He’s only just begun.
After adding McDonald’s to his list of corporate converts that have forsaken what he calls destructive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, anti-woke activist Robby Starbucks says he is looking forward to another busy year of outing misguided miscreant monopolies.
The new year had barely begun before what is arguably the world’s biggest fast food brand announced it was walking back its DEI policies in favour of what it said was a more merit-based approach to staffing and sourcing third-party suppliers.
The iconic burger behemoth joined other iconic American brands that have buckled to pressure from Starbucks’ unorthodox campaign, including Harley Davidson, John Deere, Jack Daniel’s, Ford, and Walmart, among others. To date, 15 companies worth more than USD$3 trillion have backed down and abandoned DEI policies aimed at promoting racial and sexual minorities.
Starbucks began his campaign in June of last year after the release of his online Twitter (“X”) documentary, The War on Children, opposing gender-affirming care, an agenda he blamed on big social media companies and corporate culture. By leveraging social media, Starbucks has proven to be an extremely effective voice in forcing big corporate behemoths to heel to a vast — and growing — silent majority.
It comes amid a broader backlash against what ordinary consumers perceive as a woke agenda that gained momentum with Bud Light’s disastrous Dylan Mulvaney campaign.
Starbucks himself was raised by his mother and grandparents who fled communist Cuba in the 1960s. After a career directing music videos and commercials in California, he relocated to Tennessee after rejecting the Golden State’s leftist political aesthetic.
All of Starbucks’ targets had several things in common: they are all iconic brands who represent more than just dollars and cents to symbolize basic American values of freedom, perseverance, and independence. All had seemed to lose touch with their traditional customer base by pursuing corporate policies seemingly at odds with those standards.
In an e-mail exchange with the Western Standard, Starbucks agreed that he targets high-profile companies but said his campaigns speak to a bigger principle of basic fairness and equality that are threatened by discriminatory — and misguided — management practices at the highest levels of corporate governance regardless of brand.
“To say that I target heritage brands is somewhat right and somewhat wrong. Sure, I definitely target some iconic brands, but that’s not our sole metric for choosing companies. It goes far beyond that, and we’ll continue to expand the list of companies we target.”
And though there are Canadian brands that definitively fall under that umbrella — Starbucks quarry Coors is technically owned by Montreal-based Molson’s — he was reluctant to wade into a debate over the merits of incoming President Donald Trump’s threat to impose punishing tariffs on deserving Canadian companies and products.
“No comment on this one, but I’m a bigger fan of Greenland joining the US than Canada,” he quipped.
In the meantime, Starbucks’ campaign shows no signs of slowing down, and he urged his growing legion of followers on both sides of the border to stay tuned. He vowed to continue turning heads and headlines in the next 12 months.
“There will absolutely be big names crashing down in 2025, but I don’t give hints because it ruins the fun of each new story.”