Death of Cancel Culture: Woke companies finding out its bad for business
"If you'd find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you," the memo read.
Wokeness is the religion of the Fascists, who prefer the term “progressive” but are nothing more than a reincarnation of the socialists who rose to power in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. (Photo: Amber Davies/Washington Examiner) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Late last week, Netflix did something astounding for a “woke” corporation. They told their employees that are trying to censor and silence those who offend their sensibilities, in so many words, to go work somewhere else.
One specific section of the memo gaining notoriety is the "Artistic Expression" section, which seems to be Netflix's answer to a year filled with woke employees complaining about comedian Dave Chappelle's special. Chappelle uses the transgender community as fodder for his jokes, and many of the streaming service's woke employees called the comedian's work transphobic.
Under the new memo, employees will not "censor specific artists or voices," even if they feel their content is "harmful," according to the report.
"If you'd find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you," the memo read.
Employees at the company may have to work on content they "perceive to be harmful," according to the memo, and, if that is too much, there is always another job somewhere else, the memo noted.
"Entertaining the world is an amazing opportunity and also a challenge because viewers have very different tastes and points of view. So, we offer a wide variety of TV shows and movies, some of which can be provocative," Netflix told its employees. “We support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with. ... We let viewers decide what's appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices.”
Netflix has suffered a dramatic drop in subscribers over the last year and the politics of its mid-level employees has intruded on the company’s efforts to provide a broad range of streaming content to a wide spectrum of the public. Conservatives have been the target of those employees’ efforts to censor content they wish to silence. The company’s stock has precipitously dropped as a result.
Netflix felt it had to do something. So the memo was written and then leaked. It’s a trend we can expect to continue.
Disney’s bad blunder in attacking the new Florida law banning gender identity curricula from kindergarten through third grade was the canary in the coal mine that served as an alarm to Netflix and other woke corporations.
In short order after vowing to fight the new Florida law and attacking Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-led legislature, Disney lost its 56-year rights to self-governance on Disney property and may face other harsher penalties from the state as well. They’re Wokeness blew up in their face.
Disney has suffered thousands of cancellations at both its U.S. properties and the Disney stock has taken a hit as well since it stubbed its toe on Florida’s new law.
“Racist”, “Sexist”, “Homophobe”, “Transphobe”, “Nazi”, “White Supremacist”, etc., are, as we all know in the Dissident Right, the language of control that the Fascists ― who prefer the word “progressive” because, after all, calling one’s self a Fascist has a negative impact on others ― use against other we ordinary Americans, whether conservative or moderate, to maintain control and social power.
Members of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement are spurred by to action by white Fascists who finance them through the corporate donations that have flowed into BLM over the last two years. (Photo: Daniel Zee/Los Angeles Times) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Occasionally non-whites — usually weaponized by whites of course — Involve themselves in this power dynamic. But it is mainly a form of white-on-white verbal violence, or tyranny, and like all such things it is deeply resented.
Unlike earlier tyrannies, Wokeness and the cancel culture is not well understood. Invisible chains are, after all, the most effective ones. No tyranny can last indefinitely. Indeed, all tyrannies have to be constantly reinvented or rejigged, because proportionate to their success, they all breed resistance, antithesis, and finally their own overthrow.
It will eventually be with Wokeism too, as well as its central “crime”, “sin”, or “taboo” that certain objectively valid generalizations and topics are somehow “evil.”
In order to facilitate the death of this particular tyranny on the free opinions of mankind — because, yes, its negative effects ripple out over the whole of humankind — we have to start thinking concretely of how Wokeism will actually die.
This may very well be the beginning of its downfall. As will most ideologies, when they start brushing up against personal income and corporate profits, those affected take pause to reflect on what exactly is the price they must pay to hold to such radical principles. If the price is too high, the individual or the company will likely decide their own economic well-being is more important that the creeds they have previously espoused.
Certain Netflix has made that decision. We would be willing to guess that Disney wishes it had been more cognizant of the bottom line before sticking its corporate foot in its corporate mouth.
After a lot of false starts and toing-and-froing, effective resistance against the tyranny of Wokeism was bound to emerge. We have already had some worthwhile attempts to deconstruct the juggernaut going back at least a year, and perhaps somewhat longer.
One of the first chinks in Wokeness’ armor was when Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time,” grabbed himself by the shirt collar and dragged himself back toward the center. He began speaking out against Wokeness shortly after Biden took office and has continued over the months to become more and more vocal about the tyranny of the movement.
Maher first broke ranks with the Fascist Left when he pointed out some glaring problems with Biden’s ill-fated “Build Back Better” legislation that, had it passed, would have had a devastating impact on wages, inflation and consumer confidence ― even more so that his other policies have had.
He has also panned Biden’s “ministry of truth,” officially known as the Disinformation Governance Board, to be headed by Mary Poppins imitator Nina Jankowicz. He compared it to Nazi Germany’s efforts to control the narrative.
Recently, Maher has condemned the protests outside the homes of Supreme Court justice’s homes following the leak of a February draft of the decision that may overturn Roe v. Wade. He rightly pointed out that it is illegal to attempt to intimidate a federal judge, juror or prosecutor, a felony punishable by one year in federal prison.
Bill Maher, lost of HBO’s “Real Time,” has abandoned the Woke movement to expose the hypocrisy of the Fascists that promote it. (Photo: HBO Publicity) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
He also ridiculed the Fascist efforts to characterize the potential overturning of the controversial decision by the Warren court in 1973 as a return to back-alley and coat-hanger abortions. He accurately cited Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked brief as reestablishing abortion as a States’ Right issue rather than something the federal government should regulate.
