Back in 2020, after the death of George Floyd, the CEO class joined the left in distorting history.
The question is whether the C-suite’s penchant for virtue signaling will reassert itself after the similarly tragic killing of Alex Pretti?
It shouldn’t, if only because CEOs should know by now that they aren’t just bad at politics, they actively make things worse.
Recall that following George Floyd’s death, racialized re-education sessions began popping up at places like American Express and Bank of America, resulting in lawsuits and employee revolts. Corporate money poured into the coffers of sketchy radical groups like Black Lives Matter. All those mandated diversity, equity and inclusion hiring policies installed to wipe out alleged racism in the workplace were nothing but a culturally Marxist form of discrimination, even before being deemed illegal by the courts.
CEO activists
And yet, virtue signaling is now starting to happen. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon — in Davos speaking to government leaders and CEOs no less — couldn’t help himself when he hysterically compared ICE enforcement to “five grown men beating up a little old lady,” which sounds like something coming from the p.r. department of Antifa.
The New York Times’ DealBook recently ran a piece titled “Who Will Speak Up,” advocating that more members of the CEO class get involved in this mess in Minneapolis, because “even if you believe an officer acted in good faith or out of fear for his or her life, the frequency of these episodes suggest a systemic training failure.”
Maybe it was; I happen to think so. But it is also a murky situation, not all that much different from what happened in 2020. That George Floyd did not deserve to die goes without saying, but the country didn’t deserve the knee-jerk reactions from the likes of BofA chief Brian Moynihan, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs and Dimon joining hands with the radical left to morph police overreach in one instance as proof that the whole country is a racist hell hole.
Similarly, that ICE officers need better training, and should be using their weapons as a last resort, is obvious. But they’re also thrust into a situation that can best be described as a prolonged riot, egged on by leftist agitators and reckless public officials like Gov. Tim Walz and the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey.
So no, I don’t want the companies that provide me services or I invest in to speak up. I can make up my own mind. It’s time for our CEOs to stay out of this mess and focus on doing what they do best, like running their companies.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
