- Europe
- Wokism
The Cost of Going Woke: the great “anti-woke pushback“
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The U.S. is officially “woke no longer,” declared President Donald J. Trump – and he isn’t kidding. As far back as his first week in office, President Trump, who abhors anything “woke,” shut down all federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) offices and rescinded former President Joe Biden’s DEI initiatives throughout U.S. agencies. Trump then cut federal funding from state education departments and universities with DEI offices and programs, and from schools teaching critical race theory and radical gender ideology. Next, he stopped federal funds from being used to “mutilate” children via transgender surgeries and “transitioning,” and so much more.
Trump has also attacked “woke” business in the U.S., with rippling effects across the Atlantic Ocean to the United Kingdom. Under a Trump executive order, U.S. government agencies identify companies that violate federal discrimination law, including with DEI practices. DEI policies entail disparate treatment in the terms, conditions and privileges of employment if based on race, sex or other protected characteristics –a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
DEI employment policies are actually “exclusive,” overlooking skilled and merit-based achievement to require hiring quotas of certain racial or other identity groups or to giving preference to DEI-aligned suppliers. DEI policies divide employees into identity subgroups and place subgroup interests over the interests of the whole, such as elevating transgender bathroom choices over the privacy of other employees. In practice, the rigid orthodoxy of DEI policies have been found to stifle hiring practices and employee morale, undermine hard work and employee unity, and strangle freedom and innovation.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration warned twenty leading U.S. law firms that their DEI policies may violate federal equality and anti-discrimination laws. Shortly after, four of London’s most prestigious “magic circle” law firms with significant operations in the U.S., dropped their rainbow-themed logos on social media platforms during “Pride Month” 2025.
The collapse of ESG Investor, a British online publication for “socially-conscious investment” has also been connected to the pressure of Trump’s crackdown. ESG or Environmental, Social and Governance initiatives promote radical environmental policy and are similar to discriminatory DEI in that they include critical race theory in human resources programs and rigid hiring policies based on race or sex. They are also burdensome and costly to implement.
The practice of measuring and rating corporations based on their ESG “performance” metrics is a product of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum’s globalist economic model of stakeholder capitalism. Stakeholder capitalism (in reality having very little to do with capitalism), is a theory promoted by Schwab since the early 1970s. Stakeholder capitalism holds that the purpose of corporations is not to maximize profits for shareholders, but rather to maximize value for all supposed stakeholders—government agencies, community members, activist groups, non-profits, companies, etc.
For those seeking to make the world a better place, this might sound like a fair goal, but the practice of stakeholder capitalism is far from effective, prosperous –or even fair. Asset management firms like BlackRock will direct investment funds to companies with positive ESG and DEI scores, ultimately using companies to shape society in ways that their elite, left-leaning institutions feel is wise. Instead of acting in the interest of business, investors, employees, consumers, or shareholders, businesses are at the mercy of “stakeholder activism” to promote “woke” programming, products, and advertising.
Corporate support for ESG seemed to be fading in London even before Trump’s anti-woke crusade. In fact, investment in ESG policies or programs has been on a steep decline in the U.S. and in Europe since at least 2022, and banks, asset managers, and finance firms are cutting ties with “green finance.”
Consumers, too, are fed up supporting the so-called “progressive” causes of powerful, out-of-touch corporate elites. Outraged consumers boycott and lash out against companies that go off the woke deep-end – causing many to backtrack their woke ways.
Public pushback against companies like Jaguar, which recently took on a bizarre rebranding that included “gender-fluid” models and a shift to all electric vehicles (and a 98% collapse in European sales) is the latest example. Social media response to Jaguar’s strange androgynous ad (which contained no actual cars) was scathing and abundant. Not long before its decline, Jaguar’s brand strategist proudly announced the establishment of “more than 15 DEI groups” and a “transitioning at work” policy.
