Companies like Anheuser-Busch and Target have lost billions for pushing a “woke” agenda. An ex-Anheuser-Busch executive says the “wokeness” is being pushed by prominent investment firms.
Anheuser-Busch has reportedly lost nearly $30 billion in market value since it decided to partner with “transgender” celebrity Dylan Mulvaney.
Target has received boycotts after the company promoted Pride month with “tuck-friendly” bathing suits, LGBTQ clothing for babies, and products from a company promoting Satanism, causing JPMorgan to downgrade Target’s stock, dropping the retain chain’s share price by 14%.
Anson Frericks, former president of Anheuser-Busch sales and distribution, says dominant investment firms are prominent companies that promote liberal ideologies despite alienating large portions of their customer base.
“You just have to follow the money,” Frericks said during an appearance on “Jesse Watters Primetime.” “You take a look at BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard – they manage $20 trillion worth of capital.”
Frericks noted that these influential investment firms manage large pension funds, like California’s pension fund, which is the largest in the U.S. He said that Californian politicians influence companies that such firms invest in.
“In California, for example, they recently have mandated those large pension funds that they divest from things like fossil fuels and oil and gas, and then when Bill de Blasio, [former] mayor of New York, was there, he did the same thing,” he said.
“But they also tell BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard if they’re going to manage their money, they have to commit to things like ESG — diversity, equity, inclusion — and adopt firm-wide commitments that they therefore then force onto all the major companies in corporate America,” Frericks added.
Frericks said he left Anheuser-Busch because the company began engaging in politics while telling customers “How to live their lives.” He cited Georgia legislators passing election integrity laws and companies such as BlackRock, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, and Major League Baseball (MLB) opposing Georgia’s election integrity law which didn’t affect them.
“But what was crazy to me was that after the fact, BlackRock came out and they said, ‘We’re against this law. We think this is bad for democracy, this is bad for society,’ and they basically then had companies like Coca-Cola, like Delta and heck — even Major League Baseball, they canceled an All-Star Game over this,” Frericks said.
Fmr. Anheuser-Busch Exec. on How BlackRock, State Street, & Vanguard Force Companies to Go Woke
“Citizens should be able to decide these things through free and fair elections, not necessarily with a small group of asset managers and CEOs that are telling individuals how to live… pic.twitter.com/DmnZUVwJKO
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) June 4, 2023
Frericks warned that BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, the “Big Three,” as they’re known, are “proponents of what’s called ‘stakeholder capitalism,’ which is a belief that businesses should be run not only to increase value to shareholders, but to serve all stakeholders, including government agencies, activists, and non-governmental organizations.”
Frericks told the Daily Mail that political and cultural issues “should be settled at the ballot box, not in the board room.”
