AMAC Exclusive
Mitch McConnell tried to warn them. He said that “If I were running a major corporation, I would stay out of politics” and stop “behaving like a woke parallel government.”
Yet corporations continue to preach endlessly about “systemic racism” and “equity,” and their actions are more indicative of left-wing activist groups than a legitimate business.
Starbucks, for example, suspended its own policy against issue-advocacy to allow employees to wear Black Lives Matter clothes.
American Airlines, Netflix, General Motors, BlackRock, and Amazon signed a letter calling election integrity bills “discriminatory.”
Bank of America, FedEx, and Pepsi pulled their sponsorships from the Washington Redskins (now the Washington Football Team) to protest the team’s allegedly “racist” name.
Nike, Facebook, General Mills, IBM, Pfizer, Google, T-Mobile, Microsoft, Target, Uber, and Verizon, among many others, all signed a letter opposing legislative efforts to keep biological men from competing in women’s sports.
The list goes on and on and on.
A recent series of powerful ads funded by Consumers’ Research even called out some woke companies by name and pointed out their contradictions and hypocrisy.
Ironically, behind these ultra-woke corporations are ultra-tame corporate leaders. In their own lives, they usually reap the benefits of traditional, even conservative lifestyles, with higher marriage rates, lower divorce rates, and a focus on work and family. And they certainly don’t seem eager to implement aggressive racial or gender “equity” in their own corporate C-suites. There are only four Black CEOs in the Fortune 500 and fewer than fifty women.
Moreover, while their companies have effectively become mouthpieces for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, most corporate executives themselves avoid political activism. They don’t spew woke platitudes on Twitter because they’re not on Twitter. A study found that, among Fortune 500 CEOs, only 36 had a Twitter account. While CEOs are more than willing to put out a statement under their company’s name paying lip service to whatever left-wing crusade is fashionable at the moment, they’re generally much less willing to tie their own name to it.
The executives cut big checks to politicians, though, right? No, they really don’t. Among Fortune 100 CEOs, for example, only six donated to the campaigns of Donald Trump or Joe Biden in 2020. Even during the 2018 midterms, when CEOs had an opportunity to make far more donations to far more candidates (and do it under the radar, far away from a presidential election), among Fortune 500 CEOs, only 35 gave more than $100,000 and more than half gave nothing at all.
Among those who do donate, plenty of them support Republicans and Republican groups.
What gives? Why do Chief Executive Officers usually run their lives like sensible businesspeople but run their companies like Chief Woke Officers?
It boils down to one simple truth: they’re afraid of the people they hire.
They look out at their company, and who holds the real power? Overeducated, Rachel Maddow-watching, walking HR departments—often actually working in HR.
Woke radicalism has gone mainstream by seizing the once bland world of Human Resources at the innermost layer inside organizations. Now, they’re subverting institutions from within.
As a result, even middle-of-the-road personnel policies today include statements on “equity,” “inclusion,” and even “anti-racism” as standard-issue boilerplate. Far from the traditional HR responsibilities of hiring, firing, and training personnel, today’s HR departments are the woke police of corporate America, enforcing rigid adherence to leftist ideology. Any dissent, even from corporate leadership, is not tolerated. Ever fearful of being tried in the court of public opinion, CEOs and other executives, ostensibly the most powerful people in the company and some of the most powerful people in the country, submit.
CEOs, always more concerned with investor-relations and long-term projects than HR policies, now face a choice.
Do they stand up for what they probably know is common-sense, and fire the mouth-breathers more suited to running a freshman seminar on protest art than running a company?
Or do they take the easier road—surrender to the enemy within, keep cashing their checks, and hope the woke mob cancels someone else?
We’ve seen their answer. Again and again and again. They cave.
Yet while purging companies of radical activists would likely lead to some short-term backlash on Twitter and in the media, it would undoubtedly lead to a healthier business environment in the long-term – and better the lives of employees who just want to earn a living without being unwillingly co-opted into progressive political activism. Unfortunately, thus far, executives have shown a complete unwillingness to do so, apparently content to cede their companies to leftists as long as they can continue collecting a large paycheck.
Woke liberals and the HR departments they run have taken over companies. Now, with CEOs in their grasp, they’re taking over America.