Jun
13
How to Fight Corporate Wokeness
“Big business, this is supposed to be the one area of culture that conservatives have some lever of power, but we were losing it at a rapid pace.” — Justin Danhof, National Center for Public Policy Research
With the ever-growing frequency of American corporations adopting and pushing “woke” Left agendas, it becomes increasingly frustrating for conservatives and others who don’t buy into the same view(s). Many on the right, feeling the need to do something, resort to boycotting of the services and products provided by such companies. Personally, while I understood this, I could never get fully behind such efforts. I question the effectiveness in most cases. Plus, I wonder if, once the push to boycott eventually peters out, the protesters — well, some, anyway — just revert to their old purchasing habits. In any case, that can’t be the only thing we can do, can it?
Justin Danhof certainly doesn’t think so. Danhof, general counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research, was recently interviewed by Rachel del Guidice on “The Daily Signal Podcast”. A good portion of the discussion was about what he and his organization’s Free Enterprise Project were recommending conservatives do to fight corporate wokeness. Here are a few excerpts from Danhof’s comments:
What About Boycotts?
“[When the Left] see a business they want to take over, they buy more. They don’t divest. They don’t boycott. They engage more in that company. That’s the state of play with the outside-in.
The shareholder activists investors, the rating agencies, they almost all come from the left. Conservatives do not engage business. Conservatives have this terrible knee-jerk reaction that we need to unlearn, that we claim we’re going to boycott.
Rachel, give me a conservative boycott that’s ever worked of a business. I’ll wait. We’ll sit here in silence for the next many hours because there isn’t one. That’s just the problem. Our claim of boycott is actually a hollow threat, so it hurts our cause. Don’t boycott.
Here’s a secret, the left threatens it from time to time, too, but their biggest effective tool is engagement….
If we engage these business leaders from the onset, if our voices are in the room, we’re going to have more impact. That’s why I always say: Engage, don’t boycott. Right? From my understanding, there’s at least 1,200 major companies that are on the wrong side of voter integrity in Georgia, that are literally trying to corrupt our elections.
If I’m going to go shopping for my family, if I want to boycott, first I would have to look at all 1,200. I’d probably need to set up some sort of algorithm and figure out which stores I’m even allowed to go to. Then, once I get there, I would need a team of people behind me saying, “Oh, no, that product can’t go in the cart, that one can, that one can’t.”
We’re not going to boycott our way out of the problem, so we have to engage the companies and engage the ones that are especially bad. Engage Big Tech, engage Hollywood, because part of the problem is, if you’re only hearing from one perspective, why won’t you just give into that perspective? It’s human nature, right? Many of these large corporations never hear from folks that share the values that you and I share. They never hear from us.
Contact customer service, if you’re a customer. Contact investor relations, if you’re an investor. If you’re anybody, anywhere, all these companies claim they care about stakeholders now. Well, everybody’s a stakeholder because stakeholder is an amorphous term that means nothing. You have the right to contact any company on any issue. I implore folks to do that.”
How Can Conservatives Dominate ‘Shareholder Proposal Space’?
“The simplest answer is ‘vote’. At corporate annual shareholder meetings, at every publicly traded company, there’s two sets of votes that are super important. Those are votes for board members and they’re votes for shareholder resolutions.
What happens is the equivalent of a red or purple state election that goes blue every single year because conservatives couldn’t be bothered to show up, while the left coalesces their money and they vote.
The shareholder base of even large companies that are woke, like Facebook, Alphabet, Nike, they’re not monolithically left, but that’s what the vote looks like. The management of those companies, they have freedom to take stances against conservative values because that’s what the vote looks like.
Conservative money, we couldn’t be bothered to vote on that Tuesday. Sorry. The left, they always vote. Use your money just like you’d use your electoral votes for politicians because you have the same amount of power.
If Andrew Breitbart, rest in peace, taught us anything, it’s that politics is downstream from culture. These votes on corporate culture, they affect politics. I implore folks to vote and not ignore your proxy ballots for corporations because they’re so meaningful for our society.”
Can We Ever Convince Corporations to Stay Out of Politics?
“I want companies to be fully engaged when there’s an issue that affects their bottom line. When it affects their investors, when it affects their customers, their shareholders, yes, be fully engaged. But voting laws? Bathroom bills? These things have nothing to do with the bottom line of corporations.
If there’s enough chatter on both sides, I think we’re going to build an off-ramp for companies to say, “Hey, maybe we should focus on our business for five minutes rather than engaging in the culture wars.”
The culture wars, guess what? They should be left to the culture warriors, right? I’ll fight that battle. I’ll fight that battle and I’ll debate anybody from the [Southern Poverty Law Center] or the Human Rights Campaign any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Bank of America doesn’t need to be funding the SPLC or the Human Rights Campaign. Goldman Sachs doesn’t need to be involved in that.
Yeah, if there’s enough chatter from our side, because we know there’s enough on the other side, let’s build them the off-ramp because I think, deep down, many businesses know that it’s their legal, fiduciary responsibility to look after the best interests of their investors. They’re bending to the will of those that are talking to them. We need to have more conversations.”
To be honest, I am skeptical that this sort of stuff will ever disappear. But, Danhof makes sense about influencing from the inside. So, we have our marching orders. Let’s figure out how and when we can engage these corporations, so they get out of the “culture wars” and focus on being profitable businesses that provide great value for all their customers and clients, not just the radical squeaky-wheels.
