Home » How small woke groups exert pressure on the majority that disagrees, as well as on corporations

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How small woke groups exert pressure on the majority that disagrees, as well as on corporations — 20 Comments

  1. Years ago, my younger brother was the finance director for a city in southern California. He wrote a letter to Business Week pointing out that public employee pension funds have a fiduciary obligation to invest for maximum return, even if that means investing in companies and industries that some find distasteful. I don’t know if that is still the case or not, but a few shareholder lawsuits might help get the attention of boards of these publicly traded companies.

    This is a fight that is never going to be over, by the way, at least within our current system. If the left finds that their current strategy is no longer effective, they’ll probably quit using soft means like DEI and ESG and begin fire bombing corporate HQs or kidnapping executives.

  2. Debar money managers from being proxies at shareholder’s meetings, for their clients or anyone else.

  3. Sgt Joe Friday, I just read yesterday in the daily rag that political pressure is ramping up on CalPers, the huge California public employees pension fund, to invest in “approved entities” even if the returns are less. One would think that would be illegal, or at least unethical. Millions of people depend on Calpers for retirement, and its finances are already very shaky.

    For the record, I now fully acknowledge that I am a bundle of “isms” and “phobias”; and I am very angry. At one point I thought that I would make a statement by only doing business with companies that resisted the pressure to make political and social declaration that I find abominable. I learned, however, that that would be impossible unless I lived a completely self sufficient lifestyle by going off the grid, raising my own food, and wearing animal skins that I harvested–or going bare.
    Even Walmart has caved.

  4. That was a very good thread, thanks for posting it. Many things become clear about the tactics, in particular the objective of prodding people / groups into shifting from passivity into alignment and then support. I’ve often thought that the purpose of prodding people into a reaction is that it becomes a form of free advertising – making the cause seem bigger than it really is.

  5. There’s another element that I’ve been hearing about. Reportedly, the availability of low interest business loans from the major lenders is based on your ESG score. Businesses are always taking out loans, and they want the lowest interest rates. So they bump up the ESG scores to comply with the lender’s demands.

  6. its a violation of fiduciary responsibility, but would they be prosecuted for it, certainly not in minnesota or california

  7. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were the early instigators of this technique. Thay picked companies and told them if they didn’t play ball, they would call them racists and ruin their reputations. Many companies paid the required bribes to keep them quiet. The activist LBGQT+ people have taken it up a notch. Asking companies to glorify their perversions or they would out them as intolerant “phobics.” With the MSM pushing the agenda, many corporations are running scared. The DEI, ESG agenda was stealthily put in place to avoid “trouble” or accusations of intolerance and to virtue signal.

    I abhor boycotts and shunning, but it appears that the “normals” will have to fight fire with fire. Hit them in the pocketbook. It may wake some of the corporations up to who their customers really are.
    In a world where identity is now all, being the wrong identity is to be a person in danger of being canceled. Social media has made this identity politics powerful and useful to activists. It and the MSM provide them with a megaphone to go after those who don’t toe their line. Avoiding the MSM and social media is a step toward neutering the Woke megaphone.

  8. In Target’s case, the calls are coming from inside the house, with a marketing VP (I think) who’s on the Board of GLSEN, the LGBT lobby “charity” which pushes “transgender medicine” for children, among other things.

  9. It’s been suggested that we buy less if we can’t buy unwoke. IOW, do with less of the usual.
    That would be tougher than switching beer brands, but if can be done, even if only one percent.
    Been said many times, the first (pick a number, say, 90%) of sales cover expenses. Until you get beyond that, the gross profit isn’t the net profit,
    For example, more care in combining errand trips might save 1% of our gas consumption. Lower temp by one degree in winter, raise it in the a/c in the summer.
    Is Good Will woke? My wife and a couple of other comfortably retired people she knows get attractive, serviceable purses at Good Will for five or ten bucks. Diff goes to worth causes, 501c3 or not.
    They have books for casual browsing, decent coffee mugs for a Christmas gift or to fill out the cabinet.
    Non-franchise purchasing might help avoid woke.
    Might think of some other things.

  10. I have been reading an interesting book about this topic.

    The person behind much of this trend is well known, Eric Holder, Obama’s “wing man.” He has been the apostle of “Woke.”

    This book provides a comprehensive overview of the problem and the players involved, both on the aggressive, hard-charging left and in the nascent conservative resistance. Soukup explains what the left is doing and how and why the right must be prepared and willing to fight back to save this critical aspect of American culture from becoming another, more economically powerful version of the “woke” college campus.

  11. The Big Picture I’ve come to:

    * Society can be roughly divided into a power pyramid with three classes: upper, middle and lower.

    * Currently the upper and the lower have become allied against the middle.

    In the short term It’s a good strategy for the upper and the lower, since the middle has the most assets to loot.

    In the long term it’s a bad strategy because societal stability depends on the middle class.

    Après moi le déluge!

