The left's strange new respect for corporate speech

And its concern that corporations have dialed back their woke declarations

According to Axios, “companies that were once very vocal on human rights and societal issues have held statements close to the vest or stayed completely silent following the recent streak of tragedies in America.” It notes that “in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, executives from Dell Technologies, Merck and Ford made statements slamming police brutality.” But “when asked how the leaders were responding to the fatal police beating of Tyre Nichols, reps from all three companies declined to comment.”

Axios makes no attempt to quantify the degree to which corporate America has backed away from making woke pronouncements, and it’s not surprising that corporate executives have declined to comment about the killing of a black suspect by black cops. However, I accept the article’s premise that corporate executives are somewhat less prone than in 2020 to opine about “tragedies in America.”

That’s not surprising either. It’s never been the job of corporate executives to talk about events, tragic or otherwise, that have nothing to with their business. To be sure, many of them decided to provide social commentary after George Floyd’s death. But they did so in the context of widespread hysteria.

Thankfully, the hysteria has receded.

Corporate executives aren’t what they were a generation ago, but they are not chronically hysterical. Profits still matter to them, and profits still depend in most cases on the public’s good will. Embracing the left’s narrative about “tragedies in America” may produce a small amount of good will from leftists, but it’s likely to alienate many of the non-leftists who comprise a significant portion of a company’s consumers.

This is the most straightforward explanation of why corporations, though still far more woke than is good for them, are less prone than in 2020 to mouth left-wing talking points.

Ignoring the obvious, Axios turns to “experts” who cite four factors:

Power dynamics. Companies are not facing public and internal pressure to make external statements. "They felt pressured to speak up in 2020 because their employees had a lot of power. Now, not," one DEI consultant told Axios' Emily Peck.

Economic uncertainty. The tech industry — which was previously out front on many of these issues — is now going through massive cuts and is focused on staying afloat, not wading in. Plus, many tech companies have gutted their DEI departments in response to economic strains.

ESG pushback. Recent pushback from activist investors and legislators at the state and federal levels have caused businesses to become more skittish on ESG initiatives.

Fatigue. “There’s a sensitivity to not making a statement every time something happens,” Paul Washington, executive director of the ESG Center at the Conference Board told Emily. Companies don’t want to get into the routine for fear of being asked, ‘Why did you say something about that, but not this?’

As you can see, the “experts” in question are DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) types. Naturally, they want to blame any mild reduction in their sway over corporations on the economy, political opponents, and fatigue. Naturally, they resist the obvious conclusion that, to some degree, corporations are simply acting more rationally than in 2020 — behaving more like corporations and less like social justice warriors.

Axios frets that “corporate silence could crater civil discourse.” Put aside the fact that we’re a long way from “corporate silence” on wokeism. Focus, instead, on how odd it is for the left to contend that civil discourse depends on corporate speech. I’m old enough to remember when leftists wanted to decrease the influence of corporations on civil discourse.

Why the strange new respect for corporate speech? The rationale (or pretext — the real reason is that corporations increasingly are run by leftists) is this:

As trust in government erodes, "business is the sole institution seen as competent and ethical," Edelman CEO Richard Edelman says, and "societal leadership is now a core function of business."

I’m old enough to remember when corporations, in conjunction with ideologues, providing societal leadership was a hallmark of fascism. I think it still is.

Quite apart from its fascist implications, calling on corporations to provide societal leadership because the public trusts them is foolish. If it’s true that the public trusts corporations more than politicians, journalists and non-profits, that’s probably because the public believes corporations, unlike these other institutions, aren’t taking sides in controversial matters of public policy (other than those that directly affect their ability to make a profit).

In other words, corporations are trusted precisely because, in the past at least, they tended not to view societal leadership as a core function. To the extent that corporations embrace a more ambitious role and behave like ideologues and partisans, the public will stop trusting them, too.

As I argued above, this is why some corporations, as much as they may want to provide woke “societal leadership,” are backing off — at least to some degree.