AMAC Exclusive – By Aaron Flanigan
Last week, 37-year-old billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy announced his bid for the presidency in 2024, becoming the third candidate to officially declare as a Republican. Ramaswamy first rose to prominence following the publication of his 2021 book Woke, Inc., a thorough takedown of woke capitalism and “social justice” policies in corporate America that earned him regular appearances on conservative radio and TV. While Ramaswamy faces a decidedly uphill battle to the Republican nomination against former President Donald Trump, who continues to be a heavy polling favorite, his entrance into the races marks the continued prevalence of opposition to woke corporatism as a major issue for conservatives.
This trend was further highlighted earlier this month when Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Republican House Leader Steve Scalise made the unprecedented move of refusing to meet with the U.S. Chamber of Congress – a stunning reversal after decades of close cooperation between the Chamber and congressional Republicans.
“The priorities of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have not aligned with the priorities of House Republicans or the interests of their own members, and they should not expect a meeting with Speaker McCarthy as long as that’s the case,” a spokesman for McCarthy said in a statement. Scalise’s office reiterated McCarthy’s sentiment. “Washington has radically shifted away from the pro-business philosophy of most local Chambers across America,” a Scalise spokeswoman said, and “unless the Chamber gets back to their traditional pro-business roots, they should not expect to have any engagement with Majority Leader Scalise’s office.”
Notably, McCarthy and Scalise’s snub comes after the Chamber endorsed dozens of Democrat candidates in recent election cycles who evinced decidedly anti-business policy goals – another reflection of the rise of woke ideology in corporate America more broadly. In the months leading up to the 2020 election, for instance, 97 percent of donations from employees of Google and Facebook went to Joe Biden, as well as 90 percent of donations from Capital One employees, 83 percent of donations from JPMorgan employees, 80 percent of donations from Amazon employees, and 79 percent of donations from Bank of America employees.
Another encouraging sign of conservatives’ growing disillusionment with this corporate wokeism was Senator Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) viral questioning of Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen late last year. When McMullen attempted to gain support from GOP officeholders to offset regulatory policies proposed by Democrats, Cotton responded by saying, “You know, this situation reminds me a little bit of the situation Big Tech companies have found themselves in recent years. They’ve come to Washington because they fear regulation from our Democratic friends, or action by the Biden administration and they expect Republicans, who are traditionally more supportive of free enterprise, to come to their defense.”
“I’ve cautioned them for years that if they silence conservatives and center-right voters… if they discriminate against them in their company, they probably shouldn’t come and ask Republican senators to carry the water for them whenever our Democratic friends want to regulate them or block their mergers,” Cotton continued.
Cotton’s remarks were made in reference to two former Kroger employees in Arkansas who were fired for refusing to wear rainbow-colored aprons in support of “pride month.” Kroger had also recently introduced a guide urging employees to stop using words like “sir” and “ma’am.”
“I’ll say this,” Cotton concluded in his remarks to McMullen. “I’m sorry that’s happening to you. Best of luck.”
Figures like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley have also staked out an identity within the GOP as crusaders against woke corporatism. DeSantis’s conflict with the Walt Disney Company over its relentless pushing of progressive gender and racial theories in children’s programming, as well as its silencing of conservative employees, has served as an effective roadmap for other red state governors to hold companies in their states accountable for censorship and blatant political acts.
Hawley too has sought to take on woke media giants like Disney. In May 2022, he introduced a bill that would “strip woke corporations like Disney of special copyright protections.”
Some in the private sector have also taken concrete steps to clamp down on woke capitalism. In a recently released report, 1792 Exchange—a corporate wokeism watchdog—assessed the policies of more than 1,000 companies to give every American a much-needed chance to evaluate corporations’ intrusions into the political arena. As AMAC Newsline has previously highlighted, the group’s report classifies each company as either “high risk,” “medium risk,” or “low risk.” Examples of “high risk” companies include well-known corporations like Bank of America, Etsy, JPMorgan Chase, PayPal, YouTube, and Amazon—giving conservatives a surefire way to know which corporate giants to avoid.
Despite significant progress, the war against corporate wokeism is far from over. Many corporations continue to use their power and influence to advance a far-left cultural agenda while silencing anyone who disagrees. The developments of recent months, however, suggest that the relationship between big business and militant progressivism is in peril. Should the conservative movement continue advancing in this direction, the far left’s grip on corporate America could soon be broken.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
