The Daily Signal - Author Explains the Problem With the 'Woke' Invasion of Big Business

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

Why is corporate America increasingly stepping in to support "woke" social justice causes? "These corporations are part of a movement that has been going on in the West and in this country in particular for the last roughly 100 years to move the culture very consistently and very aggressively to the left in order to more or less make ready the path for the revolution," says Steve Soukup, author of the new book "The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business." Soukup joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to explain how activists have hijacked and twisted the purpose of many of the world's largest companies to serve left-wing ends and why Americans need to be concerned about it. We also cover these stories: The Department of Homeland Security says illegal crossings are going to reach the highest amount in two decades.  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a strong and direct defense of the filibuster on Tuesday.  Both Coca-Cola and Home Depot have announced they are not supportive of election reform efforts in Georgia.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, March 17th. I'm Rachel Del Judas. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, our colleague Jarrett Stetman talks with Stephen Sokup, author of the new book The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, How Political Correctness Captured Big Business. They discuss how the political left is using its power to influence corporate America and further a progressive agenda. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Department of Homeland Security says illegal crossings are going to reach the highest amount in two decades.

In a DHS statement, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Maraca said, we are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years. He added, we are not expelling most single adults and families. We are not expelling unaccompanied children. We are securing the border, executing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Authority to safeguard the American public and the migrants themselves and protecting the children. We have more work to do. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a strong and direct defense of the filibuster on Tuesday. Speaking on the Senate floor,

McConnell warned his colleagues of the disruption that would occur. in the Senate if the filibuster was done away with per the Hill. Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, can even begin to imagine what a completely scorched earth Senate would look like. None of us have served one minute in a Senate that was completely drained of comedy and consent. This is an institution that we're requires unanimous consent to turn the lights on before noon, to proceed with a garden variety floor speech, to dispense with the reading of lengthy legislative text,

to schedule committee business, to move even non-controversial nominees at anything besides a snail's face. So Mr. President, I want our colleagues to imagine a world where every single task, Every one of them requires a physical quorum, which, by the way, the vice president does not count in determining a quarrel. Everything that Democrat senators did to President Bush and Trump, everything the Republican Senate did to President Obama, would be child's play compared to the disaster that Democrats would create for their own priority if they break the Senate. McConnell went on to remind his Democratic colleagues

that if they end the filibuster, they would regret having done so the moment Republicans held the majority in the Senate once again. As soon as Republicans wound up back in the saddle, we wouldn't just erase every liberal change that hurt the country. We'd strengthen America with all kinds of conservative policies with zero is zero input from the other side. McConnell's remarks come just one day

after Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the number two Democrat in the upper chamber argued that the filibuster undermines democracy. On Monday, Durbin said on the Senate floor that the filibuster is still making a mockery of American democracy. The filibuster is still being misused by some senators to block legislation

urgently needed and supported by a strong majority of the American people. Both Democrat senators Joe Mansion of West Virginia and Kristen Cinema of Arizona have spoken out in support of keeping the filibuster. Both Coca-Cola and Home Depot have announced they are not supportive of election reform efforts in Georgia. Per the Washington examiner, representatives from each of the companies told the Washington Post that their companies are aligned with the state's Chamber of Commerce, who on Sunday spoke out against two of the the bills passing through the Georgia legislature. The one bill which passed the Georgia State Senate would do away with no excuse absentee voting, while the version passed by the Georgia

House would add an ID requirement for requests for absentee ballots, put restrictions on the amount of absentee ballot drop boxes, and tightened times in which voters can vote absentee. Now stay tuned for Jared Stetman's conversation with Stephen Sokup about his new book, The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, how political correctness captured big business. This is Virginia Allen, host of the Daily Signal podcast.

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We are now joined by Steve Suckup, the senior commentator, vice president, and publisher of the political forum and independent research provider, and also the author of a new book, The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, How Political Correctness Captured Big Business. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Jared. I appreciate it.

