J.D. Vance Claims Amazon Funded BLM to 'Destroy Competitors'—Historian Labels It a 'Conspiracy Theory
J.D. Vance Claims Amazon Funded BLM to 'Destroy Competitors'—Historian Labels It a 'Conspiracy Theory
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00:00Well, good afternoon.
00:00How's everybody doing?
00:02Here we go.
00:05Arthur, Ryan, how much time do I have?
00:07I want to make sure I'm not keeping anybody too long.
00:10Three hours?
00:10OK, great.
00:13So I thought I'd start today by sketching out
00:20a vision for how I see what we should be about
00:23in the conservative movement in the 21st century,
00:26because I think it's useful to anchor ourselves
00:28not just in first principles, but in the lives of the people
00:30affected by those principles.
00:32And then I'll talk about why woke capital, I think,
00:34is such a problem and what's going on.
00:36I'll try not to be too loquacious
00:38and keep you too long, but I care about this topic
00:40and I care about what we're discussing today.
00:43So if I go a little bit long, I'll
00:45ask your forgiveness in advance.
00:47So my view of what the conservative movement should
00:50be about is pretty simple and pretty straightforward.
00:53I think that we should fight for the right of every American
00:56to live a good life in the country they call their own,
00:59to raise a family in dignity on a single middle class job.
01:04It's a simple vision that if you work hard and play
01:07by the rules, you should be able to live
01:09a good life in this country that is your own, that
01:11was built by your grandparents and parents, that will
01:14be inherited by your children.
01:16Now it's, of course, more complicated
01:18in some ways than it sounds.
01:21I think that requires that we respect our history in order
01:26to give that to people so that people are anchored
01:28in the traditions of this country
01:30so that they can teach their children those traditions
01:33and so they can pass off a feeling of rootedness
01:35in their own community.
01:36That's why, of course, we worry about the assault
01:39on our history in our schools.
01:41I think it requires that we give our children and ourselves
01:46the right to speak openly and participate meaningfully
01:49in this democratic society of ours.
01:51That's why we worry so much about censorship,
01:53whether it comes from the government
01:54or whether it comes from the big corporations.
01:57I think that it requires that we live and have
02:00work that has dignity and is meaningful.
02:04That's why we worry about our trade and economic policies
02:07so that the people who do work hard and play by the rules
02:09actually have good jobs there to employ them.
02:13It's why we worry about our foreign policy
02:15so that we don't send people to wars that
02:19have no connection to our national interest
02:21and end up depleting our country of its most
02:23useful resource, the young men and women who
02:26fight for our military.
02:28All of these things, all of the battles that we fight,
02:32as complicated as they are, affect and implicate
02:36this question of whether we're enabling
02:38the people, the citizens of this country,
02:40to live a good life in their own nation.
02:45Now, I happen to believe that the biggest obstacle to this,
02:48the biggest obstacle to accomplishing this vision
02:50is woke capital, which, of course,
02:52is the topic of conversation today.
02:54And I believe that those of us on the right
02:56need to wake up to what's really going on.
02:59Because in practice, we have lost,
03:01and I hate to sound cynical, I think I'm just being realistic,
03:05we have lost nearly every institution in this country
03:09that actually matters.
03:10We've lost the academy.
03:11We have lost the media.
03:13We have now lost the government.
03:15And we've lost the business and financial institutions, too.
03:18That's what woke capital is really about.
03:20If we're trying to define this term
03:21and understand what it means, it's
03:23rooted in the fact that the biggest businesses, the most
03:26powerful institutions, the most powerful banks in this country
03:29have aligned themselves against us.
03:32Now, that is an obvious fact.
03:33You see it in a number of ways.
03:34A couple of years ago, one of my most frustrating,
03:38or one of the things I've been most frustrated about
03:40in American politics, is when Stacey Abrams
03:43said about a Georgia abortion restriction
03:46a couple of years ago that this was a bad bill because it
03:49was bad for business.
03:50That was the argument of our new corporate neoliberal class.
