First Lady Melania Trump and evangelicals listening to a speech by President Donald Trump on August 27, 2018 (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks/Flickr)
MAGA influencer and conspiracy theorist Nick Shirley, in one of his YouTube videos, claimed that a Somali-operated day care center in Minneapolis was committing fraud by not having any real children on the premises. The 23-year-old Shirley defended his work on the "PBD Podcast," arguing that being celibate demonstrated his credibility.
Shirley said, "I'm a virgin. I don't have sex with random girls. You're not gonna catch me on those sexual allegation charges."
In a scathing article published on January 5, Salon's Amanda Marcotte emphasizes that Shirley's day car center claims are easily debunked — and that his "odd" and "irrational" defense of his work reflects a "longstanding fear" among MAGA Republicans.
"Shirley stands accused of lying for racist reasons, so his 'but I'm a virgin' defense is irrational — at least on the surface," Marcotte explains. "But it makes more sense, in a psychosexual way, in light of the right's longstanding fear and loathing of day cares."
Shirley's false claims about a Somali-opera day care center, Marcotte argues, not only underscore "conservative audiences" having a racist need to "hear Black people are committing crimes" — they also show the far right's disdain for day care centers in general.
"These businesses were picked almost certainly because Shirley and his colleagues have tapped into the longstanding tendency of paranoid reactionaries to make day cares the subject of conspiracy theories," Marcotte writes. "Along with birth control and abortion — whose providers are also smeared constantly with right-wing lies — day care is loathed on the right for allowing women to work instead of being financially dependent on a husband. In the 1980s, day care workers were accused of being Satanists. Now, during the MAGA era, the scapegoat for men's fears of female independence has shifted from imaginary devil-worshippers to real immigrants."
Marcotte continues, "White women are implicitly accused of using immigrant labor as a cheat to avoid their God-given duty to quit work to stay home and raise babies. Vice President JD Vance has been especially loud with his belief that day care is pushing women away from their supposedly inherent desire to be housewives…. The Manosphere isn’t just deeply misogynist; it's also incredibly racist."
Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.
