The mayor of Nice, France, rebuked Victor Wembanyama for supporting the ongoing protest movement in France, accusing the NBA star of encouraging unrest.
"French celebrities like the basketball player Victor Wembanyama, who called for supporting the riots of October 17, bear a historic responsibility," Ciotti wrote on X. "They must be condemned."
For background, the protests began in September with high school students claiming they were demanding better conditions in French schools, including more resources, improved facilities and relief from overcrowded classrooms. The movement has since expanded into a broader protest against government spending cuts, drawing support from university students, labor unions and members of France's "Yellow Vest" movement.
The unrest escalated significantly on Oct. 17, when an estimated 550,000 to 800,000 people participated in demonstrations across France. Rioters broke out in several major cities, including Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Rioters and looters clashed with police, set fires, damaged public buildings and looted businesses.
Earlier this month, Wembanyama, who was born in France, wrote on Instagram that he'd "really love to" join the protests.
"These are systemic inequalities, problems that are so deep," he added when asked about the demonstrations during a preseason postgame press conference on October 8.
"I’m glad that high school students, young people in general, are making their voices heard, because I hear them and I support them. And I hope the people at the very top will do the same."
Then, on Oct. 16, the eve of the nationwide demonstrations, Wembanyama posted a cryptic image of the White Rabbit from "Alice in Wonderland" pointing to his watch. Some in France interpreted the post as signaling anticipation for the Oct. 17 demonstrations, though Wembanyama did not explain its meaning.
Wembanyama has not publicly commented on the protests since the widespread violence on Oct. 17.
As the emerging face of the NBA, Wembanyama has shown he's more LeBron James than Michael Jordan in his approach to political issues. Last January, he said he ignored the advice of Spurs public relations and spoke out against ICE in America anyway.
"PR has tried, but I'm not going to sit here and give some politically correct [answer]," Wembanyama told reporters. "Every day I wake up and see the news, and I'm horrified. I think it's crazy that some people might make it seem like or sound like the murder of civilians is acceptable."
During the NBA Finals, Wembanyama drew attention for crossing his arms during the playing of the U.S. national anthem. Later in the series, he reportedly stayed off the court entirely during the anthem.
It would behoove the NBA for its biggest star to not align himself with polarizing political causes. James did little to help his own or the league's popularity when he embraced political activism.
I suspect Wembanyama's commentary and demonstrations, whether about America or France, won't help the league's popularity either.
One must also wonder how informed Wembanyama is about the issues on which he comments. This tends to be the question when athletes and celebrities speak out about complicated issues.
His initial support was for students protesting conditions in French schools. Fine. However, the movement he encouraged has since grown into something much larger and, at times, much more violent.
Wembanyama was willing to lend his considerable platform to the demonstrations when they represented a cause he supported. Now that those demonstrations have been accompanied by widespread violence, he ought to use that same platform to condemn it.
Editor's note: This op-ed is part of a series by Eli Steele exploring White guilt in America and the West. Steele is the director of the newly released documentary essay, "White Guilt." See the film at WhiteGuiltFilm.com.
I am a native Californian, and I will never get over the absurdity of seeing California and slavery in the same sentence. I believe I saw it for the first time during the height of the Black Lives Matter unrest. I remembered how I learned in my San Jose elementary school that California entered the Union in 1850 as a free state. Yet here we are again, this time with AB 2599, the Truth in Disclosure Act.
On September 30, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the act into law. "This is a bill that requires large companies that operated before 1965 to search their records for ties to slavery going back to 1849, and then we make it public," Newsom said. "These are insurance policies on enslaved people. Human beings used as collateral, quite literally as collateral for loans."
I first learned about these atrocities as a child, and they made me understand how total the dehumanization of slavery was. This history should be learned, but there is something profoundly different about turning history into a legal obligation, sworn under penalty of perjury. This comes at a time when most California students, including Black students, are underperforming in reading and math. So why does Sacramento want to excavate corporate records from 1849 rather than fix the classrooms today?
