Why DEI, female Secret Service agents became targets of right wing outrage

“Absolute humiliation for this gaggle of female Secret Service Agents,” right-wing content creator Benny Johnson captioned one video on X, writing lower down in the post that “DEI Secret Service make Presidents LESS Safe.” The post was viewed nearly 9 million times.

“Secret Service personnel on the ground moved quickly during the incident, with our counter sniper team neutralizing the shooter and our agents implementing protective measures to ensure the safety of former president Donald Trump,” Cheatle said in a statement issued by the Secret Service on Monday.

The online backlash over the gender of the Secret Service agents responding to the shooting illustrates how online antagonists can quickly spread partisan speculation during national emergencies when there is little authoritative information available. In the wake of the weekend shooting, liberals and conservatives have flooded social media with unproven claims about the shooter and attack.

Meanwhile, internet platforms have backed away from some of their most aggressive efforts to moderate toxic content, often leaving much of it unchecked. The social media landscape has become more decentralized, as groups of like-minded users bolster their partisan views in online silos.

The DEI attacks add to the growing references to diversity in social media posts, podcasts and other public statements from conservative politicians, commentators and influencers, blaming corporations’ efforts to foster a more inclusive and equitable work environment for everything including airline malfunctions and fights in schools. According to social media posts, podcasts and other public statements from high-profile conservative politicians, commentators and influencers analyzed by The Washington Post, such references rose 50 percent and are 15 times as common since July 2022. The term DEI is emerging as one of the right wing’s favored topics to generate social media attention and outrage, experts said.

“This is all part of a direct effort to kind of undermine and eliminate those [DEI] policies in the federal government should Trump get elected,” said Teddy Wilson, publisher of Radical Reports, which covers and studies far-right extremism.

In another example, far-right influencer Matt Walsh posted a video featuring female Secret Service agents gathering around Trump after the attack with the caption, “There should not be any women in the Secret Service. These are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women.” Pearl Davis, a well-known anti-feminist YouTuber said in a since-deleted post, “Why do we keep trying to put women in positions where we don’t belong? Go work in human resource, assistant, sales, or low level management.”

Institutions appear to be backing away from DEI in the wake of these attacks. Some have rebranded their diversity programs or eliminated requirements of job applicants to discuss diversity, said Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

“After the George Floyd killing and all the chaos through the pandemic, lots of corporate leaders sort of came out and said, ‘You know, we are going to change,’” Chakravorti said. “They made all kinds of promises, and a year later, you look at the numbers — literally nothing had changed.”

Over the past year, DEI efforts — once praised by tech CEOs — are increasingly criticized for leading to bloated payrolls in Big Tech, unqualified hires at start-ups, and lower standards across the economy and academia, a position often discussed on tech podcasts like “All-In.”

Elon Musk has been campaigning against DEI to his nearly 190 million followers on X long before the rally, including a post in December that said, “DEI must DIE.” Venture capitalists in his orbit also pointed to the Secret Service’s DEI efforts on X. Musk wasn’t immediately reachable for comment.

Anil Dash, a veteran tech entrepreneur, said the pushback against DEI by tech titans in Silicon Valley is partly a response to the rise of tech workers as a powerful class of laborers who called out bad actors, advocated diversity initiatives and pushed back against business deals they saw as unethical, like working on weapons. Some tech leaders resented this display of power — and moved to roll back consensus that racial and gender diversity is a good thing for the industry, Dash said.

DEI encompasses a wide range of practices that advocates describe as ways to diversify companies, schools and organizations and ensure equal access to opportunity. It includes efforts such as recruiting and mentorship programs geared toward underrepresented groups, anti-bias training and employee resource groups. Critics of DEI programs say preferences based on race and gender are themselves discriminatory.

The social media attacks on DEI come on the heels of a conservative legal movement designed to challenge long-standing corporate and government programs that consider race, gender and other preferences to fight demographic disparities in business, government and education. That legal campaign has been buoyed by the Supreme Court’s ruling last June that held race-based preferences in college admissions decisions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unconstitutional.

Chakravorti said right-wing influencers probably won’t slow their attacks.

“The attacks on DEI programs and the so-called ‘woke agenda’ has been a critical part of the right wing platform, the Republican platform.”

Jeremy Merrill contributed to this report.