American View: How to persuade leaders to pivot away from harmful ideologies in the office

Risk Management17 Dec 2025

My mate Jack raised my morale last week. He not only provided feedback on my American View material but offered me a column-worthy topic as well. First, his feedback: check this out: “So, I read your most recent article for Business Reporter twice. Very good. I’ve forwarded it to all my contacts, who will no doubt forward it to theirs, and so on.”

I’m not the kind of stodgy, overly dignified writer who stoically brushes off praise. Jack’s compliment sparked a loud and exuberant “YEEE-HAH!” from me that woke up my napping dog (sorry, Elmo!). Jack’s suggestion for a new topic also fired my imagination. He continued: “Have you considered coldly, dispassionately analysing and documenting the effects of White Supremacy upon business?”

I admitted that I have. I’ve been drafting pieces on the effects of White Supremacy and its ideological cousin Christian Nationalism on the business world for quite a while. My operating premise for each story idea has been that adopting an openly exclusionary and hostile position towards one’s employees, suppliers, and customers is – brace yourself! – bad for business. Shocking, right? More importantly, I’ve argued that even if an organization’s leaders publicly disavow their concealed harmful ideologies, they can’t help but act on those discriminatory beliefs in the course of doing business. In short, bigoted leaders cannot be tolerated in a modern corporation any more than polonium can be tolerated in your tea. Jack and I have frequently discussed this issue since America’s current KKKerfuffle kicked off.

For context, I met Jack at university when we were undergrads. Jack was two years ahead of me in our Army R.O.T.C. battalion and lived two dormitories away, making it easy to socialize. Jack’s was and still is a proud Angeleno ^[1] with extensive experience in Hollowood where he’s made his living as a professional actor and audiobook narrator. After branching into Army Psychological Operations after graduation ^[2], he carried on studying politics and social science. Jack wrote Firewall: The Propegandist’s Guide to Self-Defense in 2015 and has lectured on it to little mom-and-pop California start-ups like Google. Yes, that Google.

All this is to say, Jack’s article pitch wasn’t new, but it was compelling. I asked him what his angle on the piece should be and he kindly sent me the following: “I think [you] could write about White Supremacy’s dampening effect on tourism. Let’s use Disneyland as an example. It’s open year-round where the other theme parks in the area (e.g., Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm, et al) are only open Friday through Sunday in the off seasons. Also, [remember that] Disneyland draws international tourism. 

Tourism is immensely important for most nations’ economic viability. If travellers are afraid that they’ll be treated badly or … you know … shot when they visit your country, then they’ll be disinclined to visit and give you their money. They’ll go somewhere else instead. See also, “Duh.”

“What effect do you suppose President Trump’s White Supremacist policies have on Disneyland? If you were Latino, would you bring your family North from your home in say, Ensenada, to visit Anaheim? What about if you were African? Or Asian? Or LGBTQIA+? Do you have alternative destinations [that wouldn’t be as problematic]? Certainly! There are Tivoli Gardens in Denmark, Blackpool in the U.K., Efteling in the Netherlands, and Europa-Park in Germany just to name the most highly regarded theme parks. if you were a Northern European with difficult memories about fascism, would you leave Europe to visit California right now? Considering what’s happening in the U.S.A.?

“Now let us consider the downstream effects of a decline in international tourism: What about hotels? I’d wager if you asked a few Anaheim hoteliers how business compares to last year, you’d get an earful.” ^[3]

I agree with Jack’s economic argument and think it should be hammered home, whether in print or in person. For example, point out that if your customers perceive your business to be copacetic with a White Suppremecist regime, then it’s both reasonable and prudent to conclude that your business will then manifest discriminatory policies in line with that ideology in the operation of their business and the delivery of its services.

Jack continued: “Of course, White Supremacists don’t care about the economy, or rather they know that historically they thrive in bad times, because desperate people turn to them, allowing them to accrue power. But they are very bad at cultivating an economy. Shirer himself refuted the myth of Nazi economic efficiency.” ^[4]

Jack then pivoted: “Were you aware of Georgia’s premiere tourist attraction? It’s called Stone Mountain. In the 1920s the reborn Ku-Klux Klan carved the world’s largest bas-relief into the side of a mountain. The sculpture immortalizes Jefferson Davis, ‘Stonewall’ Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Just about nobody but White Supremacists visit this atrocity. That’s White Supremacy’s idea of a tourist attraction: a glorified graffito. Wasn’t even done by Banksy! Anyway, White Supremacists don’t care about tourism because their states don’t draw tourists.

“Then there’s the brain-drain. A lot of people who can afford to are fleeing the USA. Being a cinephile, one of my favorite stories is about how the German cinema competed against the U.S. until Goebbels seized control of all cinema production. Auteurs like Fritz Lang and actors like Peter Lorre left for Hollywood, never to return, and German cinema never recovered. Will we see entire sectors of US industry succumb in a similar fashion?

“In sum,” he wrote, “White Supremacy is very bad for business. Count the ways and rake the fascists over the coals. Show all those capitalists just how bad, with hard numbers and indubitable testimonials. As the U.S. sinks further into its new status as a pariah among nations, we’ll [all] find out just how bad it is firsthand.

