Woke Capital Blinks

By Nate Hochman

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

 

Yesterday, Caroline Downey reported that State Farm, the insurance mega-corporation that had recently launched an initiative sponsoring the distribution of LGBT literature to children as young as kindergartners, was having second thoughts:

 

State Farm, the household-name insurance company, has abandoned its program to distribute LGBTQ-themed books to teachers, community centers, and libraries, explicitly targeting children as young as kindergartners, after a media exposé based on a whistleblower email caught the company by surprise on Monday.

 

In an email to all State Farm agents and staff members sent just hours after multiple news outlets revealed the book initiative, Victor Terry, chief diversity officer and vice president of public affairs, announced the cancellation of its collaboration with GenderCool, an organization that promotes LGBTQ teaching via speaking events, mentorship programs, DEI/HR consulting, and advising for parents of transgender children.

 

“State Farm’s support of a philanthropic program, GenderCool, has been the subject of news and customer inquiries. This program that included books about gender identity was intended to promote inclusivity,” the email, obtained by Libs of TikTok, read. “We will no longer support that program.

 

It’s not the first time in recent months that a large corporation has snubbed left-wing activists. In March, Disney’s ill-considered decision to go to war with Ron DeSantis over Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Bill backfired so badly that the entertainment company decided to withdraw from political activism altogether. As I wrote at the time:

 

DeSantis didn’t cave. As Phil Klein wrote, “Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek made a public show of calling DeSantis in protest about the parental-rights bill. . . . Some suggested that this put DeSantis in a tight spot, given that Disney is one of the most powerful businesses in the state and one of its major employers. But the governor not only told Disney to pound sand, he made a public show of it.”

 

And then? He won. Rather than lean into the fight, Chapek announced that Disney would be “pausing all political donations in the state of Florida.” In an open letter detailing the decision, Chapek apologized to progressive activists: “You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down. I am sorry.” In the end, it was all talk. DeSantis’s courage actually de-politicized the company. Go figure.

 

Then, in April, Bloomberg reported that Exxon-Mobil planned “to prohibit the LGBTQ-rights flag from being flown on the corporate flagpole outside its offices during Pride month in June,” updating “company guidance on what flags can be displayed outside its offices” to ban “‘external position flags’ such as PRIDE and Black Lives Matter.” It was a symbolic move, to be sure, but significant nonetheless. I wrote:

 

Big business’s relatively recent entry into the culture wars was at least partially a question of basic incentives: Progressive activists, armed with the enormous institutional power of the media, Big Tech, the culture industry, the universities, and one of the nation’s two major political parties, were increasingly demanding that corporations use their considerable economic power to go after their enemies. Conservatives, on the other hand — traditionally more deferential to the business community — were reluctant to respond in kind.

 

But we’re beginning to see a shift in that dynamic. The Republican base is now demanding that their leaders show some backbone in the culture wars, and is making it politically unacceptable for party elites to cave to corporate interests. Conservatives — particularly those of the social-conservative variety — are realizing that big business is often not their friend, and responding in kind. As a result, the incentive structure is changing before our eyes.

 

Then, on the heels of the leak of the draft Roe decision, large corporations — many of which had become vocal proponents of any number of boutique social-justice issues in recent years — were conspicuously silent. “Among most Fortune 500 companies, substantive statements were few and far between, whether in support of or opposition to the court’s draft opinion,” the New York Times reported. Their old allies on the activist left noticed: “The silence is deafening from corporate America in Roe v. Wade,” one PRWeek headline declared.

 

Then, just last week, Netflix went on the offensive against the woke activism within its own company. Caroline Downey reported: 

 

Netflix recently canceled several social justice-oriented projects and on Tuesday laid off 150 employees, many of whom created content that catered to various racial and sexual identities, in an apparent effort to steer the business model away from prioritizing the interests of progressives.

 

On top of the layoffs, Downey wrote, “Netflix published an update to its corporate culture memo for the first time in nearly five years . . . which declared that the company would be embracing a big tent content strategy regardless of whether staff find some of it objectionable. Rather than indulge the protestations of woke employees, Netflix encouraged them to seek a different workplace more compatible with their values.”

 

And now, State Farm — all in all, a bad few months for the activists who had grown accustomed to having corporate America do their bidding. Whether it lasts, of course, remains to be seen. But it’s a step in the right direction.