Go Woke, Go Broke – it’s been said for awhile now and a few major brands have started to re-think their forced political agenda after suffering losses from their consumer base. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Americans don’t like the idea of corporations pushing a leftist narrative upon them, and also feel that whatever corporate activism is taking place, is largely in part to phony pandering anyway. A Brunswick Group study, published last year, had data to support that only 36% of voters felt that “companies should speak out on social issues.”
To take things a step further, it’s worth noting that corporations pushing a “woke” agenda, have, by large, done nothing to speak out against serious humanitarian issues such as the abuse and modern slavery system perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party, including the imprisonment in concentration camps of an estimated 1,000,000 Uyghurs.
Continually, corporations siding with far-left ideology and propaganda are facing significant financial loss. The question now is, where is the breaking point and when will these pandering organizations begin to distance themselves and cease their involvement with Woke agenda items to retain market share and profits?
The tide seems to be turning in some cases, for example, back in 2016, Oberlin College students got into an altercation at Gibson’s Bakery with the store owner’s son when he tried to shoplift from the store. Allyn Gibson attempted to stop the shoplifter and after the altercation spilled onto the street, the shoplifter and began to punch and kick him repeatedly. This story should have ended there, with an an unfortunate article about the situation, but rather, Oberlin College students gathered outside the bakery the next day with “Black Lives Matter” signs and the dean of students proceeded to pass out fliers which described Gibson’s Bakery as a “racist establishment.” – Fast forward to April 2022, the Court of Appeals that heard the case has ruled that Oberlin College must pay Gibson’s Bakery $32,000,000.
Another example is how Disney has taken a serious hit financially after taking a strong opposition stance to Florida’s HB 1557, which was designed to ban ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ issues from classrooms. The bill, designed specifically to protect children from sexualized content gained national news, and after Disney’s tough stance to oppose the bill, they ultimately lost special tax status (costing hundreds of millions of dollars) and lost stock value in the double digits.
Most recently, Netflix, a known perpetrator of original films that are designed to be more “inclusive” for the sake of pandering, issued a memo to workers that if they are offended by the content published by Netflix, they should leave the company. This is a bold step to take for someone who has been riding the far left lines for quite some time. Comedian Dave Chapelle’s comedy special which covers content that the far left has deemed offensive has drawn ire from a number of Woke groups, but rather than caving to the woke mob, Netflix has surprisingly held firm on this matter. It’s no surprise that Chapelle has made Netflix a significant amount of revenue and similar to Spotify’s arrangement with Joe Rogan, money talks and we may see more large corporations back down from working to force this unwanted ideology on their consumers.
Will this trend of a return to sanity continue? I certainly hope so, and in the meantime we as consumers must continue to support solid, sane American companies.