03:54And she was right.
03:55This is something those of us on the right have to accept,
03:58is that when the big corporations come against you
04:00for passing abortion restrictions, when corporations
04:03are so desperate for cheap labor that they don't want people
04:06to parent children, she's right to say
04:10that abortion restrictions are bad for business.
04:12And what that means for those of us who
04:14want to protect the dignity of the unborn
04:16is that we should be for abortion restrictions,
04:20even if they are bad for business.
04:22We should support the dignity of human life,
04:24even if it means the corporate class doesn't like it.
04:28That is a simple and unavoidable fact of the era
04:31that we find ourselves in.
04:33But I think no moment illustrated
04:35what woke capital meant for our country
04:38than the riots last summer tied to the Black Lives Matter,
04:41or BLM, movement.
04:43Now, we all know the ideology that underpins this movement.
04:46We all know what happened.
04:48In Minneapolis alone, I believe $13 billion
04:51of damage was caused by the riots set off
04:56by the Black Lives Matter movement.
04:58Woke capital is when the companies and businesses
05:03are more invested in a movement like BLM
05:06than traditional American principles.
05:07And they are.
05:09And importantly, if you peel back the onion,
05:11what you often find is that the businesses that
05:14are most connected and most devoted to destroying
05:17our values are also benefiting financially from it.
05:21Let me give you just a couple of examples.
05:24The insurance companies in Minneapolis,
05:26who saw billions of wealth, black and white,
05:30destroyed by those riots, have consistently
05:34underpaid the premiums to the owners
05:36of those businesses who had their livelihoods destroyed.
05:40In one example, a guy had to pay $140,000
05:45to have the rubble from the business
05:46that he built carted off by the city of Minneapolis,
05:49and his insurance company reimbursed him
05:51to the tune of about $40,000.
05:53That's just one example that I read.
05:56Now, who was one of the biggest funders of the Black Lives
05:59Matter movement?
06:00The insurance companies.
06:02They avoided the criticism that they
06:04weren't paying their own clients for their own damaged property,
06:09while at the same time, they were
06:11making that damage more likely by funding the movement that
06:14was causing it.
06:15And increasingly, if you look at the details,
06:17if you peel back the onion, this is happening.
06:20The best example, of course, is Jeff Bezos,
06:23one of the largest funders of the Black Lives Matter
06:25movement in this country, to the tune of millions of dollars.
06:29Now, who benefits most when small businesses on Main Street
06:32are destroyed?
06:34Who wants to see their competitors
06:37unable to deliver goods and services to people
06:40so that you get it delivered in your brown Amazon box?
06:44Jeff Bezos.
06:45There is a direct connection between woke capital
06:48and the plunder that's happening in our society today.
06:51The people who are invested in destroying America
06:55via our corporate class are also getting rich from it.
06:59This is an important piece of the puzzle to understand.
07:04Now, why is this happening?
07:05I think this is a really important question.
07:07I know that we've had some very good conversations today
07:10about what's driving it and what's going on.
07:13But I want to offer three suggestions for what's
07:16driving woke capital.
07:18Try to be brief here.
07:19The first is the rise of the digital over the real economy.
07:24If you look at the companies that
07:25are most woke, that are most aggressively
07:27anti-American and anti-conservative,
07:29they are the companies that operate in the digital
07:32as opposed to the real economy.
07:34If you're manufacturing something,
07:35if you depend on cheap energy, if you're
07:38building something with your hands
07:40or employing those who do, if you're shipping goods
07:42from one part of the country to another,
07:45you are fundamentally less woke than the digital technology
07:49oligarchy that's trying to destroy the country.
07:51You see this consistently.
07:53Now, sometimes, of course, those companies can be woke too.
07:56And sometimes there are some digital technology
07:58entrepreneurs who are not woke.
07:59But by and large, the digitalization
08:01of the American economy is one of the biggest drivers
08:04to the American corporate class becoming woke.
08:07It's consistent.
08:08You see it everywhere.
