I Am Richard Bilkszto

How DEI Destroyed a Devoted Canadian Educator

“I am Spartacus!” Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas 1951

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.

~Edward Everett Hale

In 1960, a film called Spartacus was released. It was based upon a novel by Howard Fast, the son of Jewish immigrants, who had worked for the United States Office of War Information during WWI, contributing to broadcasts from Voice of America. After joining the Communist Party in 1950, Fast ran afoul of the infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities. Refusing to name names before Joe McCarthy and his cronies, Fast was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for contempt of Congress. While in prison, Fast wrote Spartacus, the story of an uprising among Roman slaves in the First Century, B.C. The manuscript was blacklisted by all the major publishing houses, so Fast published it himself. The novel sold out seven printings during its first four months of publication. Fast had struck a nerve.

Fittingly, when actor Kirk Douglas’s production company, Bryna Productions, took up Fast’s novel, blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was enlisted to adapt it, under the pseudonym “Sam Jackson.” He banged out his brilliant script in two weeks. Clearly, this was a passion project for all involved. Before the film was released, gossip columnist Walter Winchell outed Trumbo as the writer of Spartacus, which led ultimately to Douglas’s announcement that Trumbo would receive full screen credit for his work—effectively breaking the blacklist for good. It was an impulse that Douglas, throughout his life, held up as one of his proudest moments. Clearly, the bringing of the tale of a rebel—Spartacus—to the screen was an act of rebellion itself, against the chilling, censorious and brutal campaign of character assassination and career destruction wrought by our government under the auspices of Senator McCarthy. It was also a powerful repudiation of those members of the Hollywood community who had “named names” and thrown their fellow artists and filmmakers to the wolves to save their own skins.

So, what’s the film about? In a nutshell, it’s the story of an enslaved man whose very nature is to resist. He’s sentenced to starve to death when he refuses to toil in the mining pits, but his ferocity is noted by a businessman who trains gladiators (the 2000 film Gladiator borrows liberally from the plot of Spartacus) and purchases him to become a champion of the coliseum. He does—but when an Ethiopian opponent named Draba refuses to kill Spartacus in the arena, and is slain for his defiance, the gladiators revolt, and, led by Spartacus, they become a formidable army. Ultimately, despite numerous victories over Rome, the slaves are cornered. Spartacus urges his legion to die fighting, proving their humanity and righteousness. The cruel Roman general Crassus offers a pardon to any member of the rebel force who will expose Spartacus, who is doomed to crucifixion. In the penultimate moment of the film, every man raises his hand, declaring, “I am Spartacus!” This inspiring act of solidarity is ultimately futile. The entire slave revolt is doomed to hang from the cross, and, as he dies, Spartacus is offered a last look at his wife and child, passing beneath him as they escape to freedom.

It’s no wonder that this film broke the blacklist, and it’s a testament to Kirk Douglas’s courage in championing Fast’s story, Trumbo’s authorship, and the delivery of a powerful moral death blow to a shameful period of ugly witch hunts, cultural cowardice and governmental corruption. And here we are again—as institution after institution in our country is captured by the ideological bureaucratic grift of Antiracism and its legions that march under the banner of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Before I leave the McCarthy era, let me tell you about Philip Loeb. He bears an uncanny resemblance to the primary subject of this piece, Mr. Richard Bilkszto, whose tragic story has enraged me so much since I heard it that it took me over a week to be able to lower my pulse enough to focus, and write this essay.

