Credit Image: © Ted Benson/Modesto Bee/ZUMAPRESS.com
In many ways, the Left is driven by cults of personalities. Seemingly every black person shot by the police gets his portrait on signs held by protesters. “Rest in power!” cry demonstrators. Almost every left-wing cultural advance was marked by a “martyr” and posthumous fame. Emmett Till, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepherd, and others are political saints. Even those who were not cut down can receive religious trappings, with figures such as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg getting devotional candles. Egalitarianism is not a substitute religion; it is a religion.
Many of these saints have their dark sides. Emmett Till’s story was more complicated than the unprovoked murder we are told about, as he reportedly assaulted a woman who never recanted her story. Martin Luther King, a supposed minister, was a pervert who reportedly laughed as a woman was raped in front of him. Malcolm X — famously eulogized by Ossie Davis as “our living black manhood” — was an adulterer and probably a homosexual prostitute. Harvey Milk had sexual relationships with underage boys. Matthew Shepherd was reportedly in a sordid sex-for-methamphetamine deal, not an innocent victim of an unprovoked hate crime.
Therefore, it is not surprising that Chicano union organizer Cesar Chavez has a similarly dark past. Jared Taylor reviewed a biography of him in 2014 and concluded that he was “a deceitful, foul-mouthed, philandering, sociopathic egomaniac who pretended to be a saint.” He was a racial huckster, more corrupt and vicious than even Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. His open use of National Socialist colors in his organization’s flag was seemingly excused by the mainstream media because it was for a left wing, non-white movement. Despite a mainstream biography and reputable reporting on Chavez’s shameful history, he remained a hero in the official American civil religion. President Joe Biden even kept a bust of him in the Oval Office.
What is surprising is that Cesar Chavez is now being “canceled.” The New York Times reported this week that Chavez sexually abused underage girls for years, leading with a story about an alleged statutory rape of a 13-year-old when Chavez was 45. Among the alleged victims was fellow organizer Dolores Huerta, a cofounder of the United Farm Workers (UFW). Now 96 years old, she alleges that Chavez raped her but that she remained silent for 60 years lest she “hurt the farmworker movement.” In one case, she says she was “manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already dedicated years of my life to.” In the second case, she says she was “forced, against my will.”
Remarkably, she got pregnant both times, and she kept the children. After the collapse of some #MeToo scandals, the Duke Lacrosse Hoax, and other accusations, some may be inclined to be suspicious of Ms. Huerta’s claim. However, she had the children raised by other families “that could give them stable lives,” which makes her story more plausible. Chavez’s conduct is certainly consistent with what he reportedly did in other cases. “I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor,” Ms. Huerta said, “of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control.”
The New York Times claims that it uncovered extensive evidence to support the accusations of several women against Cesar Chavez, who died in 1993. The accusations include sexual assault against girls as young as 12, with at least one alleged victim claiming to have attempted suicide as a result. “The Times investigation found that Mr. Chavez also used many of the women who worked and volunteered in his movement for his own sexual gratification,” the paper added. There is therefore little reason to doubt Dolores Huerta’s claims, which seem in character for Chavez.
Striking farm workers from the Delano area gather around Dolores Huerta, vice president of the National Farm Workers Association, and Cesar Chavez, the association’s general director at the Hotel Californian in Fresno on Nov. 19, 1965. (Credit Image: © Carl Crawford/Fresno Bee/ZUMA Press Wire Service)
The speed and scale of Chavez’s cancelation is remarkable, especially considering the previous state and federal efforts to give him a holiday as a kind of Hispanic Martin Luther King. California has already renamed Cesar Chavez Day as “Farmworkers’ Day” and removed him from the state Hall of Fame. There is more work to do because of the streets, schools, buildings, and local festivals named after Chavez.
California is not alone. More than 60 schools nationwide are named after Chavez. Austin, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; Portland, Oregon; and other cities will have to rename streets. Around the country, institutions are scrambling to cover statues of Chavez. The effort is so frantic it is amusing. The determination to give Hispanics their own racial saint has resulted in a festival of iconoclasm. Clumsily renamed commemorations and celebrations now honor nothing in particular. Anglos tired of seeing the Founding Fathers and other American heroes suffer damnatio memoriae at the hands of bitter non-whites can enjoy a little schadenfreude.
