‘Marxist concept’: Robby Starbuck gives Van Jones reality check on equity, his anti-DEI activism

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck pushed back against some of CNN contributor and former Obama administration official Van Jones’ claims about his stances on equity policies on Tuesday.

Jones said during a panel discussion at the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) “Blueprint” conference in Louisville, Ky., that Starbuck should not say that people who have previously embraced “equity” efforts in the workplace are “communists” or “don’t believe in merit.” Starbuck quickly denied calling everyone in attendance at the conference “communists,” also reiterating that he believes “equity” is inherently a “Marxist concept.”

“I don’t see any communists here, I don’t see anybody that doesn’t believe in merit here, I see people who are trying to solve real problems,” Jones said.

“I don’t know where I called anybody here a communist,” Starbuck replied. “I will say, statistically, there’s probably one or two [in] here.”

“You said ‘Marxist’ on this stage,” Jones shot back.

“Equity is a Marxist concept,” Starbuck said. “A thousand percent. I mean, it’s been a pillar of every Marxist revolution that we’ve had over the last 200 years.”

WATCH:

Starbuck, a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, has publicly called for several U.S. companies to terminate their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives over the past few years. He has also previously compared DEI to “poison.”

Starbuck wrote in an Aug. 27 X post that he believes it is now “socially unacceptable” to “promote” trans causes or DEI efforts in corporate America, adding that it is also “unacceptable to use our money for Pride events.”

Later on during the SHRM panel discussion, Jones criticized Starbuck for using what he claimed were “bully tactics” to get American companies to abandon their diversity policies.”

“I think you may give yourself a little too much credit for the force of your argument,” Jones told Starbuck. “I don’t think people are being won over by your argument; I think they are being run over by your bully tactics and are afraid of the government. And so that’s something I think you have to be careful about.”

“You may be right about that, the CEOs may just be kissing up to me when they say that I’ve won them over with my arguments,” Starbuck said. “But to be honest with you, I don’t really care whether it’s a byproduct of me running them over with bully tactics or whether it’s because they loved my argument privately.”

The activist also added that he was achieving success at getting corporations to drop their DEI policies even when former President Joe Biden was in office.

“The truth is, I was doing this before [President Donald] Trump was in office, before he won the [2024] election, when it was very probable, a lot of people thought Kamala [Harris] was going to win. They were still dropping these [DEI] policies as we went after each company because they saw the financial reaction from the marketplace, they saw their in-store customers dipping [and] they saw it was a serious problem,” he said.

“I can definitely humble myself to say everybody in this room is not a communist, I don’t think I ever said that, but in the case that I did, I do not believe you guys are all communists,” Starbuck later added.

Many human-resources (HR) professionals were reportedly extremely upset over SHRM’s decision to invite Starbuck to its fall conference. Some HR professionals have backed out of attending the conference or have ended their memberships in SHRM, The Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 17.

Additionally, Trump unveiled an executive order in January to terminate “radical” and “immoral” DEI programs in federal agencies.

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