Bud Light, Nike trans activist partnership is the worst kind of ‘woke capitalism,’ says Vivek Ramaswamy
Ramaswamy said the partnership with Mulvaney shows
Anheuser-Busch is clearly not following its financial self-interest
By Nikolas Lanum | Fox News
Published April 7, 2023 10:30am EDT
Vivek Ramaswamy: Bud Light is alienating customer base
with trans activist partnership
The GOP presidential candidate discusses Anheuser-Busch
and Nike’s promotion of Dylan Mulvaney.The GOP presidential candidate discusses
Anheuser-Busch and Nike’s promotion of Dylan Mulvaney.
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is wading
into the controversy surrounding Bud Light and Nike's recent partnerships with
a trans activist, citing it as an example of large corporations' consistent
push to engage in "the worst kind of woke capitalism," even if it
means pushing away established customers.
"This, to me, is a case of a company that's clearly
not following its financial self-interest," Ramaswamy said. "Sometimes
you could make an argument that a company does something totally woke because
that's what its customer base wants to see. Oftentimes, that's even debatable.
In the case of Bud Light, that's just wrong."
Anheuser-Busch, the company behind Bud Light, recently sent specialized cans of the popular beer to trans activist and TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney, featuring the influencer's face. The cans included printed text that celebrated her first "365 Days of Girlhood."
Less than a week later, Mulvaney received a paid
partnership with Nike and took to social media to model the
company's leggings and sports bras in a series of videos.
Many Twitter users claimed the partnerships were an
attempt to push radical gender propaganda.
Conservative social media user James Lindsay went viral
after he posted a thread suggesting the companies were forced to engage with
Mulvaney to maintain a high score with the Corporate Equality Index (CEI). CEI
is a national benchmarking tool from the Human Rights Campaign that measures
policies and benefits pertinent to LGBTQ employees.
"It's ESG (Environmental, Social and corporate
governance) racketeering," Lindsay said, attaching images of past
instances in which trans activists warned Anheuser-Busch the company would see
its CEI score plummet if they did not engage in an open dialogue with LGBTQ
advocates.
Ramaswamy said that special ratings applied to CEOs, like
CEI, are definitely a factor, but the reasons for these types of corporate
displays of progressivism go far beyond that.
Ramaswamy referred to the recent moves by Anheuser-Busch
and Nike as a "short run marketing gimmick" that could push away
customers but claimed the companies might view it as a "net neutral"
because it provides them free coverage at a time when it's difficult for a
corporate brand to break through. Regardless, he said such actions create
opportunities for other entrepreneurial ventures.
"In this country, there are over 100 million customers easily who are now badly disaffected from the places where they shop, where they bank, where they invest, as they do business with companies that effectively show disrespect for their own values as customers by prioritizing different values instead," he said.
However, to take advantage of this opening, Ramaswamy
said smaller companies must rely on more than customer annoyance to cultivate
market alternatives.
"I do think that you know, a lot of these other
firms like Disney, Anheuser-Busch, they're so big and many of them, even in Big
Pharma, for example, or even operating monopoly businesses, that there is no
market accountability, that even if they take a hit, they hit small,"
Ramaswamy said. "But the executives derive so much more cultural and
personal social power that the trade becomes worth it for them to make
anyway."
Ramaswamy added that the U.N. Principles of Responsible
Investment influence how large asset managers behave. Those large asset
managers, like BlackRock and State Street, then become the shareholders of
large public companies and pressure them publicly and in the boardroom.
According to Ramaswamy, the problem can also be traced back to universities feeding new generations of Gen Z employees that demand social change within lower ranks of companies.
He compared the Mulvaney controversy to the birth of the
private equity industry in the 1980s when employees policed the overuse of
private jets in public companies because that was a personal benefit to the CEO
at the expense of the shareholders. Now it takes the form of virtue signaling,
where they get to be more popular in certain "weird cultural
corridors" of the U.S. despite the fact it is "quite obviously on its
face" something that alienates their customer base.
"This is a cut-and-dry example of the worst kind of
woke capitalism, which is the kind that doesn't even advance their capitalistic
goals," Ramaswamy added.