  12. Lola
    The Kinks, 1970

    I met her in a club down in old Soho
    Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola
    C-O-L-A, Cola
    She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
    I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said, “Lola”
    L-O-L-A, Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola

    Well, I’m not the world’s most physical guy
    But when she squeezed me tight, she nearly broke my spine
    Oh, my Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola
    Well, I’m not dumb, but I can’t understand
    Why she walks like a woman and talks like a man
    Oh, my Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola

    Well, we drank champagne and danced all night
    Under electric candlelight
    She picked me up and sat me on her knee
    She said, “Little boy, won’t you come home with me?”

    Well, I’m not the world’s most passionate guy
    But when I looked in her eyes, well, I almost fell for my Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola

    Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola

    I pushed her away
    I walked to the door
    I fell to the floor
    I got down on my knees
    Well, I looked at her, and she at me

    Well, that’s the way that I want it to stay
    And I always want it to be that way for my Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola
    Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
    It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world
    Except for Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola

    Well, I’d left home just a week before
    And I’d never, ever kissed a woman before
    Lola smiled and took me by the hand
    She said, “Little boy, gonna make you a man”
    Well I’m not the world’s most masculine man
    But I know what I am and I’m glad I’m a man
    And so is Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola
    Lo-Lo-Lo-Lo-Lola

  13. miguel cervantes…”its a violation of fiduciary responsibility, but would they be prosecuted for it, certainly not in minnesota or california”

    It’s a civil issue, not a criminal issue, no prosecutors involved.

    These cases will likely be hard to win, management can always argue that what they are doing is *really* in the best interests of the shareholders, because attracting young employees, or whatever. Some of them are so egregious, though, that shareholder lawsuits on fiduciary responsibility grounds may stand a chance.

    What this really is about is *abuse of authority*, which has become a widespread plague in our society:
    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/67862.html

  14. That’s quite a thread, David.
    …With great comments.
    Is the trend we are now seeing—private corporations giving ironclad support to Democratic Party policies across the board…and then being supported, in turn, BY the Democratic Party (AKA “Biden”)—akin to the increasing collusion between government and the corporate sectors, IOW a kind of Fascism?
    Or was it always thus? (I would like to believe that it was not, or at least that the situation was NEVER AS INCESTUOUS—and hence almost seamless, and DANGEROUS—as it is now.)

    People have already been using Eisenhower’s warning about the “Military-Industrial Complex” as a prescient precursor to what is happening today: a kind of militarized “Government-Media-Infotech Complex” that heavily influences—corrupts—the dissemination of INFORMATION thus affecting a wide spectrum of social features, perhaps most prominently EDUCATION, to create a kind of Fascist political and social reality WRT top-down, invasive power, leverage and control over the individual.
    I’m not even sure it could be referred to as “soft fascism”.
    More like a kind of Corporatist Socialism…with authoritarian features and totalitarian potential.
    (Keeping in mind the CPC model…and Klaus Schwab’s fatal attraction to that model…along with the adherence of Western, and global, political leadership and governing class—in the US, in Canada in Europe—to Schwab’s nefarious WTF policies.)

  15. The danger currently facing the US….
    Compare and contrast:
    “The profoundly dishonest James Comey forgets the FBI’s corruption is now established fact”—
    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/the-profoundly-dishonest-james-comey-forgets-the-fbis-corruption-is-now-established-fact
    “No Surprise: FBI Director Playing For Team Biden”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/no-surprise-fbi-director-playing-team-biden
    H/T Powerline blog.

    I would imagine that the Democrats, the FBI, the entire Security Apparatus, the Deep State and the Corrupt Media BELIEVE that they are FIGHTING for the soul of America; that they are doing what they are doing to PROTECT and SAVE the country.
    (Or maybe they’re just being entirely and pathologically disengenuous. That is, maybe it’s entirely an elaborate rationalization, a sugar-coated POWER PLAY.)

  16. In business restructuring, I worked with a lot of execs who seemed to care more about access to the capital markets than about generating revenue. If the capital markets cooperated with them, both management and lenders appeared to be willing to ignore customers to a startling degree. Sometimes it seemed that customers existed to give someone the ability to generate income projections based on wild assumptions about what customers would be likely to put up with. It’s amazingly easy to lose sight of the basic problem of offering people a product so valuable they’re willing to give up their money for it voluntarily.

  17. This the reason that law lefties advocate that corporations maximize welfare for “stakeholders” instead of shareholders.

  18. Wendy Laubach…”In business restructuring, I worked with a lot of execs who seemed to care more about access to the capital markets than about generating revenue.”

    Samuel Johnson observed that the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully. I don’t know what the specific situation of these companies was, but if you’re worried about running out of money to pay the bills in a few weeks, getting enough new investment to keep going would surely rise to top-of-mind.

  19. ESG (Environmental, Social & Corporate Governance) scores are a big topic in investment. Public pension funds, so far as I can see, do take ESG scores into account when investing money, though some states have acted to forbit that. Progressive unions like SEIU are also big promoters of ESG. HR departments, though, are the Trojan horse inside the corporate gates, and most CEO’s seem to give them a free hand or support their efforts.

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