You may have heard the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement described as a juggernaut that has steamrolled through our institutions for over two decades. It’s commonly thought that ESG is a behemoth that has gorged itself on reams of academic pablum, with few daring to disrupt the chorus of virtue signaling that dominates modern business scholarship. If only ESG were a unified force towering over corporate America and beyond. The reality is far more insidious and difficult to combat.

ESG is not a Leviathan but rather a hydra—a multi-headed beast of disparate interests, a loose confederation of academic theorists, corporate opportunists, bankers, investors, lobbyists, non-governmental organizations, and misguided do-gooders, all jockeying for position to appear as the most righteous.

The genesis of this movement can be traced to a 2004 conference, “Who Cares Wins,” orchestrated by the United Nations, the World Bank, and the Swiss government, with funding from an array of European bureaucracies. Attended by a cadre of global elites including finance executives, bankers, and investors, the conference focused on integrating “environmental, social and corporate governance issues in asset management, securities brokerage services and associated research functions.” In other words, from its inception ESG has posed a formidable threat to national sovereignty, cultural identity, and fundamental economic principles.

At first, ESG struggled to gain traction. However, the financial crisis of 2008 provided the perfect pretext for its proponents to repurpose their ideology as a panacea for corporate misconduct. It was a masterstroke of opportunism: the institutions contributing to the crisis rebranded themselves as champions of social justice and environmental stewardship—but in fits and starts, gradually and by slow degrees, over several years and in response to different exigencies.

Today, ESG has emerged as a pervasive apparatus of power, a complex network of discursive practices and institutional arrangements that produces its legitimacy. The power of ESG percolates through the capillaries of global finance, academia, and governance, creating forms of knowledge and mechanisms of control. National interests find themselves reconfigured and sublimated within this global network while market freedoms are subtly reshaped under the guise of leftist ideals.

Contrary to the impressions given by book titles like The Great Reset, coauthored by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, this accumulation of power is not the result of a grand conspiracy, but rather the outcome of countless small acts, decisions, and policies. Each institution advancing its agenda bolsters the overall influence of ESG, amplifying its impact through a snowball effect of interlocking practices and discourses. The result is a vigorous regime that operates not through overt coercion but through the internalization of its norms.

The Bitter Fruit of ESG

Consider the components of ESG. The “E” stands for Environmental, encompassing greenhouse gas emissions, conservation, biodiversity, water usage, renewable energy, and climate change disclosures. The “S” represents Social causes, which include pro-abortion policies, LGBTQ+ activism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, transgenderism, Critical Race Theory, and Black Lives Matter advocacy. The “G,” or Governance, refers principally to the shift from a shareholder to a stakeholder corporate governance model.

Some on the Right, particularly postliberal conservatives and Catholic integralists, might be tempted by the Governance aspect of ESG, which suggests that corporations should serve a purpose beyond mere profit maximization. However, this is a dangerous enticement. As a legal entity, a firm is morally neutral; it is a tool like a knife or a car, capable of serving both good and bad ends. But by redefining the corporation’s purpose to serve “stakeholders” rather than shareholders, ESG opens the door to mischief, allowing the definition of stakeholders to be twisted to include the environment, marginalized groups, or any other fashionable leftist cause.

Conservatives who rail against big corporations and embrace ESG fail to see that they are empowering the very entities they despise. Only the largest, most entrenched firms—those with the resources to navigate and manipulate the ESG landscape—benefit from ESG regulations, which are increasingly instituted by First World governments (that is, Europe and the United States). Incumbent firms use ESG to stifle competition, erect barriers to entry, and consolidate their power while cloaking their self-interest in social responsibility rhetoric.

Global financial assets are projected to grow “from 263.9 trillion U.S. dollars in 2021 to roughly 329 trillion U.S. dollars by 2027” according to Statista. The “Big Three” asset managers—BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard—manage an astonishing $20 trillion in assets. When you include the broader slate of leading asset managers, the global assets under management far exceed $100 trillion (see here, here, and here).

Forbes reports that the U.S. has 813 billionaires out of 2,781 worldwide. The private wealth of these individuals cannot account for the colossal sums the top asset managers invest. So where does all this money come from? The answer is clear: government money has fueled the growth of asset management firms through sources like pension funds, bonds, and sovereign wealth funds. These firms have strategically invested in publicly traded companies likely to receive government subsidies, effectively creating a loop where they profit from taxpayer and pensioner money on both the front and back ends.

These firms don’t just control wealth—they also shape culture. Their influence is exerted in two primary ways. First, through fund portfolios, they channel investments into companies that typically support leftist political causes, screening industries and companies that don’t align with their political preferences. (Unless, of course, they are just “greenwashing.”)

Second, they wield power through shareholder voting and proposals. By buying shares in publicly traded companies, these firms engage directly with boards and CEOs, lobbying legislatures to push left-wing agendas. Unlike retail or household investors, who historically would divest from companies they disagreed with, these asset managers don’t just sell off their shares—they strong-arm and bully corporate boards to align with their ideological goals.

