The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW The Diversity Con: Secrets and Lies Behind the Shady DEI Industry

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Author Kent Heckenlively joins to talk about his new book working with Project Veritas whistleblower David Johnson showing how companies and schools are infiltrated, radicalized, and captured. And, Kent follows the money trail left in the destructive wake. "The Diversity Con: Secrets and Lies Behind the Shady DEI Industry"Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

Wonderful Baby Bye. Just counting their toes. Wonderful baby. Nothing but new. The world has gone crazy. I'm glad I'm not you. At the beginning or is it the end? It goes in and comes out and starts over again. All right. And our guest is Kent Hecken Lively.

Have you heard that? Wonderful baby. The world has gone crazy. I'm glad I'm not you. Well, these babies are now being born into a world. And the reason I played that, we did start the program by talking about the murder of babies. But now we have babies that are hated because of the color of their skin. We're told that babies are racist.

Six-month-old babies are racist. Where is this coming from? Well, it's coming from the diversity, inclusivity, and equity. I like to mention them in those three orders because it spells D-I-E, die. I think that's what we're headed for. But Kent Heckenlevely is an attorney and a science teacher, also a New York Times bestselling author. And he's put together a book talking about the whistleblower experiences

for a guy who's whistleblower for Project Veritas and exposing a lot of this, they call it DEI training. I call it D-I-E training. So joining us now is Kent Heckenlively. Thank you for joining us, Kent. Thanks so much for having me, David. Yeah, the book is The Diversity the diversity con just published last Tuesday. My publisher always demands that I must show the book on every interview.

So now well, that's good. You can put it up there at any point in time. That's good. The diversity con and yeah, hold it up at any time you want to. That's fine. We're fine with that. It's a, it looks like a very interesting book and tell us a little

bit about how this came together. Well, this is my fourth book with a Project Veritas whistleblower. So I've done the Google whistleblower. I've done the Facebook whistleblower. I've done the CNN whistleblower. And now I'm doing the DEI, or I actually like that, D-I-E. I think that's probably a better formulation. But my co-author, David Johnson, is an extraordinary young man, 26 years old, black, and kind of left of center, actually, and he's gay. And what happened was he is a packaging engineer and he got a job at Hasbro

the toy giant and within the first couple weeks that he was there they had him do this DEI training and he had the foresight to push the record button on it and he heard this crazy thing that you know babies as young as six months old are displaying racial preferences. At two years old, they're excluding people. And he thought this was just crazy. And so his experience as a black gay man in America, the America that was depicted in this video was not the one that he had experienced in his life. And as I said, he kind of considered himself a little bit left of center. He jokingly says, he wants to be able to go to a gay wedding with a gun in his pocket and some pot on somebody's

land who has their own nuclear generator. That's sort of his libertarian perspective. And so he appeared on Project Veritas, and that was a huge story. But what he really wanted to do is he wanted to go deeper into it. And so with the great staff at Bombardier Press, we came up with a plan that he would go undercover at a number of DEI classes so that we could document what was going on and then we we did a deeper investigation as to who's funding this craziness and why might they be funding it so I think that the book is a great combination of you know the humorous stuff that's going on that you know it's really craziness

being taught in these classes so you know there's a lot of of humor in this stuff that you know even though it's very serious you know i always try to take you know the satirical approach to it and yet yet we also need to understand what the system is and who the people are behind these civil rights organizations. I don't even call them civil rights organizations. I call them civil disorder organizations. And so I think that that's a really interesting combination. The other thing that I just want to mention to your listeners is Dennis Prager has been a longtime supporter of the books that I've written, and he wrote just a wonderful forward for the book.

So for those of you who listen to Dennis Prager, this is something that he is just 100% behind. Well, that's right. And of course, know hasbro a kid's uh toy uh place so i can imagine what they're going to be doing in terms of the marketing of kids toys but we've seen this uh whether it's coca-cola or whether it's nascar uh and especially you know it was something like nascar they want to go head to head with their conservative audience uh they're not trying to market what people want anymore.

