Christopher Bedford of the Federalist takes aim at American corporations’ ongoing efforts to mollify protesters nationwide.
Morgan Stanley is not uniquely stupid for empowering an activist whose sole job was to call them racists. For decades, corporate America has launched similar efforts in the vain hope that money, press releases, and choice divestments could virtue-signal them out of the mob’s cross-hairs and even hurt their competitors. None of it saves them. On the contrary, moves to embrace the mob have placed corporations more clearly in their sights than they were before.
At root is the reality that corporations are cowardly, and there’s a reason for that. While conservative consumers are adept at patronizing companies that support their worldview, a la Chick-fil-A, they rarely target private industry for blatant Democratic partisanship. Liberal consumers and their media enablers, on the other hand, will boycott a company for the slightest connection to the slightest transgression.
Over the past 30 years, this has taught corporations like Nike that attacking conservatives has no consequence, while pushing left-wing values has no detriment. Until now.
We’ve seen this sort of suicidal partnership before — and recently — with the secret alliance between environmental radicals and energy companies. First, the energy companies went after their competition in the coal industry, with firms like Chesapeake Natural Gas sending more than $25 million to the Sierra Club. Now this is the model, and at the moment, major oil companies like Exxon are funding a Republican-staffed carbon tax effort that would disproportionately hurt their smaller competitors.
The list goes on, but one thing remains constant: Soon enough, as company after company and job after job are forced to climb to the guillotine, the corporations paying the bills get closer and closer to the front of the line.
The left employs this tactic because it works.
