“The stupidity and ignorance on display currently is insane.”
It seems the Trump administration’s attempt to purge the US military of any traces of diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) has spiralled into a confusing mess.
Images of ‘Enola Gay,’ the Boeing B-29 aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan in combat during WWII, are among a number of photos that are in fact unrelated to DEI but have been mistakenly flagged.
The aircraft was not named after sexual orientation, but after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of its pilot, Col. Paul Tibbets.
The purge, following an executive order from former President Trump, has flagged over 26,000 images across military branches, with estimates suggesting the actual number could surpass 100,000.
The directive targets material that mentions anything remotely related to DEI, and the majority of deletions are material referencing minorities and women. A large number of posts that mention various commemorative months, such as those for Black and Hispanic people and women, have been removed.
Images of historically significant military achievements or personnel, such as the Tuskegee Airmen and the first female Marine Corps infantry graduates, have also been flagged for removal.
And, particularly absurd, photos of Army Corps biologists have been flagged simply because they recorded gender alongside fish data.
The process has been reportedly slow because of limited personnel. Apparently, the Marine Corps only has one civilian employee managing the deletions.
While historians and military experts have raised concerns that the removals could lead to the loss of important records documenting the evolution of the armed forces, defence secretary Pete Hegseth defended the move, saying: “DEI is dead. We are returning the focus of the military to merit and mission readiness.”
Can you imagine how Trump and his cronies would react to the British military, which is similarly under fire from the right-wing press for supposedly being infected by “woke ideology.”
Just this week, a headline in GB News screamed: ‘EXPOSED: Army insider blows whistle on ‘woke ideology’ infecting Britain’s forces – ‘meritocracy wins wars, not DEI.’
The article features an ‘army insider’ who argued that ‘woke ideology’ is ‘hampering fighting effectiveness, wasting resources and depressing morale.’
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail barked: ‘Woke RAF is running out of gun pilots!”
The newspaper continues with the alarmist assertion that the RAF’s ‘unlawful diversity drive’ was jeopardising Keir Starmer’s promise to send jets to support Ukraine, claiming that RAF leaders had ‘launched a desperate search for pilots’ after a ‘secret bid’ to discriminate against white male applicants backfired.
I’ll stop there but you get the picture. No doubt Trump and his anti-woke allies would have a field day with the UK military, eager to exploit their manufactured culture war for political gain.
As we’ve seen time and again, the real threat isn’t DEI initiatives, but the forces working to undermine them.
In the case of Enola Gay, Fake History Hunter summed it up well on X:
“The stupidity and ignorance on display currently is insane.”
And frankly, it’s hard to argue with that.
Image credit – X screen grab
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