AMAC Exclusive – By Tammy Bruce
The most unlikeliest of places continues to signal a possible inflection point in the left’s ugly woke culture war against our nation. Netflix, the streaming service, had gained a reputation for being the King of Woke. Like many other American companies, they seemed more concerned with genuflecting to leftist activists and placating them by focusing on Democrat-approved political programming.
First it was Disney, which in March embarked on a disastrous adventure by taking a very public stand in woke politics as they pledged action to defeat a Florida bill meant to empower parents. Their stock crashed and Americans of all stripes made clear their significant disgust with house that Mickey built.
Then in April, Netflix announced a loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 and their stock crashed 37 percent on one day. Talk about a wakeup call! Upon news of the subscriber and stock plunge Elon Musk tweeted what everyone was thinking: “The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable.”
The reasons for the Disney and Netflix disasters are varied, but both companies have publicly displayed a disturbing shift into the woke politics. When an economy gets tight and people have to make choices about where they spend money the first to be cut will be companies who have taken for granted and insulted American consumers for far too long.
On top of that, Netflix’s trouble may just be starting. CBS reports “Netflix acknowledged its problems are deep-rooted by projecting a loss of another 2 million subscribers during the April-June period.” That deep-rootedness is, in part, the woke activists they’ve hired and going on a woke programming binge.
But all of that seems to be changing.
It appears leadership at the streaming service have suddenly realized what the left has been feeding them isn’t health food—it’s cyanide. Netflix has acted to save itself and that means quickly and definitively ending it’s love affair with wokeism by laying-off at least 150 employees they had previously hired to work on woke programming and issued a memo to its staff rebuking censorship.
The Daily Mail reported, “Netflix announced a new crackdown on woke staff who try to interfere in shows they deem ‘harmful’ or which leave viewers feeling ‘unsafe.’ In a memo to employees following the mass layoffs, Netflix heads told their staff: ‘As employees we support the principle that Netflix offers a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values. Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. ‘If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.’”
It wasn’t just leftist personnel who were shown the door. A whole lineup of woke programming met its end as well.
“Netflix has also scrapped a host of woke shows – the most famous of which is Meghan Markle’s doomed animation Pearl, about a socially-conscious girl said to have been based on Meghan herself. Other scrapped projects included “Antiracist Baby” and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You,” two adaptions by Critical Race Theory expert Dr. Ibram X. Kendi …” reported the Mail.
All gone because it finally became apparent that NO ONE wants what the left is selling. NO ONE is buying this denigration of America. And EVERYONE rejects this disgusting effort to train Americans, especially children, to think as racists and with racist stereotypes.
How will we know if this is a genuine transformation of Netflix into a company has had enough of leftist activism and destruction? Enter comedian and actor Ricky Gervais. Known for creating and writing the original “The Office” television series in England, he also speaks bluntly about the culture wars and most famously he hosted a Golden Globes awards program where he skewered the gathered Hollywood elite for their hypocrisy, politics, and behavior.
Gervais also has new comedy special for Netflix called “SuperNature.” Woke activists whine Gervais is bigoted, and of course transphobic in the comedy routine. But he’s not. What he really does is go after extremist activist politics. In a profile of Gervais at The Spectator they write: “If he could get away with joking about the Holocaust – surely the epitome of punching down – why did his jokes about transgender people spark such outrage? Gervais’s explanation, which he offered to The Spectator last night, perhaps reveals the answer: ‘My target wasn’t trans folk, but trans activist ideology. I’ve always confronted dogma that oppresses people and limits freedom of expression.’”
It is so absurd it is worthy of some comedy. Comedy is very political, and it offends, by its very nature. This is why the left has no sense of humor, because their malignant agenda is ripe for exposure and skewering.
In an interview with the New York Times, CEO of Netflix Ted Sarandos commented on the Chappell and Gervais controversies and Netflix’s new approach: “I think it’s very important to the American culture generally to have free expression… We’re programming for a lot of diverse people who have different opinions and different tastes and different styles, and yet we’re not making everything for everybody. We want something for everybody but everything’s not going to be for everybody.”
At least Netflix now seems to understand or accept just how wrong they were, but it’s not a stretch to recognize if their subscriber base and stock hadn’t taken a hit, none of these changes would have happened. Mostly, this is a reminder to make sure your voice is heard when it comes to what stocks are in your portfolio, what you subscribe to, and what efforts you support.