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The practice of corporate virtue-signaling is reaching epidemic levels in western corporations. It was borne out of the introduction of social responsibility in corporations’ policies. Today it has become a proven way for a corporation to appear moral without actually acting morally in its business operations.

The outbreak of corporate virtue-signalling surged during Australia’s Marriage Law postal campaign. Every big bank, airline and retailer supported a “yes” vote; not one dared to attach their brand to the “no” campaign. One corporation, Coopers Brewery, was vilified for simply sponsoring a debate on the issue and issued a cringe-worthy apology.

Corporate virtue-signaling has now moved onto affecting how corporations advertise their products. With the radical left now in charge of the culture and media, their attention has turned to finding a way to silence their opponents. Since most conservative media still rely on corporate advertising, it was the most obvious.

Alan Jones Boycott Campaign

The campaign to pressure companies to withdraw their advertising from conservative media in Australia is led by a twitter account Sleeping Giants Oz. Their main targets have been Sky News Australia and Radio 2GB. They regularly publish lists of these media outlets’ advertisers for their followers to harass with emails and threats.

Sleeping Giants were at the forefront of the latest campaign to deplatform Alan Jones after his comments directed at New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Jones was responding to Ardern’s demands that Australia had to answer to climate change in the Pacific, and suggested Scott Morrison ‘shove a sock down her throat’.

Sleeping Giants and another Twitter account Mad Fucking Witches were successful in pressuring current and previous advertisers of Jones to pledge not to advertise on the Alan Jones Show ever again. These companies stated that Jones’s on air comments did not reflect their values.

Alan Jones’s listeners and supporters responded to this campaign by launching a counter-campaign, ‘Go Woke, Go Broke‘. This has become a slogan this year in response to corporations, in their quest to virtue-signal or be “woke”, suffering massive financial losses after backlash from their actual customer base.

Gillette’s Disaster

The company that nearly went broke from going woke this year was men’s razor manufacturer Gillette, launching its ‘The Best Men Can Be’ campaign at the beginning of this year. Its ad attacked the male customer base for being full of toxic masculinity.

Gillette suffered a $12-billion write-down in the value of the company. As a result, Gillette ditched its ‘The Best Men Can Be’ campaign and the CEO announced Gillette would now only engage in campaigns which display its male customer base in a positive light.

But not all corporations are full of panicked public relations officers who see an email, Facebook comment or tweet from a leftist activist and think the whole company is about to be subjected to a crippling loyal customer boycott.

The Story of Chick-fil-A

Some corporations can see through all this bullshit and the abuse and threats from these alleged voices of the consumer. The first major corporation that loudly proclaimed its conservative values was American fast food outlet Chick-fil-A.

LGBT groups started targeting the chicken sandwich franchise in 2011 when they noticed that Chick-fil-A’s charitable arm, the WinShape Foundation, was supporting Christian and family based organisations.

As the scrutiny on Chick-fil-A from the mainstream media and LGBT activists intensified, company Chairman Dan Cathy, rather than run away or cuck, proudly stated his pro-family and Christian belief: “We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. … We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families.”

Despite Chick-fil-A never having discriminated against an employee who may be LGBT or refused service to any customers who identified as such, Cathy’s statement still caused outrage and accusations that the company funded a hate-based organisation.

But the boycott campaign against Chick-fil-A backfired, as America’s large Christian and conservative citizens countered with Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. The end result of the controversy was Chick-fil-A’s sales rising 12 percent, to $4.6 billion.

As of 2019, Chick-fil-A has now become the United States’ favorite fast food outlet. It has nothing to do with the beliefs of the owner, it is simply because its chicken sandwiches taste great. Consumers at the end of the day just want good-quality products at reasonable prices.

Many major Australian companies are now proven corporate bedwetters following the Alan Jones boycott campaign. One Australian company, knowing that the quiet Australians voted to re-elect the Morrison Government only in May, decided that if corporations are getting political, then they were going to be unashamed of their own political beliefs.

