Exclusive — Rep. Warren Davidson: Woke Corporations ‘Are Imposing a Modern Heresy Code’

Woke corporations capitalizing on trendy, often left-leaning social justice movements are “imposing a modern heresy code,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) told Breitbart News during an exclusive interview.

“Essentially, they are imposing a modern heresy code and if you step out of line with the new heresy code that’s sort of ill-defined, then you’re going to get canceled. Right?” the Ohio congressman told Breitbart News during an exclusive interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

“And that goes on in terms of the dialogue, like for example when Martina Navratilova had been a long-term ally and she was openly lesbian way before, you know, it was safe to do that in America or even globally. Once she spoke out about protecting women’s tennis for biological women, canceled. No tolerance for that,” Davidson observed, explaining how that phenomenon has transcended to the “business world.”

“It’s like, oh, if you’re going to provide any sort of capital that would be at odds with that, they’ll cancel the business. They’ll cancel the person. And you’ve seen that not just in, you know, political life — people that are overtly political or, say, celebrities that are sports folks,” he said, noting this is now happening to “every day Americans.”

“And that’s a horrible thing,” he said.

When asked why many of these “woke” businesses continue to cave to external cultural and political pressures, Davidson pointed to the basic structure of the operations.

“One of the big factors is who owns the shares right? So the hedge funds like CalPERS for example, California Pension, the hedge funds are run by folks who are on the left often and they vote the shares not necessarily for the best value for the pensioners or best returns,” he explained. “They’re voting for some of these other goals. And that’s being formalized under ESG goals, environmental social governance goals, that are good for the stakeholders.”

“Who are the stakeholders? They never want to completely define the stakeholders, but who are they not? They’re not the shareholders alright? The shareholders are the people that own the shares, and often the people that do own the shares — your Fidelity account, your Schwab account, your Robinhood account — these people don’t end up voting their own individual shares,” he added. “So these proxy firms vote the shares, and they are steering the management team to go towards left goals.”