I believe the point of this investigation is not to discover more history, since we have historians for that, but to unearth confessions that can be commodified as grievances. To see why, you have to understand that White guilt is transactional.
When I mention White guilt, many people tell me they feel none. Of course, they don't. You cannot feel guilt for what you have not done. But, that is not White guilt. "White guilt doesn't have anything to do with actual feelings of guilt," my father, Shelby Steele, author, columnist and Hoover Institution senior fellow, says in our new documentary, "White Guilt." White guilt is the collective guilt that says all Whites must carry the sins of the slave masters and segregationists forever.
Activists on the Left have leveraged this accusation for power since the 1960s, and it has produced a terror in many Whites, the terror of being tied to this racist past. Those Whites, especially liberal Whites, want innocence most of all, the ability to say, "I am not like those racist Whites."
Black leaders understood early on, as my father did in the 1960s, that Whites would do anything out of their deep, existential desire for innocence. That is what gives White guilt its transactional nature.
My father has said that White guilt is "quite literally the same thing as Black power." From Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton to Black Lives Matter, these leaders knew their power was in selling Black victimization. Whites bought innocence with everything from endless programs of dependency to lowered education standards. Both sides of this White guilt — Black power symbiosis get what they want, and that is the trap.
In order to keep the lucrative White guilt grift alive, Black leaders have to keep Blacks locked into permanent victimhood, and Whites have to remain condemned as eternally guilty. As America continues to make racial progress, this symbiosis has moved further left, and further into the past, in search of more grievances.
It was California’s reparations task force that demanded AB 2599. This new law applies to any company doing business in California that takes in more than $100 million a year worldwide and existed in some form by the end of 1964.
Once the legislature funds it, any such company will be legally bound to go through its records, and the records of its parent companies, subsidiaries and predecessors, back to 1849. It must report any findings that the company sold or leased slaves, used them as collateral for loans or insured them. The first filings are due as early as January 15, 2029, and the records will be kept online indefinitely. Every filing will be a confession made under oath, and every confession becomes one more grievance on the public record, available to the activists for as long as the database exists.
Newsom bought his own racial innocence by signing into law the demand that more Black victimization be found. Imagine if Newsom had refused to sign. He would have been blasted as the governor who protected the companies that exploited slaves.
Right there is the very terror that White guilt deploys to kill any reasonable objections. And the corporations on the target list will confess to the sins of their predecessors and buy their innocence with statements of regret and funding for programs and initiatives. None of them will risk the stigmatization that comes with fighting a slavery disclosure law.
On the same day, Newsom vetoed a bill to exempt reparations payments from state income tax. Where there was no innocence to be gained, he refused to cost his state actual revenue.
On the other side of the bargain are the sellers, and their product is Black victimization. The author of the bill, Democratic Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, told CalMatters which companies he expects to file. "I'm thinking agriculture. I'm thinking banking, insurance. I'm thinking anything in the financial sector." Then he said about what comes next. "Once the public has this disclosure and we have a full accounting of the impact, then it's up to us to decide what that means and what we're going to do about it."
If that last line comes off as a threat, it is because it is. Bryan is telling these companies that once the grievance is documented, lawmakers will set the price of penance. And what this statement also reveals is that this is nothing more than a fishing expedition to find the crime to fuel the White guilt-Black power symbiosis.
That is why the left will never let the White guilt — Black power symbiosis die out. Kristin Nimmers, policy and campaign manager for the California Black Power Network, told Fox News Digital that "a single check is not going to holistically repair our communities." She wants "a harm-based approach, so whoever was harmed should be entitled to that repair."
The rest of us are chum in this transaction, Black children most of all. California released its new test scores on October 15. Only 33.7% of Black students met the state standard in English. In math, it was 21.5%. Our state is busy chasing the ghost of past crimes while ignoring the very crimes of miseducation taking place today.
But the White guilt-Black power symbiosis never had any interest in doing the hard work of developing young minds into individual talents. Instead, this symbiosis will wait for the companies to report back on the sins of their predecessors, and then its elites will hold up the evidence as yet more proof that California and America are systemically racist.