The rejection of Wokeness is an international movement. London-based, Zimbabwean born writer and speaker Africa Brooke recently published a letter indicating she was abandoning what she calls “the cult of Wokeness.”
“What I’m truly afraid of is existing in a world that forces me to submit to an ideology without question,” she wrote. “Otherwise, I’m to be shamed (or pressured to shame myself) and cast out of the community.
”A world that tells me that because I inhabit a black body; I will forever be oppressed and at the mercy of some omnipresent monster called ‘whiteness.’ That because of the color of my skin, I am a victim of an inherently racist system by default ― and me rejecting the narrative of oppression means that I am in fact, in denial. How empowering!
“As someone who comes from Zimbabwe, a country where the general population is truly oppressed, it perplexes me that oppression is now being worn as an identity piece in most parts of the West, especially by those who claim to be “progressive.”
“What I’m truly afraid of is existing in a world that forces me to consider the color of my skin and my gender (and that of others) at every f***ing turn, instead of living by Martin Luther King’s teachings and prioritizing the content of mine and other people’s character.”
When those who are supposedly the focus of Wokeness realize that Wokeness is the true oppressor, the movement is in big trouble. That sentiment has not been lost on several corporations in the U.S. that Wokeness is killing their businesses.
Business leaders are waking up to the destructive “woke” policies being foisted on businesses by boardrooms more concerned with virtue signaling than their primary responsibility of ensuring corporate profitability and enhancing shareholder values.
In short, the “woke” buck stops here, more corporate executives are saying. Mixing the politics of culture wars with business is a losing strategy.
Former McDonald’s CEO Ed Rensi is leading the charge. He ran McDonald’s from 1991-1997, bringing the chain’s McNugget to market and also served on the boards of Famous Dave’s Bar-B-Que, Great Wolf Resorts and Snap-on Inc. These days, he’s launching The Boardroom Initiative, comprised of three conservative advocacy groups — The Job Creators Network, which was founded by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, The Free Enterprise Group and Second Vote. The goal: get business back to business and out of politics.
“Corporations have no business being on the right or the left because they represent everybody there and their sole job is to build equity for their investors,” Rensi said.
Author and speaker Africa Brooke, born in Zimbabwe and now living in London, is another prominent individual who has rejected the nonsense of Wokeness. (Photo: Dani Asmon/Vogue) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rensi knows how to grow a business. While leading McDonald’s, he saw U.S. sales double to more than $16 billion, the number of U.S. restaurants grow from nearly 6,600 to more than 12,000 and the number of U.S. franchisees grow from 1,600 to more than 2,700.
“It is not the province of board members or executives to take shareholder money profit and spend it on social matters,” Rensi explained. “Corporations should not get involved in social engineering.”
Corporate adoption of “woke” policies that attempt to sway public policies on everything from energy investments to the Second Amendment is crippling businesses. Corporate discrimination is nothing new to the firearm industry. It’s a battle NSSF has been engaged in for years.
Corporate banks are engaged in “woke” discrimination against firearm businesses. Banks including JPMogran Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo have all adopted discriminatory policies unfairly denying financial services to firearm-related businesses simply because they don’t like the products that are lawfully made and sold.
They want gun manufacturers to adopt policies that exceed federal and state law and would deny Americans their Second Amendment rights, including demanding a ban on the sale of Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and standard capacity magazines as well as instituting age-based gun bans that deny law-abiding adults under 21 their complete civil liberties.
The woke gun control policies aren’t just embraced by corporate boardroom executives that are unaccountable to American voters. Investor groups and state treasurers have their own pressure campaign to divest state retirement funds from firearm businesses to financially starve them too.
California’s Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, has been active in the divestment game to discriminate against firearm businesses at the cost of their own investors. Fund managers ignore their fiduciary responsibility to California’s public workers and instead advance a “woke” discriminatory gun control agenda. As of 2019, these discriminatory policies cost CalPERS over $11 million to cover retirements that are underfunded by as much as $600 billion.
Even the “Oracle of Omaha” Warren Buffett isn’t immune to “woke” policies being driven by special-interest investors. Buffett refused to divest Berkshire Hathaway’s funds in firearm company investments in 2018. He told America’s Conservative Voice, “I don’t believe in imposing my political opinions on the activities of our businesses.”
These “woke” policies aren’t just being rejected by business leaders for being destructive to business. Woke politics is being rejected by elected officials, too. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva rejected Wokeism that is wreaking havoc in his county and says midterm elections will be a referendum on their failing legacies. Los Angeles’ “woke-ism” led to record homelessness and out-of-control crime.
“Wokeism is on the ropes. Let’s put it out of its misery in 2022,” Sheriff Villanueva told Fox News. “My only goal is to make LA livable again.”
When it comes to “woke” gun control targeting the firearm industry, governors and legislatures are standing up. Texas Republican Gov. Gregg Abbott signed the Firearm Industry Nondiscrimination (FIND) Act into law in 2021. That bill bars states from holding municipal contracts while discriminating against firearm businesses. Six sitting Republican governors attended NSSF’s first-ever Governors Forum at SHOT Show 2022 and told the audience they wouldn’t tolerate discrimination against gun companies.
“Woke” capitalism isn’t just bad policy, it’s a dangerous policy. It supplants public policy-making by elected officials who are accountable to voters by unaccountable corporate boards executing policy by corporate fiat. It leaves Americans’ rights, especially Second Amendment rights, vulnerable to a series of “corporately-endorsed privileges” and not a right of the people at all.
As it turns out, that’s bad business, too.
Mike Nichols is an advocate of the counterrevolution with a four-step plan to defeat Leftist Fascism: We Organize. We Stand. We Resist. We Fight. He is a regular contributor to several conservative news websites and has a regular blog and Facebook presence at Americas Conservative Voice-Facebook.