March 18, 2026: The statue of Cesar Chavez located in Fresno State’s Peace Garden is seen covered with a black cloth. (Credit Image: © Nick Fenley/Fresno Bee/ZUMA Press Wire)
However, we should not expect the Chavez political legacy to be re-evaluated. In fact, destroying Chavez posthumously may be useful. Allegations against Chavez’s personal character have been known for many years, but what may be more destructive was Chavez’s fierce opposition to illegal immigration for most of his career. In a 2006 American Conservative article entitled, “Cesar Chavez, Minuteman,” Steve Sailer said that Chavez led protests at the INS to demand a border shutdown, reported illegals to immigration authorities, and testified to Congress in 1979 that the INS was looking the other way with illegal immigration to encourage “strikebreaking.” He offered UFW staffers as reinforcements to stop border crossers and some of them even beat up fellow Mexicans. He called illegals “wetbacks.”
Yet Mr. Sailer observes that in his later years, especially as Chavez devolved into bizarre paranoia and cult behavior, he increasingly satisfied himself with being a racial icon rather than a union leader. Labor costs respond to supply and demand, and mass immigration reduces wages. However, if the more important goal is demographic replacement of whites, illegal immigration becomes an act of social justice rather than a capitalist tactic to exploit farmworkers. With La Raza triumphing over La Causa of farmworkers’ wages, the UFW and Mr. Chavez himself became symbols of racial pride rather than economic struggle. The effort to festoon the American southwest with his mug was an expression of racial solidarity and triumphalism rather than a protest against cheap labor. Still, a holiday called “Farmworkers’ Day” may raise awkward questions about how exactly mass immigration is supposed to raise their wages.
The likely result will be a new Hero Cult around Dolores Huerta rather than Chavez. An individual person is politically more useful and engaging than an abstraction like “farmworkers,” especially when the driving force behind the holiday is not high wages but Chicano triumphalism. Chavez’s macho posturing is outdated for today’s progressives. Ms. Huerta’s status as a “survivor” and a victim is far more compelling. We can expect Dolores Huerta Day and associated street names, buildings, and schools. This also means that those opposed to immigration cannot draft Chavez posthumously as a kind of premature Hispanic Trump supporter.
Dolores Huerta (Credit Image: © PI via ZUMA Press Wire)
The larger lesson is that there is no left-wing hero who is truly invaluable. Leftism is above all a project of entropy, as egalitarianism requires endless deconstruction. Almost any progressive from the past dressed, acted, and behaved in more masculine, conservative, and traditional ways than a typical petit bourgeois today. The modern Left has dispensed with the militaristic, sexually repressive ethic of the USSR. A supporter of Red China like Hasan Piker does not trouble himself about what it would mean if Chinese-style racial and ethnic policies were implemented here. Such contradictions do not worry leftists because their primary interest is in tearing down what exists, not upholding an existing social order.
Indeed, we may see further iconoclasm against once untouchable leftist heroes. Michel Foucault reportedly sexually abused children in Tunisia. Noam Chomsky, the most cited academic living today, is reeling because of his seemingly close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Martin Luther King Jr.’s reputation may not survive if more FBI files about him are released and contain more evidence of his sexual sins. However, journalists will not expel these icons from the progressive pantheon unless there is a larger political purpose.
Cesar Chavez, whose importance was already reinterpreted from that of a union leader to an identitarian tribune, outlived his usefulness. Others will undoubtedly meet the same posthumous fate. Yet conservatives should not kid themselves that this will cause some progressives to wonder about the righteousness of the cause itself. While they may not all be fiends like Chavez, everyone falls short of practicing perfect egalitarianism, which is the greater sin in the leftist theology. Anyone is susceptible to cancelation. The problem with being a hero in a movement built upon critical theory is that eventually someone will deconstruct you, too. Leftists have no real heroes —only temporarily useful martyrs. Every revolution eats its own children.
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