They raised the issue, not me!
I’m not complaining about the New York Times, this is what they do, but I thought you should see this article (just in case you didn’t know you were a xenophobic hater for questioning what Hamdi Ulukaya is doing to Twin Falls, Idaho).
They must be really fearing another B-word too—Breibart!
And, no surprise, they even bring Donald Trump into the story.
It doesn’t matter if Ulukaya’s plans to change Twin Falls have been done in secrecy. It doesn’t matter if he puts on the white hat of humanitarianism as he encourages a steady supply of cheap immigrant labor to be brought in at your (taxpayer) expense. It doesn’t matter if some critics believe refugee labor is slave labor. It doesn’t matter if you object to the social and cultural changes he promotes for your community, or that he got lucrative government contracts during the Obama Administration.
None of those things matter to the NYT which is out to silence free speech. Only one thing matters and that is you are a hater of foreigners and they get to call you one of their favorite grown-up words—xenophobic—for daring to question his business practices that depend on your tax dollars!
Here is the story:
By many measures, Chobani embodies the classic American immigrant success story.
Its founder, Hamdi Ulukaya, is a Turkish immigrant of Kurdish descent. He bought a defunct yogurt factory in upstate New York, added a facility in Twin Falls, Idaho, and now employs about 2,000 people making Greek yogurt.
But in this contentious election season, the extreme right has a problem with Chobani: In its view, too many of those employees are refugees.
As Mr. Ulukaya has stepped up his advocacy — employing more than 300 refugees in his factories, starting a foundation to help migrants, and traveling to the Greek island of Lesbos to witness the crisis firsthand — he and his company have been targeted with racist attacks on social media and conspiratorial articles on websites including Breitbart News.
Now there are calls to boycott Chobani. Mr. Ulukaya and the company have been taunted with racist epithets on Twitter and Facebook. Fringe websites have published false stories claiming Mr. Ulukaya wants “to drown the United States in Muslims.” And the mayor of Twin Falls has received death threats, partly as a result of his support for Chobani.
Online hate speech is on the rise, reflecting the rising nationalism displayed by some supporters of Donald J. Trump, who has opposed resettling refugees in the United States.
“What’s happening with Chobani is one more flash point in this battle between the voices of xenophobia and the voices advocating a rational immigration policy,” said Cecillia Wang, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.
I’m guessing that the calls on social media to boycott Chobani Yogurt must be having an impact, and I am further guessing that the NYT is not helping the yogurt company one bit with this story.
(I think most people had forgotten that there were calls to boycott Chobani Yogurt.)
See our complete archive on the continuing controversy in Twin Falls, Idaho by clicking here.