Absolutely. So your book, The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, covers this trend of big business following, I think the trend of many other big elite institutions, suddenly going what we now call woke, openly embracing many left-wing social justice causes. It's a startling trend because it seems strange that businesses would be so outright political and willing to anger many customers. But you say this has really been a long time in the making and will damage the nature of free market capitalism in America if it continues unabated. You kind of set this up in the book with an example, a very important one, from 2019, a year that you say that Woke Capital really began to be weaponized and perhaps

overplayed its hand. Several massive companies, I know there was Disney, Netflix, Warner Media, essentially threatened to punish and hurt the state of Georgia's economy after it passed a fetal heartbeat abortion restriction law. First Things Magazine published a Senator Tom Cotton, who's a Republican from Arkansas speech, they titled The Dictorship of Woke Capital, which is the title of your book. Look, Cotton spoke about the redefinition of the purpose of the corporation and shine a light on a growing problem of corporate activism that many Americans were unaware of. Cotton's speech was really a warning flag about corporate trends long in the works.

You specifically mentioned the environmental, social, and corporate governance or ESG model that big businesses increasingly use. And the flip from so-called shareholder to stakeholder capitalism, can you describe with those things? mean why they're problematic and really what's driving it? When we discuss woke capitalism or woke capital, what we mean is a top-down anti-democratic movement on the part of some of the biggest and most important names in American business to change the way business functions, to change the definition of capitalism, and to change the very relationship between the citizen in the state permanently. These corporations are part of a movement that has been going on in the West and in this

country in particular for the last roughly 100 years to move the culture very consistently and very aggressively to the left in order to more or less make ready the path for the revolution. These businessmen, these corporations that have gotten involved in this, have sort of forgotten that that's what the end is, that the end goal is the revolution, but they become very heavily involved in this left-wing cultural movement. ESG stands for environmental, social, and corporate governance. And it is probably the hottest investment trend in the world, certainly in the in Europe and the United States over the last five years. And this is a successor investment instrument to what used to be called socially responsible investing. Under the old socially

responsible investing regime, anybody who was concerned about their investments and lining those investments up with their values could do so. They could talk to their advisor or they could carefully screened themselves which stocks they picked in order to weed out those companies whose activities conflicted with their values. It was totally voluntary. It was totally bipartisan and non-overtly political. And it was something that allowed people to opt into the idea that they could align their values and their portfolios, allow. them to sleep at night. Over the past, say, 10 to 15 years, ESG has become the successor to this, and ESG, unlike the original social, socially responsible investment movement, is very aggressive.

And it seeks not to simply screen companies out of portfolios. It seeks to change companies, to change their boards of directors, to change their management, to change their bylaws, in order to force them to comply with certain political beliefs. So ESG has become a very pernicious and driving force in American business that is pushing corporations to embrace political values over traditional business values. Interesting. How universal have these changes been? I mean, is this all of corporate America?

Is this limited to specific sectors? Is there maybe an industry in which this model is being rejected? Well, right now I would say that it's almost entirely universal. Much of the growth, particularly last year, in American capital markets, came in the ESG realm. Many of the largest asset management firms in the country, in particular the three largest passive asset management firms, which are BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, who combined control a total of maybe $20 trillion in assets under management. All three of them have made sustainability, which is a part of this ESG movement,

their primary investment goal, which means that they are judging companies not strictly on their business performance, but also on their performance with respect to preparing for climate change and preparing for the decarbonism, of the environment. So it's widespread. And I think I'd be hard pressed to name a sector that hasn't been touched by this. Well, I think one of the interesting issues with this, of course, woke capital, as we call it, is highly aggressive in injecting itself. And many of the issues that Americans are dealing with. But I think what's really interesting is how uneven it seems they are applying these standards. While companies were going after the state of Georgia,

for passing pro-life laws, many of these same companies seemingly turned a blind eye to the malfeasance of China and the Chinese Communist Party, despite having business ties in that country. You mentioned Apple and its CEO Tim Cook. Apple kind of highlights this problem. The company is highly involved in various environmentalist initiatives and other generally left-wing causes. Yet its environmental recognition, China seems to be less than ideal, and its labor practices appear to be ruthless. You mentioned Apple's Foscon iPhone factory that operates in a special zone in China. You wrote that suicide is so rampant that the company that installed actually had installed nets and many abilities to catch falling bodies. On top of that, Apple appears to be silent about

the fact that the communist country has put over a million Uyghurs in concentration camps. Can you talk about this situation? It seems that wokeness doesn't actually apply to tyrannical regimes. No, it doesn't. And that's one of the reasons why I highlighted Apple in the book is because at home, as you mentioned, Apple and Tim Cook are ESG darlings. Tim Cook is a very outspoken, in fact, probably the most outspoken, well-known CEO when it comes to social justice or environmental matters. not a single issue with respect to a large social justice matter occurs in this country without Tim Cook feeling that he needs to get involved in it, write an op-ed or make a statement or use some of the corporation's money to try and rectify the problem. But as you said, in China, it's a different story. Tim Cook spent the last 20 years investing very heavily in the People's Republic of China.

