WOKE CORPORATIONS EMERGE AS AMERICA’S ‘BIG BROTHER:’
The rise of left-wing corporate marketing and environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards are creating a form of corporate dystopia that effectively gives Democrats control over your life without your consent. The soft totalitarianism of conformity can be seen by the increased control we’ve given corporate America. And that control is being abused every day. If you’re concerned about “Big Brother,” he probably won’t be pulling your strings from Washington, but rather, through the “death by a thousand paper cuts” enabled by your ideological and social betters at big corporations.
There is no better recent case in point than a man whose home’s “smart” devices were disabled by Amazon after a delivery driver falsely accused him of hurling a racial slur via a Ring doorbell. The homeowner, who is Black, was not home during the purported incident and yet was locked out of his smart devices for a week while Amazon conducted a “review.” It turns out, the smart doorbell did not emit a racial epithet but instead issued the automated response, “Excuse me, can I help you?”
The incident serves as a succinct illustration for woke overreaction and the power of our modern corporate state. There likely will not be a Chinese-style social credit system passed by Congress, at least not in the next decade. However, consumers are little by little accepting the idea that their lives will be controlled by tech companies increasingly equipped with artificial intelligence technology and far-left goals.
It may seem weird to paraphrase Gerald Ford at this moment, but a device powerful enough to control nearly all aspects of your domestic life can take it away just as fast. If you step out of line, you could lose your window into the modern world. Just ask supporters of the Canadian truckers’ 2022 convoy to protest COVID vaccine mandates, who temporarily lost access to their bank accounts for making donations to the effort as small as $50. Here in the U.S., Amazon ceased web hosting for the conservative social media site Parler, citing “dangerous” content, and PayPal cut off GoFundMe competitor GiveSendGo.
I’m pretty sure that Norman Jewison didn’t intend for Rollerball to be a how-to guide for giant corporations.