The trend toward passive investment has led to a concentration of ownership. One Harvard law professor has identified what he calls the “Problem of the Twelve,” predicting that just 12 fund advisors could soon control the majority of U.S. public companies’ voting shares.

As passive index funds continue to gain popularity, a few large asset management firms have amassed considerable corporate voting power, often exercising it without explicit guidance from their investors. This concentration of power, especially among index and private equity funds, occurred with staggering speed. In the early 1980s, asset managers owned little public equity in U.S. stock markets. Today, the Big Three alone account for nearly 25 percent of all votes at shareholder meetings for most S&P 500 companies.

BlackRock, in particular, is notorious for its rent-seeking and regulatory influence. It advised U.S. government officials on their economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Amid the 2009 financial crisis, the U.S. Treasury hired it to manage Bear Sterns’s toxic assets. One Wall Street Journal headline says it all: “This Powerful BlackRock Team Has the Ear of Governments and Megabanks.”

The Biden Administration has deepened the integration of ESG principles into government operations through Executive Order 14030, which has encoded elite preferences throughout the administrative state. This whole-of-government directive requires federal agencies to factor ESG considerations into their decision-making, leading to unconventional public-private partnerships such as the Federal Reserve’s joint efforts with central banks on climate risk assessment.

Big Brother Is Watching

A new kind of control has emerged in our financial landscape: “debanking.” This practice represents not merely an exclusion but a force that shapes behaviors and norms within the economic sphere. Financial institutions, nodes in a dispersed network, exercise powers beyond monetary control. They become arbiters of social and political acceptability, wielding the ability to grant or deny access to capital. Such power is not centralized or monolithic but seeps into every crevice of social and economic life.

The cases of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and others illuminate how this power operates not through flagrant repression (except, perhaps, in the case of the Canadian truckers) but through more subtle forms of exclusion and normalization.

Closing accounts belonging to conservative organizations, gun manufacturers, or individuals deemed politically undesirable is not simply a denial of service—it is a performative act that demarcates the boundaries of acceptable economic citizenship.

Credit card companies’ introduction of merchant category codes for firearms sales represents a growing regime of surveillance and categorization. It creates a system of visibility that allows for the monitoring and potential regulation of specific economic behaviors, reinforcing societal norms through financial mechanisms.

PayPal’s penalties against users promoting alleged disinformation demonstrate how financial institutions become instruments of social control, enforcing a particular moral and political order through economic means. The power exercised here is not merely prohibitive but generates new forms of knowledge about economic subjects, creates categories of financial deviance, and shapes the conduct of individuals who must navigate this normative landscape to maintain their economic viability.

Debanking becomes a means of governing conduct, of producing compliant economic subjects who internalize the norms and values embedded in these financial practices. The threat of economic exclusion serves as a disciplinary mechanism, encouraging self-regulation and adherence to the prevailing ideological standards.

We thus observe the manifestation of a novel form of government control whereby economic participation becomes contingent on conformity to a particular set of social and political norms. This power is all the more insidious for its diffuse nature, with financial institutions each acting as a relay in this complex circuit.

Back to Basics

ESG is a heterogeneous collection of institutions, regulations, administrative bureaucracies, scientific statements, and philosophical propositions operating under the aegis of “global governance.” This term, heralded by the World Economic Forum and lauded in academic circles, signals a phenomenon that dissolves traditional affiliations and identities in favor of a homogenized global subject.

The threat posed by global governance is not just theoretical—it has the potential to dictate the flow of capital across the Western world. Under ESG’s expansive reach, people are stripped of agency, unable to influence or resist the intricate machinery that governs their professional and personal lives. They become alienated, disempowered, and isolated—mere cogs in an apparatus too vast, disparate, dispersed, and powerful to challenge. ESG is eroding the deeply rooted cultural ties, family legacies, and traditions that constitute the very foundation of human existence.

To challenge ESG is to take on a formidable array of forces, including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the Business Roundtable, the administrative state, and the most influential asset managers and central banks. The sheer weight of this varied opposition creates a climate in which even the bravest researchers hesitate to confront ESG head-on. When I testified before a state legislature in support of an anti-ESG bill, the banking lobby didn’t just oppose my words—they tried to silence me, even going so far as to threaten my career.

The ESG movement has not created a regime of overt tyranny but rather a system of soft despotism that would make Tocqueville recoil. This new order stifles dissent not through brute force but the more insidious means of social conformity and economic coercion. It has created an environment where words must be chosen carefully, where academic researchers self-censor to avoid the invisible yet palpable risks of speaking out.

The great Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn astutely noted of the United States,

Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to flock together and shut off successful development.

It’s time for those who understand the gravity of the ESG agenda to step forward, even at the risk of career and reputation, and confront this encroaching assault on liberty. We must pinpoint areas of resistance within the sprawling network of power that spans both public and private institutions. By challenging these power dynamics and advocating for the norms and values that ESG marginalizes, we can safeguard the culture and individual freedoms fundamental to America’s strength and vibrancy.