'Corporations win. Celebrities win. Even the Chinese Communist Party wins': Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, 35, slams US big business for going woke 'at the expense of the American people'
The founder of a US biotech firm has argued that corporate America is poisoning society because it capitalizes on wokeness just to make money - and that it is 'quietly wreaking havoc' on democracy.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who stepped down as CEO of his biotech firm Roivant Sciences in January, said in a New York Post op-ed on Tuesday that he was 'fed up' with corporate America pretending to care about social justice to boost profits.
The 35-year-old entrepreneur argued that the money-making tactics of investors and CEOs is now to promote progressive social values - or in other words to 'stay woke'.
Ramaswamy's argument is the basis of his new book, 'Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam', which will be published in August.
'When corporations tell us what social values we're supposed to adopt, they take America as a whole and divide us into tribes,' Ramaswamy said.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who stepped down as CEO of his biotech firm Roivant Sciences in January, says he is fed up' with corporate America being 'woke' and pretending to care about justice to boost profits
'That makes it easier for them to make a buck, but it also coaxes us into adopting new identities based on skin-deep characteristics and flimsy social causes that supplant our deeper shared identity as Americans.
'Corporations win. Woke activists win. Celebrities win. Even the Chinese Communist Party finds a way to win. But the losers of this game are the American people, including both sincere progressives who are used as pawns and everyday conservatives who are silenced, our hollowed-out institutions, and American democracy itself.'
Ramaswamy added that investors and CEOs are now determining what is good for society instead of the democratic process.
'This new trend has created a major cultural shift in America. It's not just ruining companies. It's polarizing our politics. It's dividing our country to a breaking point,' he said.
'Worst of all, it's concentrating the power to determine American values in the hands of a small group of capitalists, rather than in the hands of the American citizenry at large, which is where the dialogue about social values belongs.'
Ramaswamy detailed how he chose to step down as CEO of his biotech company, which he founded in 2014, after deciding to write his book and facing backlash for speaking out against corporations who punished those who attended the US Capitol riots in January.
While he condemned those who stormed the Capitol, Ramaswamy argued it was worrisome how Facebook and Twitter, for example, started canceling those who participated and other conservatives.
The 35-year-old entrepreneur argued that the money-making tactics of investors and CEOs is now to promote progressive social values - or in other words to 'stay woke'
Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of his biotech company Roivant Sciences in January after deciding to write a book about corporate America and wokeness
'It was a Soviet-style ideological purge, happening in plain sight, right here in America, except the censorship czar wasn't big government. It wasn't private enterprise either. Rather it was a new beast altogether, a frightening hybrid of the two,' he said.
After arguing in a separate op-ed that Twitter and Facebook broke the law by engaging in political censorship, Ramaswamy said the fall-out against him was swift.
He said some advisers resigned, his friends said they were disappointed and investors raised concerns.
'As CEO, I needed to effectively run a business focused on developing medicines, without getting intertwined in political matters. Yet as a citizen, I felt compelled to speak out about the perils of woke capitalism. I tried my best to avoid using my company as a platform to foist my views on others. But eventually I had to admit that I couldn't do justice to either while trying to do both at once,' he said.
'There was a certain irony to the decision that lingered with me. When left-leaning CEOs write books about their views on business and politics, it doesn't hurt their companies at all. Rather, it seems to help them. But my situation was different.
'At the company town hall explaining my decision to step down, I said that it was important to separate my personal voice as a citizen from the voice of the company, in order to protect the company. No one was confused.
'I do think there's a double standard at play in America, but ultimately I didn't step aside because I feared a firestorm. I did it because my own beliefs told me I had to keep business and politics apart.
'A good barometer for the health of any democracy is the percentage of people who are willing to say what they actually believe in public. As a nation, we're doing pretty poorly on that metric right now, and the only way to fix it is to start talking openly again.'