They've got an agenda that they're pushing. And talk a little bit about this. I mean, when they talk about these terms, diversity, equity, inclusion, all this type of stuff, anti-racism, what is it, pick any of these terms and tell us what they really mean about it. Because they pick words that sound great to us, right? And they carefully choose these terms and tell us what they really mean about it. Because, you know, they pick words that sound great to us, right? And they carefully choose these terms, just like they talk about equity and people think, oh, equality.

You know, what do they mean by these terms? It's a great question. And I think that's what motivated me in putting this book together, because one of the things that just got to david was he's he the the training told them that they should consider ways of pushing a social justice message through the toys without the knowledge of the parents and he's thinking to himself, well, geez, you know, and, you know, he's supposed to consider himself as an oppressed minority. And, you know, his lived experience in America is that what the heck does my race or my sexual orientation have to do with me packaging a toy so that it doesn't break in

transit okay what is the efficiency of the packaging what does my sexuality or my race have to do with the efficiency of the packaging that's right nothing and and so you know, the question is, why is this stuff being pushed? And I think it's got a couple moving parts. You know, part one is that a lot of these social justice organizations are Marxist in orientation. And they will tell you specifically that they are. For example, we do a large profile on Black Lives Matter. And we look at not only their philosophy, and the philosophy of DEI, which is Marxist in orientation. It's got, agents and oppressors it's typical Marxist philosophy however that doesn't answer the question as to why

some of the wealthiest corporations in America are funding this crap because it makes no sense corporations in America are funding this crap. Because it makes no sense. So do we really believe that left-wing billionaires are funding Marxism because they

want to bring in Marxism? No. That makes more sense. No sense. What makes more sense and what we profile is how these wealthy corporations are funding these social justice warriors who are in turn destroying local communities

so that then Target, Amazon, name your large organization suddenly with local communities destroyed everybody's buying things online well who's in the online world it's these left-wing billionaires like mark zuckerberg bill gates you you know, take your pick, Jeff Bezos. And so what we're seeing is that it's not Marxism that they're trying to bring about, but a monopoly. Okay. And the best way to get us hooked on these other systems is to not have us interact with people in our community so let's destroy the family let's destroy the community and what's left we're human beings we have to connect to something we connect to the government and we connect to big business that's right absolutely and that's exactly what we saw with what was happening in 2020 with the lockdowns uh main street is

non-essential we were told these businesses if it's a small business we don't care about that business and we don't care about your job if you work for them you need to work for the big guys and you need to all go into your cubicle that we'll call a house eventually and you need to buy everything online from us and and you know we were told that was you know that they were essential and everybody else was non-essential. It is exactly, you're right, it's exactly the same thing that has been pushed by both parties, by all these politicians for the last three years. And that's, I think, the real agenda. I agree with you 100%.

That is the real agenda. Yeah, these people really do hate our society, but ultimately, it's all about them getting monopolistic control of everything, because that's really ultimately what it is about the Marxists as well. They'll come up with any kind of lie they can, whether it's about struggle of the masses, capitalism, and all the rest of the stuff, or if it's a race war, whatever, anything that they can use in order to get all power and money to themselves. We see that over and over again in these Marxist authoritarian totalitarian regimes, don't we? Yeah, and it may be something counterintuitive, but the groups that I hope read this book are the social justice organizations, because they're being taken advantage of because i i genuinely

believe that in their hearts they want to do good by their community but what they don't understand is how they're being used and the example that we make from history is that the pirates that we think of from the Caribbean didn't start off as lawless entities. They started off as representatives of the British crown. So the British did not have the navy that they would have in subsequent centuries. So what they gave was a letter of marque to these privateers to go against the Spanish main. Well, what happened when Britain made peace with Spain? Suddenly they wanted to get rid of the pirates and some of the pirates didn't go along with it. And so that's when you got the real fight between the British Navy and the pirates. Well, these social justice organizations have to understand that they're pawns, okay? So, you know, they do