SCD American Vehicles and Eddie Kocwa

SCD American Vehicles, based in north Brisbane, re-manufactures American vehicles for the Australian car market. It is based in Home Affairs Minster Peter Dutton’s electorate of Dickson. At the May federal election, a grassroots local campaign helped re-elect Dutton as the local member in response to a well-funded campaign to oust him by left-wing activist group Get Up.

The owner of SCD American Vehicles, Eddie Kocwa, appeared in a Facebook video two days before the federal election urging voters in Dickson and elsewhere to re-elect the Liberal National Party that supports small business like his to thrive and expand in Australia.

The conservative values of Eddie Kocwa did not garner mainstream attention until SCD American Vehicles last week released an advertisement on its Facebook page which remixed footage of Peter Dutton visiting the SCD American Vehicles premises. It was to the tune of the 2003 song “X gon’ give it to ya” by American rapper DMX. The video description reads ‘Thanks for the official visit Peter Dutton. Looking forward to creating more jobs in your electorate!’

SCD American Vehicles Dutton Baddest MP Ad

The advertisement promoted Dutton as the ‘baddest MP’, a reference to his strongman political persona as Home Affairs Minister, in not caving into any of the political and media pressure to weaken Australia’s border security. It has made him the most reviled politician by Australia’s left which has labelled him a fascist, racist and child-torturer.

The video has been viewed over 20,000 times with 90% positive emoji reactions. Though in the comments, the keyboard warriors were at it, vowing never to buy one of their vehicles, asking how they thought promoting Peter Dutton in one of their ads would be good for business. The most lame comment was that Dutton would deport their dark-skinned employees.

SCD American Vehicles wasn’t concerned by such comments as the video saw them achieve a record day for sales last Friday.

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In fact they encouraged the snowflake comments and continued outrage as it only made their ad go even more viral online.

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Although it wasn’t just leftist commenters on social media who were whipped up into a frenzy. The mainstream media had not seen a business in Australia dare align itself with conservative values.

The Daily Mail claimed the ad was turning off customers, while SBS reported how insensitive it was to call Dutton the baddest MP during Biloela Tamil deportation matter.

10Daily felt it relevant to mention that the rapper of the song, DMX, has been in jail for drug charges, driving offences, tax fraud and stealing a dog. As if SCD American Vehicles approves of such criminality.

Further Media Smears

One ‘independent journalist’ Carrick Ryan went in for a deeper dive into owner Eddie Kocwa’s social media. He found Eddie wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat and flashing the ‘okay’ hand symbol.

The ‘okay’ hand symbol was started as a troll on 4chan to see if they could turn it into a white power symbol. And the left fell for it, hook, line and sinker; they now believe anyone who flashes it is a white supremacist. Ryan even linked Kocwa to the Christchurch mosque killer.

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In response to this accusation that he was a supporter of white supremacy, Kowca said he was flashing the hand sign of ‘the circle game’ from US sitcom Malcolm in the Middle and that the photo was taken many years ago.

He blasted the smears on social media against him, telling SBS “That’s complete fucking horseshit. That circle thing is…if you ask any Aussie dude, you do that, it’s a punch in the shoulder if someone sees that. If they look through that, if someone puts their finger through it you get a punch in the shoulder”.

Even though sales had surged for SCD American Vehicles, that hasn’t stopped the leftist abuse being directed to the company. Kowca added, “You should see the emails we’ve been getting from people saying we’re racist, vile scum. I can’t believe this. My mum is probably going to be calling me soon. It’s just complete nonsense. None of these people know me. I’m club captain at my soccer club, I donate so much time to people.”

Business Lessons

The message from the stories of Chick-fil-A and SCD American Vehicles is if you don’t cuck, you earn bucks. The silent majority or quiet Australians as customers are just after the best deal, they don’t make purchases based on social justice issues. All the left really has to counter the free market with in this situation is cyberbullying and harassment campaigns.

Good on Dan Cathy and Eddie Kowca for showing real corporate leadership, and most importantly of all making a sound business decision.

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