(Article by Walker Larson republished from LifeSiteNews.com)
Fewer people are aware that other American brands have come under fire for similar reasons, including John Deere, Tractor Supply, and Harley Davidson. And fewer still are aware of the man who is largely responsible for the latest round of pushback against woke capitalism. That man is Robby Starbuck, and he has been working relentlessly to expose these companies’ slide to the left. He’s a filmmaker and conservative activist whose mother and grandparents brought him to the U.S. as a child when they fled communist Cuba. The former Trump supporter began operating as a corporate watchdog after he discovered the woke policies of Tractor Supply, a company he used to buy feed from for the cattle on his farm near Nashville, and found that his reports on social media triggered a reaction from the company: they actually canned their DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives and carbon emission goals.
Since then, Starbuck hasn’t looked back. He realized that the techniques used against Tractor Supply could be replicated against other brands—specifically brands whose customer base is largely rural and conservative and who will feel betrayed by company policies that surrender to the zeitgeist of demonic and destructive woke idiocy. John Deere came in his crosshairs next when he unearthed several of their corrupt policies, including gender and sexual orientation “training,” race-based identity groups at corporate headquarters, funding for a pride event for children as young as three, welcoming groups that identify based on their sexual perversions (LGBTQ+ groups), and moving jobs to Mexico while firing U.S. employees.
John Deere has since backtracked a bit on some of these initiatives, stating that it will “no longer participate in or support external social or cultural awareness, parades, festivals or events.” However, the company said that a diverse workforce allows them to meet customer needs and they “will continue to track and advance the diversity” of their organization, despite denying the existence of diversity quotas.
The latest brand under Starbuck’s microscope is Harley Davidson. Starbuck claimed on The Dennis Prager Show that the company’s CEO, Jochen Zeitz, is a woke activist and that the company promoted the Critical Race Theory (CRT) book “White Fragility” to its employees and joined the LGBTQ+ chamber of commerce in Wisconsin. In the video, Starbuck points out that this political/social activism is also just plain bad business on the part of Harley Davidson. “They’re out of alignment with their customer base… They have fiduciary duty to stockholders to actually do things that are in the best interest of the company’s bottom line. That is not the case with the way that they’ve adopted wokeness because it’s clearly out of alignment with their customer base.” The situation at the major motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, right now supports Starbuck’s assertion: the Harley Davidson tent there is reportedly a “ghost town” as bikers boycott the company that no longer supports their values.
Already, Harley Davidson may be considering backpedaling on their wokeness, as indicated by their announcement that they are evaluating “policies, strategies and activities to ensure they’re relevant to our business.” Is this a preparation for a change in DEI policies? It’s too early to say, but if they follow the pattern of Tractor Supply and John Deere, some kind of shift may be coming.
Starbuck has also released a documentary detailing the left’s intentional sexualization, exploitation, and indoctrination of children called “The War on Children.”
Starbuck, journalist Christopher Rufo, and other investigators seem to be part of a growing movement pushing back against the woke-ification of our business, education, and government sectors. David Primo, professor of political science at the University of Rochester, New York, as quoted by USA Today, comments that “Starbuck and other activists are tapping into the sentiment that DEI and ESG initiatives, however well-meaning, have gone too far.”
There’s a whisper in the wind. There’s an echo in the hills. There’s a stirring in the waters—not yet enough, perhaps, to be called a turning of the tide, but something like a halting that might precede a turning. I am no prophet, and predictions are a risky business. But I sense that the postmodern, neo-Marxist “long march through the institutions” may be coming, at last, to an end.
This “long march” was a slogan developed around 1967 by socialist activist Rudi Dutschke and it echoed Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the “war of position.” Dutschke elaborated the theory in a correspondence with philosopher Hervert Marcuse, one of the fathers of the modern left. The slogan expresses Dutschke’s strategy for revolutionizing society along Marxist lines, and according to journalist Christopher Rufo, this strategy is the key to the modern left’s power. He explains that in the 1960’s and 70’s, leftwing radicals pivoted away from Leninist-style violent agitation and revolution because it wasn’t working in Western democracies. Instead, they took the war to the intellectual front by infiltrating the elite institutions that shape our society’s culture and beliefs. Rather than taking over industrial production, they would take over cultural and knowledge production to spread revolutionary ideology and transform society.
But this “long march”—which up till now has been remarkably successful—may at last be coming to a halt. Consider: Republicans have attacked DEI programs in higher education through legislation; parents are pushing back against critical race theory in schools; there have been repeated woke box-office bombs in the entertainment industry; and we’ve witnessed the successful boycotting of brands obsessed with identity politics.
These are all signs of hope. Any ideology as absurd, irrational, and evil as wokeness will eventually run its course. Natural laws demand it. But the question is, which will it destroy first: itself, or Western culture?
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