For all the conservative frustration over woke corporatism’s embrace of virtue signaling, it’s worth remembering that the real cost of companies posing black squares in honor of George Floyd and signs reading, “HATE HAS NO HOME HERE,” isn’t mere political correctness. Instead, we pay in literal bloodshed, as expertly evidenced in the microcosm of Nike’s prime puppet, Colin Kaepernick.
After decades of criticism for the use of sweatshops and occasionally child labor, Nike leveraged neoliberalism’s greatest weapon against change, the supposed moral facade known as virtue signaling. The sports brand, now the highest valued on the planet, signed Kaepernick, the ex-NFL player famous for kneeling for the national anthem and celebrating dictators like Che Guevera and convicted cop killers like Mumia Abu-Jamal, as their latest face with the slogan, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