Citing his book "Woke Inc.," Ramaswamy recalled
the first commandment of woke capitalism is that companies pretend to care
about something other than profit and power to gain more of each.
He suggested that companies like BlackRock and Airbnb, or
even in some cases Nike, fit into that category. Still, he noted that
Anheuser-Busch is a "much simpler case," falling more into the former
category, where C-suite executives merely want to gain notoriety in the
cultural circles they run.
Characterizing the rise of radical gender ideology as the
equivalent of a mental health epidemic, Ramaswamy surmised that Mulvaney is being
used as a pawn to bolster Nike and Anheuser-Busch's "cultural
cachet."
The controversy involving Mulvaney has garnered attention from a multitude of conservative figures.
"As someone that grew up in awe of what Phil Knight
did, it is a shame to see such an iconic American company go so woke! We can be
inclusive but not at the expense of the mass majority of people, and have some
decency while being inclusive. This is an outrage," Caitlyn
Jenner tweeted Thursday.
A day earlier, former Arizona Republican gubernatorial
candidate Kari Lake claimed she was at a rally when the open bar ran out of
beer, except for one brand, Bud Light.
"Go woke, go BROKE. Sad!" she tweeted.
While Republican lawmakers take these observations and
try to "retrofit" them into a concise campaign slogan, Ramaswamy
suggested that these political maneuverings often fall flat because they
simplify the complicated motivations behind corporate threats to liberty and
culture.
"It's not just in the form of big government or just
in the form of one bad actor. It's a 30, 60-degree problem. And I think that's
why it's a big part of why I'm running for president to expose these cultural
problems," Ramaswamy said. "It takes a leader who understands that
nuance in a first personal way, not somebody who got handed a binder 10 minutes
before an interview like this one to be able to spout off talking points. The
left is far ahead of that."
He added that Republican leaders like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are essentially playing a game of whack-a-mole when instead, they need to get to the root cause of the "cultural cancer" itself, which is complicated and shows up in a variety of ways.
Ramaswamy suggested that DeSantis tried to punish
companies like Disney and BlackRock from the bully pulpit,
which allowed the companies to get the last laugh. He said that DeSantis' big
announcement on removing special privileges from Disney was ineffective because
the changes will not affect the company for years.
"Where was DeSantis when that happened? Nowhere to
be found. Same thing with respect to divesting the money from BlackRock. That's
a form of boycott. He pulled $700 million out while actually leaving the $13
billion of Florida state funds still in there. And so Republican politicians,
you know, the way I say this about Disney is if you can get outsmarted by
Mickey Mouse, you're going to get outsmarted by the left," Ramaswamy said.
He added that Republican politicians, particularly career
politicians, are only in the game of woke capitalism insofar as it allows them
to trend on Twitter or conservative media for a cycle.
"These forces that are actually driving the
companies to behave in the way they are, they're in this for the long haul
because they actually want to change the culture," Ramaswamy added.
"And so that's a mismatch. The left is actually up for the challenge where
you get career politicians who are into a cycle of attention that just turns
them into another pawn in the game."
Connecting the Dots:
Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP is the lobby firm for the Anheuser-Busch
Companies, Inc. and Nike, Inc.
Vernon E. Jordan
Jr. is a senior counsel for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer &
Feld, LLP and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution
(think tank).
Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings
Institution (think tank).
George Soros was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote
Open Society.
Philip H.
Knight is a trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank)
and the chairman & co-founder for Nike, Inc.
Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP is the lobby firm for Nike,
Inc. and Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc.
Daniel R.
Glickman was a senior adviser for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer
& Feld, LLP and is director, Congressional Program for the Aspen
Institute (think tank).
Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Aspen Institute
(think tank).
George Soros was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote
Open Society.
Resources: Past
Research
Univ. of Kansas Still
Paying Professor Who Hoped NRA Members' Children Get Shot (Past Research on Nike)
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER
12, 2013
https://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2013/11/univ-of-kansas-still-paying-professor.html
Smaller Bites –
(Connecting the Dots: Anheuser-Busch & Soros Funding, All Networking) (Past Research on Anheuser-Busch)
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2023
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