When Big Business Went Woke - YouTube

Wokeism—the idea that America  is a systemically racist country  

and that your identity is defined  by your race, your gender,  

and your sexual orientation—is no  longer about challenging the system.

Wokeism is the system. 

Blame the radical academics.

Blame the college administrators.

Blame the woke graduates.

But these aren’t the people  who took wokeism mainstream.

That dubious distinction belongs to  an unexpected source: Big Business.

That’s right—the largest companies in America,  the standard-bearers of American capitalism—have  

injected this virus into the arteries of commerce.

Our story begins in 2008, following the mortgage  crisis that led to the near-collapse of the entire  

banking system. Bankers got paid a lot of money  when times were good, but got a bailout from  

taxpayers when times went bad. No wonder Americans  were skeptical of capitalism, and for good reason,  

because it was really just crony capitalism.

The old Left wanted to punish the banks in the  usual way—seize their money and redistribute it  

to “the poor.” But the new Woke Left added  a new twist. The real problem, they said,  

wasn’t just poverty or economic injustice. It  was a 300-year history of white patriarchy.

Ironically, this new idea (you know it as Critical  Race Theory) presented Wall Street with a way out  

of their PR disaster—a way to go from being  the bad guys to—poof!—becoming the good guys.

All they had to do was admit that their eyes  had been opened. In other words, they “woke” up.

You want us to fix global warming?  No problem. You want us to get on  

board with the transgender movement? Sure,  we’ll do that too. Solve systemic racism?  

Sounds great, as long as you don’t  talk about systemic financial risk.

They were happy to add token minorities to their  boards. They were happy to post a black square  

on their corporate Instagram. They were happy  to preach about climate change after flying  

on private jets to fancy ski towns. But they  didn’t do it for free. As long as the banks  

said the right things, they would be  left in peace to make their billions.

And, abracadabra, like a rabbit  out of a hat, Woke Inc. was born.  

Things went pretty smoothly, until the 2016  election. The man who won wasn’t supposed  

to win. And this time, the blame fell not so  much on Wall Street, but on Silicon Valley. 

But they had Wall Street’s playbook, and  they followed it to a T. The new bad guys  

(Big Tech) could become the good guys just  like the banks, as long as they made sure  

the next election went the “right way”; that  is, the way the new Left wanted it to go.

In exchange, Big Tech would get  to keep its monopoly power intact.

And that’s the untold story of how modern Big  Tech censorship was born. The newly ascendant Left  

was able to delegate its dirty work to  private companies to do through the back door  

what it could not do through the front  door under the Constitution—namely,  

to censor protected political speech.

Then came Covid and the death of George Floyd.

Woke Inc. became the Woke Industrial Complex.

Now it’s not just Wall Street and  Silicon Valley playing the game,  

but nearly all of corporate America as we know it.

Coca-Cola trains its employees “how to be less  white” and issues public statements about voting  

laws that make it sound more like a super-PAC than  a soft drink manufacturer. Pay no attention that  

its drinks are a major contributor to the obesity  epidemic. Especially in the black community.

Nike condemns “systemic racism” in the United  States and donates tens of millions of dollars  

to Black Lives Matter while it still relies on  slave labor in Asia to make $200 sneakers that  

they sell to black kids in the inner city  who can’t afford to buy books for school.

It’s the magic trick of the 21st Century.  Distract the public with its virtue over here  

while doing awful (but highly profitable) things  over there, including in places like China,  

where companies including Disney, Nike,  Apple, BlackRock, and the NBA regularly  

support a brutal regime while continuing  to decry “social injustice” here at home.

Big Business wins. 

Woke activists win.

The Chinese Communist Party wins.

But Americans lose.

We lose because when corporations  cynically enforce speech codes and  

mandate how we act and think, we lose the most  fundamental freedom of all: freedom of speech.

We’re forced to choose between speaking our  minds and putting food on the dinner table.

So, how do we stop them?

Well, you’ve already taken a big first step.  You now know how the magic trick works.  

So when a woke corporation  tells you how virtuous they are,  

just laugh and take your business elsewhere.  And then, stand up for your constitutional,  

God-given rights. And if they  try to take those away…sue ‘em!

I’m Vivek Ramaswamy, author of Woke Inc.:  

Inside Corporate America’s Social  Justice Scam for Prager University.