The Regressive Corruption of Disney is So Much Worse Than We Thought
Peter Pischke
Oh, how far the Mouse has fallen.
#BoycottDisney became the dominant campaign on social media this week after the dropping of several huge news bombshells, proving that the intolerant progressive left enthralls the House of Mouse. The momentum began after CEO Bob Chapek formally announced the company would align itself as “an outspoken champion” for LGBTQ issues against the dreaded so-called 'Don’t Say Gay' law in Florida. While celebrated by the media, this contentious decision did not go over well with Disney's regularly conservative consumers, nor the investors that did not appreciate Disney’s thumb-sucking while there were shut-down theme parks in China. For long-time Disney watchers, it became an open question if Disney would be able to right its sinking ship. Disney may have dug itself into a grave from which it will never fully recover.
Not-At-All-Secret Gay Agenda
“I was just, wherever I could, just basically adding queerness. If you see anything queer in the show — no one would stop me, and no one was trying to stop me” boldly stated Latoya Ravenau, a top Disney Animation executive, declaring Disney’s support for a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda.” This shocking statement originated from a series of videos leaked Tuesday, by Conservative activist Chris Rufo, from Disney’s Reimagining Tomorrow campaign. Every video is as damning as the last.
The conference's theme is about pushing LGBTQ characters and stories as hard as they can into all Disney content, especially that which is made for children. The speakers emphasized how the company aims to get at least 50% of the major characters in its content to be either LGBTQ or racial minorities. Karey Burke made this explicit, President of Disney General Entertainment Content, as featured in one video. In another, a production coordinator admitted that Disney relies on a digital script and content trackers to ensure their content does not feature anything problematic and has enough LGBTQ content.
Institutional Capture:
At the same time as these videos were being released, Quillette published a report from a Disney insider about the prevalence of these woke changes inside the company. Under the earlier CEO, Bob Iger, Disney introduced the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) departments and LGBTQ+ Business Employee Resource Groups to put the company firmly on an explicitly woke-progressive path. While small at first and ignored, they have now fully taken over the decision-making apparatus inside the company. Between 2019 and 2021 alone, these groups expanded by a whopping 633 percent, while the rest of the company departments shrank as much as 75 percent due to Covid. The author of the report puts particular care to tell readers that nothing now happens in the company without their input and support.
Yet these wokesters are furious.
According to the author, the company has gone into full-safe-space mode over the last two weeks, canceling all regularly scheduled company meetings in favor of the euphemistic “Brave Space Conversations.” These conversations are the Disney version of the historical Maoist struggle sessions, where activists rave and yell about the dangers of white hetero-normativity while their targets, i.e. the majority of Disney’s employees, shrink in fear.
When you watch the videos and read the report, you get a keen sense of a moral panic festering inside the House of Mouse, with social justice activists scaring the other employees and executives like lemmings off a financial cliff. This combination of news, plus an appearance from Governor Ron DeSantis on Tucker Carlson, got the topic "Boycott Disney" trending on Twitter and Facebook throughout the week. As of this writing, the topic had been tweeted about over 400,000 times and is still being talked about with millions more.
It is important to emphasize what a blast of truth this news is and how potentially devastating it will be over the long term for Disney. Up until this point, Disney could use the media for veritable deniability that the company had become a political machine. Over the years, there were vague announcements and rumors from inside the company which signaled institutional capture, such as the algorithmic machine learning tool, GD-IQ: Spellcheck for Bias, which would check all Disney scripts for so-called problematic elements. But Disney had enough protection and shade. When projects like The Last Jedi or shows like Captain Falcon and Winter Soldier pushed inane, woke themes and plots. Disney could claim regressive changes only existed in the imaginations of their right-wing critics.
But now, the corrupt political plan is open to the clean light of truth. No one, not even sycophants in the media nor lazy normies, can claim Disney is not trying to use entertainment to indoctrinate consumers for a radical political and cultural agenda. This may be a terminal diagnosis for the company. So far, no major company that is given itself over to the wokesters has shaken those parasites off their back.
Currently, Disney's strategy is to create half of its content for the left and the other half as red meat for consumers. But the growing power of activists in the company will mean it is becoming more difficult for Disney to make quality content that gets clicks and sells tickets. The control of the activists has stifled Disney's flexibility to meet the market's demands and will only get worse as time goes on.
As for consumer alienation, conservatives will never fully trust the company again. It is no coincidence the Daily Wire announced its new $100 million investment in its child programming the day after this news broke. Nor is Disney likely to find more allies abroad, as the international market is not as friendly to overt LGBTQ programming as the United States is. While the left celebrates the take-over, those in the know understand this is the first stage of failure. Former CEO Bob Iger - who will go down as the worst CEO in Disney history- with the help of his cowardly successor, may have dug a grave Disney will not be able to crawl out of.
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