08:10And it's a big problem.
08:13A second suggestion or a second thing that's driving this
08:16is the rise of globalization.
08:18So the companies that are most invested in the American nation
08:21state, in the people who live here,
08:23in the laborers that build and make our goods,
08:27those people tend to be far less woke
08:29than the people who are employed,
08:32who are employing people overseas, who are more invested
08:34and more committed to overseas regimes.
08:40I've heard of a banker who was asked by a union leader,
08:45don't you worry about all the projects that you're
08:48funding that are causing destruction of American jobs?
08:51You're shipping jobs overseas.
08:53You're funding the Chinese regime.
08:55You're making it easier for the Chinese middle class
08:58to rise and harder for the middle class
08:59of your own country.
09:01And the banker's response was telling.
09:03And I think we should take it to heart.
09:04He said, I have international shareholders.
09:07I have international customers.
09:09I have international investors.
09:11And I have international clients.
09:13I am not an American company.
09:15Why do I care about America more than anyone else?
09:19That attitude is driving a lot of the woke corporate class.
09:25Because when you're invested in American workers,
09:27when you depend on American customers,
09:29when American consumers have more power over you
09:32than the Chinese regime, if your laborers are
09:35people in my hometown in Middletown, Ohio,
09:38and not Chinese slaves over in China,
09:41then you are fundamentally more attached
09:43to the American nation state.
09:44You can't criticize it in the same way.
09:47And you face different incentives.
09:49So the rise of globalization, the rise
09:51of a new corporate class that's more
09:53invested in regimes overseas than in their own country
09:56is another big driver of woke capital.
09:59And the final thing I'd point to is
10:01that the capital allocators themselves are going woke.
10:04This is the third and maybe the most important point
10:06that I'll make.
10:08All across our country, we have nonprofits, big foundations,
10:15that are effectively social justice hedge funds.
10:19The Ford Foundation has $14 billion
10:21in assets under management.
10:24Their leadership is serving on many of our corporate boards.
10:27And of course, the corporate boards
10:29is one of our biggest companies, are
10:30serving as the leadership of the Ford Foundation.
10:34The biggest projects that they're investing in
10:37are critical race theory.
10:39They're investing in the racial division
10:40all across our country.
10:42They're invested in all of the progressive social causes
10:46of the moment, one of the biggest investors
10:48to the Black Lives Matter movement
10:49that destroyed many of our towns and cities last summer.
10:54Now, if I want to sell my house, or if a middle class
10:59American wants to sell their house,
11:00and they make, say, $200,000 on the sale,
11:02they have to pay tax on that $200,000 of money
11:06that they made.
11:07But if the Ford Foundation sells $200 million
11:09of real property in an investment transaction,
11:12they pay zero tax.
11:13Because our public policy has enriched and prioritized
11:17the foundations and the nonprofits
11:20that are destroying our country.
11:22Now, why does this matter?
11:23This matters because if you're in my business,
11:25I work in venture capital.
11:26If you work in private equity, if you're a hedge fund manager,
11:29or if you're just a business that needs money
11:30to operate your business, you have
11:33to go to these people to get the capital
11:36to do what you need to do.
11:38And of course, the biggest capital allocator,
11:41or at least one of the biggest capital allocators in the world
11:45is that woke social justice hedge fund
11:48known as Harvard University, which
11:50has over $120 billion under management, which
11:54funds some of the most destructive ideologies
11:57all across our country, which literally trains
12:00the next generation of priests in the woke seminary that's
12:04dominating our professional class.
12:06That university's endowment pays not a dollar of tax.
12:11It has no obligation to draw down the principal.
12:13It is literally ammunition for the left.
12:16And we, through our public policy,
12:19have given that endowment more power.
12:22Now, this raises the question, of course,
12:24what do we do about this?
12:25And I don't mean this to be exhaustive.
12:26I can't possibly sketch out everything
12:29that we have to do on the question of woke capital.
