No fairy tale: the Walt Disney Company is an American industrial titan with a loud, progressive voice the company has used to campaign against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ parental rights bill.
But as loud as they are against a state policy they disagree with, Disney has been silent about the ongoing Uyghur Muslim genocide in China — even as they film movies there.
Fox Business reached out to Disney asking why it appears they are more vocal in speaking out on the DeSantis-backed bill than the literal genocide going on in China, and if the company would condemn the ethnic cleansing.
Disney did not respond to Fox Business’ request for comment.
DeSantis’ spokeswoman Christina Pushaw eviscerated Disney in a Friday email to Fox Business, blasting the Mouse House as having “failed to condemn the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights violations”, and that the company’s disposition towards the genocide is “much worse than ‘silence.’”
“Disney has actively endorsed the CCP’s mistreatment of ethnic and religious minorities,” Pushaw said.
“Disney’s live-action film Mulan (2020) was filmed in Xinjiang, with Uyghur internment camps edited out of the background. Disney actually thanked Xinjiang CCP officials (the same communists forcing Uyghurs into gulags) in the credits of the movie.”
Pushaw pointed to an IndieWire article talking about the Uyghur detainment centers — which China calls “voluntary education centers” — and said DeSantis “has led the way in protecting Floridians from malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party and has consistently criticized CCP human rights abuses.”
“If you look at how these major companies behave when faced with Chinese disapproval, they censor what the CCP tells them to censor and we see groveling apologies,” DeSantis said in a December 2021 press release cited by Pushaw.
“Go back a generation, and the idea of the American elites was, ‘If we allow China into the WTO and give them most favored nation status, that will make China more like us,’” DeSantis continued.
“This experiment has failed and it has endangered our nation’s national and economic security.”
DeSantis’ spokeswoman also cited video of the governor’s remarks slamming Disney after the “CEO of Disney called him to express opposition to the Parental Rights in Education bill.”
“You have companies, like a Disney, that are going to say and criticize parents rights – they’re going to criticize the fact that we don’t want transgenderism in kindergarten and first grade classrooms, and that’s the hill they’re going to die on,” DeSantis said.
“Then how do they possibly explain lining their pockets with their relationship from the Communist Party of China?”
“Because that’s what they do, and they make a fortune and they don’t say a word about the really brutal practices that you see over there at the hands of the CCP,” the governor added.
Pushaw said that corporations “should focus on their businesses and creating value for customers” before torching Disney for losing sight of their company being “family-friendly entertainment.”
“In Disney’s case, that means family-friendly entertainment – not radical progressive activism,” Pushaw said.
“Corporations do not have veto power over bills passed by Florida’s duly elected legislature. ‘Woke’ virtue-signaling is empty and meaningless, particularly from companies that bow down before a brutal communist regime so they can line their pockets with money from China.”
The Mouse House made headlines on Friday after an open letter from an anonymous group of religiously and politically conservative employees speaking out about their beliefs publicly coming “under attack” by the company they work for.
The employees warned the company not to take political stances that alienate some workers and parts of Disney’s audience.
The employees heaped praise on Disney, noting that “our work contributes to a fountain of wonder that inspires joy, awe, and delight in guests and audiences of all ages.”
However, they warned that “over the last few years, one group of cast members has become invisible within the company.”
They wrote:
“The Walt Disney Company has come to be an increasingly uncomfortable place to work for those of us whose political and religious views are not explicitly progressive.”
“We watch quietly as our beliefs come under attack from our own employer, and we frequently see those who share our opinions condemned as villains by our own leadership.”
Disney has long been under scrutiny, not only for its increasingly woke policies but also over their ties to China and silence over the human rights abuses plaguing the country where they actively pay money to film movies.
(Fox News).
