Cancel culture comes around. A Harvard graduate who apparently threatened to stab people who say, “All lives matter” has lost her job at Deloitte after understandable backlash. She has since claimed the video was an analogy, not a threat, but the TikTok video she posted certainly seemed like a threat.
Claira Janover took to TikTok again to lament her firing on Wednesday. “Standing up for Black Lives Matter put me in a place online to be seen by millions of people,” she said. “The job that I’d worked really hard to get and meant a lot to me has called me and fired me because of everything.”
Janover’s LinkedIn page lists her as an “incoming government and public business service analyst” at the Britain-based accounting firm Deloitte. During the TikTok video, Janover turns to a page from the company’s website, bitterly complaining that she was fired “even though they claim to stand against systematic bias, racism, and unequal treatment.”
Janover graduated from Harvard in May with a degree in government and psychology, The New York Post reported. Her name went viral after she posted a TikTok video delivering an angry apparent threat to people with “the nerve, the sheer entitled cauc-asity [Caucasian audacity] to say, ‘All Lives Matter.'”
“I’m-a stab you,” the Harvard grad says as the video zooms in tight on her face.
“I’m-a stab you, and while you’re struggling and bleeding out, I’m-a show you my paper cut and say, ‘My cut matters, too,'” Janover adds in the video, holding up her pinky finger.
The Harvard grad has since deleted the video, but others preserved it on YouTube.
Janover has claimed that she received death threats as the video went viral. Death threats are inexcusable, and if she did not mean to make a death threat herself, she should have re-thought the “analogy” in her video. While it makes sense the Harvard grad might have wanted to make an argument like “Telling a ‘Black Lives Matter’ supporter that ‘All Lives Matter’ is tantamount to sympathizing with someone who has a paper cut while refusing to help someone who has been mortally stabbed,” she chose to issue an apparent threat instead.
Janover’s other TikTok videos demonize Trump supporters as white supremacists.
The Harvard graduate frequently posts videos of herself acting as two different characters. In one such video, she starts, “I’m voting for Trump because…”
Then the alternative version of her cuts her off, saying, “You’re a white supremacist, or do you prefer racist?” As the other Janover complains, the “woke” woman responds, “You’re also implicitly homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic.”
In today’s rabid cancel culture, if an employee publicly said anything remotely like this about the Black Lives Matter movement or any other favored leftist cause, most companies would fire him or her immediately. In one case, a professional soccer player found himself sacked for his wife’s tweet — a tweet he himself condemned.
I oppose the cancel culture, not just because as a conservative I would find myself in its crosshairs but because this kind of witch hunt is detrimental to free expression in a society. Janover should not be fired for calling Trump supporters white supremacists, although that is very offensive and she deserves condemnation for it. Making threats of violence is another matter, however.
Rather than recognizing her mistake and apologizing for the apparent threat, Janover has decided to play the victim.
“Trump supporters took my job away from me,” the Harvard graduate lamented in a second video. “I have gotten death threats, rape threats, violent threats. It was OK, but now my future’s entirely compromised because Trump supporters have decided to come for my life.”
Crying, she vowed to continue to champion Black Lives Matter and condemn those who counter with “All Lives Matter.”
“I’m too strong for you. I’m too strong for any of you ‘All Lives Matter,’ racist Trump supporters,” Janover declared. “It sucks. But it doesn’t suck as much as systemic racism. And I’m not going to stop using my platform to advocate for it.”
Then she attacked Deloitte.
“I’m sorry, Deloitte, that you can’t see that,” she said. “That you were cowardice [sic] enough to fight somebody who’s going to make an indelible change in the world and is going to have an impact.”
Perhaps if Janover had an ounce of sympathy for those who disagree with her far-left dogma, she might make a greater impact. This incident is also an indictment of Harvard’s education. How does a Harvard graduate make a video like that and not realize she threatened to stab people? Did Harvard really teach her to demonize Trump supporters and those who say “All Lives Matter”?
Yes, that last question was rhetorical.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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