The boycott against corporations that tried to push left-wing sex and gender ideology on their customers opens the opportunities to expose what’s behind their embrace of “woke” agenda, according to author and commentator James Lindsay.
Speaking on EpochTV’s “Crossroads,” Lindsay said the boycotts “must definitely have an impact,” as Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch scrambled to downplay its now-notorious partnership with transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney.
Woke Corp’s Priorities
On May 9, a month after the initial Mulvaney backlash, Anheuser-Busch lost its perfect Corporate Equality Index (CEI) score, which is overseen by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy group.The fact that a company would rather further upset customers than get a lower social credit rating, Lindsay said, shows “how this extortion racket works and how serious the extortion racket is.”
“We see which thing they’re choosing to do,” Lindsay explained. “Whether it’s Corporate Equality Index score, whether it’s a broader ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance] score, they’re choosing to serve the same agenda.”
“This reveals a lot of things that are very useful,” he continued. “We can have hearings. We could have the House Oversight Committee talking about this: ‘Why are you doing this? How important is that number? Why is it number so important? How did this number come to mean so much to your company? Who made the deals? What are the costs?’”
Fighting Woke Corps in Court
“We now have very good reason to believe that shareholders have excellent lawsuits in potentia for the violations of fiduciary responsibility,” Lindsay told Philipp.In fact, conservative legal group America First Legal is preparing to sue Anheuser-Busch, as well as several other big-name brands, for allegedly tanking their shareholder value through their Pride Month promotions that triggered outrage and boycotts.
On Tuesday, America First Legal called on anyone whose shares in LGBT product-promoting companies lost value to reach out to them to join a class action lawsuit they are working to file against those companies.
Target has been the subject of a conservative-led boycott over merchandise celebrating Pride Month, including a onesie for infants that states “Bien Proud;” a children’s book with the title, “Twas the Night Before Pride;” a book that tells children how to use transgender pronouns; and a handful of T-shirts with similar slogans. The company also drew backlash for “tuck-friendly” swimwear. A Target spokesperson has since said the swimwear wasn’t made for children.
Similarly, Kohls drew boycott calls from customers after it was found promoting Pride Month-themed merchandise, particularly clothing items for toddlers.
While Lindsay said he expects more lawsuits like this to come, they won’t be so effective until large investors get involved.
“This thing actually operates like a racketeering scam,” Lindsay explained. “The largest investors—huge institutional investors—are all pledged to participate in the program, so there’s this very incestuous thing that’s keeping the whole thing locked up.”
‘Keep the Pressure On’
For Americans who choose to shop elsewhere, Lindsay said they should keep up with their “extremely important endeavor,” although sooner or later they may get demoralized due to the sheer number of companies jumping on the woke bandwagon.“I’m glad that they are realizing that they do have this muscle to flex, that they have this weapon that they’ve been able to wield, but we have to make sure that it gets wielded intelligently,” he replied when asked what would he tell boycotters.
“Sooner or later, you might end up getting demoralized or you might not know what to do,” Lindsay added. “I would say that these focused boycotts, whichever one you pick first, that’s the horse you ride. It doesn’t have to make sense, but you have to keep the pressure on somewhere, so that we can take this and scoop it up and do something useful.”
“What you'll find is that, if you want to go to the store, maybe you’re not allowed to enter the store without having a good enough ESG score,” he said. “Maybe you can’t go into the meat department. Maybe you can’t go into the beer department. Maybe you’re limited in how much you can buy. Maybe you can’t buy a plane ticket. Maybe you can’t order an Uber. Maybe you can’t buy more than 10 gallons of gas in a month. ”
“They already do this kind of stuff in China. And we can expect the same thing to come down this way—surprisingly enough, even here in America—if we don’t fight back against this.”