This is the anti-woke activist who is taking on corporate America's DEI policies - and winning

"Leroy N. Soetoro" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups alt.activism,talk.politics.guns,alt.politics.equality,alt.politics.trump,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,sac.politics
Organization The next war will be fought against Socialists, in America and the EU.
Message-ID <[email protected]>
https://nypost.com/2024/09/03/us-news/how-robby-starbuck-is-prompting-
brands-like-ford-to-ditch-dei/

Over the summer, Ford, Lowe’s, Harley-Davidson, John Deere and Tractor 
Supply have dropped controversial DEI practices in the workplace — and one 
man is behind it all.

“Companies are starting to realize the whole DEI thing has been a house of 
cards,” activist Robby Starbuck told The Post. “Somebody just had to press 
the cards. The majority of CEOs in America are very happy to have an 
excuse to get rid of this stuff.”

Starbuck puts companies with divisive DEI programs on blast in online 
exposés that he posts to his more than 500,000 followers on X.

On Tuesday, Starbuck announced on X that Molson Coors is “preemptively 
making changes” — including nixing DEI-based training and hiring metrics — 
after, he said, he messaged with executives and warned them that an exposé 
could be forthcoming. (The Post has reached out to Molson Coors, the 
parent of more than 100 beer and spirit brands including Miller High Life, 
Leinenkugel’s, Foster’s, Blue Moon and the Coors’ varieties.)

The move is similar to Jack Daniel’s reversing its policies once Starbuck 
simply said he was going to protest the whiskey brand.

Last week, Ford said it would scale back DEI initiatives and stop using 
diversity quotas.

And late last month, Lowe’s buckled under Starbuck’s pressure too. The 
big-box retailer agreed to combine all its identity-based employee 
resource groups into one and to stop participating in LGBTQ+ parades that 
are unrelated to its business.

While critics have accused Starbuck of riling up mobs, he says he’s merely 
shedding a light on corporate values that he feels are out of step with 
everyday Americans’ values. 

“You have to be in alignment with your customers — [otherwise,] if someone 
else is, they’re going to eat your lunch,” Starbuck, 35, said. “That’s how 
capitalism works. Customers don’t ignore it when you’re violating their 
values every day.”

Born and raised in California to Cuban-American parents, Starbuck was 
always acutely aware of Marxist ideology, which he says is echoed in DEI 
initiatives that promote equity: “Communism took everything from my 
family, so the warnings about Marxism were constant in my upbringing.”

Living in a notoriously progressive state, Starbuck saw localized spread 
of the ideology before it became a mainstream concern after the summer of 
2020.

“I caught onto DEI and CRT really early because, when you’re living in 
California, it’s kind of unavoidable,” he said. “I realized it was a virus 
that was going to spread across the country.”

Before becoming a full-time activist and podcaster, Starbuck owned a 
successful production company. He has directed music videos for the likes 
of Snoop Dogg, Akon and Sara Bareilles, and worked with celebrities such 
as Natalie Portman and Jamie Foxx — until he found Hollywood “too 
inhospitable” as a conservative.

“In the back of my head, I always knew that I did not fit into that world 
because my value set was always conservative, and I knew the industry at 
large was very, very left wing,” he said.

He started publicly speaking out about wokeness while working as a 
producer in Hollywood and publicly endorsed Donald Trump in 2015.

As a result, he said, he lost 80% of his clients. Rather than put his head 
back down, Starbuck decided to sell his production company and start a new 
life with his wife and children on a farm in Franklin, Tennessee.

The ensuing moral panic of the summer of 2020 launched him into an all-out 
war against corporate DEI initiatives he describes as “fascist.”

“Corporate executives were terrified of being called racist,” he said. 
“The majority of the Fortune 500 right now are essentially prisoners to 
this ideology, even if the executives hate it.

“Executives rolled over after George Floyd, but we’re at a different 
moment now, and it’s time to course correct and unify all of our 
customers.”

When he zeroes in on a company with inflammatory DEI infrastructure, 
Starbuck posts video exposés and blasts offending companies in tweets. The 
bad publicity often leads to brand boycotts and mass anti-woke backlash 
from his followers.

His recent campaign against Harley-Davidson, which inspired a boycott, was 
successful in getting the company to reverse course on DEI programming and 
drop diversity standards with suppliers in August.

However, the motorcycle manufacturer said in a subsequent statement that 
they were “saddened by the negativity on social media” and claimed the 
campaign was “designed to divide the Harley-Davidson community.”

But Starbuck, of course, sees things differently.

“In some way, we’re doing a favor to these companies by giving them a 
reason to stop divisive ideology from continuing to infect their company,” 
he said. “Corporations do not have a responsibility to stand up on social 
issues at all. They have a responsibility to make money for their 
shareholders.”

As a farm owner, he considers Tractor Supply’s dismantling of its DEI 
program his biggest success so far. After Starbuck called them out for 
that, as well as lofty climate change goals, the company cut all DEI 
roles.

Tractor Supply also reoriented its corporate activism toward animal 
welfare and veterans’ causes, saying in a statement that the company 
endeavors to reconnect with “rural America priorities” and is committing 
to “being a good neighbor.”

Now that enough executives have watched other corporations be made an 
example of on social media, Starbuck says some are proactively scrapping 
DEI policies before he even puts them on blast.

“We’re at a point where enough companies have seen other companies suffer, 
and they are deciding to change,” he said. “I’ve heard from some 
executives who didn’t even realize that some of this stuff was going on at 
their own company.”

Ultimately, Starbuck said, his goal is to get politics out of the 
workplace entirely — and he has no plans on letting up on corporate 
America until he achieves this goal.

“Work is about work. It’s not about who you want to have sex with. It’s 
not about what your skin color is. It’s not about who you vote for,” he 
said. “The end goal here is to make work a very neutral environment where 
people simply do their work.”


-- 
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

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No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.  
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden 
fiasco, President Trump.  

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.

President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed 
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.
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