A left-leaning Salt Lake Tribune columnist agreed with the assertion that the term “America First,” even though it is used by Utah-based America First Credit Union (AFCU), is racist. This comes after a group of North Carolina Courage football fans challenged the Utah Royals for wearing the logo of the credit union, which sponsors the team, on their jerseys.
Gordon Monson, longtime columnist at left wing Salt Lake Tribune, wrote a article titled “It’s time for a Utah credit union and the Utah Royals to drop the ‘America First’ name and logo,” after the fan group alleged the term was racist.
“Here is a call not only for the Utah Royals to remove the America First name and logo from the front of their jersey and stadium as the team’s primary sponsor, but also for America First Credit Union change name,” he wrote.
Monson’s opinion piece follows a fan group of the North Carolina Courage, called “Uproar”, published on March 22 that the name of the local credit union was racist and criticized the Utah Royals football team for having them as a sponsor. Many took issue with the post and mocked the proposition online, leading to the community rating the post.
The Uproar shared the article on the thread with the original post, claiming that the phrase “America First” is rooted in “racism, fascism and hateful ideology.”
The group also added: “Thank you to Andre and Courtney of @DiasporaUtdPod for courageously speaking out on this topic. We join you in speaking out: football is for everyone, and promoting language related to racism and to hatred is unacceptable.”
Monson said the phrase “represents racism; this represents an extreme political move, unbecoming of a company that wants to serve all Utahns. »
Monson alleged that the use of the term “represents racism”, although he admitted that he had “done business with AFCU, and never, not once, did I feel that anyone associated with the company held or espoused racist views. .
“America First” has been used by a large number of people throughout American history and became more popular when it was taken up by President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
One conglomerate that used this term was the anti-war movement and America First Committee in the 1940s, which was made up of a coalition of “pacifists and communists (at least until Germany attacked the Union Soviet in 1941), wild-haired liberals.” , hard-line conservatives and everything in between,” according to a 2016 article on the subject of James Carafanolongtime foreign policy researcher and military historian at the Heritage Foundation.
THE America’s first credit union only took its name in the 1980s, having been founded in 1939 as Fort Douglas Civilian Employees Credit Union. This name was dropped in 1947 to become the Federal Employees Credit Union. Its name changed again in 1984 to America First Credit Union.