Newspaper reporting on the suicide of Philip Loeb, 1955

We are a few weeks away from the 68th anniversary of the death by suicide of blacklisted actor Philip Loeb, in 1955. Loeb was riding high a few years earlier, as star of the popular TV show, The Goldbergs, playing a struggling Bronx family man working in the sweatshops of the NYC garment district (not unlike my great-grandfather). He was an ardent unionist, which may have resulted in his being falsely included in Red Channels, an anti-Communist pamphlet, exposing the names of suspected traitors. There’s evidence that many of the fingers pointed at supposed communists were antisemitic—Jewish people were particularly singled out, and Loeb’s public image was very true to his Jewish identity. Whatever the motivation, the forces of “reformation” condemned Loeb, who was fired from The Goldbergs under a storm of scandal and enormous personal anguish. His career was virtually destroyed; the occasional stage role came his way, but the damage was done. Loeb was the sole provider for a disabled son, and he was soon in desperate financial straits. On September 1, 1955, Philip Loeb checked into the Taft Hotel under an assumed name and took an overdose of sleeping pills. He left no note. Years later, Loeb’s real life friend and fellow blacklisted actor, Zero Mostel, feelingly enacted his former colleague’s tragedy in the 1976 film, The Front, his character leaping from a window to escape the ignominy of the blacklist.

Another fine and brilliant man leapt from a window about a month ago, up in Canada. His name was Richard Bilkszto. I urge you to read Rupa Subramanya and Ari Blaff’s reporting in the Free Press, on Bilkszto’s collision with DEI and his subsequent ostracism, demonization and dehumanization; the loss of his reputation and his life’s work as an educator and school principal. Bilkszto was beloved in his community; he was dedicated to bringing educational opportunity to underprivileged and marginalized kids. He was a gay man of great empathy and compassion. Bilkszto had already retired, but decided to return to his work, and in 2021 was the principal of a high school catering to students in the their twenties who’d been high school dropouts. Bilkszto, who trained and worked in the U.S., was attending a required Zoom session in April of that year, led by a diversity trainer named Kike Ojo-Thompson of the KOJO Institute, a DEI consultancy firm. Subramanya and Blaff’s reporting offers embedded audio recordings from that and the other two sessions, and I urge you to listen, not merely to the bully tactics and misinformation engaged in by Ojo-Thompson, but to her snide and gleeful tone of voice when she responds to gentle pushback by Bilkszto to her assertion that Canada, more than the U.S., “is a bastion of white supremacy and colonialism…the racism we experience is far worse here than there.” Citing his own lived experience living and working in predominantly Black high schools in Buffalo, NY, Bilkszto defended what he called “a far more just society” in Canada, citing the quality of the public schools, socialized medicine, and the Canadian tax system.

Having been on the receiving end of the venom and ruthlessness of antiracist social justice warriors in the workplace, I recognize this remark as Bilkszto’s instigating event. I had mine last summer, in a rehearsal hall at a summer stock theatre in Massachusetts. Glenn Loury, praising me for “breaking the spiral of silence,” invited me on his esteemed podcast with John McWhorter, to relate my experience of being attacked, bullied and ostracized after defending a fellow actor from a vicious SJW pile-on. The podcast episode has had 23,000 views—it’s also what inspired me to start The Cornfield.

Richard Bilkszto—not realizing that his job as a white man of a certain age, authority, education and experience, was to be silent—challenged DEI propaganda. For his pains, he was singled out; made an example of, a sacrificial lamb. His interlocutor—his inquisitor—was ruthless, belittling, and apparently loved every minute of it. Vilifying Bilkszto, and referring to him as “Whiteness,” and in subsequent sessions, as a resistor and a weed for which she got out “the weed wacker,” Ojo-Thompson actually giggles as she shreds this man’s self esteem before a Zoom room of cowards. It literally gives one chills to hear her evident enjoyment of her performance.

This sounds familiar. It bears strong resemblance to a remark made by race grifter Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility and the Carrie Nation of the DEI industrial complex. In a viral comment caught during a webinar earlier this year, during which DiAngelo advocates for, among other regressive notions, segregation, she declares that compliance with DEI trainings and policies should be a requirement for employment. “What I want to do is create a culture that actually spits out those who are resistant,” DiAngelo says, sporting the characteristic sneer of her ilk.

Oh, yeah, lady?

