Today’s blacklisted American: Man’s life ruined because a black man slandered him for profit
The North Face: eagerly promoting bigotry
and discrimination worldwide
They’re coming for you next: Mountain-climber John Talbot lost his job and his career as a projessional climber for the sports apparel company Outdoor Research because black mountain-climber, Manoah Ainuu, sponsored by a different sport gear company The North Face, used his Instagram account to slander and defame Talbot, accusing Talbot falsely of being a racist while threatening Ainuu with violence.
Worse, there was no evidence that Talbot ever did any such thing, a fact that Ainuu himself later admitted.
Talbot is now suing both Ainuu and North Face. You can read the lawsuit here [pdf], summarized as follows in the press release from the non-profit legal firm, America First Legal, that is representing Talbot.
As alleged in the complaint, Ainuu, a paid climber and brand ambassador for The North Face, used his large Instagram audience to communicate defamatory claims that Mr. Talbot had made racist comments to Ainuu and tried to assault him, all because Ainuu wanted to increase his fame and advance The North Face’s social justice mission, even if it meant maliciously destroying the reputation and career of Mr. Talbot, a man Ainuu had just met.
As further alleged, Ainuu communicated his defamatory claim repeatedly online and solicited others to republish them. Moreover, Ainuu repeatedly directed the defamatory statements to Mr. Talbot’s employer, a competitor of The North Face – actions which North Face’s Global Senior Athlete Coordinator endorsed.
Talbot alleges that as a result of Ainuu’s actions, done with the approval and for the benefit of The North Face, Mr. Talbot was fired from his job, even after Ainuu later admitted to Mr. Talbot’s employer that he did not say anything racist or offensive. Meanwhile, Ainuu has continued to operate as a paid climber and brand ambassador for The North Face.
Talbot remains unemployed. He is suing Ainuu and North Face for damages not less than $75,000, plus punitive damages and attorney’s costs.
It is important to note that this slanderous behavior by Ainuu is apparently not unique, and in fact has been his modus operandi for years, according to people who know him personally.
Talbot is not the only individual who alleges that Ainuu levies unsubstantiated accusations of racism against those he’s come in contact with. Ari Novak, a movie producer and ice climber, told The Daily Wire that he’s known Ainuu for six years and has “personally observed him ‘race bait’ multiple individuals aggressively and then claim they ‘wanted to fight him.’”
“I found this behavior so disturbing that I asked him to move out of my home in 2020. There are many cases of Manoah threatening physical altercations and then claiming victimhood under the banner of racial bias,” Novak said. “As a highly paid outdoor athlete Manoah’s whole brand is rooted in racial confrontation.”
….“It has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with him not being stable,” Novak said. “Literally anybody can bump into Manoah and suddenly he decides they’re racist, and they could lose their job,” Novak remarked before explaining that the outdoor industry has “gone woke” and contending that The North Face has established an incentive structure that encourages Ainuu’s racial agitation. [emphasis mine]
Talbot’s lawsuit cites an example where one of North Face’s other sponsored minority atheletes, Vasu Sojita, slandered Novak and all the participants in a film about a climbing festival in the Himalayas, accusing everyone involved with a “white saviour complex, white complacency and indigenous erasure”, with utterly no evidence. The participants of the festival, many of whom were native Himalayans, were slandered equally, even though they were neither white nor European.
Though the festival organizers complained to North Face, it took no action, ignoring the issue entirely. Sojita was left free to spout more slanders.
North Face’s Explore Fund Council:
Non-Hispanic whites men need not apply
North Face’s favoritism to minorities, essentially putting whites to the back of the bus, can also be clearly seen on its “Explore Fund” website, where it details the many programs it runs exclusively for minorities. The fund’s Council toolkit [pdf] further shows us that non-Hispanic white men need not apply, they will be rejected outright solely because of their race and sex. As it says on page one, the council is “a group of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color experienced in creating spaces and opportunities for more equitable systems, both in and outside of the outdoors.”
That statement of goals of course is a lie. What the Explore Fund’s real goal is to discriminate, to favor some solely because of their race or sex or ethnicity.
Talbot’s lawsuit demands a jury trial, which I hope he gets because any ordinary group of decent Americans is going to be horrified by the facts in this case, and will likely want to award Talbot a big financial award, taken directly from the pockets of Ainuu and North Face.
More important, I hope a victory by Talbot will act to make corporations like North Face back off from this new fad of creating blatantly racist programs that favor people merely because of their race or ethnicity. Such programs do nothing but engender anger, resentment, and hate, the exact opposite of their claimed intentions.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The North Face: eagerly promoting bigotry
and discrimination worldwide
They’re coming for you next: Mountain-climber John Talbot lost his job and his career as a projessional climber for the sports apparel company Outdoor Research because black mountain-climber, Manoah Ainuu, sponsored by a different sport gear company The North Face, used his Instagram account to slander and defame Talbot, accusing Talbot falsely of being a racist while threatening Ainuu with violence.
Worse, there was no evidence that Talbot ever did any such thing, a fact that Ainuu himself later admitted.
Talbot is now suing both Ainuu and North Face. You can read the lawsuit here [pdf], summarized as follows in the press release from the non-profit legal firm, America First Legal, that is representing Talbot.
As alleged in the complaint, Ainuu, a paid climber and brand ambassador for The North Face, used his large Instagram audience to communicate defamatory claims that Mr. Talbot had made racist comments to Ainuu and tried to assault him, all because Ainuu wanted to increase his fame and advance The North Face’s social justice mission, even if it meant maliciously destroying the reputation and career of Mr. Talbot, a man Ainuu had just met.
