Corporate America’s retreat from social activism is well under way

New York (CNN) — Corporate America gave social activism a go. Between 2020 and 2023-ish, it really seemed like the big guys were done with the old ways of ignoring societal injustices and keeping their eyes trained squarely on the bottom line.

But like most trends, corporate activism moves on a pendulum. And right now, in the (Election) Year of Our Lord 2024, we are firmly on the backswing.

Check out some of my colleagues’ headlines in recent days:

Bud Light loses more ground, slipping to No. 3 in America

John Deere backs away from diversity and inclusion efforts after a conservative backlash

Tractor Supply warned climate change and a lack of diversity would hurt business. Now it’s ignoring those risks

Target is dialing back on Pride merchandise after right-wing backlash

To quote CNN contributor and rockstar journalist Kara Swisher: “As it turned out, it was capitalism after all.”

Let’s back up a bit.

There have always been socially conscious companies out there walking the walk. Your Patagonias and Ben & Jerry’s.

But in the midst of America’s racial reckoning following the emergence of Black Lives Matter, years of protests and the murder of George Floyd, the idea of “stakeholder capitalism” — basically, that companies thrive when they focus not merely on chasing profit but also on supporting their employees and customers, and generally not destroying the environment — was showing up in surprising places.

In 2018, Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, blew peoples minds when he wrote in his closely watched annual letter that businesses need to not only make money but also make “a positive contribution to society.” The following year, the Business Roundtable, a group of about 200 CEOs, signed a letter embracing a similar message.

We’d come a long way from the days of Reagan-era “greed is good.” Some of it was just lip service, of course, and plenty of companies caught flak for trying to look progressive by slapping a rainbow flag on their Twitter profiles. But their hearts seemed to be in the right place.

By 2020, the public outcry over Floyd’s murder made it impossible for companies to stick their head in the sand anymore. That’s when Corporate America went full-tilt into diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.

That’s also when the far-right outrage machine started revving up.

In 2022, Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek stumbled into the discourse over Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, pitting Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis against one of the state’s biggest employers in a saga that ultimately cost Chapek his job. It became cautionary tale for other CEOs: Support the LGBTQ community, of course. But tread lightly if you want to keep your job.

Then came the Bud Light fiasco of 2023. In short: The brand did a one-off partnership with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Then a bunch of anti-trans people called for a boycott. And sales of Bud Light have taken a hit ever since. It went from the No. 1 to No. 3 beer in America.

Bud Light didn’t handle fallout well — it capitulated to the angry mob and dropped Mulvaney even as she faced a barrage of threats. But we now know the “backlash” was a lot more than just a handful of anti-trans jerks swearing off their favorite beer and posting about it on TikTok. It caught fire as right-wing media fueled the swirl of negativity around Bud Light, framing it as “wokeism” gone amok.

On Thursday, the Guardian reported that the Bud Light boycott was fueled in part by the right-wing activist Leonard Leo. Citing tax documents uncovered by the watchdog group Accountable.US, the British paper wrote that a group connected to Leo led a backlash effort “that generated threats against Mulvaney, violence against consumers and layoffs by Anheuser-Busch,” the Guardian wrote. (Leo declined to comment to the Guardian. CNN has reached out to Leo through the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group he co-chairs.)

Bottom line: It is, of course, the nature of people and systems to revert to muscle memory. Corporate America has spent a lot more time chasing profit than it has effecting cultural change, and we can’t expect corporations to fix everything.

It was easier for companies to stick their necks out in 2020 and 2021, when interest rates were near zero and customers were still loading up on goods faster than the supply chain could handle.

But the blowback from the right, combined with higher interest rates and less ravenous consumer spending, has been enough to push major brands back to the sidelines.

It is capitalism, after all.

The-CNN-Wire
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