“Diversity, equity, and inclusion are three wonderful sounding words that are, in fact, a scheme to do the exact opposite.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch-American writer and intellectual of Somali origin, nails it in a recent interview.
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion are three wonderful sounding words that are, in fact, a scheme to do the exact opposite”pic.twitter.com/bZH5aVXhCD
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) February 20, 2025
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion are three wonderful-sounding words that are, in fact, a scheme to do the exact opposite—a divisive con with roots in Stalin-era Soviet tricks. Look at korenizatsiya: it dangled diversity to non-Russians—local languages, leaders—promising a fairer shake after Tsarist rule. But it was a bait-and-switch. Stalin wanted loyalty, not freedom; when folks didn’t toe the socialist line, he deported millions—3 million by 1945. Diversity? Only if it served the Party.
DEI pulls a similar stunt. It sings a sweet tune—include everyone, right wrongs—but flips the script in practice. Diversity? It cherry-picks favored groups, ignoring others, baking in bias instead of balance. Equity? It’s not fairness; it’s forced outcomes, punishing some to prop up others based on history, not merit. Inclusion? Only if you nod along to the “right” ideas—step out, and you’re canceled, not welcomed. Like korenizatsiya’s Soviet playbook, DEI pushes unity but breeds resentment, splitting people into winners and losers.
Stalin’s scheme demoralized by design; DEI does it by accident—or maybe not. It promises a rainbow but delivers a gray blob of conformity, sidelining talent for ideology. Far from uniting, it pits us against each other, a biased mess dressed up as progress. Soviet subversion or not, DEI’s a feel-good lie that tears down more than it builds.”
Korenizatsiya: Stalin’s Soviet DEI Program
Did you know the Soviet Union ran a DEI program exactly like the Woke Marxist one of today? How about Mao’s China? As it turns out, DEI isn’t an American invention. It’s a Soviet invention and Soviet export, designed, outlined, and implemented by Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin in the USSR in the 1920s. The results were predictable, of course: massively increasing ethnic strife arising from within the world’s most widespread Affirmative Action program in history.
Russians, then later Han Chinese, then later straight, white, Christian, males in the West, were invited to subjugate themselves to ethnic minorities to accomplish “actual equality,” which we today call “equity.” The full program was called korenizatsiya, and its “diversity” program was called raznoobrazsiya, and its lever was called “Great Russian chauvinism” in the USSR, “Han chauvinism” in the PRC, “white supremacy culture” in today’s West, and “great-power chauvinism” in general.
In this groundbreaking episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay explains the korenizatsiya program of Stalin’s USSR and reads excerpts from two of Stalin’s works to flesh it out. Join him to understand how DEI is nothing more than a Bolshevik Communist program we’ve implemented on ourselves.