some amazing scholarship, they have all these ideas and everything, they're really committed, but they're doing the wrong thing, they're serving the wrong masters. They need to talk to the conservatives who are genuinely interested in every human being succeeding, and they need to talk to the conservatives who are genuinely interested in every human being succeeding. And they need to understand that they're not bringing in Marxism. They're not bringing in, oh, gee, our community is going to do great. What's happening is they're being used to destroy their own communities for the benefit of these billionaires who, as soon as these social justice

organizations are not needed by the billionaires they're going to turn against them so they these social justice organizations need to consider themselves like the privateers who thought that the british crown was their friend their, the British crown was not their friend. These billionaires are not the friends of minorities. You know, we need to talk about how we achieve success. And I think that's where conservatives really have the edge, because we believe in systems of success, not just goals. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, hey, I want to weigh 30 pounds less. Okay, well, that means I need to have a system that I eat less food. Okay, so you can't just wish for something.

You have to have a strategy. And that's what conservatives need to say to these people who, you know, are the front for this? Because I really think the social justice organizations are missing the big picture. We are not their enemies. We want them to succeed. The people they think are their friends are their deadliest enemies. Yes, that's a good analogy. I like the analogy of the pirates. And if anybody wants more information about that, they can see Pirates of Penzance. We are not pirates. We're single gentlemen, you know. Yeah, I agree.

And it is, you know, it is ultimately about power. And, you know, corporations will do it for economic power. You have a lot of the people who have done the march through the institutions. And this is pervasive. You know, it's not just with the corporations. It's also with our educational institutions. So many institutions have, you know, whether you're talking about entertainment or media or education or the corporations, all these different ones, they've got the people who are leading this understand that they are going to be the ones who are going to be empowered by it. Just as see linen had his useful idiots these people are the useful idiots of the neo-marxists who are trying to run this stuff through and they'll always have a justification

to justify the chaos and other things that they implement you know Kent, I've played many times a recording from Fauci just before all this stuff kicked off. It was in October 2019. And I love the way that he laid it out. It was very clear. They said, you know, how do we get people to take a shot that hasn't been tested? He goes, well, we do it from the inside. We do it with disruption, and we do it incrementally.

And that's the way they always get their agenda through regardless of what. That's what is happening with the DIE stuff as well, isn't it? They're doing it from the inside. They're using it to create chaos and to destroy our society. And they're doing it incrementally. Tell us a little bit about, you know, the the whole idea of of equity, because this is a key thing that the left has been on for a long time. They're not talking about equality of opportunity. What are they talking about?

One of the really interesting things that David Johnson observed when he went to these DEI trainings, uh, seminars is like the first day or so would be all sort of information that, you know, is good to know. And probably the average person would go, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense. Day two was when things started to get a little bit sketchy and they'd introduce some Marxist ideas, and day three is where they go completely nuts with things.

And so the idea is, we want all people to succeed, but they're leaving out the role of the individual, the role that the time that Asian, white, and black students spend every week doing homework or work outside of school, which supports school. Asian students average about 13 hours. White students, about eight. Black students average about 13 hours white students about eight black students about five okay think about that so between your average white student and your average asian student the asian student is studying five hours more a week okay that's that's 45, 50 minutes a day, you know, break it down into chunks that can be done. You know, also things like the family, you know, 17 per, only 17% of Asian kids are living with a single parent, 25% of whites, 75% of blacks. Okay. if you just look at those kind of numbers you know

let's make it simplistic let's say what's your strategy for success like if you're going to lose weight you need to consume fewer calories it's it's a real simple way of looking at the world so we don't have to talk about, you know, systematic racism and everything. Let's empower the individual with information that will allow them to be successful. And so the diversion is to throw all this other stuff at young kids, and they don't know what to do. What young kids should be doing is focusing on their schoolwork, focusing on their skills, and then the world will be open to them. And, you know, whatever racism is out there will be so much smaller factor when they actually have, you know,

