything down. I give them points for their enthusiasm, but the sad punchline of it is that their biggest achievement will be in detonating a political fault line in this country. The Year of the Bully is going to be a pretty unpleasant time to live in the US, unfortunately.
NPR “Morning Edition” had a touching story of a naturalized citizen who’s a Buddhist originally from Bhutan who now lives in conservative upstate New York. After the election he immediately experienced racism with several people telling ‘the chink’ to go back home, his car was vandalized and he felt threatened to the point of nearly buying guns for protection.
The happy ending is when he posted this on Facebook the community rallied around him.
I don’t know where this election is taking us. Is Blanchfield overreacting or going to be seen as a insightful social pioneer? I do know Trump and his administration picks is scaring the s—t out of me so far..
Blanchfield is responding to a choice of behavior by people who have chosen to support racism, sexism and a level of meanness in authority that truly could border on fascism if it isn’t exposed for what it is. Blanchfield is saying that he cannot support hate speech and hate crimes, and that people who engage in those activities (or who support the thugs who do) are not people with whom he can do business with in good conscience. So Blanchfield is making a positive statement about common American values of not attacking others.
The bakers who refused to provide services to gay marriages did so out of hatred and bigotry. They were saying that they believe homosexuality is just a choice of lifestyle, in the same manner that they would like people to think hate speech is considered. This point of view is actually a form of hate speech in itself – the bakers were really saying that they don’t believe the gay community has the same rights as anyone else. And to be even more specific, they were trying to affirm their right to hate speech and hate actions under the cover of their religion.
So on the one hand, Blanchfield, you have a person who is speaking out against hatred. On the other hand, the bakers, you have people speaking out in support of hatred. The former point of view is to be commended by any sane individual in a decent society. The latter point of view is obviously reprehensible.
I am slowly weeding out any Trump/GOP supporters from my list of suppliers. We probably purchase in excess $1 million, from long-time and well-trained vendors, some for as long as 25 years. Since our vendors are primarily machine shops and metal fabricators, it’s very hard to replace them, but I’ve ended the relationships with 2 already, and am seriously working on the rest.
As is the case with Blanchfield, this is not the kind of decision that can be taken lightly. There is no good way of ‘coming back’ from this. It DOES make us feel better, though.
