Virginia state government investigating white supremacist EMT - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/white-supremacist-emt-alex-mcnabb_us_5c0aeed4e4b0a606a9a8a967 Alex McNabb, a white supremacist podcaster who works as an emergency medical technician in southern Virginia, is under investigation by the state’s Department of Health, a spokesperson for the department confirmed to HuffPost. McNabb, 35, is a frequent co-host of “The Daily Shoah,” a popular neo-Nazi podcast. On the show he regularly tells stories about being an EMT, often referring to patients by racist slurs and comparing black patients to animals. In a recurring segment on “The Daily Shoah,” McNabb assumes a persona he calls Dr. Narcan. In these segments, he tells his co-hosts stories about being an EMT. He regularly refers to black patients as “dindus,” a deeply racist slur common among the alt-right. During a Nov. 8, 2016, episode, McNabb compared black patients to animals. “The heat brings out the wild in the dindu,” he said, adding that, “as winter approaches, the animals go into hibernation and the ridiculousness of the [911] calls goes down.” He then told another story of an “unruly young African-American male child running around” an emergency room. “Dr. Narcan enjoyed great, immense satisfaction as he terrorized this youngster with a needle and stabbed him thusly in the arm with a large-gauge IV catheter.” In a statement sent to HuffPost over Twitter, McNabb wrote that “Doctor Narcan is a work of fiction.” On the Nov. 30 episode of “The Daily Shoah,” McNabb said he didn’t treat patients differently based on their ethnicity or religion.

I'd normally say that this shouldn't necessarily matter in this context - while white supremacists can go die in a hole for all I care, if he's good at his job, he's good at his job, and there is a severe shortage of EMTs. But severe racial biases are just way, WAY too likely to manifest themselves in his quality of work as a medical professional. He's far too likely to treat non-white patients more poorly, even if he doesn't intend to. He should absolutely be investigated.

Something tells me that no matter what, he could be the world's best EMT and treat every patient like royalty, and he's still gonna lose his job.

if you think half your patients would be better referred to a veterinarian then you're a bad EMT by default

Even if he put up a 100% bias proof firewall, exhibit A at a medical malpractice suit will be his hours and hours of racially and ethnically charged podcast.

Really? So he's bad at placing IVs? Bad at performing CPR? Bad at reading monitors for vitals? It seems, according to the article, that his shitty views were only discovered after an anonymous tip, not through an investigation into some sort of bad care. So what makes him a bad EMT specifically?

The PR is enough for him to lose his job. This kind of thinking cant be prevelant in our emergency agencies, and at least to the general public opinion not out in the open for anyone to see. Ideally these thoughts should never occur but what can you do. If your outest as such a blatant racist, even in your private life it doesnt matter if your good at your job, by being there you bring down the organization you are a representative of if you have now publically know racism. Now, whether thats right or wrong at that point for them to lose their job is up to debate.

In a line of work where peoples' lives literally hang in the balance you cannot take any risks that one of your workers will do an adequate job despite actively referring to others as subhuman.

This whole line of "you are a representative of the organization you work for" is complete and utter horse shit, and needs to be nipped in the butt. We don't need to give companies more excuses and avenues to control what employees do outside of work. If that means I have to be treated or served by someone who thinks I should be killed in a genocide, then so be it. But I'm not comfortable with the idea that anything other than someone's performance at work could be used as an excuse to terminate them. So what's the excuse for all other lines of work? Because this it's not just something that happens in the medical field.

No one's life hangs in the balance if a cashier is secretly thinking "man I hate black people" while ringing up some groceries. You shouldn't be fired just for having certain political views, even if they're controversial. But there's a line when those views are objectively reprehensible and bad enough to affect profits. If there's 2 different coffee shops, but one has someone who wears a "black lives don't matter" shirt, and the other one doesn't have anyone like that, then the other one is going to get much more traffic, regardless of the quality of the coffee.

You're assuming that "reprehensible views" is an objective universal constant, but it's not. It's very much something that's relative, and quite fluid. Admittedly, my issue is not with this specific case. I really think this guy is an absolute shitty human being and I don't really care what happens to him. I'm not trying to defend HIM as a person. These kinds of situations really just rub me the wrong way. I see the ever increasingly politicized world we live in, and then I see something like this, and while I have no sympathy for a white supremacist, I can't help but think about the rabbit hole this could lead to in the near future, all things considered.

It's not something that needs to be "nipped in the budd". Maybe construction is different but you have always been able to be terminated for something other than raw performance at work, in pretty much every field. This is a downright bizarre post to lead with.

While I agree, considering the dude co hosts a Neo Nazi podcast and talks about his experiences on the job and discusses patients in a derogatory manner and doesn't make any attempt to hide his identity, I'd say this is a fairly extreme example and even if he wasn't an EMT this would probably get you fired from most workplaces.

Which I still believe to be complete and utter horse shit. If they're not paying me for the time, they shouldn't be able to dictate what I do with it.

