According to legend, when Vladimir Lenin was asked how he planned to “hang all the capitalists” in the face of a rope shortage in the young Soviet Union, he replied “don’t worry comrade, the capitalists will sell us the rope.”
U.S. lawmakers are beginning to get serious about the dangers of propaganda, focusing on American businesses’ relationships with hostile foreign governments—perhaps most visibly the entertainment industry—to bolster their argument.
Conservatives are rightly vexed by “woke capitalism,” exasperated at the ways in which big American corporations are increasingly weighing in on sociopolitical issues—invariably, it seems, in favor of the progressive left. Certainly, many businesses are under pressure to do so. Sometimes that pressure is open and public. Indeed, it can make national news. But other times it is less so. Many Americans are likely unaware of the coordinated campaigns by shareholder activists—equity owners in a corporation interested in something other than financial gain—to insert their political priorities into those same corporate boardrooms through environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) shareholder proposals.