The past will be dragged into the present as if no progress had ever been made, the accusation refreshed and sharpened for another generation. And worst of all, the Black children who needed a state that believed in their future will instead be told that the sins in that database, from 1849, are what has been holding them back all along.
I teppisti delle piazze italiane sono sfuggiti a una rete educativa che non ha funzionato, anche per colpa di una sinistra giustificazionista, che non boccia, che non punisce, che non indirizza. Il governo con il nuovo provvedimento varato in Consiglio dei ministri prova a cambiare registro. Lo dice a Formiche.netElisabetta Gardini, vicecapogruppo di Fratelli d’Italia alla Camera che, partendo dalle devastazioni di Milano, analizza le cause politiche e gli effetti sociali di tali fenomeni. “Cosa è cambiato rispetto ai miei tempi? Ieri c’era la misura: non spaccavamo vetrine, non calpestavamo libri, non rubavamo abiti pur essendo tutti provenienti da famiglie monoreddito. Avevamo dignità e rispetto per tutti, docenti e istituzioni scolastiche”.
Scontri, manovra, elezioni: dove finisce il disagio e dove inizia l’infiltrazione?
Dinanzi a queste situazioni, prima ancora di capire se è un attacco ibrido o solo violenza, ci dovrebbe essere una condanna unanime, a maggior ragione perché gli autori sono minorenni. Occorre capire che esiste un limite che non può essere oltrepassato. Purtroppo la sinistra non riesce proprio a condannare senza poi dire “ma”. Per cui penso che alla base dei rapporti umani, delle relazioni familiari e anche dei rapporti tra amici ci devono essere delle linee che non si possono superare. I tumulti ci raccontano che purtroppo sono state superate abbondantemente. Bisogna essere inflessibili, occorre un’alleanza della politica con chi ha un ruolo educativo e un ruolo dirigente nel Paese. Non riusciamo ad uscire da questa palude nella quale la sinistra sembra sguazzare bene. Più c’è caos e più le opposizioni sono contente: ciò lo considero gravissimo. In Aula abbiamo anche chiesto alla sinistra di sottoscrivere la proposta di legge di Fratelli d’Italia in discussione generale sulla cittadinanza, ovvero che in presenza di atteggiamenti del genere bisognerebbe fermare il processo per la cittadinanza italiana e intraprendere un percorso di ripensamento e di rieducazione, in attesa di una seconda possibilità.
Il Cdm ha dato il via libera al nuovo decreto sicurezza e criminalità minorile, oltre a 500 agenti in più a Milano. Come rispondere a chi vi accusa di suonare il solito ritornello di “regole e disciplina”?
Finalmente c’è anche per i minorenni il fermo preventivo. Significa che questo governo non insegue l’emergenza, ma interviene quando è necessario affrontare un problema che purtroppo si è manifestato in tutta la sua drammaticità. Confesso che nessuno avrebbe mai immaginato di vedere bambini di undici anni che vanno a sfasciare vetrine per prendersi l’ultimo paio di scarpe alla moda. Bisogna prendere dei provvedimenti ed è chiaro, come osservato dalla ministra per la Famiglia Eugenia Roccella, che anche per i minorenni si lavora su due binari, la prevenzione e la repressione. Noi abbiamo con i nostri provvedimenti diminuito la dispersione scolastica: mi sembra un grandissimo risultato di cui andiamo fieri. Però non bisogna neanche fare l’errore di identificare questi violenti, che sono una minoranza, con tutti gli altri giovani: quattro scalmanati non rappresentano la totalità degli studenti. Non è così oggi e non era così anche ai miei tempi.
Cosa è cambiato rispetto a 40 anni fa?
