Robby Starbuck Urges Customers to Abandon ‘Hopelessly Woke’ Harley-Davidson

Documentary filmmaker and conservative social media activist Robby Starbuck is calling on his fans to throw in the towel on Harley-Davidson, saying nearly two years after the motorcycle manufacturer’s pledge to review its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, the corporate leadership is still “hopelessly woke.” “They’ve learned NOTHING from our last go-around,” Mr. Starbuck said in an X post Wednesday. He said a new review of the company’s DEI policies shows that its promises were empty. Mr. Starbuck, who gained fame as a video music director before moving his family to Tennessee from Los Angeles in 2019, first organized a boycott of Harley-Davidson in 2024. After weeks of social media pressure, the iconic company responded by saying it had backtracked from DEI programs. In an X post on its since-deleted handle, the company said it had not “operated a DEI function since April 2024, and we do not have a DEI function today. We do not have hiring quotas and we no longer have supplier diversity spend goals.”“We are saddened by the negativity on social media over the last few weeks, designed to divide the Harley-Davidson community,” it added. The company said it would review sponsorships and organizations that the company affiliates with moving forward.In his lengthy post and video, Mr. Starbuck also went after Harley-Davidson’s latest chief executive officer, Artie Starrs, who was hired in October 2025. “Their new CEO hire literally had DEI and woke policy deeply embedded in both of his most recent stops as CEO of Topgolf and Pizza Hut. That’s the guy you bring in to change things? Really???,” Mr. Starbuck said.The post was also critical of the company’s chief brand officer, Marcus Fischer, whom Mr. Starbuck derided as “a woke disgrace to the brand and riders.” “It’s either incompetence or total contempt for your customer base at this point. When you see everything I lay out about him, there’s really no question about where things stand,” Mr. Starbuck said.Mr. Starbuck said Harley-Davidson doesn’t deserve another chance to make changes. “I think it’s time to leave them and move on from a company that’s willing to be this blatantly disrespectful after pretending that they’d change,” he said.Mr. Starbuck claimed that his initial boycott had led to a “huge” stock collapse. The company, however, has been facing a series of challenges. It has an aging demographic as younger consumers choose cheaper alternatives. Elevated interest rates since the pandemic have also made financing the pricey luxury motorcycles more expensive.“As our dealers and employees can attest, our only agenda is getting back to basics: building great motorcycles, strengthening our network of 500+ U.S. dealers, and supporting a workforce that is proud of the product they put on the road. We have made meaningful improvements and changes, and that work continues,” Harley-Davidson stated in an emailed statement to The New York Sun.In May, the company announced that while its sales in North and Latin America were up in the first quarter of 2026 over the previous year, revenues were down 12 percent year over year, and operating income was down 85 percent.Mr. Starrs also announced a new strategic plan to increase the company’s market share and bring it back to profitability. The plan includes diversifying revenue streams, improving the dealer network, and bolstering its management team.DEI had surged in corporate America in the months that followed the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd in 2020. President Trump has worked to end it since returning to the White House. He signed an executive order in 2025 to eliminate DEI from the federal government, calling the initiatives “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral.”Mr. Starbuck has gone after a number of companies in the past several years over its DEI policies, including Walmart, Lowe’s, Ford, John Deere, and McDonald’s. “We’re a force to be reckoned with, and we won’t stop until wokeness is extinct,” Mr. Starbuck said.

Robby Starbuck Urges Customers to Abandon ‘Hopelessly Woke’ Harley-Davidson

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