Major League Baseball’s decision to move the All-Star game out of Atlanta was another point for woke capitalism. The woke marketing and human resources people who push corporations to embrace leftist ideology get forced on everyone as a more moral version of capitalism. Like so many before it, the MLB decision reveals the political opportunism and moral hollowness of woke capitalism.
It would be one thing if these corporations were making a general stand on principle. But that’s not happening. The entire reason MLB moved the game out of Atlanta — because the new Georgia voting law “restrict[s] voting access for residents of the state” — is based on complete lies.
The MLB statement relies on President Joe Biden’s rhetoric, who has decided to make the Georgia law something of a hobby horse of his in speeches. Biden has blasted it as restricting voting access on racial terms. The Washington Post, in fact-checking some of Biden’s claims regarding voting windows, said:
Not a single expert we consulted who has studied the law understood why Biden made this claim, as this was the section of law that expanded early voting for many Georgians. Somehow Biden managed to turn that expansion into a restriction aimed at working people, calling it “among the outrageous parts” of the law. There’s no evidence that is the case.
The paper gave Biden their highest liar rating. Biden argued this was disenfranchisement when, in reality, the legislation opens up voting to more people. The Post dinged Biden again because he keeps repeating this same lie, among many others.
All of this ignores, too, that the Georgia law is far less restrictive on voting than many places like New York.
The claims that requiring voter ID are racist and wrong would be news to a majority of not just Americans at large but Democrats. A new poll by the Associated Press found that 72% of all Americans supported voter ID laws, as well as 56% of Democrats. You wouldn’t know that by listening to your average Democratic talking head or the MLB press statements.
In the end, this isn’t a stand on principle, it’s woke corporations seeking a way to hit Republicans. This move is nothing more than raw politics masquerading as morality.
Here’s how to prove this. These corporations are saying, in various ways, that the Georgia voter ID law is the return of Jim Crow. This kind of description is ludicrous on its face, but that’s what they’re saying. So this is an issue of racism.
If MLB believes racism is a problem that needs fixing, then why are they lying about the Georgia legislation? And why is the league getting cozy with China? The Chinese Communist Party actively sends a religious and ethnic minority in its country into concentration camps and uses them as slave labor. Women are actively being sterilized.
Well-read students of history aren’t surprised on this point. These actions are typical for a communist government, from Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. This is what these countries do. What’s different this time is that American companies are using and profiting from this slave labor, including Hollywood, refusing to say a word about it and then preening in the United States, attacking Republicans.
A real stand looks more like the clothing company Hennes & Mauritz, aka H&M. That company is currently facing an immense backlash in China from the CCP government. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company has faced censorship and a public slander campaign because:
The outrage appears to be in response to a statement the company issued last year expressing concern about reports of forced labor and discrimination against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. H&M said in the statement that it didn’t source products from the region and that it strictly prohibits forced labor in its supply chain, regardless of country.
How novel. A company is trying to ethically source its products and avoid slave labor. That’s a stance not many other American companies are making, but yet they’ve got time to lie about a Georgia law.
And that brings us to the endpoint here about woke capitalism: it’s amoral. There are no principles here, and there are no grand moral actors. These are people who are trying to economically and culturally punish Republicans and nothing else. They’re standing for what they believe will help them out politically in marketing and sales, but they’re not making principled stands.
If you’re helping a genocidal slave country on the one hand, while only tossing out false claims against a political party domestically, your claims fall flat. The hollowness of woke capitalism is a feature, not a bug. These are Democrats covering what they do in faux-morality. But when push comes to shove, they don’t have any bravery to stand against actual slavery when it’s right in their face.
Those woke companies have the same gameplan as NBA Coach Steve Kerr. They’re big-time Twitter warriors who shrink away in noiseless fear when faced with real racism and slavery. Cowardice is one thing, though, aiding and abetting a genocidal regime? That’s a whole other level of low. But that’s what woke corporations are doing.