Ricordo che mio padre mi accompagnò a sporgere una denuncia contro ignoti perché un picchetto mi impedì di entrare in classe. Io volevo entrare in classe, ma qualcuno non era d’accordo. Anche ieri, erano sempre i pochi a piantonare l’ingresso della scuola, al liceo classico Tito Livio, che frequentavo. Ma a differenza di oggi c’era la misura: non spaccavamo vetrine, non calpestavamo libri, non rubavamo abiti pur essendo tutti provenienti da famiglie monoreddito. Avevamo dignità e rispetto, per tutti, docenti e istituzioni scolastiche. Ci approcciavamo a qualsiasi lavoro, pur di andare avanti nella vita. Sicuramente era un’altra epoca la mia, ma assieme alle mie amiche non potevamo permetterci boutique di alta moda e compravamo i giornali con cartamodelli. I vestiti ce li cucivamo da sole, nessuna di noi rubava, non spaccavamo le vetrine perché qualcuno voleva il modellino che aveva magari la compagna di banco. E siamo sopravvissute bene a quell’epoca. Oggi vedo persino qualche rapper fare sfoggio di tutto il lusso più sfrenato, per poi stigmatizzare la società dei consumi. Inoltre mi chiedo come sia stato possibile che ragazzini di 11 o 12 anni fossero in giro da soli per strada a sfasciare vetrine. Dov’erano i genitori?
Il ministro della difesa Guido Crosetto ha detto che i fatti di Milano “sono il frutto di quella che io chiamo guerra ibrida che qualcuno sta portando nelle nostre Nazioni ricorrendo a strumenti non convenzionali che si chiamano TikTok, social, YouTube, senza che l’Occidente se ne renda conto e in qualche modo reagisca”. Che ne pensa?
Evidentemente lui da ministro ha strumenti molto più tecnici, però è chiaro che di questa guerra ibrida stiamo parlando da molto tempo, così come si era notato anche durante il referendum sulla giustizia un certo movimentismo dei social, che aveva mandato a votare una massa consistente di giovani che non lo avevano mai fatto prima. La guerra ibrida è un qualcosa con cui ci si confronta e su cui si dibatte a livello internazionale. Il tema, quindi, abbraccia il concetto stesso di difesa ampia, ovvero non più intesa come spese per cannoni o carri armati: oggi la difesa ha tutto un altro approccio. Difesa, ad esempio, è analisi, scienza, indagini così come l’Italia sta egregiamente facendo sull’Artico. Giorni fa in commissione esteri è stata in audizione la sottosegretaria Isabella Rauti che ci ha illustrato cosa vuol dire oggi difesa, come portare il Paese nella modernità, come far sì che l’Italia non sia tagliata fuori dalle rotte commerciali, dalle materie prime, delle materie critiche e dalle strategie internazionali. Per cui occorrono giovani che si impegnano, che imparino con il nostro aiuto a costruire il futuro e non che aiutiamo invece a deprimere come ama fare la sinistra, che foraggia un clima distruttivo. Per la sinistra l’Italia dovrebbe sempre indossare la maglia nera ed essere sempre l’ultima della fila. Oggi vedo in Italia delinearsi una sinistra talmente estrema che l’intero campo largo potrebbe configurarsi con Melenchon.
Proviamo a andare oltre le vetrine infrante: quale il danno sociale per ragazzi irresponsabili e genitori giustificazionisti?
Premetto che oggi non è facile essere genitori, ma se un figlio di 11 anni circola da solo per tumulti, forse è lecito pensare che qualcosa ti sia sfuggito dalle mani. Come madre mi sento a disagio, anche se è vero che oggi è molto più difficile. Ma sarebbe utile capire come sia possibile che dei bambini così piccoli sfuggano ad una rete educativa, perché dovrebbero stare in una rete di protezione che, evidentemente, non ha funzionato. Quando ero al Parlamento europeo ricordo che i britannici mi dicevano che il minore è considerato tale fino a 14 anni, dopo occorre che risponda delle proprie azioni. Così come ricordo bene che in Belgio bocciavano tranquillamente anche alle elementari. In Italia invece no, la cultura di certa sinistra ha iniziato a convincere tutti che non bisogna bocciare, che bisogna capire, che non bisogna punire. Ed ecco i risultati nelle nostre piazze.
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