Uber COO Barney Harford had the audacity to criticize an Uber ad featuring a mix-raced couple.  He remarked that perhaps not a lot of Uber customers are mixed-race couples, therefore the ad does not focus on Uber's target audience.

On a conference call this spring with colleagues, Mr. Harford, the company's chief operating officer, critiqued a new ad that showed a mixed-race couple, said five people familiar with the conversation.  He debated aloud how common the pairing was among the audiences that would see it.

Though Mr. Harford later told colleagues that he regretted his phrasing, his comments struck many on the call as insensitive about race.

All Harford was saying is that maybe the ad should reflect the typical Uber customer, not a fantasized mixed-race couple.  If an alien landed in America and evaluated our country based purely on our advertisements, he'd conclude that America is far more than 13% black.  That's because so many ad agencies use black actors and models to virtue-signal.  It's not that companies are convinced that most of their customer base is the 13% of Americans who are black, but rather that companies are trying to show us how virtuous they are by putting blacks forward as their fictional target audience.  This was Harford's crime: suggesting that Uber target its actual audience rather than its fantasy virtuous one.

Harford got ratted out by some of his morally superior colleagues, and boy, did he get into trouble!  Harford immediately had to write a self-criticism and turn himself in to the thought police for re-education.  Here's an excerpt from his self-criticism:

In the course of conversations with some of you, I have been embarrassed to learn that at times I made comments that made people feel uncomfortable, isolated, or unwelcome.

Saying that an ad should feature Uber's real target audience makes people feel uncomfortable.

You have my commitment that I will do everything necessary to create a truly inclusive environment.

"Inclusive" is code word number one for "get rid of whitey!"

I am committed to working with a coach who will challenge me to confront my blind spots.

What is a "coach" in this context?  When I was a kid, a "coach" was someone who helped improve your baseball swing.  In this case, I am guessing that a "coach" is a political commissar who will re-educate Harford and eradicate all his impure thoughts concerning race.  What is this, really?  A "morality coach"?  A "thought rectification coach"?

And, most importantly, I will seek out opportunities to build the best, highest performing, and most diverse business leadership team.

"Diverse" is buzzword number two.  It means the same thing as buzzword #1: "get rid of whitey!"

I want to close by saying how grateful I am you spoke up.

I'll bet Harford is really, really grateful.  And to think, he hasn't even been reprogrammed yet!  Harford closes by saying he's glad that colleagues reported him for his thoughtcrime.  He invites them to report him again to the company's anonymous hotline if he continues to stray.

I'm glad I don't have to work in a major company and toe the official line on "inclusion" and "transgenderism" and late-term abortions and whatever else is the fad of the moment.

Harford's self-criticism reminds me of what occurred in China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.  There, too, political enemies had to make confessions to purify themselves.

Thomas Lifson adds: Having interviewed U.S.-educated scholars who were vilified in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, I can attest that this is how it starts: the insistence on apologies and professed eagerness for re-education.  But in China, it went much, much farther, to include beatings, being paraded through the streets in dunce caps and pelted with garbage, and sometimes death in prison camps.

Ask yourself: what would Antifa do, if it seized control?

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.