(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Want To Know When A Business Does Something Decent? Conservative Woke-Up Calls Will Alert You! [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-17 In early 2021, surge protector magnate and climate denial funder Barre Seid essentially donated his company to Leonard Leo, a conservative activist whose Marble Freedom Trust nonprofit then sold the company for $1.6 billion . Two months later, Consumers' Research, which counts Leo among key benefactors , started a campaign against a supposedly "woke" Wall Street. In the years since , the concerted ' Alex Jones Investing ' campaign to erode environmental, social, and governance considerations in investing, known as ESG, has sought to convince conservatives that big business is actually a tool of progressive social justice warriors and so-called climate alarmists. The idea that capitalist corporations, reliant on profits derived from paying workers less than the value of what they produce, could ever be truly "woke" in the original sense of being attuned and opposed to (racist) oppression, is of course ridiculous. That's why it requires such sustained efforts to make conservative audiences mad at any company that hires Black people or recognizes that trans rights are human rights or considers the climate crisis to be something to stop, not exploit for profit. The latest effort from Consumers' Research, the campaign that they're running with all that money they got, is called "Woke Alert." You give them your name and phone number, and they'll text you any time a company does something "woke." The most recent example, as of Friday when the project launched, is an alert about a 2021 ad campaign that Jack Daniels ran with RuPaul's Drag Race. It's apparently "resurfaced" after the manufactured hate campaign against BudLight for working with Dylan Mulvaney . With almost 11 million TikTok followers , Mulvaney's an obvious choice for an influencer ad campaign, but because she's a trans woman, bigots got big mad . The baseless hate against Mulvaney, the latest in a sustained , well-funded , anti-trans agenda across conservative media and the GOP , goes to show how desperately reactionary this entire anti-”woke” endeavor is, how intently conservatives are trying to turn back the clock, and how deeply bigoted a supposedly finance-minded effort this is. They’re not just railing against current campaigns but also hatemongering over past ones! RuPaul appeared in drag on national TV as early as a now nostalgia-inducing 1993 appearance on an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Charles Barkley and featuring musical guest Nirvana . So if you'd like an alert about two-year-old ad campaigns that a company ran with a TV show that has been on the air for 15 seasons, with a host who's been a national media darling for three full decades and even does a little fracking , then feel free to sign up. Alternatively, you can just keep an eye on right-wing disinfo websites, which were of course all too eager to turn the Woke Alert press release into a story: The Daily Caller , Townhall , and The Washington Times all promoted the effort to their audiences of old men who apparently are going to sign up for texts to get angry at brands for existing in the 21st century. More seriously, though, this campaign is an important tacit admission: Even with all the money a campaigner could ask for, the attempts to claw back ESG policies aren't getting traction when they talk about the environmental issues impacting the fossil fuel industry. Instead, anti-ESG activists are focusing on social issues, running campaigns attacking transgender people to build support for otherwise deeply unpopular policies that cost states billions of dollars . It's textbook scapegoating, and it's being pushed across conservative media in the same way Asians were scapegoated during the Covid pandemic, and the immigrant "caravan" was in 2018 , or the Black Lives Matter protests before that. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/17/2164366/-Want-To-Know-When-A-Business-Does-Something-Decent-Conservative-Woke-Up-Calls-Will-Alert-You Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/