The Atlantic: Woke Capital Doesn’t Exist

Don’t believe your lying eyes.

You are imagining that woke progressive activists have hijacked Corporate America and have been using HR departments to enforce a cultural and political orthodoxy and the concentrated economic power of these corporations as a weapon to force their unpopular cultural views on recalcitrant state governments. There is actually no bullying by a hated activist minority going on here.

You are imagining that all that “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” corporate nonsense has crept its way into the Biden administration. You are imagining that political correctness has mutated into wokeness and has become a disease of the highly educated, cosmopolitan professional classes. You are imagining that Corporate America is bankrolling Black Lives Matter. You are imagining that Big Tech is censoring the internet and forcing garbage into your newsfeed. None of that is actually happening.

The Atlantic:

“Republicans are ready to take on “woke capital.”

After losing elections for president and U.S. Senate, Georgia Republicans passed a series of restrictions that specifically targets the voting methods used disproportionately by Democratic constituencies during the unusual circumstances of the pandemic.

Whether those restrictions will have the desired effect of either placating the conservative base, which regards any election loss as definitionally fraudulent, or granting Republicans a partisan advantage at the polls remains unclear. But the law has already sparked a massive backlash, because most Americans rightfully believe that their right to vote should not be curtailed just because they choose not to vote Republican. …

Putting out statements supporting Black Lives Matter or adorning their logos with pride colors is very easy for big corporations, but such gestures do not signal a commitment to fair wages, safe working conditions, or a willingness to pay their share in taxes, let alone racial egalitarianism in all but the most cosmetic sense. They are merely brand management. “Woke capital” does not actually exist, only capital—and its interests remain the same as they have always been. …

These so-called populist Republicans do not wish to throw the one ring into Mount Doom; they simply want to wield it on their own behalf. …”

It is true that most elected Republicans are still wedded to their Reaganite free market orthodoxy. Congress is a gerontocracy. The Republican policy agenda hasn’t caught up the reality of the Republican electorate. It certainly hasn’t caught up with what is labeled “Right Populism.”

None of this addresses the real issue and the grievance which is that corporations are starting to elevate the boutique cultural values of the most leftwing swath of the American population – upper class progressive activists – ABOVE their economic interest as businesses and in doing so are alienating and angering vast swathes of the country. Whether it is Big Tech deplatforming the president of the United States and censoring millions of his supporters, the MLB All-Star game, the collapse of trust in “journalism” and the discontent over woke sharia in the New York Times newsroom, it is the same issue.