To an extent. A company shouldn't be able to fire you for talking about the crazy party you went to over the weekend. A company (or the government, in this case, since he is a licensed professional) should absolutely be allowed to investigate and possibly terminate if you are proudly boasting about your racial biases at the job site. Especially when the "job site" in this case is, you know, administering emergency healthcare?

Most employers state in your contract that if you act like a big piece of shit in public they can discipline or fire you because even when you aren't at work you're still an employee and in some ways represent your employer. Whether or not you agree with that is up to you, but its stated in most contracts, at least it is in my own experience.

When I was in high school I had a Dean who constantly looked the other way when I was being violently bullied by other students for being gay. It got so bad that I was nearly killed on one occasion and attempted suicide on two others. This fucker always claimed how he wasn't aware and always kept this bullshit level of plausible deniability or faux understanding when he repeatedly refused to take care of the bullies in any meaningful manner. He had a heart attack partway through my junior year and died shortly after. Suddenly, it came out that this guy was a long-time member of a anti-LGBT hate group that specifically advocated for young LGBT kids be bullied into conversion or suicide. Many of the students who were bullying me had parents who were in this group who knew the Dean personally. Worse, it came out that the higher school administration knew about his membership in this group and looked the other way for the exact same fucking excuses you're putting up here: They felt that what he did in his free time had no bearing on his work evaluation. His maltreatment and mishandling of me and other LGBT kids wasn't obvious enough for it to show up as bias on its own but the second his personal bullshit came to light it was glaring what the pattern was. This was a school disciplinary official, not nearly as directly responsible for my health or wellbeing as a doctor, who still used the ability to slip through the kinds of cracks these excuses provide to really fuck up and nearly end my life. As far as I'm concerned, if you hold bigoted beliefs you're subject to all the societal contempt that comes with it, regardless of what dark corner of your life you try to hide it in. There's no such thing as a firewall, it's just a matter how sneaky they have to be.

if you choose to spend your free time being a racist piece of shit and devaluing the lives of others based on skin color, and your job is literally is maximizing efficiency in taking care of these lives ( all lives), I don't see why your employer would want you around. Especially since the US has at-will employment.

This. Having worked with and near racists since I was a teen (racist against black people and racist against white people) I find it very hard to believe that this doesn't in some way affect their professional lives when they are working around the people that they have a constant, seething disgust for. This goes for most fields but for something as critical as emergency medical care it goes double.

It feels that you aren't taking the details of this particular case fully into account. He personally brags about mistreating black people online (I hope I don't need to explain why the "it's just fiction" excuse shouldn't be taken at face value). I also believe that companies shouldn't ever encroach upon their employee's personal lives, but if you bring your biases into work as much as this guy does, especially when other people's lives depend directly on you, you should at the VERY least be investigated. Also, it doesn't help that you led with what essentially amounts to a dogwhistle about a liberal conspiracy to persecute conservatives.

it's Silence. When you get the chance take a look at their posting history.

Come on man I know you're not this dumb.

Being pro-genocide is still very widely recognized as reprehensible, the idea that killing is wrong is one of the oldest and most basic principles of human morality.

Unfortunately I am very much familiar with his work. I am aware that people like him just come in, plant some poorly disguised hate speech and then twist the discussion endlessly to try and make those who call them out seem like the REAL bigots. I guess I just wanted to articulate my opinion on this horrible story.

It's a conflict of interest to put it simply. His job is saving human lives, and his views could potentially get in the way of that. If he views black people as sub human his views can very well influence his actions or inactions in that regard, whether consciously or not, his ability to do his job properly is compromised. If he was a shelf stocker, whatever, his views can't really change how he puts shit on a shelf, but his views CAN effect his work as an EMT.

I agree with your post but just want to point out that while it may not affect his job performance, it could affect other things, like interactions with customers and coworkers. This should absolutely lead to HR or in-store investigation to see if it's a consistent issue and if it is affecting the store or his coworkers, termination should absolutely be on the table.

I don't care if he can regrow limbs or can cure cancer, he's a cunt and deserves to be ousted as one. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

Of course this is also true. I guess the key element here really is that at least with piss poor customer relations and stuff that the stakes are much much lower. Generally a poor customer experience doesn't result in the death or severe medical complications for the customer at least. I wonder how much of a defense force he'd have gotten if he were a simple grocery store employee who was fired for being a piece of shit to only black people.

As a professional in the medical or paramedical field, you're supposed to be a fucking professional. That includes keeping your personal views out of the office space or EMT ambulance. Who asked him to mouth off his racist bullshit where everyone could hear it, then? let me tell you for a fact, if I were caught spouting the same shit this man did, I would at the least find myself suspended from service for six months, to say nothing of having my name and face plastered everywhere as being "that neo nazi racist doctor", if it reached the right ears. Be racist elsewhere if it pleases you, but not while on duty, shut up and do your job properly, or don't do it at all if you can't think of people as anything other than animals.

Yeah usually i'm mister "let sleeping dogs lie", but this absolutely would interfere with him performing his job, and fulfilling the responsibilities and duties he undertakes as an EMT. Fuck him.