This is the tone of DEI work: this smug, gleeful public shaming of anyone (especially anyone white) who dares to push back; to defend the values of their institution, organization, or country—to stand up for nuance, for freedom of thought and speech, and to repudiate the abandonment of truth. Kike Ojo-Thompson perpetuated an online campaign to destroy Richard Bilkszto, clearly using him as an example, casting him as a heretic; her vilification of him as effective as the dunce cap used in Maoist Cultural Revolution struggle sessions. The wildfire of Twitter branded Bilkszto a racist; a white supremacist. His superior, Executive Superintendent of Education Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini (who is Black), tweeted support for Ojo-Thompson’s tactics: “When faced with resistance to addressing Anti-Black racism, we can’t remain silent as it reinforces harm to Black students and families…Thank you @KOJOInstitute for modeling the discomfort administrators may need to experience in order to disrupt ABR (anti-black racism).” She has since deleted the tweet. Yeah, I bet she has.

And for “modeling the discomfort,” what did the KOJO Institute make for the three Zoom sessions that decimated Richard Bilkszto’s life? Around $14,000.00. Toronto public money paid for a hit job on a dedicated career educator who simply disagreed and demonstrated patriotic support for his country. Blood money, if you ask me. After a two year ordeal, during which Bilkszto filed a lawsuit against the Toronto School Board, he descended into a traumatic spiral, culminating in his suicide on July 13th of this year. Despairing, Richard Bilkszto leapt from his 16th floor balcony, ending his life. To add disgusting insult to injury, Kike Ojo-Thompson had the audacity, a mere two weeks after Bilkszto’s tragic death, to try and paint herself as the victim. “This incident is being weaponized to discredit and suppress the work of everyone committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion… [W]e will not be deterred from our work in building a better society for everyone.”

Like Philip Loeb before him, Richard Bilkszto became collateral damage, sacrificed to a narrow, militant, venal campaign of authoritarian persecution, merely for speaking out; for resisting. But unlike Spartacus, no one stood with Bilkszto. His colleagues abandoned him, even cheered on his destruction, all to save their own miserable skins.

Well, I’m fed up, and I know I’m not the only one.

I started this Substack in order to speak out and speak up for my creative work, for freedom of speech, and the exposing of destructive and dangerous forces that have hijacked our society. I took the online Best Practices for Inclusive Theatre Workplaces training instituted by my union, Actor’s Equity Association, and wrote a three-part expose of the divisive, nasty content of the course, and the feeble responses from the union (which I’ve been a member of since 1990) when I voiced my criticisms and concerns. Now, here’s an irony for you: in 2010, Actor’s Equity Association, on the 55th anniversary of his death, rededicated the Philip Loeb Conference Room at its home headquarters in New York City. This is the same union that states at the start of its DEI training that Actor’s Equity has traditionally been a “white supremacist organization.” Hypocrites.

I started to speak up because I was told I wasn’t entitled to. FUCK THAT. This is still America, and I am no one’s collateral damage. Try to “spit me out,” and I will leave a bad taste in your mouth. There is no defense for the outright, bold-faced cruelty-with-a-cackle that Ojo-Thompson and the profiteers of DEI exemplify. If you can’t feel the sickening in your solar plexus when you listen to the words of these people from their own lips, then perhaps you’re dead to common human empathy. There’s little evidence that the billion-dollar DEI industry is succeeding at anything but dividing people, re-racializing society, getting dedicated people fired, and losing companies, large and small, profits and public confidence.

A year out from my own confrontation with this divisive bullshit, I feel the pendulum swinging back. I find myself able, more and more (admittedly, usually behind closed doors) to have conversations with like-minded friends and colleagues which a year ago I wouldn’t have broached. My modest efforts here on Substack are being met with approval and gratitude. Show business, and businesses in general, are surveying the wasteland left behind by bad Woke products, ideas and divisive campaigns. Smug activists like DiAngelo and Ojo-Thompson, exposed on video in their own words, are showing their true colors. But damage is being done in the interim. Perhaps if Richard Bilkszto—a man two years my senior, a loving teacher, a kind and caring gay man, beloved by his family and colleagues—perhaps if he’d not been left swinging in the wind, if he’d known he was not alone, and that there are many out here who agree with him and stand with him…perhaps he’d have lived to see his lawsuit win, and watch this ugly tide turn. It’s time to speak up.

I AM RICHARD BILKSZTO.

Richard Bilkszto 1963-2023