you know, the opportunity. Yeah, it's key. The, what they're doing is they're exploiting what you're talking about. When we talk about, uh, black, white, and Asian students, you're talking about cultural differences. You're talking about whether the family stays intact. That's a big cultural difference. Uh, and, and, um, what the focus is and, and, you know, the family that is intact is going to push their kids to, to work harder with that and so by by taking that away and making it uh a grievance and saying this is happening to you because of the color of your

skin i think that's one of the reasons why um you know david who um got into that as you point out david johnson who was the whistleblower for project Veritas, he probably grew up looking at the, we're not going to judge people by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And he found that was what he experienced. Well, it's really clear, and in early versions of the book, we were thinking about calling it Killing Martin's Dream, because David really believed in Martinin luther king jr's formulation

that that it's not the color of your skin but the content of your character and that was sort of the way he lived his life and he said this dei stuff is really a destruction of dr king's message and and he said this will lead to societal collapse if we do this. Yes, yes. Racism is racism. You know, it's just got a different group that you put in there

that you're going to push in. And again, to sort everybody, you know, put everybody in little boxes and, you know, different categories and then check the number of boxes that they've got and say, this is a good category, that's a bad category.

And a lot of these things are immutable, things that you can't change, like the color of boxes that they've got and say, this is a good category. That's a bad category. And a lot of these things are immutable things that you can't change, like the color of your skin. And I'm sure that as a homosexual, he looked at this and, you know, you go back 25, 30 years ago, what do we have? We had the don't ask, don't tell. I don't need to know about your private sexual life. Why does that have to be front and center? And even more so as he saw there at Hasbro,

why are you pushing this to kids without their parents' knowledge? That's grooming. You know, that's one of the most reprehensible aspects of this. Yeah. And, you know, he, he said, you know, he, he, his parents got divorced, but he grew up in a family that was supportive of education. His, his mother was Jamaican and, you know, that has a little different cultural aspect to it um you know close to his father and you know he just said like gee i i grew up in a really nice america and you know it didn't discriminate against me my best friend growing up was el salvador and i'm black you know who cares you know when he was in college he worked with a bunch of blue-collar guys. And the terrible thing is, and what we profile in the book, is the really terrible discrimination laws, which were enacted in the South before the Civil Rights era, were all about keeping people from mixing with each other.

You know, one of the laws we came across was you can't play a game of checkers with a black man. And so you find yourself going, you know, what these people really fear is that we're going to mix with people who are different than us and we're going to like each other and so what's remarkable about the whole dei thing is i find their philosophy is exactly the same as the racist terrible people you know in the southern states you know after the civil war

you know the thing they're terrified about is we're going to interact with each other and we're going to like each other. Yes, yes. Yeah, that's always the tactic of tyrants. They want to control people by dividing each other, dividing us from other people, and to make us hate people of other groups. They want us to see everybody as part of a group,

and then they're going to tell us which groups are good and which groups are bad. Tell us a little bit about, you know, it's kind of interesting. David was working for Project Veritas, and, of course, now there's been internal issues with Project Veritas. When was this? I don't recall exactly when this was but I'm sure this was before there was internal problems at Project Veritas

is there anything that you can tell us because you've done books for Project Veritas about any future projects what is the status of Project Veritas right now? Project Veritas since they got rid of James O o'keefe has had a really difficult time i i believe they're in the process of closing down they've actually let a number of people go uh james o'keefe has found a new group o'keefe media group and so he's continuing on his mission and uh you know i was really uh very very honored by the fact that and, you know, all of that instability at Project Veritas came shortly after a big revelation about what Pfizer was doing from a Pfizer whistleblower. So I'll leave that to people's imagination as to what was really going on there.

