This article by Peter Baldwin for Politics & Civilization begins with these words:
You might have noticed that the new global corporate elites, especially those in the big tech sector and the large finance houses, who have become vastly wealthy through the exploitation of new technologies and globalization, are very moral people.
Not like those business tycoons of old, the evil Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Fords and Rothschilds, the "robber barons" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an era known as the Gilded Age due to their profligate displays of wealth, execrated by the old Left for trampling underfoot the nascent labour movements around the world and generating unprecedented levels of inequality.
No, not at all, nothing like that. Our new super rich elites are most concerned about social justice, with just about all of them professing their commitment to implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in their corporations, with the creation of DEI bureaucracies nowadays pretty much mandatory.
And boy, do they mean it. Woe betide any employee of any of these entities who dares to express dissent from the reigning corporate ideology, especially its multifaceted "equity agenda".
You may recall the case of Google senior software engineer James Damore, peremptorily fired several years ago for writing an internal memo (actually solicited by management) that dared to suggest that gender disparities in software engineering might not be totally due to discrimination, but just might have something to do with evidence men and women have different preferences about the work they do.
Good grief—he even had the temerity to title his memo Google's Ideological Echo Chamber! Anyone would think he thought it permissible to have frank and robust internal discussions at Google.
Anyway he was set straight when Google's Vice President and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Danielle Brown a statement that said of the memo:
… like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I’m not going to link to it here as it’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages.
Wow—incorrect assumptions about gender. Fire that man immediately! A decision immediately backed by Google's CEO Sundar Pichai. That's how serious Google and just about all its corporate peers are about social justice.
As Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has said we do need "tough conversations about tough topics", but questioning gender equity assumptions, that's a step too far. Even virtuous corporate giants acknowledge that free speech has limits.
Not to mention the massive corporate support for the Black Lives Matter movement, with Apple, Amazon and Facebook endorsing the movement and kicking in millions of dollars to support the unfinished racial justice agenda and help overcome the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
How progressive is that—corporations willing to endorse and get behind a movement founded by self-described "trained Marxists", albeit ones not averse to applying some of the funds to acquire multi-million dollar mansions for themselves.
But, hey, isn't that part of the equity agenda? Don't people of colour have the same right to splurge on conspicuous consumption as white people? Looks like the Marxist slogan "expropriate the expropriators" has been replaced by "share the wealth".
And anyway, as BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors pointed out, the controversy about her homes "has taken away from where the focus should be—ending white supremacy".
We even see big tech willing to take on state governments, as with Apple, Cisco, IBM, Google and Facebook and eighty others coming together to publicly express their disappointment with the North Carolina legislature for their discriminatory legislation concerning transgender access to bathrooms in the state. That took courage!
Incredibly, it might not be too much of a stretch to say the leaders of these corporate behemoths have actually joined the "Left". At least in its new and more enlightened form that stresses gender and racial justice and transgender rights over the old-left thinking that obsessed about challenging corporate power and ending gross social inequalities.
This, surely, represents the fulfilment of the Left's long-cherished dream of capturing the "commanding heights" of the capitalist economies—a cause for celebration for all progressives, if ever there was one!
OK time to switch out of sarcasm mode. Time for a reality check, and an explanation for my cynicism.
I have just read a most astonishing and disturbing book, Red Handed by American author Peter Schweizer, recently released on Kindle and available in print format from 4 May.
The book provides a comprehensive picture of the success achieved by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in creating circles of influence in the top power centres of the United States.
Schweizer's work is an excellent companion volume to Clive Hamilton's two books about the CCP influence operations, especially its "united front" work, throughout the Western democracies.
His specific focus is one of the most important aspects of this activity—what the espionage world terms "elite capture".
For the full article in pdf, please click here:
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