Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk gave his thoughts on the Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) phenomenon sweeping through boardrooms worldwide. Musk slammed ESG, calling it “the devil.”
The comment stems from a series of tweets on Call of Duty’s recent decision to remove its partnership bundle with a popular professional gamer over his tweet about a violent LGBT-related protest in California. The popular right-wing Twitter account End Wokeness tweeted, “Call of Duty removes popular content creator for tweeting “leave little children alone.” Conservative commentator James Lindsay replied to the tweet with a screenshot of a section from Activision’s website where it discusses their ESG policies.
Elon Musk replied to the series of tweets stating, “ESG is the devil.” The image James Lindsay tweeted was of Activision BIizzard’s ESG reporting. The image featured the text, “We are excited to share key highlights of our ESG efforts across this website. To read about all our ESG efforts in detail, we invite you to download our 2022 ESG report.”
Furthermore, Activision’s website features an expansive section dedicated to its DEI efforts. The page details the company’s commitment to being diverse and inclusive. It states, “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) is essential to our mission to connect and engage the world through epic entertainment. We produce our best work when our people reflect the diversity of our players, and when our people can show up as their authentic selves. We are building a workplace that embraces, values, celebrates, and welcomes our differences to help us innovate and succeed in our mission.”
Additionally, a section brags about good ratings from the LGBT activist organization The Human Rights Campaign. It continues, “We are proud of the progress we have made and are honored that Activision Blizzard was named as one of the “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality” by the Human Rights Campaign in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace is an ongoing journey, and we are committed to focusing on our people, culture, and content so that we can continue delivering epic experiences for our global player community. “
The recent Call of Duty controversy started over a short tweet from professional gamer Nickmercs, discussing the violent California protest over a school board voting on whether to recognize pride month officially. The American Tribune reported that Nickmercs stated, “They should leave little children alone. That’s the real issue.” Following his statement, Call of Duty removed custom skins in the game that were designed for Nickmercs.
However, Dr. Disrespect, a legendary figure in the gaming community, spoke out against Activision and Call of Duty for its action against Nickmercs. Dr. Disrespect uninstalled Call of Duty on one of his recent live streams and demanded that Activision publicly apologize to Nickmercs and reinstate his bundle back into the game before he would reconsider playing it again. Dr. Disrespect called the move a terrible PR decision. He additionally claimed that the current Call of Duty video game is the worst in the franchise’s history.
It’s unclear why Elon Musk thinks ESG is “the devil,” but he does understand how to run a company given he is the CEO of several massive companies. It has become apparent that a woke corporate agenda is bad for business, shown by Target and Anheuser-Busch who have lost billions in market value.
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