Departing Whole Foods CEO: ‘My Concern is That I feel Like Socialists are Taking Over’
“It looks like they’ve taken over a lot of the corporations. It looks like they’ve taken over the military. And it’s just continuing.”
The outgoing CEO of Whole Foods, a favorite of progressives everywhere, is warning that America’s institutions are being taken over by socialists.
For many Americans, this will confirm that they are not imagining what’s happening to our country.
Ryan King reports at the Washington Examiner:
Departing Whole Foods CEO frets that “socialists are taking over”
Outgoing Whole Foods CEO John Mackey raised concerns that ” socialists are taking over” key institutions across the country.
Describing himself as a “capitalist at heart,” Mackey lamented that rights such as the right to bear arms and freedom of speech are coming “under threat” as socialist influences begin to dominate education, corporations, and other institutions.
“My concern is that I feel like socialists are taking over,” Mackey explained during an interview with Reason. “They’re marching through the institutions. They’re …taking over education. It looks like they’ve taken over a lot of the corporations. It looks like they’ve taken over the military. And it’s just continuing.”
Mackey previously co-authored a book titled Conscious Capitalism, in which he discussed four key tenets to help bolster capitalism: stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, conscious culture, and conscious management.
“You know, I’m a capitalist at heart, and I believe in liberty and capitalism. Those are my twin values. And I feel like, you know, with the way freedom of speech is today, the movement on gun control, a lot of the liberties that I’ve taken for granted most of my life, I think, are under threat,” he told the outlet.
Mackey ties some of this to what happened during the pandemic.
Greg Wilson writes at the Daily Wire:
But incompetent Leftist governance, especially during the COVID pandemic, has made it difficult to champion those values while still making a profit, he said. He cited increased government unemployment benefits that made it more lucrative for prospective workers to stay jobless.
“A lot of people were making as much money, if not more money, not working at all,” he said. “And so guess what? They chose not to come back to work. They got used to it,” he said.
Even now, the younger generation that the supermarket industry relies on to unload trucks, stock shelves, and man the registers “don’t seem to want to work,” he said. The problem is most acute in Democrat-run big cities, he said.
“They only wanna work if it’s really purposeful, and [something] they feel aligned to,” he said. “You can’t hope to start with meaningful work. You’re going to have to earn it over time. Some of the younger generation doesn’t seem to be willing to pay that price, and I don’t know why.”
This criticism of socialism by Mackey is not new, however. He talked about this with Joe Rogan in 2021. Listen below:
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and Joe Rogan torch socialism 🔥 pic.twitter.com/OsFlIf5yfD
— Young Americans vs. Socialism (@YAAS_America) February 25, 2021
Back in 2008, when Obama was running for president, I clearly remember Democrats and people in the media calling conservatives paranoid conspiracy theorists for warning that socialism was coming.
And now, here we are.
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Food for thought
I make runs over to Asheville about every two months; that’s where my closest Trader Joe’s is. There’s a Whole Foods just down the street. Not my sort of place, but, it is SO suited to what I see of the people of Asheville.
MANY not-attractive women with that perpetually angry facial expression. They are also rude, They drive Subaru Foresters or Honda CR-Vs or the equal type vehicle in smaller size. HR-V or something. ALL wear masks, even outdoors.
Drive through the parking lot of Whole Foods, and the clientele makes those at TJ’s look like cold-dead-hands rednecks.
It’s amusing, in a pathetic sort of way.
We fled Asheville in 2018. Terrible place.
It’s gorgeous country, but, it feels like a southern version of San Francisco politically. Just curious: are we still “neighbors”? I’m over the mountain in Johnson City.
It is a Southern version of San Francisco. Really, words cannot describe just how awful it was. By the time we left, we had no one to talk to. We were surrounded by leftists. You and I are no longer neighbors. If we were, I would meet you in Johnson City for a beer. In 2018 we decamped for Israel. I needed to protect my young son, who I couldn’t let go through the local school system nor the US university system. I also needed to try to maintain my sanity.
I’d not feel welcome in Israel. I certainly wish you and yours the very best.
Israel is safer than North Carolina? Not that it would surprise me these days.
Whenever I hear “Johnson City”, I’m reminded of Old Crow Medicine Show. If you like Bluegrass, at all, give them a try.
Classic enabler behavior on display, when he had the power to shutdown the activity he stood down. Now that he will be above criticism from within the organization he all of a sudden grows a pair and speaks out. All while enjoying his nice life in retirement.
I hear where you’re coming from, but, I tend to believe “better late than never,” in such matters. If Mackey had spoken up, previously, then-Amazon CEO, Lord Bezos, or, his successor, Andy Jassy, would’ve swiftly fired him for non-compliance with the parent company’s Leftist orthodoxies and mission statement.
Just an obscure way of saying that money meant more to him than his principles.
The shorthand for that is “sellout.”
Fair enough. I’m just saying that it’s better to speak out for capitalism at some point, than, never at all.
He fed them all with herbal tea and granola, now complains they did not eat him last.
The long march through the institutions started at least a half century ago. Where’s he been?
Like many libertarian minded folks he was under the delusion that he could just run his business and leave the culture was BS to the battles between activists on all sides.
In the last dozen years and especially the last six it has become very clear that you won’t be allowed to mind your own business or live and let live. Classical liberals in our institutions had the same mindset and now realize that the SJW having successfully driven the few heterodox thinkers either out or into a fearful silence that they are next on the menu.
See the legacy institution grown ups being denounced who are themselves very much to our left but today insufficiently so within the new cultural climate that they enabled. College Dean, SR editor, SR scientists and software engineers, Authors, Publishers and so on all of whom have been tossed aside by their super woke peers and subordinates. Public, private and corporate alike.
Like many libertarian minded folks
You mean, like many progressively-minded folks. He might like capitalism (so do Ben & Jerry) but the values of his company were never really libertarian, they were progressive.
(Also, a vast number of libertarians are really progressives at heart.)
Libertarians don’t do the culture war as a general rule. I am a recovering libertarian and still don’t care what adults get up to. Give the govt the power to start telling adults what to do beyond very narrow confines and they will do just that in ever expansive and unintended ways.
Hers is one example. You want to shoot heroin? Ok, sure legalize it for adults, but that’s on you. Don’t ask me for taxes to support a methadone clinic or free needles or even ER services for an overdose. Don’t ask me to overlook any quality of life crimes and certainly not theft or violence using an addiction as the excuse.
The fake libertarians you call progressive are only concerned with culture war issues not taxes/scope of govt. They weave in many identity politics BS into their arguments.
Anyone talking the virtues of tribalism in any form isn’t a true libertarian. Most of them are really just libertine which is a horse of another color.
A century ago.
Rick Santorum was also mocked for his predictions and yet, here we are on that front as well.
No problem, they’ll just redefine “socialism”.
From what I’ve seen, socialists, or wannabes of that death cult, are his main customer base.
“Take me in, O tender Mackey.”
I guess he’s worried the socialist will take away what he earned because he’s no longer useful to the cause.
The march through the institutions started decades ago, so he’s behind the curve
“Mackey previously co-authored a book titled Conscious Capitalism, in which he discussed four key tenets to help bolster capitalism: stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, conscious culture, and conscious management”
Sounds a lot like ESG to me. This guy is confused. Stakeholder integration?
Soylent Green.