Last month, Budweiser was on fire as the company faced harsh criticisms and boycott from different celebrities like Kid Rock, Travis Tritt, and John Rich for featuring trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney on its new Bud Light ad. Mulvaney, who has millions of followers in TikTok and Instagram, has become a new ambassador of big brands like Kate Spade, Crest, and even Nike.
At the height of these “wokeness” happening in America, many people wonder how the agenda effectively penetrated through the fabric of corporate America. 20 years ago, there was no company catering for the “needs” of the LGBTQ+ community in America. Now, people can see it in the open. Thanks to Corporate Equality Index or CEI, another arm of Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest LGBTQ+ political lobbying group that is now dominating the international business community.
One of the funders of HRC is George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. HRC is the one responsible for “rating” America’s largest companies using CEI. CEI is a system that provides the bases for “special privilege or punishment” to corporations through its rating standards. Corporations adhering well to categories, or rules, such as “Workforce Protections, Inclusive Benefits, Supporting an Inclusive Culture, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Responsible Citizenship” will earn huge points and the most subservient ones will win the “Best Place To Work For LGBTQ Equality” award. On the HRC’s latest report, it was said that there are more than 800 US companies scoring high.
Formed in 1980, HRC has been overseeing American politics and corporations vigilantly. In 2022, it established CEI, a “massive actual scoring and rating system that companies are judged on by other companies, suppliers, and more importantly, financial investors”. It is another tentacle for Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG), an entity that invest in businesses that “oppose fossil fuels, push for unionization, and stress racial and gender equity”.
In one of Joe Rogan’s podcast episodes, Adam Curry, a popular podcaster and host of ‘No Agenda’, explains ESG and CEI as follows:
“This is now something that if you want to invest in a company, they will, on their investor relations page, they’ll show you their ESG score. ESG stands for Environmental, Social, Corporate Governance. And this is where the woke culture comes from. So, they’ve created this kind of phony baloney rating system that says “well, if you mentioned that you have a ‘green agenda’ and you believe in carbon credits, you might trade some credit somewhere, then you get a higher score, and therefore you’re more investible”.”
CEI is currently being led by its president, Kelley Robinson, one of Barack Obama’s political campaigners in 2008. This is one of the main reasons why corporations jump on the “wokeness bandwagon”. Describing how CEI is being used as a fascist tool to control the corporations, Glenn Beck, one of the leading voices of conservative America, recently commented:
“This is why all these companies are going woke, if they get a bad score, then the woke investor funds start putting pressure on the boards. Woke activists are mobilized out on the streets. Advertising campaigns are shut down and anyone that continues to do business with them will also be penalized.”
References:
https://nypost.com/2023/04/07/inside-the-woke-scoring-system-guiding-american-companies/
https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-glenn-beck-program/bud-light-2659943736
