Jaguar is the latest in a conga-line of big companies to Get Woke, Go Broke, as the saying goes. The car company is facing a massive consumer backlash after releasing its latest ad, featuring models with androgynous models resembling transgender Teletubbies and no actual cars.
But if Jaguar is the latest, it may well be the last. Corporate wokeism is beating a notable retreat in recent months. A retreat only accelerating after the election victory of Donald Trump.
In June, the American retailer Tractor Supply abandoned its decarbonisation goals and began to de-woke instead. It shelved its diversity, equity and inclusion program and declared that appointments and contracts would be decided purely on merit.
Tellingly, the decision called out what a limp, soggy, paper-tiger corporations have been so afraid of.
The threatened backlash from the black and LGBTQ farming communities never arrived. Instead, a stampede of companies followed in its wake. They included John Deere, Caterpillar, home improvement retailer Lowe’s, brewer Molson Coors and Harley-Davidson.
Last week, another high-profile defector climbed over the wall to flee wokeism. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, announced it would no longer prioritise suppliers based on race and gender. Its staff will no longer be subject to racial equity training, and the company will stop sharing data with the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. Appointments would be made purely on merit regardless of race, gender or sexual identity.
There was the predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth from the useless leeches of the ‘DEI’ industry.
The New York Times’ coverage of the story was scathing. “This is Walmart preparing for a Trump presidency and Justice Department,” Amber Madison, a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant, told the newspaper.
No, sweetie: this is you, preparing to look for a real job for a change.
Woke will be starved of federal funding, and universities will be pressured to roll back initiatives. The appointment of Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk signals that the jig is up. Ramaswamy is the author of Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.
On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported that companies were considering whether to scrub left-leaning policies from their websites. Some were scoping out appearances on conservative podcasts to gain the Trump administration’s attention. Ramaswamy told the Journal: “My inbox and text-message box looks like Niagara Falls.”
It used to be that Republicans and big business were firm partners. In recent decades, that’s changed: Democrats became the party of woke big business. Blame California, of course.
The change in progressive priorities this century from the redistribution of wealth to identity politics opened the door for the march through the institutions to occupy the corporate sector.
It coincided with the rise of the tech-industry based in Silicon Valley, reputed to be the wokest place on earth.
From Barack Obama’s administration onwards, the Democrat Party has become the political wing of woke corporate America […]
Trump’s second coming doesn’t threaten business, but it is catastrophic for the corporate elite – those who make a tangible profit out of woke policies on top of the warm inner glow.
Jeeves, prepare my tiniest violin.
And remind me to send the tiniest of bouquets to the RINOs.
In 2016, Trump was widely seen by the Republican establishment as an agitator who would divert it from its sacred course. In time, Trump may be recognised as the one who saved it from death by mediocrity as an ineffective, chaotic and utterly unmemorable band of fence-sitters, too timid to confront the profoundly divisive force of identity politics and save America from destroying its economy in a futile quest for net zero.
As a wise young man once said to me: Trump may be an asshole, but he’s the asshole that we need, right now.
That was in 2019. It’s even more true in 2024.
