EXCLUSIVEIve taken on some of Americas biggest companies - my next targets are harming your kids
Robby Starbuck has risen as an outspoken critic of DEI in corporate America this year, using tweets to pressure Toyota and other big-name firms to walk back their diversity efforts.
Robby Starbuck has risen as an outspoken critic of DEI in corporate America this year, using tweets to pressure Toyota and other big-name firms to walk back their diversity efforts.
Now, the 35-year-old says he sees the endgame to his self-styled crusade.
Speaking with Dailymail.com, Starbuck predicted that within two years, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the US and even overseas will be in the rearview mirror.
Before then, the dad-of-four, whos pressured everyone from Ford to Lowes to ditch DEI, says his biggest targets are yet to come.
He next plans to take the fight to TikTok, Meta, and other big tech firms — not just over their internal procedures but also for content streams that he says harm kids.
Conservative activist Robby Starbuck managed to get major firms to ditch DEI simply by revealing details of these efforts on X.
The dad-of-four says his next target is TikTok, Meta, and the other social media giants that he says aim porn and radical gender ideas at children.
When we turn our sights on the big tech world and go after some of them, its going to be harder to change their policies, Starbuck said.
But if you do the right way with the right ones, it could have enough of an economic effect for them over the course of a year to pull back.
Starbuck has this year emerged as a hugely divisive character in Americas culture wars.
He once directed music videos for Snoop Dogg and Megadeth in LA, but swapped that for rural living near Nashville, Tennessee, where he tried — and failed — to win a Republican House seat in 2022.
From a farm in Franklin, hes had greater success in posting X/Twitter videos exposing the DEI programs of top firms and getting their conservative customers to stop spending until executives scrap them.
So far, Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, Tractor Supply, Molson Coors, Caterpillar, and Brown-Forman, which makes Jack Daniels, have all folded. Starbuck lauds his 100 percent success rate.
Toyota this month said it would scale back DEI work, stop sponsoring Pride events, and cut ties with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which ranks companies on their LGBTQ culture, after Starbuck tweet-bombed the Japanese carmaker.
His wins echo the past backlashes against Bud Light over its tie-up with a trans TikToker and Target for its Pride range, which some consumers said was inflammatory.
Still, critics decry Starbuck and say the executives who cave to him will suffer for alienating their minority employees.
Short-sighted decisions to abandon DEI initiatives will have a lasting, negative impact on business success, says Eric Bloem, a vice president at the HRC.
In the future more people than ever are identifying as LGBTQ+, he added.
Starbucks revelations about beloved Harley-Davidson struck a nerve with devotees, such as enthusiast Ernest Chapman, 53, who said the motorbike brand should leave the wokeness alone.
For some, DEI schemes help to overcome historical racism and sexism and make it easier for people of all backgrounds to get ahead in education and work.
Critics say its a form of reverse discrimination that unfairly blows back on straight, white men.
Others say DEI schemes may be well-intentioned, but seldom 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 US Supreme Court banned affirmative action in college admissions last year.
That ruling sparked a series of lawsuits and complaints against companies for discriminating against white workers.
Many companies that embraced DEI policies in the wake of the cop killing of unarmed black man George Floyd in May 2020 have stepped back from them for fear of irking conservative patrons.
People deserve to be able to shop without thinking theyre supporting some cause or having somebody elses social value shoved down their throat, says Starbuck.
Companies should be neutral and stay out of politics and divisive social issues.
Hes now planning the final stage of his anti-DEI campaign by targeting wokery at big tech firms.
Its a phase shift for Starbuck, as the DEI issues are more complicated, and the companies in question — from Meta to TikTok, and YouTube — are much wealthier than his past targets.
He seeks to halt not only their internal DEI systems, but also how they expose kids to violence, pornography, and posts that promote eating disorders, a negative self-image and radical gender ideology.
Bosses of social media giants Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and Snapchat have already been grilled by Congress on the dangers their platforms bring to children.
Families held up photos of victims of child exploitation and suicide in the audience behind the five tech bosses at the charged hearing.
The major concern is how their policies and their platforms affect kids, because we can see the real-world harm, and its serious, he says.
This shouldnt 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 boss Elon Musk but panned by critics as an anti-trans conspiracy theory.
In his assault on social media firms, Starbuck has plenty of potential allies.
The Biden Administrations surgeon general Vivek Murthy has railed against social medias harms on children, and liberal and conservative parents across the country want to part their kids from their cell phones.
But hes also entering a far-reaching and well-trodden debate thats been raging for years.
Metas Mark Zuckerberg, TikToks Shou Zi Chew and other tech chiefs have already appeared before Congress and explained how their platforms protect young users.
An online safety act is in the works, several states are already suing the tech giants.
Starbucks campaigns to date have been successful as niche attacks on DEI. He may well struggle to make as much noise — and impact — when wrestling the worlds wealthiest and most powerful corporations.
