Robby Starbuck has become an outspoken critic of DEI in corporate America this year, using tweets to pressure Toyota and other big-name companies to back off their diversity efforts.
Now, the 35-year-old says he sees the end of his self-styled crusade.
Speaking with Dailymail.com, Starbuck predicted that within two years, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the U.S. and even abroad will be in the rearview mirror.
Before that, the father of four, who pressured everyone from Ford to Lowe’s to abandon DEI, says his biggest goals are yet to come.
Next, he plans to take the fight to TikTok, Meta and other big tech companies, not only for their internal procedures but also for content streams that he says harm children.
Conservative activist Robby Starbuck got big companies to abandon DEI simply by revealing details of these efforts in X.
The father of four says his next target is TikTok, Meta and the other social media giants he says are targeting pornography and radical gender ideas at children.
“When we turn our gaze to the big tech world and go after some of them, it will be harder to change their policies,” Starbuck said.
“But if you do the right thing with the right companies, it could have enough of an economic effect that over the course of a year they go backwards.”
Starbuck has become a tremendously divisive character in America’s culture wars this year.
He once directed music videos for Snoop Dogg and Megadeth in Los Angeles, but traded that in for a rural life near Nashville, Tennessee, where he tried — and failed — to win a Republican House seat in 2022.
From a farm in Franklin, he has had most success posting videos on X/Twitter exposing major companies’ DEI programs and getting his conservative clients to stop spending until executives dump them.
So far, Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, Tractor Supply, Molson Coors, Caterpillar and Brown-Forman, which makes Jack Daniel’s, have closed. Starbuck praises its “100 percent success rate.”
Toyota said this month it would reduce DEI work, stop sponsoring Pride events and cut ties with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which classifies companies based on their LGBTQ culture, after Starbuck attacked the manufacturer on Twitter. Japanese automobile.
Their wins echo past backlash against Bud Light for its association with a trans TikToker and Target for its Pride range, which some consumers said was inflammatory.
Still, critics blast Starbuck and say executives who defer to him will suffer for alienating their minority employees.
“Shortsighted decisions to abandon DEI initiatives will have a long-lasting negative impact on business success,” says Eric Bloem, vice president at HRC.
In the future, “more people than ever will identify as LGBTQ+,” he added.
Starbucks’ revelations about the beloved Harley-Davidson struck a chord with devotees, like enthusiast Ernest Chapman, 53, who said the motorcycle brand should “leave the wokeness alone.”
For some, DEI programs help overcome historical racism and sexism and make it easier for people of all backgrounds to advance in education and work.
Critics say it is a form of reverse discrimination that unfairly disadvantages straight white men.
Others say DEI schemes may be well-intentioned but rarely achieve their desired goals, and that workshops on “microaggressions” and “white fragility” serve to deepen divisions in offices and classrooms.
Starbuck and other activists gained momentum after the U.S. Supreme Court banned affirmative action in college admissions last year.
That ruling unleashed a series of lawsuits and complaints against companies for discriminating against white workers.
Many companies that adopted DEI policies following the police killing of unarmed black man George Floyd in May 2020 have moved away from them for fear of irritating conservative patrons.
“People deserve to be able to shop without thinking they’re supporting some cause or having someone else’s social value shoved into them,” Starbuck says.
“Businesses should be neutral and stay out of politics and divisive social issues.”
It is now planning the final stage of its anti-DEI campaign targeting the “wokering” of big tech companies.
It’s a phase shift for Starbuck, as DEI issues are more complicated and the companies in question (from Meta to TikTok to YouTube) are much wealthier than their previous targets.
Their goal is to stop not only their internal DEI systems, but also the way they expose children to violence, pornography, and publications that promote eating disorders, negative self-image, and radical gender ideology.
The heads of social media giants Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat have already been questioned by Congress about the dangers their platforms bring to children.
The families showed photos of victims of child exploitation and suicide in the audience behind the five tech bosses at the arraignment hearing.
“The main concern is how their policies and platforms affect children, because we can see the damage in the real world, and it is serious,” he says.
“This should not be a partisan issue.”
This was the subject of the documentary Starbuck released in February, called The War on Children, which was promoted by tech chief Elon Musk but criticized as an “anti-trans” conspiracy theory.
In its attack on social media companies, Starbuck has many potential allies.
The Biden administration’s surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, has criticized the harm social media causes to children, and liberal and conservative parents across the country want to separate their children from their cell phones.
But you are also entering into a far-reaching and well-worn debate that has raged for years.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew and other tech chiefs have already appeared before Congress and explained how their platforms protect young users.
An online safety law is in the works and several states are already suing the tech giants.
Starbuck’s campaigns to date have been successful as niche attacks on DEI. He may find it difficult to make as much noise – and impact – when fighting the richest and most powerful corporations in the world.