Woke corporate cartel disbands after legal threats from X, Rumble
An advertising cartel that embeds woke ideologies in social and mainstream media has disbanded under threats of legal action from X and Rumble.
Who is GARM?
The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which includes global corporations like IBM, Mastercard, PepsiCo, AB InBev, Nestlé, and L'Oréal, has been forcing media and other corporations to embrace woke narratives and ideologies.
The WFA buys approximately 90% of the world’s advertising, which translates to nearly $1 trillion in ad spending annually. In 2019, the WFA created the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) to address “harmful content” and “misinformation.” GARM’s steering committee and board of directors include Proctor & Gamble, Mars, Unilever, Diageo, and three trade associations.
The year it was created, GARM became a flagship partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to “leverage” the WEF’s “existing network.”
GARM uses the threat of boycotts to force media outlets and social media platforms to suppress content opposing the woke agenda under the pretext of “combatting misinformation.” This mass censorship has cemented totalitarian ideologies like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and gender distortion. The cartel has been punishing disobedient companies by withholding nearly all of the world’s ad revenue, which has a capsizing effect.
Most platforms have complied with GARM’s woke mandates, except two. Video streaming platform Rumble and Elon Musk’s X stood alone in pushing back against GARM — and paid a price.
‘Taking on Elon Musk’
GARM boasted in 2022 about “taking on Elon Musk” shortly after he purchased Twitter (now X), which was a member of GARM at the time. One GARM corporation asked to “arrange a meeting and hear more about [GARM’s] perspectives about the Twitter situation and a possible boycott from many companies.” After holding extensive briefings on Musk, GARM launched a boycott of X and tanked the social media company’s advertising revenue by 80%.
Even as they celebrated the hit to X’s earnings, WFA and GARM members discussed more strategies to destroy the social media platform that came under Elon Musk's control. One strategy was to send Musk a list of demands regarding which content should or should not be allowed on the platform. If all demands were not met by a specific deadline, GARM would expel Twitter from the cartel and attack it in the media.
Another GARM member expressed concern over Musk’s release of The Twitter Files, which exposed a joint censorship operation between the former Twitter administration and the White House.
GARM disbands
On Tuesday, X filed an antitrust lawsuit against GARM in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Rumble, which suffered a fate similar to X’s, filed a separate lawsuit against GARM in the same court. Mars, Unilever, Ørsted, and CVS were also named as defendants.
Two days later, WFA CEO Stephan Loerke announced that GARM would be “discontinuing” its operations, according to Business Insider. Loerke said the decision was “not made lightly” but said that GARM, which is a not-for-profit organization, has limited resources.
Musk has encouraged companies who have been similarly strongarmed by GARM to take legal action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
