WORKING GIRLIES: ON THE WOKE CORPORATION
I am old enough to remember Corporate America as an emblem of conservatism. Movies like “Working Girl” or “The Secret of My Success” depicted a ruthless world of high capitalism, in which men in heavy suits would take a puff of their cigars then yell “You’re fired!” at anybody whose shape they didn’t like.
And now, where have all the men gone? The modern corporation updates its logo with every addition to the [email protected] spectrum, mandates “diversity and inclusion” training, and compels racial confessionals and seminars on those heavy-suited men of old. Our biggest corporations and even stand athwart the wishes of local patriots, as in the case of the hysterical boycotts of Georgia.
How has this happened? Surely nobody really believes that the international board of Coca-Cola cares about George Floyd, or that the calculating financiers behind BlackRock care about anything beyond more summer homes and private jets with full kitchens. What is at hand then?
Undergirding this great convergence of corporatism and Wokery is a major shift in Western political dynamics. You may call it the national undoing, or globalism, or perhaps a better name will soon be found. But it is the process by which the nation-state recedes, and in its place emerge transnational organizations: the UN, the EU, the IMF, and their ilk. National constitutions lose their meaning, while ideas such as international law, free trade, and the “rules-based international order” become omnipotent.
Similar to one of Star Trek’s crystalline entities that live in the void between planets, the transnational corporation is the keystone species in this state-less ecology. Belonging nowhere yet at home anywhere, these conglomerates have no home, are tied to no nation, seek to do business anywhere where profit can be found, and have long relinquished any ties to the republic or its custodianship. Indeed, the average American transnational now grovels in front of China’s regulators, hoping to collect a few more yuans, agnostic to any sense of patriotism or shame.
When committing to a cause, out of necessary PR tricks, or a sort of vestigial morality, the transnational will always ignore the local community or the home country and opt for something “global”, and therefore lacking any real attachment. A commitment to the “LGBT” community, a campaign for “global warming,” or that general accusation that in lieu of targeting anything specific simply accuses everybody, “systemic racism.”
Wokery too, in a fascinating case of converging evolution, is in opposition to the nation-state. The acolytes of the Left busy themselves with denouncing everything that is ours, repudiating the ties that bind us together, all in the name of “social justice.” The high priests of the modern Left excoriate America for the blasphemy of its existence, and promote any kind of policy, from reparations, to “decolonization,” to mass immigration, that may stabilize it and unsettle it.
And so the long-lost twins have found one another and converged. Transnational corporations require a moral facade to support their sprawl beyond the nation-state, and Wokery provides it. Wokery, in a symbiotic turn, requires money. So we find Morgan Stanley, KPMG, and Deloitte donating millions for “racial equity.” In turn, the racial equity warriors leave these corporations alone and focus instead on harassing ordinary Americans through burning down their neighborhoods and defacing their historical monuments. A win-win indeed.
Conservatives and patriots, naturally, uphold the nation-state. The essence of conservatism is oikophilia, a love of home (as coined by Roger Scruton). And so conservatives, traditional people, and ordinary Americans are on the target of both Wokery and large corporations. Say the wrong thing on Twitter, and surely Antifa will dox you, followed by your corporation firing you.
So runs the world. For now.
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