Dear Reader,
Why do large segments of the corporate economy support aggressively dogmatic wokeism and the LGBTQ movement, even as their core customers find themselves increasingly blindsided by culture war campaigns in marketing? The answer: for their CEI rating, the corporate social credit system.
An impressive 15.7 billion US dollars. That is the amount (as of March 25, 2023) by which the enterprise value of the traditional US brewery Anheuser-Busch, founded in 1852, has fallen to date. Sales of the Group’s most important beer brand, Budweiser, plummeted dramatically from the beginning of April 2023. This disastrous development took its course after Anheuser-Busch launched a marketing campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for its “Bud Light” product, which was anything but well received by the thirsty regulars in sports bars, football, baseball and basketball arenas. World-renowned musician Kid Rock even released a protest video of himself cutting up a load of “Bud Light” with a rapid-fire rifle. People called for a boycott of the company. They defended themselves with the concentrated power of the consumer against the sexualized cultural Marxism of segregative-dogmatic “wokists”. With success.
Read more: Editorial – Hijacked by Raiders: The Fate of Corporations between Skylla and Charybdis✌@abovetopsecretxxlThe transgender campaign was discontinued. Various event organizers and sports venues withdrew the beer brand from sale. The company’s stock price has been plummeting for weeks. Two Anheuser-Busch board members took a leave of absence. Despite this, the situation at Mammut Brewery has not improved significantly to date. On the contrary. When the company recently made public a cooperation with the motorcycle manufacturer “Harley-Davidson,” a new wave of indignation broke out. The beer brewer’s clumsy attempt to polish up the battered image of its Budweiser brand with the help of masculinity-promoting machinery was too obvious, brazen and cheap.
Anheuser-Busch’s competitors are now also under fire. After the sales figures of other beer brands initially increased because they were now able to win over droves of former “Budweiser” customers for their products, calls for boycotts against “Miller Lite” have now also arisen. This after the company had placed advertisements in the course of which it apologized self-castigatingly for its “outdated”, “sexist” marketing past. This refers to the multitude of lightly clad models with which the beer producer frequently advertised its stale brew in the past. However, the slump in profits at Molson Coors, the parent company of Miller, has so far been less drastic than at the competition.
The situation is quite different at Target Corporation, a US retail giant founded in 1902 with 360,000 employees and annual sales of over 75 billion US dollars. It recently offered a so-called PRIDE collection for children in its stores. In addition to shirts or utensils with grotesque LGBTQ slogans and skimpy dresses, this also included swimsuits for boys, which were supposed to allow male adolescents to conceal their genitals by means of special cuts in the genital area. But this attempt to push the LGBTQ agenda on customers also failed miserably.
Videos of the questionable collection made the rounds on the web – and Target (D., target), living up to its own name, became the next target of a boycott wave that was picking up speed. After just one week, the company had already lost nine billion dollars. Within ten days, the loss grew to ten billion dollars. And on June 1, 2023, it was already twelve billion, according to “Weltwoche”. The share price collapsed radically within a few days. To date, the trading company has lost around 15 percent of its stock market value. “Go woke, go broke,” was the headline of many a news outlet with a gloating commentary. And rightly so.
As a result of the wave of protests, the retail giant meekly began to gradually remove the collection from its stores. Leading media such as the New York Times attribute these developments to a “volatile political climate” to which companies such as Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Target are currently exposed. They cannot see any complicity on the part of the corporations. In doing so, the propaganda outlets ignore the fact that the LGBTQ identity politics agenda has long since evolved into a form of reverse racism. That entire groups of people, indeed much of civil society, are being discredited, defamed, and attacked by minorities absorbed in victimhood.
This is evidenced by the remarks of Target’s “Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer” during a recently leaked video conference. In it, Kiera Fernandez, Target’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, explains that employees who don’t support the company’s new DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) strategy should look for a new job. The DEI agenda is not for everyone, Fernandez said, but everyone must accept it. Once people have come to terms with having to participate because of financial dependencies, perhaps their personal attitudes will change.
It is remarkable that a company like Anheuser-Busch was tempted to run “woke advertising” at all, since the company has for some time supported the “Heartland Institute” founded by David Padden in 2006, a liberal-conservative think tank which, among other things, has endeavored to provide counter-education on the climate apocalypse and has always been criticized for this by the dark-green dogmatists. In the past, Anheuser-Busch has also supported the election campaigns of the Republican Party, the majority of which is critical of the “Wokists. So why the about-face?
