Corporations have lost their soul

In corporate America, virtue signaling has morphed into a cult-like ritual. But in their zeal to prove loyalty, corporations now take more pride in hiring far-right MAGA celebrities than they ever did in hiring minorities under DEI policies.

Only that explains Andreessen Horowitz hiring Daniel Penny. It is one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture capital firms. He was acquitted in the subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely less than two months ago. But that sensational killing, with its racist overtones, turned Penny into a living legend in MAGA world.

So Andreessen Horowitz is capitalizing by hiring him as a deal partner on its American Dynamism team, which invests in government and defense tech. Because Penny’s MAGA celebrity is such that he’ll have even greater access to lobby the Trump administration for lucrative contracts and corporate favors than any current partner.

Taking sides in MAGA culture war

To grasp how far Andreessen Horowitz has fallen, consider this: It would never have even considered hiring Bernhard Goetz, the infamous vigilante of the 1980s, to man its front desk. Yet here they are, lauding Penny’s “courage” in an internal memo – treating the death of a homeless Black man as a heroic act worthy of Wall Street accolades.

Hiring Penny isn’t just a corporate misstep; it’s a statement. In MAGA world, White grievance and White supremacy aren’t just symbiotic; they feed off each other. So acts of violence become acts of valor — as long as the perpetrators are White and the victims are not. Andreessen Horowitz isn’t hiring a venture capitalist so much as endorsing a culture, where vigilantes are rewarded, not rebuked.

Bending the knee to avoid Trump’s wrath

This signals a dangerous shift in corporate priorities. Like Amazon, Google, and Apple, Andreessen Horowitz once championed DEI as essential to its values of innovation and meritocracy. But Trump isn’t just a patently racist president but one who has made clear his intent to use his office to punish companies for failing to support his racist agenda – as Meta, ABC, and CBS can attest. That’s why these companies are cutting DEI policies like metastasizing cancer.

Don’t be surprised if corporations one-up Trump by hiring his pardoned insurrectionists. In his dystopian America, this is what courage looks like. And the “American Dynamism” Penny represents will doom us all.