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August 26, 2023

Why do people commit suicide? Volumes have been written on the subject and in many cases, we know, or like to think we know, what motivated them to do so. But some cases, even after ready explanations, still remain rather mysterious.

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A little over a month ago Richard Bilkszto, a middle-aged Toronto high school principal, jumped to his death from the sixteenth floor of his condo building. His suicide briefly made a stir in the legacy media because it was said that he had taken his life because of a nasty encounter he had had with a DEI indoctrinator. During a diversity training session, he had had the temerity to open his mouth and make a mild comment about the narrative that was being shoved down the throats of the attendees, that Canada is an irredeemably white supremacist racist country, worse even than the United States. His exact words were, “Is there room for improvement — absolutely! Are we racist and everything — absolutely!” This mild deviation from the narrative was all it took for Kike Ojo-Thompson, the race-hustler that was doing the brainwashing, to mercilessly lash out at him giving him a severe dressing-down in front of everyone present followed by another such harangue at the next session. Though an ensuing investigation by the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board found that he had been bullied he received no support from the administration. Indeed, there followed a pile-on by some of the fully-woke attendees. Directly after Ojo-Thompson thus shamed him he took a seven-week sickness leave ostensibly due to depression and on July 17 killed himself.

Obituaries following his death have portrayed Richard Bilkszto as a hero for daring to open his mouth. But one must be forgiven for asking, if he was indeed a hero, why did he kill himself in the face of such a manifestly stupid and ugly reproach from a nasty harridan? With all due compassion for this poor man, we still need to ask, is that all there is to the story? Really? A professional race-hustler gives you a dressing-down for mildly questioning her toxic narrative in a public meeting and that is all that it takes to make you take your own life? What kind of hero would do this rather than stand his ground and fight on in the face of such evil? His death was indeed tragic, but why call it the death of a hero? And might it not also be added that a society that would deem it so is rather pathetic?

At this point a little more background is in order. The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is one of the most woke, and therefore most toxic, in North America. Richard Bilkszto has been and should be commended for his moment of courage. But it was not his courage that made him commit suicide, it was what might be called his leftist fragility. Janice Fiamengo has pointed out that to get where he got in the TDSB, to work his way up the ranks and be promoted to principal, and to be praised for his work he must have bought into all the garbage (DEI, Critical Race Theory,) that the TDSB has been shoving down the throats of its employees for at least a generation. There is no reason not to believe that he was indeed a very fine teacher and principal but all within the context of working in a toxic workplace, a workplace where the poison is always in the air and virtually inescapable.

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During his courageous moment, this high school principal was listening to his healthiest instincts and to reason and was trying to embrace or at least describe reality. He was like a drowning person coming up for air. Unfortunately, he had apparently already internalized poisonous thoughts about his own country and at that moment must have suffered from unimaginable cognitive dissonance. As Janice Fiamengo has observed, “Having spent years believing, trying to believe, or trying not to be overly bothered by the idea that a school system should promote equality of outcomes and that “achievement gaps” can and must be closed, Bilkszto was caught in an ideology that both inspired and did violence to his best instincts. No wonder, then, that when he lost his public identity as an anti-racist educator, he could not bear it. The damage was done to him not only in the training session but in the years before.”

Now that Bilkszto is dead, now that the system has been publicly embarrassed by this heinous outcome which is impossible to sweep under the rug, Kike Ojo-Thomas is getting some flak, which she is naturally dismissing as yet another manifestation of white supremacy. Perhaps she will lose some clients for a while, she might even have to reboot as another brand. Since she charged the TDSB $60,000 for four diversity training sessions, perhaps by now she has already made enough money from her lucrative hustling to comfortably retire for the rest of her life.

Now that this poor man has taken his life the Ministry of Education of Ontario and the TDSB have announced plans to investigate what happened. This is a joke, because what happened at these DEI struggle sessions happened not behind closed doors but in plain sight before numerous witnesses.  Moreover, in the present climate DEI training is now everywhere and, more likely than not, everyone who will be investigating the matter will have been through the training themselves and acquiesced to its agenda. Theodore Dalrymple has pointed out the hard truth: those who acquiesce to propaganda and lies are no longer passive but become complicit in them. These investigations will take time because a PR firm will have to be hired. The powers that be will also need to lawyer-up in case there is a wrongful death suit on the way or, one would hope, even a class-action lawsuit for poisoning of the workplace because working this kind of environment is the psychological equivalent of working with asbestos and has resulted in this employees’ death.

If he had not killed himself, Richard Bilkszto’s feeble protest at the diversity training session would have quickly faded out of memory as a tiny blip on the radar of public protest against the evil of wokeness.  But now that there are inquiries into his death the question is: will anything change, will this garbage known as DEI finally be flushed down the toilet where it belongs? One would hope so, and if it does, then in taking his life Richard Bilkszto will have made the supreme sacrifice for the good of the world.

In the movie Gladiator, before their mortal combat, the Emperor Commodus, who claimed to be an accomplished swordsman, stealthily stabbed, and lethally wounded his opponent Maximus before facing him in the Colosseum. In a way, Bilkszto, like Maximus was indeed a hero because he tried to save himself from the poison that had been infused in him, and had he succeeded he might, by example, have saved others along with himself. But by the time he tried, he, like Maximus, had already been mortally wounded. Unfortunately, unlike Maximus who also died trying to save himself and others, in doing so Richard was not able to take the evil emperor with him.

Image: PickPik