The right-wing activist riding a wave of opposition to DEI in corporate America

New York

CNN

 — 

Robby Starbuck, a former Hollywood music video director and turned conservative activist, has caught fire campaigning online against some major American brands' diversity, equity and inclusion programs (DEI), support for gay Pride marches and LGBTQ events, strategies to slow climate change and other social policies.

Starbuck is both riding a wave of right-wing hostility to DEI programs and corporate advocacy on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights and advancing the opposition himself. He has channeled energy on the right to target specific brands popular with politically conservative customers, Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply Co. and John Deere, and relentlessly drawn attention online to their past publicly-stated policies. Starbuck has also claimed credit for Brown-Forman and Lowe's internal announcements in recent weeks to scale back some of their diversity and inclusion programs.

Starbuck has selected brands whose programs on some of these issues were only implemented in recent years and may be less likely to resist pressure. The full impact of his activism is not entirely clear, but companies are rethinking their programs amid a changing political environment and online pressure.

John Deere is one of several companies to pull back on its diversity and inclusion programs in recent weeks.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Starbuck told CNN in a phone interview last month that he is "exposing" companies. But more than anything, Starbuck is showing how "haphazard" many companies' support for diversity, inclusion and climate programs were to start, said Shaun Harper, a professor of education and business at the University of Southern California and founder and executive director of its Race and Equity Center.

"The larger takeaway is about the fragility of corporate DEI initiatives. If one person can take to Twitter and ultimately inflame a campaign to dismantle DEI in large companies, it means those things were not strong to begin with," Harper said. "Most companies and the people who lead them were not committed to this in the first place."

What ‘neutral' means

Starbuck, 35, whose real name is Robert Starbuck Newsom, lives outside of Nashville with his wife, Landon, and their three school-age kids. Landon Starbuck has been a leading advocate in Tennessee for right-wing causes like banning both transgender-affirming medical care for minors and drag shows with children present.

Starbuck's X account has more than a half-million followers. His posts and videos on the companies have been amplified by both customers and prominent right-wing leaders like Elon Musk.

Starbuck told CNN that corporate DEI programs, generally a mix of employee training, resource networks and recruiting practices to encourage representation among people of different races, genders, classes and other identities— are "evil" and a "Trojan horse for pushing leftism."

Corporate policies to slow down the effects of human-caused climate change do "nothing positive for society," he said. The climate has "always changed," Starbuck said, and human beings have "very little control" over it. (This is false. It is the overwhelming consensus of scientists that human-generated fossil fuel pollution, what comes from burning coal, gas and oil, is the primary cause of global warming.)

Hannah Beier/Reuters

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And gay pride parades and LBGTQ events, which are held to celebrate gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, who until 2020 were legally allowed to be fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation, promote sex to children, Starbuck said, so companies should stop sponsoring them. (Eric Bloem, the vice president of programs and corporate advocacy at the Human Rights Campaign, said that "Pride has always been about celebrating, affirming, and uplifting LGBTQ+ people" and rejecting "intimidation and fear from those who try to silence us.")

Starbuck said he has two employees who help him research companies' policies and executives' backgrounds. He said he is not receiving outside funding and is self-funding his efforts. He also relies on $5 monthly payments from subscribers on X, although he declined to share how many people subscribed. Starbuck also promotes miscellaneous products such as t-shirts, books, supplements and other products on his Linktree website.

He told CNN that he wants corporate America to stay out of social issues and is only interested in pushing a "neutral" stance. "It's corporate accountability for companies that depend on conservative consumers," he said.

But Starbuck, who was endorsed by Republican Sen. Rand Paul and right-wing activists like Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens when he ran unsuccessfully as a write-in candidate in a 2022 Republican congressional primary, is not promoting a neutral agenda, said Brayden King, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.

"The phrase ‘neutrality' is often used by activists who are pushing a non-neutral agenda. It's a clever frame used by activists to get them to do what activists want," King said.

