The legacy media and the chattering left collectively sneered when US President Donald Trump questioned whether an air crash was the consequence of DEI hiring. Except that he may well have been on to something: as Steve Sailer shows, after years of unparalleled safety, the US air industry was force to bow to ‘diversity’. Obama-era DEI quotas saw to it that a black applicant who failed maths or science in high school scores higher on hiring rubrics than a white applicant with a pilot’s licence or college degree. I wish I was making that up.
For Trump, indeed, the dangers of placing ‘diversity’ ahead of competence got pretty personal, with the egregious failures of the female-led Secret Service in the near-miss assassination attempt last year.
Now questions are being raised about the female-led security team at the Louvre, following last week’s astonishing ‘heist of the century’.
The 88 million euros ($102m) heist has been deeply embarrassing for France, and the fact that those responsible appear to be local villains as opposed to the international criminal masterminds that some had suggested will only further redden the Republic’s face.
Jordan Bardella, the right-hand man of Marine Le Pen, called the robbery a “national humiliation”, as did Marion Marechal, the niece of Le Pen and a former MP in her National Rally party.
Marechal demanded that the Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, and the head of security, Dominique Buffin, be relieved of their duties.
Des Cars and Buffin are both women whose promotions attracted much fanfare from the media. Des Cars was handpicked by French President Emmanuel Macron. ‘Trailblazers’ they may be, but are they competent?
Laurence des Cars was appointed to her post in 2021, the first woman in the 230-year history of the Louvre. Her competency has come under scrutiny this week. It was reported in the press that des Cars has invested five times less money in security than was the case between 2006 and 2008. On the other hand she has splashed out nearly half a million euros on a new dining room.
It’s just another day, then, in Macron’s DEI-friendly France.
Macron has been a fervent supporter of DEI, or what is known in France as the “feminization” of society. Upon his election as president of the Republic in 2017 he appointed Florence Parly the minister of the armed forces. A socialist and career civil servant, Parly had no military background.
And it showed.
In March 2022, a month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, France’s top brass warned that they had enough ammunition for four days of high intensity combat. Parly left her post a few weeks later without much to show for her five years in office other than the “feminization” of the military.
In 2019 Parly launched an initiative to increase the number of women in the armed forces and she boasted that she would “double the proportion of women among generals by 2025”.
That should do wonders for France’s military reputation.
France’s civil service has also been subjected to similar social engineering. In 2023 a law was passed that increased the quota for female appointments to senior and executive positions from 40 per cent to 50 per cent. As of 2027 there will be financial penalties for non-compliance.
Women so competent that bosses have to be forced to hire them.
France’s “feminization” has been inspired by America’s DEI, but while the Trump administration has started dismantling the dogma, France is doubling down. There was a furious response earlier this year when the US Embassy in Paris sent letters to companies requesting they drop DEI programs.
The Ministry of Foreign Trade denounced the letters as “US interference” and proclaimed that France “will defend their companies, their consumers, but also their values”.
Just don’t ask them to defend their crown jewels. They might break a nail or something.
