The U.S. Army has put its controversial LGBTQ recruiting ad in the internet equivalent of cold storage.
Conservative columnist Ian Miles Cheong posted the ad, entitled “The Calling,” on X on Thursday after reports that the Pentagon “delisted” it from YouTube.
As Miliary.com explained, delisting a video is not the same as deleting it, but it does make it much harder to find when searching the web.
Citing that Military.com report about the Army’s decision, Cheong noted on X, “Here’s the video the US Army wants to pretend doesn’t exist, and doesn’t want you to watch.”
“The US Army has removed or delisted this LGBTQ+ recruitment video from its social media platforms,” he added. The Army is having a lot of trouble finding new recruits and a big reason for that is its DEI push towards hiring woke candidates. It did not work out.”
As the Tampa Free Press posted last week, the Army has faced a stiff headwind in attracting recruits since President Joe Biden took office.
The most recent challenge was the monumental dropoff in white recruits, down 43% between 2018 and 2023.
As Military.com noted, the Army under Biden sought to widen its appeal with “The Calling,” a YouTube-specific ad unveiled in May 2021.
As the Free Press reported at the time, the partly animated commercials intended to portray a “rich tapestry” of individual soldiers – as the Pentagon, which failed to include any white men in the lineup, described it – who joined the Army.
One of them featured the tale of Cpl. Emma Malonelord is a California woman who, in the commercial, proudly describes how the marriage of her two moms inspired her to enlist.
Malonelord said she had a “fairly typical childhood” that was augmented by marches in gay pride parades to “defend freedom.”
The initial reaction was so negative that the Army shut down the comments section. At one point, the ad had generated 36,000 dislikes, compared to only 775 likes.
The ads have been completely mothballed amid downwardly spiraling recruiting numbers, especially among whites.
As Revolver News noted, the Army told Military.com that it hid the ads to avoid a copyright issue over rights to the background music that were expiring.
Yet Revolve News noted that YouTube is fairly proactive in dealing with such issues on its own. The outlet suggested it was a cover to mask the recruiting debacle.
Conservative columnist John Hawkins observed on X, “The thing about the military is it has been racially integrated and merit-based for a long time. What commercials like this are really announcing is a shift from that to, ‘We’re looking to push everyone but white men.’ Talk to some vets. People are hearing what they’re saying.”
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