Consumerism, woke identity politics and the corporatist agenda

By his own admission, Vivek Ramaswamy is a traitor to his class. A self-made man who founded a successful bio-tech firm in his 20s, Ramaswamy’s story has the telltale signs of membership of America’s corporate elite. But in his new book, Woke, Inc, he takes aim at fellow business leaders for what he calls “the defining scam of our time”.

According to Ramaswamy, big business’s enthusiastic embrace of woke identity politics isn’t just hypocritical but undemocratic. He argues that it’s dividing his country, and undermining the values on which America has thrived in the past. Ramaswamy spoke to Oliver Wiseman, the Critic’s US Editor, about why ruthless captains of industry have gone woke, why it matters, and what should be done about it. 

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Music: “Modern Jazz Samba” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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