UW Republican group draws criticism after controversial Tweet
Jul 30, 2019, 5:22 AM | Updated: 10:53 am
(University of Washington/Collegiate Images/Getty Images)
A group of Republicans at the University of Washington are being called out at as homophobes after a controversial Tweet from the organization’s president over the weekend.
The Tweet read, “Republicans are afraid to take true right wing stands on most issues. Rather than provide a real alternative to the cosmopolitan, GloboHomo agenda of the Democratic Party, they offer Liberalism Lite; basically all of the same stuff but with a tax cut.”
Unsurprisingly, the term “globohomo” caused some serious backlash on Twitter.
The organization’s president Armen Tooloee told KTTH’s Jason Rantz that he understands the confusion and may have chosen the wrong words.
“It actually didn’t have anything to do with gay people, specifically,” Tooloe said. “It’s short for globalized homogenized … I’m sure that you know that me and our club have no problem with people being gay.”
Tooloee went on to explain that he believes “globalized homogenized” is a good way to describe a political platform that supports a hyper-globalized economy and culture where every city, state, and even country have the same basic architecture, music, and culture.
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“The only thing that differentiates people is a sort of identity politics game that they play where you’re such and such ethnicity or such and such race or you’re gay or you’re straight,’” Tooloe said. “What they really want to have is this globalized and homogenized society.”
Clearly, Tooloee isn’t a fan of this platform and he thinks voters are disappointed in their lawmakers who are support it.
He said he didn’t expect the backlash on Twitter. He was sitting in his car, waiting for someone, while listening to Senator Hawley from the National Conservative conference in D.C. where he was speaking about such matters. The term just came to Tooloee and now it’s become a distraction.
“People are focused on the word itself and trying to say you’re a bigot or a homophobe or something because they don’t want to recognize that what I said is true,” Tooloee said.
Jason’s never heard the shortening of globalized homogenized, so he did a quick Google search and spotted it in Urban Dictionary. It reads:
“A word used to describe a globalized and homogenized culture pushed for by large companies, politicians, and Neocon/Leftist pawns.”
But the definition further states, “This culture includes metropolitan ideals such as diversity, homosexuality, sexual degeneracy, colorblindness in regard to race, egalitarianism, money worship, and the erasure of different individual cultures, among other things.”
While Jason doesn’t believe Tooloee subscribes to these beliefs, the “The Daily Stormer,” a White Nationalist publication, also uses the term.
Tooloee said he was unaware of that and wasn’t familiar with who coined the term. He had only seen it in passing on places like Twitter. While he likes the term because he thinks it aptly describes the platform, he concedes that he maybe should have done a little more research into its origins.
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“I do regret that a little bit because of the unsavory characters that are tied to it, but I don’t think it necessarily needs to be tied to those people,” Tooloee said. “I think people are focusing too much on that part of it.”
In the future, Tooloee says he will likely stop using the term to avoid the controversy, but will continue making the point because he thinks it’s one that’s lacking among the Right.
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