Businesses are also not taking measures on diversity and climate because they want to advance a left-wing political agenda, he said.

"These companies are not taking measures because they have an ideological bias," he said. "Most companies are trying to navigate without creating controversy."

Starbuck's activism

Starbuck, who said his mother and grandparents fled Cuba during the 1960s to escape the Castro regime, began his career in Hollywood and started a production company. He worked on commercials, films and music videos for artists like Akon and the Smashing Pumpkins.

In 2015, he said he endorsed Donald Trump for president, believing Trump would disrupt politics. Three years later, Starbuck and his wife moved to Franklin, Tennessee, a wealthy suburb outside Nashville, and became politically active.

During the pandemic, Starbuck campaigned against Covid-19 mask and vaccine mandates. (Hundreds of millions of people have received Covid-19 vaccines, which are safe and effective, according to the CDC. Adverse events after the Covid-19 vaccines are rare, the CDC says.)

Starbuck campaigning for Congress in Tennessee in 2021.

Ray Di Pietro/Shutterstock

Starbuck and Landon also became vocal supporters of bills in Tennessee banning gender-affirming medical care for minors and criminalizing drag shows on public property or in areas where they could be viewed by a minor.

The Human Rights Campaign said in a press release that Tennessee is the "state with the most anti-equality laws enacted in modern times."

Earlier this year, before Starbuck's campaign against corporations began, the couple released a film on X baselessly arguing that companies, LGBTQ performers and liberal Americans are indoctrinating and sexualizing children.

The film, "The War on Children,"  was promoted by other right-wing personalities such Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and Republican leaders. But Rolling Stone reported that Starbuck and his production team misled interview subjects about the subject of the film and Starbuck's involvement in it. Producers, the magazine reported, told one drag show performer she was contributing to a documentary exploring the challenges faced by transgender children and the impact of gender-affirming care bans. (Starbuck rejects the characterization that the performer was misled.)

Targeting corporate America

In 2020, corporate DEI initiatives picked up after a wave of protests for racial justice in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd. That year, Companies spent an estimated $7.5 billion on DEI-related efforts, such as employee resource groups, according to a McKinsey study.

But companies have become ripe targets for activism from the political right in recent years.

Republican leaders like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and right-wing commentators like Matt Walsh and others have pressured brands like Bud Light, Disney and Nike to roll back their inclusivity efforts.

Last year, Bud Light's partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney sparked an anti-trans backlash and a months-long boycott of the beer brand. The boycott and the company's subsequent tepid response likely lost parent company  Anheuser-Busch InBe v as much as $1.4 billion in sales, according to the company.

In June, Starbuck began advocating against brands' policies, starting with Tractor Supply, known for selling animal feed, pet food and lawn and garden equipment in suburban and rural areas.

Starbuck kicked off his campaign against brands' policies in June, starting with Tractor Supply Co.

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

"I thought, as a customer, I don't want to spend my money there," Starbuck said. "I don't want money I spend there turned around and used on policies or activism that I wholly disagree with."

"It's time to expose Tractor Supply," he first posted June 6, drawing attention to corporate components like "LGBTQIA+ events at work" and "a DEI council."

Other conservative political candidates, activists and customers began criticizing the company on social media and said they would stop shopping at the chain.

"We have heard from customers that we have disappointed them," Tractor Supply said in a statement on June 27 . "We have taken this feedback to heart." The company announced it was eliminating jobs and goals focused on diversity, equity and inclusion; withdrawing its carbon emission reduction goals; and ending sponsorships for Pride festivals and voting campaigns.

In July, following weeks of Starbuck's campaigning against John Deere, the company announced it will no longer sponsor "social or cultural awareness" events and will audit all its training materials.

Harley-Davidson pulled back on DEI policies after Starbuck campaigned against the brand.

On August 19, Harley-Davidson said it ended its DEI "function" in April after an internal review of its policies, and it will no longer have goals to increase spending with diverse suppliers as a result of a review initiated earlier this year. The company also said it would end its relationship with the Human Rights Campaign.

