How one journalist is stopping corporate DEI spending dead in its tracks

Journalist and filmmaker Robby Starbuck is responsible for enormous, multinational brands turning away from diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that have permeated throughout culture and business for more than a decade.

Through Starbuck’s work, Anheuser-Busch, Ford, Harley-Davidson, and Walmart have all pivoted away from their allegedly firmly held beliefs on inclusion.

In an exclusive interview, Starbuck told Blaze News that he holds no hidden agenda or malice toward particular brands or companies; rather, he simply does not agree with race-based hiring practices or funding for sex-based events that often flaunt disturbing content in front of children.

“Being a dad” is his chief motivator, he said. “I don’t want my kids to grow up in a crazy country.”

'Let's make the consumer aware.’

From woke to normal

The question has remained: How exactly does Starbuck, an outsider, convince companies that are worth billions to redirect their funding?

“It's a multipronged effort,” Starbuck began. “The reality is, up until we started this campaign in June [2024], these companies had not seen a whole lot of sunshine on their policies.”

He explained that companies have conducted a lot of DEI-related business “under the radar,” with the average consumers completely unaware that money they were spending at certain stores was helping prop up beliefs they “vehemently disagree with.”

“My concept from the very beginning was 'let's make the consumer aware,' because I think your average consumer has enough choices that they're going to say, ‘Oh, I don't want to fund this Pride event.'"

The next steps for Starbuck involved looping in other journalists and content creators with large followings to get the word out and help explain the importance of his work. This, coupled with whistleblowers who have voluntarily reached out to his group, has helped Starbuck conduct open-source investigations.

The approach is simple: Research the company, find out where the money goes, and reach out to its corporate entities to make them aware of it.

“We put everything together to build a picture of what the culture is at a company, what their policies actually are, and then the executives are very aware that we're not going to drop anything that we're doing until things have changed,” Starbuck explained.

It has not been easy, though. Starbuck stated that he has faced opposition from a few companies, particularly, he said, Tractor Supply, John Deere, and Harley-Davidson.

Despite other companies losing billions in market value as a result of consumers turning away, Harley-Davidson still held out the longest before eventually announcing the company has no “DEI function" remaining.

The bad press, combined with huge losses from the company's electric bike venture, caused the motorcycle giant to sell a reported 50% fewer motorcycles in 2024.

Starbuck noted that his results have sent a message to companies pushing DEI that culturally and politically, audiences are not as friendly to these initiatives as they once were.

“Other executives, they don't want to be that company that tests us again and then has the consumer sentiment turn on them, and then there are serious financial issues in the marketplace. So they recognize that we have an ascendant power, not just in the cultural realm, but also politically,” Starbuck claimed.

Inside the boardroom

When asked what his interactions with executives have been like, the 35-year-old outlined a few different categories of reactions he has received.

The first category was the rare CEO who truly believes in new-age progressivism and wants to see these programs continue. After that, though, Starbuck said there do exist a certain number of CEOs who are blissfully unaware of what their employees are pushing toward.

“Don’t get me wrong; there are some true believers out there, but there are also just CEOs unaware that these parts of the company have been hijacked by activists. Some people balk at that, and they go, ‘How could they be unaware?’ You have to realize for these mega-corporations, the job of a CEO is so compartmentalized in terms of what they look at day to day. They're not looking at the behaviors of training and HR. Like, that's just not their ballpark.”

Starbuck said that while some of the CEOs hear veiled complaints about woke operations at their companies, they do not know the extent to which the ideology has permeated through the ranks.

What that means, he explained, is that many CEOs did not exactly realize what they were funding, and many have been “very happy to pull back” and, furthermore, happy that Starbuck has given them a reason to do so.

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One thing that became clear to Starbuck was that executives are excellent judges of character who, when realizing what kind of person he is, became more receptive to his approach.

“What they're used to with a lot of corporate activists is they're used to shakedowns. They're used to people from the left coming in and they just want their check.”

Without wanting money or an ad campaign, Starbuck has focused on taking what the companies have said are their true values and helping relay that to the consumer. It also has helped his cause to reveal that many DEI programs have simultaneously pushed anti-capitalist agendas alongside their gender activism.

The majority of programs Starbuck has investigated have included literature from Ibram Kendi being recommended to employees. The irony of those teachings, the journalist revealed, is that they explain to the reader that “to be an anti-racist, you must be anti-capitalist,” something that is clearly at odds with the mantra of most CEOs.

As executives have become aware of the “absurdity,” as Starbuck put it, they have happily been willing to pull the funding back in most instances.

Who started it?

At the start of the DEI ride, companies were pulled into a “cultural tide,” according to David Bahnsen.

Bahnsen is the managing partner and CIO of the Bahnsen Group, a firm overseeing more than $4 billion (per Bloomberg).

The California native agreed that there have been “true believers” who talked themselves into wokeness, but he described the DEI era as being one of the greatest examples of “corporate penance” ever devised. This was a five-year period when meritocracy was abandoned and DEI policies became increasingly common, Bahnsen went on.

“The nexus of media, technology, political power, left-wing academia, and, yes, corporate America; all pulled the marketplace together towards DEI.”

While he noted that the companies themselves were ultimately responsible, Bahsen said that the DEI programs allowed businesses to keep being businesses, while keeping the powers that be at arm’s length through payments of cultural and political messaging.

The 50-year-old added that as the governing parameters have changed, some companies no longer have to “play a game they never actually believed in,” while other companies have been forced to learn the hard way that their ideals are no longer profitable.

Starbuck, on the other hand, pointed to a more sinister plot and alluded to the fact that he has unearthed divisive, deliberate operations infiltrating corporations across the country.

While there is certainly influence from college graduates bringing woke indoctrination into the workplace, Starbuck said there has been a coordinated effort from trained activists who have “absolutely” entered into marketing, public relations, and human resources roles to push DEI.

“It was carefully planned, who would go where and why. … This is a very, very disgusting situation. I’ll put it that way,” he added.

'Abandoning DEI boosts profits ...'

Which way, Western man?

A common question to consumers has been where to turn. Social media, news agencies, and even meat suppliers have popped up in the last decade to cater to a segment of the population who have grown tired of DEI policies.

As these sentiments have increased, Starbuck said it is important to act with “grace” and go with one’s gut feeling, in combination with common sense.

Starbuck revealed that his efforts have been to push companies down a neutral path in order for the results to be long-lasting and not to have a ping-pong effect, in which companies blow with the wind every four years.

“If a company does the right thing, then I think it is incumbent on us to have some grace.”

Starbuck advised that if there is no alternative, then consumers need to start making companies become worthy of their hard-earned cash.

At the same time, though, if an alternative does exist, consumers need to speak with their wallets and support a brand that is more aligned with their values.

The reality is, according to Bahnsen, that companies are seeing a boost in revenue after they abandon DEI principles. A series of immeasurable and measurable factors like quotas, human resources, legal resources, and untold amounts of bureaucracy have crippled many companies in his view.

While some can still turn a profit, DEI programs do have an assumed cost that weighs on revenue.

“Abandoning DEI boosts profits in the way that a runner taking off heavy ankle weights boosts speed!” Bahnsen joked.

Companies are not human beings, and consumers do not want to know what a company believes, politically, nor do they want the company to even have such beliefs, Starbuck concluded.

While it seems that most are agreeing, in ever-growing numbers, that companies should not be focused on divisive issues, it is also becoming more popular to tell companies that they should be focused on taking the ankle weights off and truly returning to being boring, bland corporations.