I hate CEO virtue-signaling.
It’s often so fake and it results in perverse outcomes.
Yet if there was ever a time to bask in it, now could be the time as Israel sits on the point of potential annihilation following probably the most horrific terrorist attacks in history.
Corporate America, when you haven’t noticed, has been oddly understated in its public expressions of condemnation.
The query is why?
The reply, best I can tell, is wokeness has so thoroughly infected much of the business community that the nation’s executive class is afraid to talk up.
Recall, in 2020 during our summer of racial unrest, CEOs like JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, Brian Moynihan of Bank of America and lots of others blanketed the airwaves, social media, you name it, with condemnations following the death of George Floyd. Moynihan told Barron’s: “The protests are about not having the equivalent opportunity, criminal justice treatment by authorities.”
Solomon wrote on his LinkedIn page that he’s grieving “for the lives of George Floyd . . . and other victims of racism.”
Dimon was photographed taking a knee, seemingly in solidarity with the social justice warriors during that horrible spring and summer of “love.”
All sickening because they suggested the isolated instances of police brutality were proof America was a systematically racist land devoid of opportunity for its diverse citizenry.
Plus, they gave credence to the claims of the revolutionaries who took to the streets, immolating our cities while attacking the American ideal.
The CEOs then doubled down on their anti-American attacks and poured billions of dollars in shareholder money as a type of reparations to fund race-based lending programs.
Many CEOs signed petitions to reverse an alleged racist voter law in Georgia that demanded little greater than ID to forged a ballot and no condemnation of rampant criminal behavior.
They posted black squares on Twitter and Instagram to point out solidarity with the unconventional, anti-Israel Black Lives Matter movement, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate donations.
You possibly can make case that these woke CEOs helped pave the best way for what we have now today: A defund-the-police movement resulting in an inner-city crime wave, and the progressive cultural anarchy seen each day on our streets.
It’s all very different from their hyper-measured boilerplate to the brutality unleashed by Hamas on the Israeli people.
Most CEOs seem content on issuing bland internal memos concerning the must end the violence, and the way they care a lot for the people of Israel, and perhaps they will raise some money for humanitarian aid.
Humanitarian aid is sweet, but some serious virtue-signaling of concern may also do some good.
It could rally the world behind an ally that faces an existential threat from determined terrorist forces.
And the way hard could that be?
Hamas beheaded infants and dragged women through the streets half-naked.
Men were filmed being shot so the terrorists could get a viral moment and advance their warped cause.
Yes, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has written Harvard asking for the names of scholars recently cheering Hamas.
He says he’s working with 50 CEOs who pledge not to rent these jackasses.
But who’re these CEOs?
All of them seem like in hiding.
No names have been released except for Ackman (I even have asked and as this column goes to press. I’m still waiting).
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Dangerous precedent
My upcoming book “Go Woke, Go Broke,” chronicles the rise of the progressive counterculture within the boardroom, what caused it, and the way its embrace is tearing on the nation’s common culture.
You possibly can’t help but see wokeness being at the middle of this near-silence within the face of real systemic barbarism.
It sets a dangerous precedent once you don’t condemn evil since it runs counter to progressive diktat where Israel is an evil occupying force despite the undeniable fact that it has taken land during its various military victories over time, given it back to the Arabs and even to the Palestinians.
Hamas occupies Gaza, the source of the present tragedy.
It’s one in every of the lands Israel relinquished to Palestinian home rule.
But within the zoological caste system of the left, that is all irrelevant.
Israel is usually a white country and is routinely the oppressor; its enemies, the terrorists, are so-called people of color, so that they’re routinely oppressed, and it doesn’t matter what number of Israeli babies they behead.
I’m not saying our corporate leaders consider this nonsense; in truth, the overwhelming majority, I’m confident, don’t.
I’m just saying they accept wokeness as a price of doing business, too afraid of social media boycotts or losing their stellar ESG rating.
That’s how they allowed this noxious ideology into the workplace in the primary place.
It manifests itself in infinite Pride celebrations, racialized hiring quotas to satisfy DEI standards, trans women hawking beer in advertisements, and the relative silence over what’s happening in Israel lest it offend all those social-activist groups which were pressuring business for years.
Average Americans, if these CEOs haven’t noticed, are fighting back against the leftist propaganda being circulated by corporate America.
Bud Light sales still haven’t recovered because it featured a trans woman influencer in a social media beer ad that went viral.
Ditto after the woke deep dives of retailer Goal and entertainment giant Disney.
Still, corporate wokeness stays a potent force within the C-suite; its occupants’ near-silence on the tragedy in Gaza is proof.