"We are saddened by the negativity on social media over the last few weeks, designed to divide the Harley-Davidson community," the company wrote in a statement posted on X. "It is our responsibility to respond with clarity, action and facts." Harley Davidson said it was still committed to DEI.

Starbuck railed against Harley-Davidson online, claiming the company had gone "woke."

Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Brown-Forman, the owner of Jack Daniels, also said Thursday in an internal memo that  it will end its push for more diverse suppliers, stop linking executive compensation to diversity and stop working with the Human Rights Campaign's Rights Corporate Equality Index survey.

Starbuck said on X that he was set to launch a public campaign against Brown-Forman and had been gathering information on the company. Brown-Forman had no additional comment to CNN.

Lowe's said in a recent note to employees that it will no longer participate in surveys for the Human Rights Campaign and will combine its individual business resource groups representing diverse sections of its employees into one umbrella organization. The company will no longer sponsor or participate in events outside of these areas, such as "festivals, parades and fairs." The company said it began reviewing its policies more than a year ago.

Starbuck claimed credit for Lowe's move. He said on X that he had messaged Lowe's executives last week.

Lowe's spokesperson Steve Salazar told CNN that Starbuck's outreach to the company came after the company "already announced changes that had long been in process."

‘We're making change happen'

Although Tractor Supply, Deere and Harley Davidson warned investors that a failure to meet climate and diversity goals could hurt business, Starbuck says these policies were a mistake to begin with.

"Was it a good thing that they got more racial diversity as a byproduct of focusing on DEI? No," Starbuck said. "What makes it bad is that they looked at it through the lens of race. This should have never been a consideration in any metric."

Companies should avoid climate change activism and developing their own policies to combat climate change because it's a divisive issue, he said. Instead, he said, if companies are focused on the environment, they should identify unifying issues like water conservation efforts.

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"I don't think (climate change activism) does anything to help anybody. I think doing it might make somebody in HR feel better about themselves because they got their company to say the words climate change," he said.

Tractor Supply said that although it's ending carbon emissions reduction efforts, it plans to focus on land and water conservation efforts.

King from Northwestern said that while land and water conservation are admirable, they won't do anything to slow climate change or the economic risks that businesses face from climate change.

"Companies have to consider that the political climate will change again, and when it does, they will be judged differently than they are now for dropping their climate and emissions goal," he said. "The consequences for climate change are going to be more visible and more serious with each year."

But Starbuck plans to keep putting pressure on companies. He has his next few companies picked out, although he did not disclose which.

"We're making change happen," he said.

Ramifications of Starbuck's campaign

If Starbuck achieves his goal of eliminating DEI initiatives, companies are likely to recruit and hire from a narrower pool of candidates, say experts on corporate management and strategy.

Companies with DEI teams tend to have a higher share of Asian, Black and Hispanic employees than companies without DEI teams , according to a study by Revelio Labs, which tracks hiring trends.

Companies' carbon emissions will also continue to grow, worsening the effects of climate change, these experts say. And company bottom lines may also take a hit.

Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives can boost  profits, reduce employee attrition and increase employee motivation, according to Boston Consulting Group research based on data from more than 27,000 employees in 16 countries.

These companies are "backing themselves into a couple of traps," said Alvin Tillery Jr., a professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University. Tillery consults with corporations and governments on diversity programs. "If you get tagged with a reputation for not being open as a company, the damage that can accrue to you is really problematic."

Tillery noted that Harley-Davidson and John Deere both have older customer bases, and their decisions may alienate customers and workers their businesses will need to rely on in the future.

Climate change also threatens industries from food to insurance and drives up costs for businesses and consumers. Tractor Supply, John Deere and Harley-Davidson have warned investors in securities filings that climate change poses significant risks to their businesses.

"Many of the controversial social issues like climate change are also critical business issues. It is the same for talent management (and hiring)," said Cynthia Clark, a professor of corporate governance at Bentley University. "Both affect the company in the short and long term."