Similar questions arise with regard to Germany, where, for example, the Hamburg-based mail order company Otto earned itself a veritable shitstorm at the end of 2021 when it suggested to a Twitter user who spoke out against gendering on the Otto channel that he should simply shop elsewhere. This caused some resentment among customers, who are apparently reluctant to be re-educated in this country as well. Especially with regard to a topic that hardly anyone in the normal population supports, as regular surveys on gendering in Germany, Austria and Switzerland reveal.
Despite the obvious aversion of their regular customers to the “wokeism” that is taking hold, many companies are going along with it as a matter of course. Even if they have to put up with lost sales, criticism from an angry clientele and the loss of market share. Whether it’s Adidas, where men recently posed for women’s swimwear, or retail chains like Edeka, Lidl and Tchibo, which say they want to advertise “more colorfully” from now on, and thus also face fierce headwind from consumers because they see themselves as being patronized by such agitational culture war campaigns – there’s hardly a large company that doesn’t subordinate itself willingly to the postmodern “woke taxonomy” in the corporate economy.
So what is the reason for this almost suicidal approach on all sides? The answer: HRC – “Human Rights Campaign”. A social engineering vehicle founded in the USA in 1980 and operating as a lobbying organization, which ostensibly campaigns for the rights of the LGBTQ community and reports revenues of just under 40 million US dollars for 2021. HRC developed the Corporate Equality Index (CEI), a corporate social credit system implemented back in 2002. It aims to improve the working conditions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in the workplace. At first, this sounds positive. Who would object to the protection of minorities? At second glance, however, the CEI turns out to be “an offer you can’t refuse.” As blackmail.
To do this, the HRC analyzes and grades 366 (as of 2021) of the Fortune 500 companies every year, as well as a host of other firms that together are responsible for about two-thirds of the United States’ gross domestic product and generate annual revenues of $12.8 trillion (as of 2018).
To grade the participating companies, their “CEI rating” is determined at regular intervals and according to a defined point system. From this, the HRC compiles a ranking of the most inclusive companies in the USA. For this evaluation, the HRC collects data on the exact composition of the workforce, transgender inclusion, anti-discrimination measures, and direct interaction with and public engagement with the LGBTQ community. If the results do not meet the organization’s ever-increasing expectations, the HRC recognizes the corporation in question with a corresponding negative CEI score.
The Washington Standard commented on the situation on April 10, 2023, under the headline, “The CEI: Why brands risk going broke to appear woke.”
“Companies like Gillette, Disney, Nike, Tampax and Bud Light seem to have completely abandoned their core customer base and turned to a completely different target audience – one that probably doesn’t need or want their products at all. (…) A quick note about the HRC itself: This organization is funded primarily by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation as well as Disney. You can see the HRC thanking these two companies for their support here.”
The “New York Post” also addresses the issue in an April 7, 2023 editorial titled, “Inside the CEI system that pushes brands to endorse celebrities like Dylan Mulvaney.” Author Dana Kennedy states:
To grade the participating companies, their “CEI rating” is determined at regular intervals and according to a defined point system. From this, the HRC compiles a ranking list of the most inclusive companies of the
“They (corporations) award lucrative deals to people once considered fringe celebrities because they have to – otherwise they risk failing a key social credit check that could determine the success or failure of their business. At stake is their Corporate Equality Index (CEI), which is monitored by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ political lobbying group in the world. HRC, which has received millions from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation among others, issues report cards for America’s largest companies through the CEI. Points are awarded or deducted for how well companies meet evaluation criteria established by HRC. Companies that achieve the maximum total score of 100 are awarded the title of “Best Employer for LGBTQ Equality.” According to HRC data, fifteen of the top 20 companies in Fortune’s rankings received a score of 100 percent last year. According to the latest report, more than 840 U.S. companies achieved high CEI scores. The HRC, which was founded in 1980 and launched the CEI in 2002,
and worked as a political organizer for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.”
The question arises as to why market-dominating Fortune 500 corporations and other successful companies subject themselves to such an ostensibly voluntary rating process in the first place. After all, it has a massive impact on corporate culture, public image and – as discussed above – sales if the company’s behavior is not appreciated by its customers and upsets its target group. To answer this question, it is advisable to take a look at HRC’s list of “Corporate Partners”.
It reads like a rendezvous of the digital-financial complex and supranational corporatism: Amazon, Google, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Pfizer, The Walt Disney Company, BP, Northrop Grumman, UPS, Intel, Nike, PayPal, Danone, Visa, Mastercard, Goldman Sachs, Citi Bank, IBM, Dell, Shell, Hyatt, Airbus or Target – to name just a few. There is hardly a global player that is not already linked to HRC, and subsequently to the supranational corporatism of financial, corporate and philanthropic elites. Thus, the purpose of the CEI rating, ostensibly serving the common good, is exapted, that is, misappropriated, and becomes a lever for transformational processes in the economy and society. For class struggle from above.