As further alleged, Ainuu communicated his defamatory claim repeatedly online and solicited others to republish them. Moreover, Ainuu repeatedly directed the defamatory statements to Mr. Talbot’s employer, a competitor of The North Face – actions which North Face’s Global Senior Athlete Coordinator endorsed.
Talbot alleges that as a result of Ainuu’s actions, done with the approval and for the benefit of The North Face, Mr. Talbot was fired from his job, even after Ainuu later admitted to Mr. Talbot’s employer that he did not say anything racist or offensive. Meanwhile, Ainuu has continued to operate as a paid climber and brand ambassador for The North Face.
Talbot remains unemployed. He is suing Ainuu and North Face for damages not less than $75,000, plus punitive damages and attorney’s costs.
It is important to note that this slanderous behavior by Ainuu is apparently not unique, and in fact has been his modus operandi for years, according to people who know him personally.
Talbot is not the only individual who alleges that Ainuu levies unsubstantiated accusations of racism against those he’s come in contact with. Ari Novak, a movie producer and ice climber, told The Daily Wire that he’s known Ainuu for six years and has “personally observed him ‘race bait’ multiple individuals aggressively and then claim they ‘wanted to fight him.’”
“I found this behavior so disturbing that I asked him to move out of my home in 2020. There are many cases of Manoah threatening physical altercations and then claiming victimhood under the banner of racial bias,” Novak said. “As a highly paid outdoor athlete Manoah’s whole brand is rooted in racial confrontation.”
….“It has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with him not being stable,” Novak said. “Literally anybody can bump into Manoah and suddenly he decides they’re racist, and they could lose their job,” Novak remarked before explaining that the outdoor industry has “gone woke” and contending that The North Face has established an incentive structure that encourages Ainuu’s racial agitation. [emphasis mine]
Talbot’s lawsuit cites an example where one of North Face’s other sponsored minority atheletes, Vasu Sojita, slandered Novak and all the participants in a film about a climbing festival in the Himalayas, accusing everyone involved with a “white saviour complex, white complacency and indigenous erasure”, with utterly no evidence. The participants of the festival, many of whom were native Himalayans, were slandered equally, even though they were neither white nor European.
Though the festival organizers complained to North Face, it took no action, ignoring the issue entirely. Sojita was left free to spout more slanders.
North Face’s Explore Fund Council:
Non-Hispanic whites men need not apply
North Face’s favoritism to minorities, essentially putting whites to the back of the bus, can also be clearly seen on its “Explore Fund” website, where it details the many programs it runs exclusively for minorities. The fund’s Council toolkit [pdf] further shows us that non-Hispanic white men need not apply, they will be rejected outright solely because of their race and sex. As it says on page one, the council is “a group of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color experienced in creating spaces and opportunities for more equitable systems, both in and outside of the outdoors.”
That statement of goals of course is a lie. What the Explore Fund’s real goal is to discriminate, to favor some solely because of their race or sex or ethnicity.
Talbot’s lawsuit demands a jury trial, which I hope he gets because any ordinary group of decent Americans is going to be horrified by the facts in this case, and will likely want to award Talbot a big financial award, taken directly from the pockets of Ainuu and North Face.
More important, I hope a victory by Talbot will act to make corporations like North Face back off from this new fad of creating blatantly racist programs that favor people merely because of their race or ethnicity. Such programs do nothing but engender anger, resentment, and hate, the exact opposite of their claimed intentions.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Now for years, pro-business conservatives wanted “loser pays” as a way to discourage lawsuits by paupers.
Now you know why such efforts are misguided
Have not bought North Face for some years now.
Still going strong on scrambling though.
It seems Talbot has a cause of action against former employer Outdoor Research for not making him whole by rehiring him. They fired him under false circumstances.
Sort of Lawyer: I agree. I found it interesting that Talbot’s suit specifically did not include Outdoor Research. It could be he wants to work for them in the future, and thus thinks a suit against them would be counterproductive in the long run. Also it is also possible he understands their own problems, and doesn’t wish to make them worse.
North Face, huh? Welp, there’s another brand I’ll stop buying.
both in and outside of the outdoors
That statement right there tells you how unserious they are about the topic at hand. Abuse of the language to align with their pretzel logic.
I certainly hope Talbot gets more than $75,000. Not sure I’ve seen a more open-and-shut slander case in the past several years. (Though, even if it’s millions, it probably won’t hurt North Face much.)
Sounds like Ainuu’s a nut job.
I’ll wait for the legal discovery and the court findings.
btw, it is not “Talbot’s non-profit legal firm” but the firm which is supporting Talbot and providing legal aid — is Talbot funding any part of this or is pro-bono by America First Legal?
The AFL Center w/ Stephen Miller & other ex-Trump admin staffers have usually been focused on political / legal equity, race and, of course, immigration issues since 2021 so it will be interesting to see the dissection of this case and identification of provable culpability.
Kevin Kanter: You are correct. My wording was sloppy. I have fixed it to indicate AFL is acting as Talbot’s attorney.
I’m completely blackballed from the outdoor industry. It would be nice if you link the gofundme that my friends set up.
This gentleman also hid from process servers and had his ex wife lie for him. He has ruined my 17 year career. He is a social media terrorist and this type of cancel culture should frighten everyone.
Johnathan Talbot: I have emailed you directly, but to update my article I need the link to the gofundme site. You provide it, I will update the article, putting it at the top.
johnathan talbot’s go fund me:
https://gofund.me/29fbc7e6
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Update: The North Face has filed motion to dismiss. Which my attorney’s told me they would do. AFL is now responding and will argue the case 2/2/24 in Bozeman. This will determine whether or not the case goes to trial. AFL feels very confident in their arguments and the probability of the case moving forward.