But, you know, the mission continues and I'm working, I'm working with another project, Veritas Whistleblower. And so we'll see where it all shakes out, but you know, we don't want to, you know, worry too much about the instability. Let's, uh, you know, keep our eye on these people who are, who are doing stuff that affects all of us. Well, that's good. I just wanted to. The reason I asked about it was because I hope they do carry on because they've done great work in the past. And you've been a part of that work in terms of turning this research into several different books. Getting back to the

book, and again, the book is The Diversity Con, Heckin' Lively lively and talking about the experiences of david johnson a packaging engineer at hasbro uh who was who became a whistleblower for project veritas talk to us a little bit about um as you look at the organizations behind all this dei or die whichever you want to call it uh talk a little bit about the Tides Foundation and what you found out about the Tides Foundation in terms of your research. So what's really interesting is, you know, if you're familiar with the nonprofit world, you understand most nonprofits exist on a shoestring budget, okay?

But what we discovered through our deep research is that probably most of this instability is coming from a group called the tides foundation out of san francisco which in 2020 had a budget of 511 million dollars wow okay and and they'd actually given out i think about 63030 million in grants that year. And so the way this works is that rich people, like the Gates Foundation, Soros Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, they'll give money to the Tides Foundation, and you can park your money there for a little while. They'll put it into funds. And then what you do is you tell the Tides Foundation,

hey, why don't you give some money to this group and and they'll go and do it and then the money comes from the tides foundation uh rather than you know the gates foundation or soros foundation or rockefeller and and you know the tides foundation gets to be like great in in my Pirates example. You know, oh, we give this money to this group and we listen to what they say. Oh, this group seems like it's going to be crazy. And, you know, the Tides Foundation has a little bit of deniability from it. So, you know, it's like they're hiring the subcontractors to cause problems.

And, you know, we go through the financial records. I mean, it may not be sexy and everything, but I think it's important for people to know how this is being funded and who is funding it. And, you know, from where I stand, a group like the Tides Foundation should be thoroughly investigated by government agencies to see how it's sowing discord in our communities. And like I said, I think these social justice organizations who are benefiting from this need to take a hard look at who's funding them and really whether they have the interest of minorities

at heart because i don't think they do yeah i agree yeah it is interesting because you see these uh i'll see some kind of initiative that's being put out there and i'll see some organizations like i've never seen that before and you start tracking it back and you'll find well they got money from this or who funds that or you keep tracking this back and you always find the usual suspects. It's like this network of Moriarty that is out there. It usually goes back to one or two of these things. And usually the tides foundation is at the center of one of these things, but they just have layer after layer after layer.

And, um, you know, most people don't go back and, Oh, well, this is a initiative. Oh,

that's a new group that's out there. And they don't realize, no, it's always the same people that are pushing this stuff through. And, again, as you point out, you know, they're looking to get a monopoly on everything to make sure that they're the stakeholders that have a stake in everything. And we own nothing. And they're going to make that perfectly clear. Talk a little bit about the mechanism of how they get into the schools. Is that something that is, of course, there's a lot of money that is coming out of Washington with the Department of Education, taking the role of the Tides Foundation or something,

but the Tide Foundation and these other organizations are involved in that as well, right? What we believe is that the model that they're using is the Chinese Cultural Revolution. We think that they look at that as a really successful campaign. So what did the Cultural Revolution do? Well, they radicalized middle school students, high school students, and college students, okay? You know, I love my young people, but let's be honest. They're the dumbest people in society, okay? Because they're the youngest, okay? Hey, look, I was young and dumb, okay? I got older, I got smarter, okay?

So that's what you need to do because they will be radical. So, you know, what they did in the culture revolution was convince young children to, you know, report on their parents and think about how that destroys social bonds. Yeah. So that's part of the strategy you know if you can capture the young you know who have more time um and you know they're certain in their beliefs you know as i get older i'm less and less certain in my beliefs okay you know i was more certain of things when i was 20 than i am now yeah i agree and you know when you look at this the the authoritarians the communists the marxists whatever that was always looking for useful idiots i've said many times uh there's no idiot that is more useful than a youthful idiot they don't have the experience they don't even have the the same capability of making judgments

and of course this is part of what everybody is concerned about when we look at the grooming and the gender manipulation that is happening with all that and that is a big part of it as well. Uh, just to keep these kids in a constant state of confusion to drive a wedge between them and their parents, but to, again, to just disruption, uh, that is a key thing, uh, and everything that they're doing is, is disruption, uh, from the inside and to do it iteratively. Uh, it truly is amazing to see that this is continuing on. And what would you, do you have some, besides looking at the background, what would your recommendations be?

