Turkeys aren’t the only things on the chopping block this week — so is woke policy. Americans, who are already celebrating a return to sanity after the elections, have to be equally ecstatic that after 19 months, conservatives are savoring another massive corporate surrender. In what Robby Starbuck calls “the biggest win yet,” the country’s number one employer, Walmart, is abandoning DEI in what may be the smartest holiday marketing decision so far.
For shoppers looking for an alternative to Target’s racks of chest-binding lunacy, it’s been disappointing to see how their largest competitor has become just as compromised on everything from Pride merch to abortion travel coverage. Now, in a shocking sea change, the brand is ditching its radical activism for market-friendly neutrality — just in time for the Christmas shopping season.
A jubilant Starbuck, who’d been in conversations with Walmart executives behind the scenes, said in a video announcing the change that he didn’t even know where to start, because, in his mind, “This is different than everything else we’ve done.” And maybe the most impactful. For weeks, the consumer activist was teasing the fact that he’d been investigating an enormous company. “Now I can reveal it was Walmart. But,” he emphasized, “something incredible happened.”
When headquarters realized Starbuck was looking under the retailer’s hood, they reached out to him. “This was critical and honestly turned out pretty fantastic for everybody involved in my opinion,” he explained. “We were able to have frank conversations with Walmart. And as I’ve said for a long time, I don’t ask companies to take on my political views. I am simply advocating for corporate neutrality. … [T]his is the future,” Starbuck insisted of the grassroots movement. And the iconic blue-and-yellow brand must agree, because “after various productive conversations, I am very proud to report to you guys that Walmart has decided on making some changes.”
The biggest, conservatives would agree, is that the company will no longer be participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s outrageous Corporate Equality Index, further frustrating the largest driver of the LGBT agenda in American brands. “I have to give their executives major credit,” Starbuck underscored, “because this will send shockwaves throughout corporate America.” Other changes the company pledged to make:
- “Monitor the Walmart marketplace to identify and remove inappropriate sexual and / or transgender products marketed to children.
- Review all funding of Pride, and other events, to avoid funding inappropriate sexualized content targeting kids.
- Discontinue the Racial Equity Center which was established in 2020 as a special five-year initiative.
- Evaluate supplier diversity programs and ensure they do not provide preferential treatment and benefits to suppliers based on diversity. We don’t have quotas and won’t going forward. Financing eligibility will no longer be predicated on providing certain demographic data.
- End the use of ‘Latinx’ in official communications.
- Cancel racial equity training through the Racial Equity Institute.
- Stop the use of DEI as a term while ensuring a respectful and supportive environment.”
Walmart joins a long list of companies who are publicly rejecting the agenda that’s tanked the stocks and profits of unrepentant brands like Bud Light, Nike, and Disney. Sam Walton’s stores now join a consumer activist trophy wall that includes Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Polaris, Indian Motorcycle, Lowe’s, Ford, Coors, Black & Decker, Jack Daniels, DeWalt tools, Craftsman, Caterpillar, Boeing, and Toyota. Together, these companies represent an eye-popping $2 trillion dollars in market value.
Asked to explain the abrupt reversal, Walmart told Fox Business, ”[We are] willing to change alongside our associates and customers who represent all of America.” Striking a remarkably contrite tone, they added, “We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers and to be a Walmart for everyone.”
Stephen Soukup, author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital” and vice president at The Political Forum, believes “what’s happening with Walmart is a big deal. And not just because it is the largest retailer in the world,” he told The Washington Stand. “I think Walmart’s decision confirms that American business stands poised on the precipice of a ‘preference cascade.’”
He’s referring to a concept that was invented by economics about 40 years ago to explain “how totalitarian regimes go from seemingly stable and in control to toppled and wiped out in a matter of days or weeks. In brief, everyone lies about their preferences in public for fear of being singled out for retribution by the regime or their peers. In time, however, the lies give way to reality. A spark of some sort alerts individuals to the fact that they are not alone, that everyone shares their hatred of the regime but has also been hiding it,” he explained.
And once that “signals to the masses that the false social support is teetering — once one person, then two people, then three people express publicly what they have long felt privately — the entire social structure collapses upon itself. One leads to two, which leads to three, which leads to a ‘cascade’ of thousands upon thousands.” In this instance, “The DEI regime — largely started and enforced by groups like the Human Rights Campaign — has been stifling for businesses, which nevertheless played along for fear of being singled out. … And so, a return to standard traditional business practices is something that’s really going to benefit shareholders,” Soukup told guest host Joseph Backholm on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.”
Remember, Starbuck emphasized, “This won’t just have a massive effect for their employees who will have a neutral workplace without feeling that divisive issues are being injected but it will also extend to their many suppliers.”
This will all come as a relief to former Walmart CEO Bill Simon, who five years ago, lamented the liberal changes the company had made since he departed a decade ago. “Our view was always, ‘Let’s just run a business,’” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in 2019. “We’ll sell to anybody. We’ll try to stay out of the public eye on issues that can be confrontational.” Fast-forward to the last five years, when everything — including the marketplace — is polarized. It’s astonishing, he said on “Washington Watch,” to see the progression of corporations.
Even then, Simon thought it was only a matter of time before the next shoe would drop. “I think there’s going to have to be some kind of reckoning because businesses,” he predicted, “particularly one that trades in public markets on the stock exchange, has to be available to everybody and can’t exclude one political ideology just because [of] the ideology of the people who are currently running that business.”
In this instance, the mere threat of consumer backlash was enough to force Walmart to wave the white flag. And it’s because, as Starbuck celebrated, “We are a force to be reckoned with. … [T]he paradigm has changed. We are powerful and growing every single day.” And, he added, “We will not stop until we have eliminated wokeness in corporate America.
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