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Virtue Signaling Is Starting To Backfire On Corporations

And that’s probably a good thing

Cailian Savage
6 min readMay 17, 2022

“Netflix tells employees to get on board with ideological diversity or get out.”

When I first saw this headline on Facebook, it was attracting a lot of hate. The comments were full of right-wingers lashing out at Woke Corporate America, claiming that even North Korea would be better than the communist dictatorship they live in.

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

But had they actually read the article, they might have been cheered up to discover that Netflix was actually (more or less) on their side.

The statement was inspired by staff who walked out after Dave Chappelle’s controversial comments on trans people; Netflix was effectively saying “you’re expected to work on shows that progressives might not like, and we’ll sack you before canceling those shows.”

Chappelle (left), made the following statement during a comedy special: “Gender is a fact. Every human being in this room, every human being on Earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. This is a fact.” By Raph_PH —Wikimedia Commons

The corporate world (and America’s in particular ) has long been criticized by both sides of the political divide for “woke-washing”, the practice of using the language of social justice activists to enhance their brand image and deflect criticism.

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