Jaguar’s rebranding was labelled “Bud Light 2.0,” a reference to the disastrous decision of Anheuser-Busch to use a transgender “woman” in an advertisement to appeal to beer-drinking Americans. President Trump just called it “a total disaster.” Bud Light’s experience should have been a warning to Jaguar – it led to a boycott of America’s best-selling beer, billions of dollars loss of shareholder value, and a 30% drop in sales and customers.
This year Disney laid off hundreds of employees after the release of its woke version of the movie Snow White, and its underwhelming box office performance. Disney had already laid off 7,000 employees in 2023 after establishing an “openly ‘gay agenda’” in movies and theme parks, including a lesbian kissing scene in the movie Lightyear. This year, Disney seems to be retreating from its extensive DEI agenda.
Corporate executives and leftist media are quick to assure the public that failures of woke companies are due to market shifts or industry transformation –but the timing and public outrage is hard to ignore. Companies like Walmart, JPMorgan, Tractor Supply co, Harley Davidson, John Deer, Lowe’s, Ford and even McDonald’s are now walking back or eliminating previous DEI and ESG policies.
How could American businesses, the “industrial, technological, intellectual and financial might” of the U.S., traditionally focused on shareholders and increasing profits, embrace the woke programming of the radical Left?
A major acquiescence to the “woke” corporate agenda occurred in 2019, when unbeknownst to most Americans, 200 CEOs from America’s top companies chose to adopt the stakeholder capitalism of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum. This act by America’s business leaders redefined the purpose of American corporations, using a globalist economic model.
This was a shockingly bad decision considering that “American capitalism (had) produced superior stock market returns and broad-based societal gains,” raising living standards and bettering the future of generations of Americans. Yet European economies, largely based on stakeholder capitalism for many decades and buried under bureaucracy, burdensome taxes, and extreme woke regulation have been “largely stagnant” for about the last 15 years.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Europe used to be 90% of America’s GDP ten to 15 years ago, but has declined to only about 65%. Interestingly, Germany’s economy, firmly oriented on stakeholder governance, only grew by 1% in the past 8 years, while the U.S. economy grew by 19%.
According to Rob Roos, former member of European parliament and serial entrepreneur, “The European Union’s competitiveness problem is real and worsening.” Labour productivity growth in the euro area has consistently lagged behind the U.S. for decades and widened remarkably since 2019. Between Q4-2019 and Q1-2024, hourly labour productivity in market services rose about 12.4% in the U.S. but only around 3.8% in the euro area. This means weaker wage growth and purchasing power for European citizens.
“A major—often underplayed—contributor (to weak productivity) is the way stakeholder/ESG policy has been operationalised in the EU,” says Roos, “via dense, overlapping compliance regimes that divert capital, management time, and risk-taking capacity away from innovation and scale-up.”
The current corporate trend of rolling back DEI and ESG policies is good news, allowing for policies tailored to individual businesses to hire, promote, and retain the right workforce. Human resource departments will be free to find a wealth of diversity where it matters most—in a large pool of diverse opinions, skills, and ideas.
Marxist principles – the cause of mediocrity, poverty, and billions of deaths – are the foundation of modern-day stakeholder capitalism, DEI and “woke” progressivism. Like Marxism, “woke” thrives on dividing society into subgroups—between the assumed “oppressed” and “oppressors.” But this type of ideological posturing not only erodes cultural cohesion, it directly harms Western competitiveness, weakens companies, alienates traditional consumers, and triggers backlash from shareholders and markets.
Fortunately, the “anti-woke” pushback has gained great momentum since President Trump took office, echoing the voices of angry citizens, consumers, and shareholders. More and more, institutions and corporations are finding that there is a cost to “going woke.”
The Patriots for Europe Foundation is partly funded by the European Parliament. The European Parliament and The Patriots of Europe Foundation assume no responsibility for the opinions expressed in this publication. Sole responsibility lies with the individual authors.
