“Wokism must die”, declared during the summer of 2023 the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, the main actor in the cultural war which is tearing the United States apart. The day after the Iowa caucus, the future of the candidate in the Republican primary is uncertain, but he will have won his political fight, the ideological defeat of the progressive left. The conservative offensive is facilitated by the war between Israel and Hamas which divides the Democratic camp between African-Americans and wokes on one side, and the Jewish community on the other.
American companies did not wait for the war to withdraw from the public debate, in which they had nevertheless been massively engaged after Donald Trump’s exit from the Paris climate agreements in 2017 and in the wake of the movements Metoo (2017) and Black Lives Matter (2020), an era that seems well past.
Political aims versus commercial failures
Stop saying DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion), because it annoys half of your employees. Stop talking about ESG (environmental, social and gender) criteria; that means taking the risk of falling out with your shareholders, with Republican states and with your customers. The number of companies using the acronym “ESG” in the presentation of their quarterly results has been divided by 2.5 in two years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Companies capitulate because they forgot their mission assigned by the late Milton Friedman: to make profits.
The best-known case is Disney, which, by pursuing political aims, multiplied its commercial failures. “The creators lost sight of what their number one goal should be. We must entertain first. It’s not about[envoyer] messages “, ended up recognizing, at the end of November, his boss, Bob Iger. The latest offensive targets Boeing, which is experiencing repeated industrial failures and which had added climate and DEI criteria to its executives’ remuneration in 2022. “Do you want to fly on a plane where they prioritized hiring DEIs over your safety? This is actually happening. People will die because of DEI »accused billionaire Elon Musk, who has shifted to the far right and believes that it is “ another word to say “racism” “.
The offensive is facilitated by the Supreme Court ruling which, in 2023, banned affirmative action for university recruitment, while Republican state attorneys general have warned big companies against “treating people differently because of the color of their skin, even for benign purposes.”
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