12:32But I think there are some obvious solutions,
12:34and it should start from a fundamental premise
12:37that if you are fighting the American nation state,
12:41if you are fighting the values and virtues that
12:44make this country great, the conservative movement
12:47should be about nothing if not reducing your power,
12:50and if necessary, destroying you.
12:53We cannot let the people who are driving this country
12:57into the ground continue to benefit
12:59from special privileges, from tax breaks, from subsidies,
13:03and from liability protections.
13:05That is the simple rule that we should follow.
13:08$120 billion of Harvard University endowment
13:11is ammunition for our enemies.
13:13And we can't let the enemy have that much ammunition,
13:17or we're going to lose.
13:18It's that simple.
13:20This principle should guide all of our policy response.
13:23If you cannot go after the pocketbook of these people,
13:27if you cannot make them pay, then you are accepting defeat.
13:31It's that simple.
13:33We're never going to beat them unless we go after them.
13:37A few ideas on this front.
13:39The first is that we should eliminate
13:42all of the special privileges that
13:43exist for our nonprofit and foundation class.
13:46Why is it that if you're spending all your money
13:49to teach literal racism to our children and their schools,
13:52why do we give you special tax breaks instead
13:55of taxing you more?
13:57If we're serious about fighting this problem,
13:59why do we give the companies?
14:01And by the way, the foundations are
14:03used by liberal donors as tax havens for themselves.
14:06When Biden raises taxes, they won't pay the brunt of this.
14:10They'll give all that money to the foundation.
14:12The foundation will use it to push their progressive agenda.
14:16They'll be saved from the consequences of the tax
14:18increase, even as it will empower
14:20institutions that hate us.
14:21We need to stop that.
14:22The decision to give those foundations
14:24and those organizations special privileges
14:27is a decision made by public policy.
14:29It was made by man, and we can undo it.
14:32We just need better public policy and a willingness
14:34to actually go after them.
14:36We need to reorient our entire economy
14:38towards the real economy and not the digital economy.
14:41It is striking how much the digital economy
14:44dominates in our public policy.
14:47To give you just one basic example,
14:50there's a high-quality manufacturer in central Ohio
14:52that makes natural gas compressors.
14:54Their corporate tax rate, like everyone else's, is 21%.
14:58Ask them what their effective tax rate is,
15:00and they'll tell you it's 21%.
15:01The reason is because they can't hide their assets.
15:04They can't pretend that their assets exist somewhere else.
15:07They're making things in the state of Ohio,
15:09employing good Americans in good American jobs to do it.
15:13Ask Google or Apple or Facebook what their effective tax rate
15:17is, and it's somewhere between 0% and 10%,
15:20because they can pretend that their digital assets are
15:23located overseas.
15:25So our very tax code biases the companies
15:29that are most invested in the American nation-state.
15:31That has to stop.
15:33We should have a different preference
15:35and a different goal.
15:36Go after the companies that are destroying this country.
15:39Reward the companies that are building it.
15:41It's that simple.
15:42That's what public policy is about.
15:44And if we're unwilling to use those levers,
15:46we should get out of this business altogether.
15:49The globalization point has been beaten to death
15:51in the last five years, but I'll beat it to death
15:53a little bit more because I think it's important.
15:56Recall that banker and what he said
15:58about his international customers, shareholders,
16:01and employees.
16:02We should take that person at face value.
16:05If that person doesn't believe that he's
16:08an American institution or part of an American institution,
16:11we should treat him like that.
16:13If you are more invested in regimes that hate this country,
16:17if you're more invested in workers in slave camps in China
16:21than the people in my hometown, no more tax breaks,
16:26no more tax cuts.
16:28We should be raising their taxes if they're shipping
16:30American jobs overseas, not cutting them.
16:33That's how you fight them.
16:34That's how you fight them with a pocketbook,
16:36and that's how you make them pay.
16:38It's that simple.
16:39Globalization was a choice.
16:41It was a choice that we made to make it cheaper
16:44to hire Chinese slaves than American workers.
16:47It's not cheaper for our country.
