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A million-dollar gift would’ve guaranteed you a pretty good seat at Monday’s inauguration. In Jeff Bezos’s case, it also didn’t hurt that the Amazon mogul has turned over a new leaf where political activism is concerned. Like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, the longtime critic of Donald Trump seems to have made peace with the incoming president — so much so that he’s ordered the world’s biggest online retailer to scale down DEI.

The shift started before the election, when Bezos, who now owns The Washington Post, refused to endorse in the presidential race. The tradition does “nothing to tip the scales of an election,” he argued in a public statement. “No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one,” Bezos wrote in a nine-paragraph article published on the newspaper’s website.

After November 5, Bezos surprised some by issuing a hearty congratulations to Trump, who’d been a frequent target of the billionaire’s ire throughout his first administration. After a string of dinners at Mar-a-Lago, however, several Silicon Valley CEOs, including Amazon’s founder, seemed charmed. “I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him because we do have too much regulation in this country. This country is so set up to grow.”

Truly Inclusive

The news that Amazon is walking away from some of its controversial diversity, equity, and inclusion policies comes on the heels of Zuckerberg’s own come-to-Jesus moment about Meta’s censorship. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among others, have pledged to “get back to our roots around free expression” by “replacing fact-checkers with Community Notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes.”

Bezos’s universe seems to be moving in the same impartial direction. “Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on programs with proven outcomes — and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture,” an internal Amazon memo from Candi Castleberry read.

This approach, the VP of Inclusive Experiences and Technologies explained, “where we move away from programs that were separate from our existing processes, and instead integrating our work into existing processes so they become durable — is the evolution to ‘built-in’ and ‘born inclusive,’ instead of ‘bolted on.’ As part of this evolution, we’ve been winding down outdated programs and materials, and we’re aiming to complete that by the end of 2024.”

The move is especially noteworthy since “the company set a goal of doubling black employees at Amazon in managerial roles” at the height of the George Floyd riots, The Post Millennial reports. “At that time, Amazon pledged to hire 30 percent more black employees in corporate roles.”

Now, not only has Castleberry’s title moved away from DEI, but the “Our Positions” page at Amazon has been scrubbed of its sections on “diversity, equity, inclusion” and “LGBTQ+ rights.” In its place is a single paragraph, Thomas Stevenson reports, that simply says the company “is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive company.”

This is no small feat, considering that Amazon had a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index just last year. So is this course-correct genuine, several experts wonder? Can these companies, who’ve been in the pocket of the Left’s wokest organisations for years, be trusted?

For Real?

Scott Shepard, who headed up the Free Enterprise Project for years, urges caution. “It’s great to see that Amazon — an extremely politicized, woke corporation — is, at least rhetorically, retreating from some of its racist, sexist, and orientation-discriminatory ‘DEI’ policies. This follows on a growing train of full or partial, real or rhetorical retreats by a swathe of companies including John Deere, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson, and so many others.”

Obviously, the fact that these iconic brands even see the need to message differently is a victory. But, Shepard continues, “This is obviously only a start to the battle that will be required fully to resile ESG’s evils to the ash heap of history. After all,” he told The Washington Stand, “Amazon’s only withdrawing some DEI programs. Why only some? If even one program remains that discriminates on the forbidden bases, then Amazon continues to violate the Constitution for one of the ugliest causes that has ever been: bigotry. … The war against ESG and DEI will not have been won until every component of that engine is smashed to ball bearings.”

Now, there are several big businesses (Tractor Supply, McDonald’s, Walmart, and more) who’ve committed in writing to abandoning their ridiculous hiring quotas, contractor and supplier commitments to DEI, and the Corporate Equality Index. That’s important because it gives shareholders and consumers a mechanism for accountability. Others, like Amazon, will have to be held “fuller to account”, Shepard notes. Those are the CEOs who want the public’s goodwill but may not have made real and lasting policy changes.

As Stephen Soukup, author of The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, pointed out in October, there’s been a big discussion among the conservatives who’ve been tracking corporate activism over the long haul about whether this pivot is legitimate. While a lot of companies have “publicly come out and disavowed their DEI policies, because of the work that Robby Starbuck has done, [they may] nevertheless [be] telling their employees privately that they’re going to continue a lot of these policies. They’re just going to take them out of their public-facing documents so that guys like Robby can’t expose them.”

Soukup didn’t say that to discourage the movement — but he does stress the need for people to remain vigilant. “I think there’s a possibility that we will have great success,” he emphasized. “But at the same time, we have to continue to push the ball forward on this, because corporations are not going to be as willing to change as we might hope.”

Strive Management’s Justin Danhof agreed. When extremists like BlackRock’s Larry Fink say they’re not going to use the term ESG because it’s become “toxic,” the reality, Justin pointed out, is that he’s the one who made it toxic by ramming it down everyone’s throats. “So it’s actually made my job much more difficult,” Danhof explained, “because what I have to do is [look deeper to determine], is this a linguistic change? Or has the company actually made a real substantial change in their action? So I look for action, not words.”

Conservatives must, too. We can’t allow ESG and DEI to “just live in disguise for the course of the coming administration,” Scott stressed. “When Larry Fink’s (and a score of the worst actors’) personal coffers are bare,” he told TWS, “then we can reasonably believe that ESG is dead, and can move on to the next battles in the long countermarch through the institutions. When there are as many conservatives on the faculty of Harvard Law and the Motion Picture Academy as leftists, then we will have really, fully gotten back to neutral. Until then,” he insisted, “we must carry on.”