and the Chinese government considers him an ally. When the protesters in Hong Kong over the last couple of years were getting a little bit too out of control for the government in Beijing to tolerate, one of the things that the government noticed was that they were using certain apps to organize and to plan their protests. And so the government in Beijing requested

that these apps be removed from the Apple App Store. And lo and behold, Tim Cook and Apple had those apps removed, specifically because the government in Beijing requested it. So this social justice viewpoint does, in fact, end at the nation's borders. It doesn't apply in China. And as you said, neither does Apple's reputation for being green. The overwhelming majority of the energy expended in the creation, manufacture, distribution, and sales of Apple products. It's not used by Apple Corporation itself. It's used by their contractors. Foxcon,

one that you mentioned, but they're headquartered in Taiwan or in the People's Republic of China, and they are no way, shape, or form as green as Apple is, or as green as Apple would like for everyone to believe that the entire process is. So both with respect to social justice and environmentalism, Apple is a much different country in China than it is in the United States. Interesting. So what does companies going woke mean for employees, especially those in these huge companies where presumably employees hold a range of opinions? How are employees affected by this transition? Well, it can affect employees any of multiple different ways. Unfortunately, as we've seen since probably the beginning of the year, companies are more and more willing to punish employees

whose politics they disagree with. So this can be very disconcerting for employees. The irony, of course, is that this movement, the ESG movement or the stakeholder capitalism movement, prides itself on being much more amenable to the causes of other states. than shareholders, including employees. So this movement that proudly proclaims that it is much more favorable to employees is actually turning around and punishing employees for violating the political orthodoxy. So this is sort of a pretty clear example of rank hypocrisy that we're seeing, particularly among some of the larger tech companies in this country.

Is there anything consumers or conservative consumers can do? Do boycotts work of these companies? I mean, can you complain to these companies? Are there examples of people effectively pushing back kind of as just individual citizens who don't appreciate this kind of trend? Well, yeah, absolutely. My personal opinion, my personal preference is for people not to boycott,

but to engage with the companies. If we think about how this happened, how we got to this position, It's because activists shareholders began pressuring companies 10, 15, even 20 years ago to do what the activists wanted. And as is always the case, the squeaky wheel gets to grease. What we need to do is reverse engineer that and become squeaky ourselves. If we disengage, if we boycott, if we leave the playing field, then they take it without any opposition whatsoever. So I think that that's a mistake to leave the field.

I think we'd be better off engaging. And if you presume, as I do, that customer service departments hate getting complaints from irate customers, you can only imagine that investor relations departments hate getting complaints from outraged shareholders. So if you happen to be a shareholder, then you can push back even more effectively. So, yeah, there are things customers and consumers and various individuals can do. There are ways that they can fight back and push back against this tyranny. Absolutely. So you conclude the book by calling for a reorientation of big business away from these woke models

and end with the line, de-politicized business, depoliticized markets, back to neutral. What do you mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is that I would like to see business return to a business return to a its primary function, which is to function as business, not to function as a political arm of various ideologies, which is where we are at this point. The much maligned and wrongly maligned shareholder model of capitalism that was explained very clearly and very concisely by Milton Friedman in 1972 was a very overtly moral depiction of what capitalism. should be. And that depiction was that if somebody trusts you enough, somebody believes in your

abilities enough that they will give you their capital, that it is your responsibility to use that capital in the ways that you told them that you would use it and to use that capital to develop the product, to develop a service, and to deliver that to customers and to make a profit. That's a moral code for business. If somebody gives you something, you do with it as you are expected to do with it. You behave responsibly with it. That is where I'd like to see American business get back to, is to believe that it is a business's responsibility to handle the resources it has been given carefully and conscientiously. That's not a political statement. That's not a political end. That is an effective end based on the moral structure of how capitalism, in fact,

Again, the book is called The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, How Political Correctness Captured Big Business. Steve, thank you so much for joining us on The Daily Signal. Thanks for having me, Jared. I appreciate it. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation.

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