I hate CEO virtue-signaling.
It’s often so fake and it leads to perverse outcomes.
Yet if there was ever a time to indulge in it, now would be the time as Israel sits on the brink of potential annihilation following one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in history.
Corporate America, if you haven’t noticed, has been oddly understated in its public expressions of condemnation.
The question is why?
The answer, best I can tell, is wokeness has so thoroughly infected much of the business community that the nation’s executive class is afraid to speak up.
Recall, in 2020 during our summer of racial unrest, CEOs like JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, Brian Moynihan of Bank of America and many others blanketed the airwaves, social media, you name it, with condemnations following the death of George Floyd. Moynihan told Barron’s: “The protests are about not having the equivalent opportunity, criminal justice treatment by authorities.”
Solomon wrote on his LinkedIn page that he’s grieving “for the lives of George Floyd . . . and other victims of racism.”
Dimon was photographed taking a knee, seemingly in solidarity with the social justice warriors during that horrible spring and summer of “love.”
All sickening because they suggested the isolated instances of police brutality were proof America was a systematically racist land devoid of opportunity for its diverse citizenry.
Plus, they gave credence to the claims of the revolutionaries who took to the streets, immolating our cities while attacking the American ideal.
The CEOs then doubled down on their anti-American attacks and poured billions of dollars in shareholder money as a form of reparations to fund race-based lending programs.
Many CEOs signed petitions to reverse an alleged racist voter law in Georgia that demanded little more than ID to cast a ballot and no condemnation of rampant criminal behavior.
They posted black squares on Twitter and Instagram to show solidarity with the radical, anti-Israel Black Lives Matter movement, which has received millions of dollars in corporate donations.
You can make a good case that these woke CEOs helped pave the way for what we have today: A defund-the-police movement leading to an inner-city crime wave, and the progressive cultural anarchy seen every day on our streets.
It’s all very different from their hyper-measured boilerplate to the brutality unleashed by Hamas on the Israeli people.
Most CEOs seem content on issuing bland internal memos about the need to end the violence, and how they care so much for the people of Israel, and maybe they can raise some money for humanitarian aid.
Humanitarian aid is good, but some serious virtue-signaling of outrage might also do some good.
It could rally the world behind an ally that faces an existential threat from determined terrorist forces.
And how hard could that be?
Hamas beheaded infants and dragged women through the streets half-naked.
Men were filmed being shot so the terrorists could get a viral moment and advance their warped cause.
Yes, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has written Harvard asking for the names of students recently cheering Hamas.
He says he’s working with 50 CEOs who pledge not to hire these jackasses.
But who are these CEOs?
They all appear to be in hiding.
No names have been released aside from Ackman (I have asked and as this column goes to press. I’m still waiting).
Dangerous precedent
My upcoming book “Go Woke, Go Broke,” chronicles the rise of the progressive counterculture in the boardroom, what caused it, and how its embrace is tearing at the nation’s common culture.
You can’t help but see wokeness being at the center of this near-silence in the face of real systemic barbarism.
It sets a dangerous precedent when you don’t condemn evil because it runs counter to progressive diktat where Israel is an evil occupying force despite the fact that it has taken land during its various military victories over the years, given it back to the Arabs and even to the Palestinians.
Hamas occupies Gaza, the source of the current tragedy.
It’s one of the lands Israel relinquished to Palestinian home rule.
But in the zoological caste system of the left, this is all beside the point.
Israel is mostly a white country and is automatically the oppressor; its enemies, the terrorists, are so-called people of color, so they’re automatically oppressed, and it doesn’t matter how many Israeli babies they behead.
I’m not saying our corporate leaders believe this nonsense; in fact, the vast majority, I’m confident, don’t.
I’m just saying they accept wokeness as a cost of doing business, too afraid of social media boycotts or losing their stellar ESG rating.
That’s how they allowed this noxious ideology into the workplace in the first place.
It manifests itself in endless Pride celebrations, racialized hiring quotas to meet DEI standards, trans women hawking beer in advertisements, and the relative silence over what’s happening in Israel lest it offend all those social-activist groups that have been pressuring business for years.
Average Americans, if these CEOs haven’t noticed, are fighting back against the leftist propaganda being circulated by corporate America.
Bud Light sales still haven’t recovered since it featured a trans woman influencer in a social media beer ad that went viral.
Ditto after the woke deep dives of retailer Target and entertainment giant Disney.
Still, corporate wokeness remains a potent force in the C-suite; its occupants’ near-silence on the tragedy in Gaza is proof.