Dana Cloud is a well-known leftist activist and professor of Rhetoric & Writing from the University of Texas Austin. Currently, she is listed on Syracuse University’s College of Visual + Performing Arts’ website as a Graduate Program Director in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies. As it turns out, it appears she’s a riot apologist/conspiracy theorist who believes George W. Bush stole the 2000 election.
Professor Cloud was previously featured in David Horowitz’s 2006 book, The Professors – The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. In it, Horowitz describes Cloud as “a member of the International Socialist Organization, a Leninist vanguard that considers itself part of the Fourth Communist International.” He also writes, “Professor Cloud was quick to blame American policies for having provoked the 9/11 attacks, singling out the United States as the world’s number one terrorist state.”
Cloud runs a website called “TXCommie” (Texas Commie). Since Horowitz wrote his book, Cloud has posted many controversial speech transcripts and pieces of writing to the site.
For starters, in a post of a 2008 talk titled Undemocratic Democracy: The U.S. Political System, Cloud claims that George W. Bush stole the 2000 Presidential election and that the administration was “one long propaganda campaign in defense of anything but democracy:
But by any criterion, the Bush administration has used the defense of our alleged democracy to undermine it, from the unprecedented use of signing statements—which basically say he will do whatever he wants regardless of the law—to the Patriot Act—not to mention stealing the 2000 Presidential election. As Scott McClellan noted in his recent memoir What Happened, the administration has been one long propaganda campaign in defense of anything but democracy.
“We have to understand riot shaming and the other arguments … used to discredit Ferguson activists and the claims about race and policing as ideological diversions from the fundamental racism that divides US society with tragic, deadly consequences for people of color, especially young men.”
UT Professor Dana Cloud
In a separate 2014 post titled “We can’t win our right by voting. How abortion rights were won and how to get them back,” the professor argues that a capitalist elite benefit from the oppression of women, which she defines simply as upholding a traditional nuclear family:
Why have I spent so much time discussing the family under capitalism? Because we need to see clearly who benefits from the oppression of women and why the bullying of women is so virulent and vile. It’s not a matter of some men just being jerks; it’s not a matter of re-educating people to have egalitarian ideas. It’s not a matter of making sure everyone knows the science of reproduction and abortion, although that helps. The fact is, elites in capitalist society benefit from perpetuating sexism and holding up the family ideal. It is necessary to their ongoing power and profits. In other words, the problem of sexism is a system problem. And system problems require system solutions.
Cloud has also weighed in on the recent conflict between communities and the police. In December of last year, she argued against “riot shaming” people, and compared Wall Street to rioters in a meme posted in the article:
We have to understand riot shaming and the other arguments (for example, “he was no angel,” “he was monstrous and scary,” “other racial groups have made it successfully”) used to discredit Ferguson activists and the claims about race and policing as ideological diversions from the fundamental racism that divides US society with tragic, deadly consequences for people of color, especially young men.
In her Twitter profile, Cloud describes herself as a “socialist, lgbtq activist, anti-racist for women’s rights and workers’power. UT professor of communication studies. Parent and partner.” In other words, no surprises here.
Cloud has not responded to a request for comment.