16:48It's not cheaper for the people suffering
16:50from heroin overdose deaths at record numbers
16:53in our country or for the millions of children
16:55growing up without fathers in the home.
16:58We made the choice to destroy our communities.
17:02We let the Chinese do this.
17:03It was our elite's fault, and only public policy
17:06is gonna fix that problem.
17:09A lot of other things out there.
17:11I think it's important to go after
17:12the Human Resources Bureaucracy, of course.
17:15If you are actively teaching racism in American schools
17:21and American corporations,
17:22if you're creating a hostile work environment
17:24because you have to tell everybody
17:25that they need to deconstruct their privilege
17:27or they need to sacrifice or repent of their whiteness,
17:31then you're committing what should be a violation
17:34of the law in this country,
17:36a violation of the law in this country,
17:38and people should be able to sue you.
17:41We have used the Human Rights Bureaucracy
17:43to enforce critical race theory on our corporate class.
17:46We could use it to enforce the opposite.
17:48Again, we just have to be willing to use the power
17:51that's been given to us and go after these companies
17:54where it actually hurts.
17:57I'll say one final thing,
17:59and then I'll let all of you get out of here.
18:02I'm a realist, but I'm also very hopeful about this country
18:07because we have a Constitution,
18:10and we have a constitutional republic
18:12created by that Constitution,
18:14and that gives the people,
18:16that gives us the power to fight back against woke capital.
18:22Every time, and I get so annoyed at this,
18:25that I see congressional Republicans
18:27haul Google or Facebook or Amazon or whoever it is
18:30before their committees,
18:34they whine at them, they complain at them,
18:36they criticize their practices,
18:38but we're so unwilling as a movement
18:40to actually do anything.
18:43It's not enough to tell Google, you're being bad.
18:48Clearly, they don't stop being bad.
18:51We have to punish them for being bad.
18:53If they're gonna keep on fighting against us,
18:55then we have to fight against them.
18:57That simple.
18:57We have to be willing to use the power granted to us
19:00by our constitutional republic.
19:03I'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes.
19:06It's an Abraham Lincoln quote from 1862,
19:08of course, at a period in this country
19:10that was much darker than the one that we confront today.
19:14The fiery trials through which we pass
19:18will light us down in honor or dishonor
19:20to the latest generation.
19:22We, even we here, hold the power
19:25and bear the responsibility.
19:27It may not be as bad as it was in the 1860s,
19:30but we're all going through a fiery trial.
19:32The people in this room are the people
19:35who are gonna be at the vanguard of a conservative movement
19:37that actually fights back against our enemies
19:39instead of just taking it.
19:42Now, I was the point of,
19:44or I was the butt of criticism made
19:46in the high quality conservative journal
19:48called The Dispatch.
19:49I'm not sure if it was Goldberg
19:52or David French that criticized me,
19:54but the criticism was you, J.D. Vance,
19:58are too willing to use the means of the left.
20:01You wanna accomplish a totally different vision of society,
20:04but you're willing to use the means
20:05that they're willing to use.
20:07And I think about that quote, my friends,
20:09it's so revealing of how so much
20:10of the establishment conservative movement thinks.
20:13Because if our enemies are using guns and bazookas,
20:17we damn well better fight back with more than wet noodles.
20:19We need to use the same means
20:21if we're actually gonna win this fight.
20:22And I'm not in this to lose, I'm in this to win.
20:25But this is our country.
20:36The people of this country, whether they know it or not,
20:39they depend on the institutions
20:41of the conservative movement to accomplish their objectives,
20:44to serve their interests,
20:46to make this country the sort of place
20:48where a good guy working hard and playing by the rules
20:51can raise his family as he sees fit
20:53on a single middle-class wage.
20:55That's our vision, and it's up to the people
20:57in this room to accomplish it.
21:00So I remind you of Lincoln's words,
21:03we have the power in this country.
21:06We have the power in this constitutional republic.
21:09And we bear the responsibility
21:11to use it to save this country.
21:13Let's get to work, thank you.