Harley-Davidson promised to dump DEI 2 years ago, but has been leaning into it instead

A Harley-Davidson store marquee.

The iconic American motorcycle brand Harley-Davidson promised amid a sharp backlash in 2024 to back off the extremist DEI policies it had implemented in the wake of the George Floyd riots of 2020, but the opposite of that has happened, says the person who called out the DEI excesses two years ago. 

Robby Starbuck, the conservative firebrand who exposed the DEI rot happening inside of Harley-Davidson back in 2024 and spearheaded the consumer revolt at the time, says the company has not made good on its promise to root out DEI from its corporate culture. Quite the opposite, in fact, Starbuck has said in a series of posts on X.

Starbuck has highlighted key personnel appointments as cause for concern, namely the new CEO, Artie Starrs, and the company's chief brand officer, Marcus Fischer. 

"After an extremely tumultuous period where your brand was torn down and now is seen as weird, woke and weak, you're going to bring in a CEO that is going to, like, project the masculine identity of the brand right? The pro-America identity of the brand," Starbuck said, pointing out that Starrs is essentially the opposite of the type of leader who should've been hired to lead Harley-Davidson in the wake of its controversy two years ago.

He pointed to Starrs' record at Topgolf and Pizza Hut, where as CEO he approved sponsoring an LGBTQ+ golf fundraiser for a group called San Francisco Pride, and for implementing so-called antiracism training, which is a term used to obfuscate actual racism, respectively in his last two CEO jobs.

Starbuck's harshest ire has been directed at Fischer, the chief brand officer. He points out that Fischer engages in nearly all manner of woke behavior, including using pronouns, raising money for so-called transgender children, an affinity for DEI conferences, and the fact that he has boasted about once helping to organize a drag show at the office in his previous job. 

Starbuck goes on to point out that Starrs and Fischer make no effort to hide their sketchy past involvement with radical DEI and woke ideologies. All of it is proudly chronicled on their respective LinkedIn profiles. 

Meanwhile, one of Harley-Davidson's chief competitors recently seized the opportunity to position itself as the polar opposite of what Harley-Davidson has become with the release of a pointed new commercial in which it declared "the culture is not confused," and blasted Harley-Davidson for moving some of its motorcycle production from the U.S. to Thailand. In an apparent response on Tuesday, Harley-Davidson said in a post on X that it was bringing back production of three of its motorcycle models to the U.S.

Below, watch Starbuck's report on what's happening at Harley-Davidson.