If a company refuses the HRC’s “offer”, this has consequences. Investors withdraw, interest rates on loans rise, loans are called in early, funding from NGOs and foundations is withdrawn, maintenance contracts become more expensive or are canceled, leading media report in a derogatory manner, license fees rise, cooperation agreements are not renewed or are canceled, and so on. This is how you create pressure to act. The mafia could hardly do better. In addition to its increasing socio-economic control, the “Human Rights Campaign” is currently trying to expand its direct influence on legislative procedures. In the U.S., the organization is therefore diligently collecting signatures in support of the “Equality Act,” an equality bill that is intended to gradually cast the fundamental paradigms and criteria of the CEI rating into legislation.
n this context, it should not be forgotten that the world’s largest investment management company – BlackRock – which oversees and allocates assets of almost eight trillion US dollars, has held stakes in almost every major company in the world for years. A detailed overview of the equity packages held by BlackRock speaks volumes in this regard. Thus, the most powerful financial institution the planet has ever seen has improbable influence not only on nation-states, geopolitics, and economics, see Rebuilding a Technocratized Ukraine, but also on social currents and cultural developments.
Georgina Murray and David Peetz of “Griffith University” in Queensland, Australia, examined global ownership structures as part of a study in 2017. In the BlackRock case, they noted even then:
“Importantly, a company that is relatively unknown outside financial circles, BlackRock Inc. already held or controlled 6.1 percent of the assets of the 299 largest companies (about $3 trillion) in 2009. It is a U.S. financial company, a fund management, with offices in 30 countries and about 8,400 employees. BlackRock, as a fund manager, mobilizes the money of others to buy and control shares in the many companies in which it has a stake.
As a result, the company exercises stock control primarily through the funds it manages, rather than by buying shares. More than 85 percent of its stock ownership was through controlled funds. BlackRock was the largest stock controller not only internationally, but also among Canadian, German, Italian and U.S. large corporations.”
The company, which was co-founded by the obscure Kappa Beta Phi member Larry Fink in 1988 and is still managed today, changes the world discreetly from the second, third or fourth row by means of its financial power. With its investments, it directly and indirectly controls the behavior of those corporations that are in turn listed as premium partners with organizations such as the HRC, the UN or the WEF. The same applies to the panopticon of some 35,000 internationally operating NGOs (Lewis, 2010; Riddell, 2007), which, apart from democratic processes and structures, exerts more influence on the course of the world than the government of a sovereign state ever could.
In turn, the corporations and institutions thus infiltrated or assimilated by BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, Open Society Foundations, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation et al. must meet the expectations placed on them by HRC, WEF, or the UN in order to remain in the good graces of asset managers, banking cartels, and potentates. This includes the obligation to support agenda-serving top politicians, NGOs, think tanks, media or influencers. Thus, across multiple levels of influence, high finance enforces the inhumane agenda of a predator caste that prefers to operate discreetly in the background. It lets its morality-free lackeys, opportunists and careerists do the dirty work and public relations.
The hijacked corporate economy therefore only has a choice between the plague and cholera when it comes to the woker DEI agenda. It is in a quandary. It is “caught in the ups and downs of the woke movement,” as the French newspaper “Le Monde” put it in an article dated January 1, 2023. Either it turns its customers against itself because it acts against their interests and convictions – or it falls out with the corporatist elites on whose drip it hangs. As a result, most companies choose option one. After all, such a shitstorm usually dies down at some point, or can be contained with rebranding initiatives and marketing methods. Or so the assumption goes. At least so far. However, in the face of increasingly brazen interference from the DEI propaganda machinery, the quality of outrage and waves of boycotts has now reached a new level and is rapidly putting even a traditional company like Anheuser-Busch in serious trouble.
This underscores the fact that demand determines supply. In this system, the customer still has the upper hand and is not completely disempowered by corporatism. In the future, we must make consistent use of this leverage.In my view, it is all the more striking that even extremely critical contemporaries continue to pay with PayPal, use Amazon Prime, renew Netflix subscriptions, participate in bonus programs, wear fitness trackers on their wrists, prefer credit cards to cash, or send e-mails from a Google account because of their own convenience.Those who act so inconsistently are not part of the solution but part of the problem, despite their enlightened mindset, and need not be surprised if they are subjugated by those “public-private partnerships” that they finance and feed with personal data in their lethargy.
Sincerely yours
Bernd Pulch
🛑 BERND PULCH ARCHIVE | SECURE MIRROR 