This summer, Ford, Lowe's, Harley-Davidson, John Deere and Tractor Supply Co. all dropped controversial DEI practices in the workplace — and one man is behind it.
“Companies are realizing that this whole DEI thing was a house of cards,” activist Robbie Starbuck told the Post. “Someone had to start a house of cards. Most CEOs in the U.S. are ecstatic to have an excuse to get rid of this stuff.”
In an online exposé, Starbucks called out companies for having divisive DEI programs. Posts To X's 500,000+ followers.
On Tuesday, Starbucks announced at X that Molson Coors was “preemptively making changes.” Discontinuing DEI-Based Training He then reportedly messaged executives, warning them that an exposé was in the works. (The Washington Post reached out to Molson Coors, which owns more than 100 beer and spirits brands, including Miller High Life, Leinenkugel's, Foster's, Blue Moon and various Coors brands.)
The move is similar to Jack Daniel's reversing course after Starbucks said it would simply protest the whiskey brand.
Last week, Ford announced it was scaling back its DEI initiatives and would stop using diversity quotas.
And late last month, Lowe's also caved to pressure from Starbucks, agreeing to combine all of its identity-based employee resource groups into one and to stop participating in LGBTQ+ parades that aren't related to its business.
Critics have accused Starbucks of inciting the mob, but he says he was simply highlighting company values that he feels are out of sync with those of ordinary Americans.
“You need to be aligned with your customers. [otherwise,] “If anyone else did that, they would take your lunch away,” said Starbuck, 35. “That's how capitalism works. Customers aren't going to ignore you violating their values every day.”
Born and raised in California to Cuban-American parents, Starbuck said he has always been strongly influenced by Marxist ideas, which are reflected in DEI's work to promote equality. “Communism took everything from my family, so there were always warnings about Marxism in the environment I grew up in,” he said.
Starbuck lives in a notoriously progressive state, so he witnessed the idea spread locally before it became a mainstream concern after the summer of 2020.
“Living in California, DEI and CRT are inescapable, so I picked up on it pretty early on,” he said, “and I realized this was a virus that was spreading across the country.”
Before becoming a full-time activist and podcaster, Starbuck ran a successful production company, directed music videos for Snoop Dogg, Akon and Sara Bareilles, and worked with celebrities like Natalie Portman and Jamie Foxx, but became “too uncomfortable” in Hollywood as a conservative.
“My values have always been conservative so deep down I always knew I didn't fit into that world and I knew the whole industry was very left-wing,” he said.
He began speaking out publicly about wokeism while working as a producer in Hollywood, and in 2015 he publicly supported Donald Trump.
As a result, he says he lost 80 percent of his customers. Rather than bow out again, Starbuck sold his production company and decided to start a new life with his wife and children on a farm in Franklin, Tennessee.
The moral panic of the summer of 2020 led him to launch an all-out war against corporate DEI initiatives that he described as “fascistic.”
“Corporate executives were afraid of being called racist,” he said. “Today, most Fortune 500 companies are essentially in thrall to this ideology, even if their executives loathe it.”
“After the George Floyd incident, management caved in, but things are different now. It's time to get back on track and unite all our customers.”
Starbucks narrowed its focus to companies with DEI infrastructure that was on fire: Post a revealing video and Twitter denounces problematic companiesBad publicity often leads to boycotts of the brand and a massive anti-woke backlash from his supporters.
His recent campaign against Harley-Davidson, which sparked a boycott, successfully forced the company to reverse course on its DEI program and backtrack on diversity standards with suppliers in August.
But the bike manufacturers In a later statement, They said they were “saddened by the negativity on social media” and claimed the campaign was “designed to divide the Harley-Davidson community.”
But of course Starbucks sees things differently.
“In a way, we're doing corporations a favour by giving them a reason to stop allowing divisive ideologies to continue to infiltrate their corporations,” he said. “Corporations have no responsibility to confront social issues at all. They have a responsibility to make profits for their shareholders.”
The farmer considers Tractor Supply's elimination of its DEI program his biggest success yet: After Starbucks criticized the company for that and for imposing aggressive climate change goals, the company cut all DEI-related roles.
Tractor Supply also redirected its business activities toward animal welfare and supporting veterans, saying in a statement that the company was seeking to recommit itself to “rural America's priorities” and was committed to “being a good neighbor.”
Starbuck said many executives have seen other companies made an example of on social media, so some companies have begun to proactively dismantle DEI policies before he could condemn them.
“We're at a point where enough companies have seen how others are struggling that they're deciding to make changes,” he said. “I've heard some executives not even realize this is happening in their own companies.”
Starbuck said his ultimate goal is to remove politics from the workplace entirely, and that he won't ease his involvement in corporate America until he achieves that goal.
“A job is a job. It doesn't matter who you want to have sex with, what color your skin is, who you vote for,” he said. “The end goal here is to have a very neutral environment in the workplace where people just do their job.”
