Woke versus anti-woke debate hots up

The latest candidate to throw his hat in the US presidential ring, Indian-American Vivek Ramaswamy, is one of the most voluble antagonists on the anti-woke side

Multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, 37, who has just declared his candidature for the American presidency has made targeting the “woke” a central plank of his public persona. Even before his presidential bid, Mr Ramaswamy wrote a book titled Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, which debuted in 2021. It became a New York Times bestseller in no time. In it Mr Ramaswamy argues that corporate America’s pursuit of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals is a complete farce.

His campaign plank focuses on corporate America’s increasing embrace of socially conscious investing. He sees it as hypocrisy that allows companies to obscure how they are actually damaging the fabric of American society, rather than enhancing it. So strident is Mr Ramaswamy’s opposition to “woke” that he and his billionaire Republican donor Peter Thiel started a hedge fund called Strive, which encourages investments that stay away from so-called “woke capitalism”.

Mr Ramaswamy is quite lucid in his book on his “anti-woke” beliefs. He says that there’s a new invisible force at work in our economic and cultural lives that affects every piece of advertising that we see and every product we buy, from our morning coffee to a new pair of shoes. “Stakeholder capitalism” makes rosy promises of a better, more diverse, environmentally-friendly world, but in reality this ideology championed by America’s business and political leaders “robs us of our money, our voice, and our identity”, he claims.

Mr Ramaswamy, in the book, takes readers behind the scenes into corporate boardrooms and five-star conferences, into Ivy League classrooms and secretive non-profits, to reveal what he calls “the defining scam of our century”. The modern woke-industrial complex, Mr Ramaswamy’s book says, divides us as a people. By mixing morality with consumerism, America’s elite preys on our innermost insecurities about who we really are. They sell us cheap social causes and skin-deep identities to satisfy our hunger for a cause and our search for meaning, at a moment when currently Americans lack both. The book basically rips back the curtain on the new American corporatist agenda, which most of the world is trying to emulate.

The word “woke” was added to dictionaries in 2017; it is slang for awake. In its contemporary use, “woke” means social awareness, being alert to social issues, racism, discrimination and injustice. The “woke” culture’s other important plank is “political correctness”. The textbook definition of political correctness being the “avoidance of action, that is perceived to insult, or marginalise certain groups of people”. But today “woke” extends to conversations around art, politics, economic and social class, gender inequality, trans rights and environmentalism — and of course the world of business, which has embraced “woke” with messianic fervour in recent years.

It is the growing woke-ness of corporations that has triggered ESG-led “sustainable investing” in a big way in recent times. Its focus on environmental factors, social issues and questions of corporate governance has always attracted people drawn to progressive causes. The original concept of sustainable investing was that using ESG criteria would help protect investments by avoiding material financial risks from things such as climate change, worker disputes, human rights issues in supply chains, and poor corporate governance and the resulting litigation. But with time, the label has come to be slapped onto renewable-energy and similar earth-friendly initiatives too. Today, most companies have adopted ESG — most consider, measure, and report the ESG aspects of their business alongside their financials. 

As the debate heats up, “anti-wokeism” is being painted as an ideology of the political right and centre left. The right presents “woke” causes as existential threats to human civilisation. “Woke” to them describes the excesses of cancel culture, but conservatives also apply it to initiatives such as the Green New Deal. The debate has just about begun. Mr Ramaswamy is one of the most voluble antagonists on the “anti-woke” side.

Unilever, Amazon, Coca Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Disney, Adidas and most other large American companies are all incredibly “woke”. For every box of cereal sold, Kellogg’s, for example, donates money to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Others do similar stuff. It is fashionable to be “woke”, after all.

Mr Ramaswamy’s “anti-woke” stance, in contrast, is very clear: Corporate America “makes money critiquing itself.” The rest of us pay the price in diminished freedom. Mr Ramaswamy defines “wokeism” as a creed that has arisen in America in response to the “moral vacuum” created by the ebbing from public life of faith, patriotism and “the identity we derived from hard work”. He argues that notions like “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion” have come to take their place.

To long-shot presidential aspirant Ramaswamy, Davos is “the Woke Vatican,” Al Gore and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, are “its archbishops.” CEOs James Quincey of Coca-Cola, Ed Bastian of Delta, Marc Benioff of Salesforce, John Donahoe of Nike and Alan Jope of Unilever are its “cardinals.” Jesus! 

The writer is managing director of Rediffusion