Alaina Kunes apologized. Her lawyers later pulled the statement amid continued harassment. The internet teaches that the mob never apologizes.
LUTHMANN NOTE: The DNC says it wants to reach 10,000 creators. Fine. Write a rule that still applies when somebody you like goes after somebody you can’t stand. I’m suing Danesh Noshirvan in a separate defamation case, and readers should know that. They should also read the late Fort Myers federal court Judge John E. Steele’s order for themselves. A Black lawyer took a deposition. Noshirvan told his audience the lawyer was a “low-class racist” and said things the transcript shows he never said. The judge found the false posts were meant to stir up harassment. He’s doing the same thing with the Ole Miss story. If party officials would still reward that conduct, let them explain why in public. This piece is “The Left’s WOKE 2.0 Test.”
By Richard Luthmann
Victoria Johnson says one woman apologized. The other kept making the gestures.
That’s the part you don’t see in the Ring video from Ole Miss. Johnson and her roommate Jakiyra Metcalf told CBS Mornings that they went outside to confront the women after seeing the footage. Two women had made monkey noises and gestures outside the apartment Johnson and Metcalf share with Kaiyden Caldwell. According to Johnson, the second woman carried on even as the first said she was sorry.
Metcalf posted the footage. She had every right to. The three women also have every right to tell us what happened after the clip ended.
Alaina Kunes, 18, apologized publicly on November 10. She said she hadn’t met the women before the incident and didn’t know their race. She acknowledged the harm and said she would cooperate with the university’s investigation. CBS reported that she withdrew voluntarily.
Kunes also said she and her family received death threats. A spokesperson for her law firm told the Associated Press that the firm took the statement off its website because harassment continued. The apology didn’t put out the fire. Eventually, the firm pulled the apology.
Meanwhile, AP found that a fundraiser for the other woman warned that it might be canceled if she apologized. Think about the bargain on offer. One young woman says she’s sorry and reports threats against her family. The other is offered financial support that could disappear if she says she’s sorry.
What lesson, exactly, do the people running either side of this circus expect anybody to learn?
The Left’s WOKE 2.0 Test: It has a forwarding address
The original story was about what happened outside three students’ home. Then it acquired a Wisconsin car dealership.
There’s a real family connection. Kunes’s lawyers said her grandfather owns Kunes Auto Group and her father is a former executive. The company says Alaina has never worked for it and has no ownership or professional affiliation. FOX6 also reported separate complaints from Black customers about their treatment by dealership employees.
Follow those complaints wherever the evidence takes you. The dealership doesn’t get a pass on its own conduct because Alaina didn’t work there. And a Ring camera in Mississippi doesn’t settle what happened on a Wisconsin sales lot.
That jump is what I mean by WOKE 2.0. The old version needed a lecture. This one needs a clip, a surname, and a place to direct the outrage. The accusation moves from what somebody did to who knows her, where her relatives work, and who might feel enough pressure to make the noise stop.
The pitch is always accountability. The giveaway is how fast the list of people expected to pay grows.
Danesh Noshirvan didn’t invent that method. He is one of its best-documented practitioners. I’ve covered him for years, and I’m suing him separately for defamation. I have found no evidence that he made or directed the threats Kunes reported in the legal sense. However, I do think the Antifa-linked activist is “responsible” in the terms that Dr. Phil put to him.
Oxford is the warning. Fort Myers is the record.
The Left’s WOKE 2.0 Test: What happened when the target was a lawyer
Noshirvan was already working this territory in the pandemic. In 2021, a South Carolina restaurant manager claimed on TikTok that he’d fired dozens of workers for getting vaccinated. Noshirvan identified the restaurants. Hostile calls and bad reviews followed. There was a problem: The man in the clip didn’t own the restaurants, and the vaccinated workers hadn’t been fired. Noshirvan acknowledged he’d been misled and asked followers to leave the businesses and staff alone. The real owner told Input the harassment had continued. The man who had to answer the phone hadn’t even made the video.