The aphorism “The greatness of a nation can be judged by how it treats its weakest members” wasn’t actually said by Mahatma Ghandi, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

I admit, I’ve taken this tack with some of my right-leaning friends. They don’t want to talk about laws or norms or ethics, but they’re always happy to talk money. ‘Math doesn’t need values,’ one told me (demonstrating an appalling lack of both principles and puns). Often, I’ve found, telling someone this is bad for other people isn’t compelling in a culture that no longer values empathy, compassion, or religion. Telling them this is bad for you, however, will sometimes land a hit.

The next day Jack sent me his follow-up thoughts. He had a head of steam going and was keen to expand on his initial argument: “I’m still ruminating on the theme of ‘why fascism is bad for business.’” He began. “I don’t know if you’ve ever read Shirer’s Rise and Fall. It’s an eye-opener. There’s still this misunderstanding going around that the Nazis pulled off an ‘economic miracle’ in Germany, transforming it from a depressed and moribund country into a powerhouse that took on the world. It’s a myth that Shirer debunks.

“What really happened is the Nazis got their hooks on a nation with good natural resources and a very industrious, well-educated populace that was suffering under war reparations and debts. Well, first they obviously stopped paying off those debts and reparations. But here’s where the real shell game came in: they sold a lot of promises to the German people that they never intended to keep.

“Hitler docked everyone’s pay, saying, ‘this money’s going to buy you a new car.’ He also started building highways, the famous Autobahn. But this autobahn was really designed as west-east MSRs ^[5] for the war he knew he was going to wage against Russia. [Then the rhetoric changed to] ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on? Those factories are all making tanks. You’ll just need to wait on your car, so sorry.’ It was a scam through and through.

I was immediately reminded of Derp Führer’s recent directive to massively increase American defence spending. It seems less about preparing for a new conflict and more about fudging the numbers to make the American economy appear stronger than it is given his administration’s bungling of domestic social, legal, and fiscal issues.

“Combine that with a ‘wildfire’ economy.” Jack wrote. “Exterminate a subset of the population, (e.g., Jews, Romani, LGBTQIA+, et al) dump their wealth into the system, build weapons, snap up Czechoslovakia. Dump Czech wealth into the system. Snap up Poland. Dump Polish wealth into the system. Take France, and on and on until you hit a firebreak at the channel and at Stalingrad. At which point the fire has nothing left to consume and burns itself out.

Violent ideologies inexorably collapse because they require a constant population of “other” to blame for all their troubles. Either they run out of others to demonize, or their own fighting strength runs out before any sort of “victory” can be achieved. “It’s all bull***!” as my grandfather said … after he returned from kerb stomping Nazis across France and Germany in 1944-45.

“Why more people don’t know the details of this or even believe the claim that ‘Nazis made the trains run on time’ (which was Mussolini’s regime, not Hitler’s, but … *sigh*) I don’t understand. Anyway, the point is that fascism – both by design and in accordance with its nature – makes a few at the top pointlessly wealthy, domineering over a crippled, desperate, and powerless population.”

While all this is painfully obvious to everyone who’s studied history, it seems to shock those people who wholeheartedly believe the administration’s outrageously false claims. In Trump’s vile screen about the murder of Rob and Michelle Reiner on 15th December, he claimed on Truth Social “… the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before.” Literally none of that is true. You’d have to be a mindless zealot or clinically dead to believe it … and yet people do. People you work with. People you might work for.

These are the people that Jack advocates we engage: those people who are so captivated by a fascist demagogue’s hollow balderdash that they can’t perceive just how terrible they’re making things for themselves. That, Jack insists, is the only argument that works. It’s also the only argument most people can advance at the office without running afoul of HR regulations. Don’t talk about the political, administrative, or human dynamics of what’s happening. Instead, focus solely on what will impact the listener(s): their personal fiscal harm.

Depressing as it is, Jack’s right: a person who has zero compassion for others – be they individual human beings or a named subpopulation or the nation as a whole – won’t listen or consider a message that doesn’t engage them specifically. Show them how their choices and their situation will change for the worse, however, and they’ll pay keen attention. That hits especially hard with people in power who cynically change their positions moment by moment to optimize their personal status, power, and wealth. No, they probably don’t have a working conscience, but that’s to our advantage in argument. These types of people do have a finely tuned sense of amoral self-interest and will pragmatically pivot away from any and all actions that promote their growth to actions that minimize their harm.

As Jack summarized, it’s not ideal, but it works. I’m not implying that you should try and win ideological arguments with your cubicle mates. That’s at best counterproductive. Instead, if you think a senior leader in our organization has embraced White Supremacy, Christian Nationalism, or open fascism, then it’s in their personal self-interest to hear an argument that will help them survive the inevitable violent backlash against the current rise of professional hatemongers. More importantly, convincing such a person to cease supporting policies, practices, and positions that directly harm or promote the harm of others will not only reduce human suffering but will also be to the leader’s long-term advantage when the political tide turns.

^[1]Angeleno = the official demonym for a native or resident of Los Angeles, California

^[2] That’s the “win the hearts and minds” specialists in U.S. Army Special Forces.

^[3] I’d wager that car rental outfits, restaurants, and souvenir shops would all show similar negative impact.

^[4] Straight from Wikipedia’s article on the subject: “The stated goal of the German Labour Front was not to protect workers, but to increase output, and it brought in employers as well as workers.^[99] Journalist and historian William L. Shirer wrote that it was ‘a vast propaganda organization ... a gigantic fraud.’^[99]”

^[5] Main Supply Route