As the political divisiveness of the 2020 election slammed home with the images of the horrific attack on our nation’s Capitol, many businesses stepped forward to call out and sever relationships with the people seen as participants, perpetrators or encouragers of the violence and the allegations that helped fuel that anger. President-elect Biden has called for national unity in building back better. But the trial of President Trump on his second impeachment charge will hang over the new Congress and calls for revenge continue to dominate the cable and network news channels.
In this heated, bitterly divided political environment, where should business activism go from here?
Studies show that Americans’ trust in the fundamental institutions that guide us—religious organizations, schools, government and media—has fallen for the past two decades. The latest (2020) Edelman Trust Barometer shows Americans trust businesses more than government or the media. I believe business has an opportunity—indeed, a moral and civic obligation—to provide sociopolitical leadership in this time of increasingly dangerous divisive politics.
The question is how that leadership should be exercised. Should businesses lead by speaking out about sociopolitical issues that matter? Or should they go further by using their power to censor and punish those whose ideas they disagree with? In effect, should they work to unify America or strive to cancel out the voices they see as negative?
Some argue that businesses have a unique opportunity to dispense unilateral, extrajudicial punishment to silence those who dare to express unpopular sociopolitical views. They explain that the First Amendment’s protection of free speech applies to government action, not private action. This is the distinction that is often used to justify allowing the big social media companies to censor or delete speech or even cancel users who purport to violate the company’s rules against various types of speech.
I don’t buy the idea that the suppression of speech by businesses is an acceptable approach. From a constitutional standpoint, there are two arguments (narrowing the state action limitation and expanding the town square concept) that may limit concerted business action that is designed to cancel voices and ideas. I expect we will see some Supreme Court decisions on these points before long.
But regardless of the constitutional arguments, should businesses get into the game of dispensing extrajudicial punishment for people who express views they dislike?
As business leaders, we need to think about the issues here, free from the rancor about the Trump Presidency. Forget Trump. How would you react if you or one of your family members were faced with allegations about something you said or did that gained coverage on social media or the television or cable networks and the following day, without any legal action or other due process:
· Twitter cancelled your account.
· Facebook suspended your account.
· Amazon cancelled your company’s AWS cloud services, leaving thousands of your customers in the dark.
· Your board of directors terminated you.
· Delta prohibited you from flying on their airline. Other airlines followed.
· Your bank cancelled your checking account.
· Your credit card companies cancelled your credit cards.
· Your national grocery store gave you a trespass warning telling you not to shop there anymore.
· The private school where your kids go told you to move them someplace else.
The list could go on, but you get the idea.
Oh, that’s silly you say. That would never happen to me. Besides, they wouldn’t do that unless I really did something horrific. After all, businesses need every customer they can get. Why would they want to cancel customers?
Two primary reasons, among several others: First, the business is being threatened or encouraged by leading politicians to do something the government cannot do itself. Second, the business believes the action will appeal to its customer base. (Hey, it can even be good publicity as cries for social justice and political revenge increase and the media responds with coverage.) As Nike founder and former CEO Philip Knight said at Stanford recently, “It doesn’t matter how many people hate your brand as long as enough people love it.”
While it may be easy to see some of the responses to the January 6 Capitol invasion as justified in light of the President’s alleged incitement of violence, was this a one-time, Black Swan event or should the punishment and cancellation continue? Should business activism echo some Democrats’ calls for revenge against a host of people formerly aligned with the Trump presidency? Should businesses blacklist people who worked for (or just voted for) the “wrong” politicians? Should restaurants or hotels refuse to serve people who support fracking or speak against the Green New Deal or argue against making the District of Columbia a state? What about people on the other side of whatever issue?
My answer is no.
Businesses need to use their own First Amendment rights to join the conversation and speak out about the issues that unite us and, if they dare, about the issues we need to solve together. With rare exceptions, they should not punish their customers or employees for what they say, the legal causes they support or the exercise of their right to peaceable assembly. Whatever America’s challenges, due process, fairness and equal protection matter. American businesses work because we are a nation of laws. As business leaders, we need to do our part to preserve that essential fabric, not help tear it apart.
Whatever the answer and however we do it, we cannot have businesses that affect virtually every aspect of our daily lives use their power to unilaterally judge and dictate the actions we are allowed to take and the words we are allowed to speak. The nightmare in George Orwell’s dystopian social science fiction novel, 1984, would not be any easier to accept if a group of businesses, rather than the government, ruled our minds. We are moving in that direction. We need to stop while we still enjoy the free exchange of ideas needed to preserve what we have.
NOTE: This article was originally posted to LinkedIn on January 19, 2021 at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/where-does-business-activism-go-from-here-charlie-harris-1f
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