Then came the Fort Myers Dunkin’ video. As Frank Parlato chronicled, a parking-lot confrontation involving Jennifer Couture became a dispute that reached Dr. Ralph Garramone, his medical practice, and their lawyers. But not because anyone was racist. It was because Danesh had sensationalized it: he selectively edited the video in order to make it appear more confrontational than it actually was and stoke bias.
By April 2025, Duane Morris attorney Julian Jackson-Fannin was taking a deposition in the federal case. Noshirvan then told his audience that Jackson-Fannin had said he thought Black people looked like monsters. He named the lawyer’s firm, tagged professional organizations, and urged followers to circulate the posts.
Duane Morris was inundated with disparaging messages. Jackson-Fannin received threatening voicemails. One invoked his female relatives.
The late U.S. District Court Judge John E. Steele (a Clinton appointee) had something the people leaving messages didn’t bother to consult: the transcript. Jackson-Fannin hadn’t said it. The judge found that Noshirvan’s false post-deposition communications were intended to incite foreseeable harassment and intimidation. Steele publicly reprimanded Noshirvan’s lawyer, Nicholas Chiappetta, and later ordered Noshirvan to pay $62,320 in attorney fees.
Those are findings about a specific episode. They are also a damn good answer to anybody who insists this stuff is just people being loud online. ecf.flmd.uscourts.gov
If Democrats want to be the party that takes racism seriously, they should be among the first to object when somebody makes up a racist remark and sends it out under a lawyer’s name. That doesn’t diminish what happened to the women at Ole Miss. It explains why the evidence matters in both places.
Metcalf had footage. Noshirvan had an accusation that the transcript disproved. Treating the two alike would be its own kind of contempt for the people who actually experienced the conduct.
The Left’s WOKE 2.0 Test: Cancel the method, or own the consequences
Shadi Hamid argues in UnHerd that the Left’s midterm victory opens a path away from the old identity orthodoxies. I’d like to see it. The test comes when denouncing a pile-on costs Democrats something with their own crowd.
The DNC set a goal of identifying and engaging 10,000 creators by the end of November 2026. This outlet previously reported that Danesh Noshirvan indicated on social media that he applied to Chorus, a separate creator incubator. And Scott Dworkin publicly urged people to follow Noshirvan and subscribe to his Patreon.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that Noshirvan posted a bystander’s video involving Denton Ryan football coach Aaron De La Torre. Hickory Creek police closed their investigation of the incident without charges on Oct. 1, 2024. Frank Parlato reported that Noshirvan kept posting after the case was closed. De La Torre died on Oct. 8.
I’ve argued that Noshirvan’s rush to judgment added to the pressure the coach faced. The legal and public record doesn’t establish that his coverage caused the death. But then again, I think Noshirvan was wrong when he told Dr. Phil, “That’s not my responsibility.” A pillar of cancel culture is doxxing; doxxing is violent; and Danesh Noshirvan is a master of it.
If the DNC gives Noshirvan access, amplification, or money, what conduct would disqualify a creator? Publish the rules. Disclose paid relationships. Apply the rules when a creator your side likes goes after somebody your side hates.
If the DNC awards Danesh, you have to ask: what conduct disqualifies a creator from getting the party’s access, amplification, or money? Publish the rules. Disclose paid relationships. Apply the rules when a creator your side likes goes after somebody your side hates.
The incoming majority has a choice about where it spends its time. In Pew’s October survey, 84 percent of registered voters called the economy very important to their midterm vote. Thirty-six percent said the same of investigations of Trump. Hakeem Jeffries put an affordability agenda on paper.
Incoming Oversight Chairman Robert Garcia’s election-night statement was two words: “Lawyer up.” Investigate real misconduct. Put the evidence on the table. But if the first thing voters see is the list of people you want to drag before a committee, don’t be surprised when they ask what happened to the price of groceries.
Canceling cancel culture doesn’t require anybody to get Danesh Noshirvan thrown off the internet. It requires the Left to quit treating his methods as useful when the target is convenient. Let Metcalf and her roommates tell the whole story. Let the dealership answer to its own customers. Let Kunes’s apology stand without making forgiveness compulsory or harassment acceptable.
And if Democrats would rather keep the outrage business than break with it, they can own what they reward. The voters who just handed them Congress know how to take it back.
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