I don't know if they're in the book, the Diversity Con, or maybe you're just laying out the foundation, or do you make any recommendations after you expose what this con is all about? Well, think of this anti-human agenda they're pushing. So the anti-human agenda they're pushing is to drive us into smaller and smaller groups. So if you want to fight this, what you should do is have a wide circle of friends.

Talk about ideas. Let people understand that you know you are interested in solutions and and i think that's that's something that you know for those of us of a more conservative bent i think one of the the problems the mistakes that we make is we get too worked up about all the evil. And in our presentations, we come across as mad and angry. And what we should be is joyful because what we're doing is we're pushing the positive parts of the human experience. I mean, I have lots of friends who look very different than me. Look, you know, I just recently turned 60 years old. Okay. I'm an old white guy. My coauthor is a 26 year old black guy who's gay. Okay. I adore this guy. He is going to be a force in the future. By my interactions with people who are different than me, it enriches my

life to an extent that I just, you know, it's difficult to describe. So we conservatives should be filled with love. We should be filled with hope. We should be pushing the success of every human being and if we can show that when when we come up against these hateful people it will be so clear to everybody else that we are the good guys and they're the guys who are deluded. They're working under misapprehension. Because I believe a lot of these people in these organizations, they believe the lies. We can't hate them because they believe the lies. We need to gently show them that they're wrong. I agree.

I agree. Yeah, I think that you can't win a culture war if you don't have a culture, as many people say. So you can't fight against just sort of saying, not that, not that, not that, and you don't have anything to offer anybody. I think it's one of the reasons why they were so adamant about shutting down churches. Oh, you can open up the casino, but don't open up a church during COVID, right? They don't want to have people coming in as they are. They don't want to have a community. And I think it is always, we focus so much.

I talked to the guy who has the Tuttle Twin books, and he's got a think tank that he works with for state politics, Libertas. And he was pointing out, he said, you know, we focus so much in politics on the area that we have the least control over, you know, the federal government or the presidency or something like that. We don't focus on our state or on our community. We have a lot of power in that area. I remember you and I are not that much different in age. I remember Tip O'Neill, he used to say all politics is local. They understand that. All politics is local.

And we have so much power to make things happen in our physical relationships, one-on-one with each other, in a community, in a church, all these other things. And that's why they want to keep us isolated, as you pointed out. That is their ultimate goal is to keep us atomized and isolated. And I also have experience as a libertarian and you know we we have to understand i remember um g edward griffin said uh we have to act collectively for individual liberty that's a difficult thing for a lot of people who are hyper individual in their perspective to think about how we have to work collectively in a community, making friends, getting to know people, not necessarily only exclusively online, but one-to-one. We have to do that, and we have to work collectively for individual liberty.

I agree with you. You're absolutely right. I think that really is the way that we undercut this thing. We can undercut them at the grassroots level because we certainly don't have any power in washington they buy all the politicians there's unlimited amounts of money to buy politicians are the best investment anybody could ever make so we can get that down at the grassroots level i absolutely agree with you about that so so the book is the diversity con and i'm sorry david but i gotta be rushing off. Oh, absolutely. No, no.

That's good. What a great discussion. The Diversity Con, and again, Kent Hecken Lively, The Diversity Con, an excellent book, I'm sure, that's going to be very useful for a lot of people. Thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it, Kent. Thanks so much for having me, David.

Thank you. Have a good day. Folks, we're going to take a quick break, and we will be right back. We'll talk a little bit about Disney, for example. I've got some information about them. We'll be right back. We'll talk a little bit about Disney, for example. I've got some information about them. We'll be right back. You're listening to The David Knight Show.