Robby Starbuck says campaign against corporate wokeness is a calling: 'One person can make a difference'

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck, a fierce opponent of corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programs (DEI), feels the American dream could slip away if Democratic Party leaders keep "pretending they're not communists" while sounding like Fidel Castro in 1959.

Starbuck, who previously directed Hollywood productions and music videos, pivoted to activism when he came out as a Trump supporter during the 2015 GOP primaries. He says he’s essentially "blacklisted from Hollywood for coming out as a conservative," but has no regrets and plans to dedicate his life to fighting the "woke beast" he believes could ruin America. 

"Coming from a family that fled communism in Cuba, I could see very clearly that America was headed down a very dangerous path toward a new form of communism. And the new form, I would say, is even more insidious than the old one from the USSR and from Cuba, because the new one doesn't even admit what it is," Starbuck told Fox News Digital. 

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"That's sort of what technology and the new world has wrought upon us, is that the Democrats can get away with essentially pretending they're not communists, because they don't need to take total control of the means of production," he continued. "All they need to do, and they realize this, is you just need to control the ideology. If you control the ideology of those companies, of those institutions, you control it in the same exact ways that you would if you took and stole those means of production in a more openly communist sort of scenario."

Starbuck, who lives in Franklin, Tenn., an upscale suburb of Nashville, said his family fled Cuba in the 1960s. While Cubans fleeing the Castro regime were able to head to America in search of a better life, Starbuck doesn’t think modern Americans have the same luxury. 

"If this happens here in America, my kids have nowhere to run. You have nowhere to run, and being aware of that reality means that you have to kind of put it all out on the table. And so that's what I've done," he said. 

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Starbuck has dedicated himself to activism, with a focus on protecting children and trying to eliminate DEI at major corporations. His film "The War on Children" aims to expose how liberal ideology affects kids and he has launched online campaigns going after such initiatives at a variety of companies. 

Starbuck was a key force behind exposing what he calls social agendas at John Deere, Tractor Supply Co. and Harley-Davidson, resulting in all three landmark American brands renouncing initiatives, although critics told CNN the haste with which they backed off DEI showed how uncommitted they were in the first place.

Starbuck said Jack Daniel's parent company Brown-Forman was next, but the brand "must have been tipped off by us going through employee LinkedIn pages" and preemptively dialed back a variety of DEI initiatives.

"We’re now forcing multi-billion-dollar organizations to change their policies without even posting just from fear they have of being the next company that we expose," he wrote. 

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He prides himself in "flipping woke policies" in corporate America, and recently took to social media to celebrate both Lowe’s and Ford Motor Company walking back some of their previous initiatives. 

"Something that our campaign against wokeness in corporate America has made acutely clear, I think people realize one person can make a difference now," he said. 

"Wokeness is spread all over the world like a virus," Starbuck said. "We're fighting for those everyday people who just want to be able to go to work and have the world be normal again."

On Tuesday, he said he'd forced Molson Coors to preemptively make changes to "woke policies."

Molson Coors did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The mainstream media has taken notice of Starbuck’s activism. Bloomberg opinion columnist Beth Kowitt wrote, "DEI has a new nemesis – and he's good at his job." 

CNN recently published a piece headlined, "The right-wing activist riding a wave of opposition to DEI in corporate America," which said the 35-year-old conservative "has channeled energy on the right to target specific brands popular with politically conservative customers." 

"The full impact of his activism is not entirely clear, but companies are rethinking their programs amid a changing political environment and online pressure," CNN reported. 

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Starbuck, who unsuccessfully ran in the Republican primary for Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District in 2022, is more than a little concerned about November’s presidential election. 

"I think that if Kamala [Harris] and [Tim] Walz win the election, I don't believe America will ever exist in the same way that it has throughout our lifetime. I think that it will become something else. It'll become something else entirely that none of us recognize," Starbuck said. 

"Our country would go through some really tumultuous dark times," he added. "That’s why I’ve doubled my efforts and I’m trying to do everything I can to stop that from happening."

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Fox News Digital’s Kerry J. Byrne contributed to this report.