On this planet of right-wing punditry, the woke and anti-woke binary is the prevailing order for explaining almost every thing that occurs in tradition, politics, and enterprise. When contemporary meat falls into the information churn, it’s promptly deemed woke or anti-woke, and a proof for a way both label applies is normally determined upon after the very fact.
Such backward logic was placed on full show this week following the collapse of Silicon Valley Financial institution, the largest American financial institution failure since 2008. Within the fast aftermath, SVB was dominated a casualty of wokeness by everybody from Home Oversight chairman James Comer and Governor Ron DeSantis to Donald Trump Jr. Citing the ladies, Black, and LGBTQ+ members of its board, Wall Road Journal columnist Andy Kessler even theorized that the financial institution could have been too “distracted by range calls for” to deal with banking.
Currently, this slapdash reasoning has been refined: Republicans are actually claiming the financial institution was not solely felled by its emphasis on range but additionally the tens of thousands and thousands it allegedly donated to Black Lives Matter. “Silicon Valley Financial institution, brace your self, spent greater than $73 million on donations to BLM and associated organizations,” Fox Information host Tucker Carlson mentioned Tuesday, citing a report produced by the Claremont Institute, a right-wing assume tank. His on-air colleagues Ainsley Earhardt, Jesse Watters, and Maria Bartiromo made related declarations.
The fact? Silicon Valley Financial institution has donated zero {dollars} to Black Lives Matter. That vacant determine is even confirmed by a Claremont Institute database that tracks company pledges to the Black Lives Matter International Community Basis and its related or associated teams, which might be why right-wing pundits are as an alternative citing the assume tank’s compilation of donations to “organizations and initiatives that advance a number of facets of BLM’s agenda.” However that ill-defined description may imply any variety of issues. (It additionally doesn’t assist that, as Common Data famous, the Claremont Institute has described BLM’s agenda in remarkably broad phrases, accusing the motion of conspiring to “undermine capitalism, the nation state, and Western civilization.”)
Particularly, Republicans have objected to a pledge to spend $50 million over 5 years on an inner initiative geared toward elevating extra ladies, Black individuals, and Latinos within the enterprise capitalist discipline, per Common Data. So not fairly the “Marxist” spending spree alleged by Fox Enterprise host Larry Kudlow, an economist notorious for confidently predicting a market rebound days earlier than Lehman Brothers collapsed.
SVB’s $20 million pledge “to help extra COVID-19 aid” and supply “full-ride, needs-based” college scholarships was additionally included within the Claremont Institute’s math. Why that certified as a donation to something Black Lives Matter–associated is an open query. And for what it’s price, solely one of many faculties included in this system, Florida A&M, is a traditionally black college.
In the end, the info behind SVB’s collapse make for a far much less fantastical narrative than a financial institution––one largely utilized by enterprise capitalists just like the right-wing Peter Thiel, no much less––overspending on anti-capitalist causes. SVB, the sixteenth largest financial institution within the US, seems to have failed as a consequence of poorly timed investments and defective threat methods that tied up the majority of its depositors’ cash throughout a harsh comedown interval within the tech trade. When prospects sensed bother final week, a traditional financial institution run ensued, with the financial institution being unable to satisfy the withdrawal demand.
