Harley-Davidson made a promise to its customers in 2024.
The company swore it was done with the woke agenda that had been alienating the very riders who built its legend.
Now Robby Starbuck says the company just broke that promise in the most brazen way possible, and loyal Harley owners deserve to know exactly what happened.
A Boycott That Actually Worked — Until It Didn’t
Back in the summer of 2024, Starbuck posted a video on X exposing Harley-Davidson’s internal DEI policies under then-CEO Jochen Zeitz. The post went viral, garnering almost 3 million views, and many consumers threatened to boycott the motorcycle company for supporting these initiatives.
The pressure worked. On August 19, 2024, Harley-Davidson finally responded to the backlash by clarifying that it had quietly cut its “DEI function” in April and that it would adjust several of its policies going forward. The company pledged to strip “socially motivated content” from employee training and put its sponsorships under review.
In 2025, former CEO Jochen Zeitz retired after he was accused of pushing a leftist political agenda and overseeing a decline in sales. Between 2022 and 2024, motorcycle sales dropped in all but one quarter compared to the same quarter from the previous year, according to data from Harley-Davidson Investor Relations. That’s not a blip. That’s a company in trouble.
And yet, somehow, the board decided the answer was to hire two executives whose track records read like a DEI conference brochure.
Who They Hired and What They Did Before
The companies that Artie Starrs, now Harley-Davidson’s CEO, and Marcus Fischer, now Harley-Davidson’s chief brand officer, previously helped lead strongly promoted diversity, equity and inclusion policies during their respective tenures, according to Starbuck.
“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,” Starbuck said in his X post.
While Starrs was CEO, Topgolf supported and promoted Pride events for the LGBTQ community. The entertainment company’s support included a statement claiming, “We envision a world at Topgolf where our family celebrates our LGBTQIA+ community,” and it also supported a PGA of America LGBTQIA+ golf tournament to raise money for San Francisco Pride.
During Starrs’ tenure at the helm of Pizza Hut, the company launched a collection of “antiracism resources for educators.” Part of the program involved a queer man reading to children.
But Starrs wasn’t the only hire raising red flags.
Fischer, Harley-Davidson’s chief brand officer, formerly served as CEO of Carmichael Lynch, an advertising agency. During his time there, the company ran a program specifically for non-white people, hosted an in-office drag show that raised over $12,000, and held an all-agency pronoun presentation, according to Starbuck’s video.
Take a minute and let that sink in. The man now responsible for shaping the Harley-Davidson brand spent his career at a company running drag shows and mandatory pronoun sessions. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a hiring decision.
Starbuck Calls It Out and the Company Pushes Back
“Harley-Davidson’s recent hires show me they didn’t learn anything from the backlash they already faced for going woke,” Starbuck told FOX Business.
“I expose this stuff because consumers deserve to know who is running the brands they support and what values those companies are pushing behind the scenes,” Starbuck said. “This isn’t about revenge. It’s about accountability.”
Harley-Davidson responded to the criticism through a statement to USA Today. “Since stepping into the role eight months ago, CEO Artie Starrs has spent time across the country listening directly to our riders, dealers, employees, and unions,” the company said. “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,” the company added.
That sounds reassuring enough. But then again, Harley-Davidson was saying similar things in 2024 right before its sales cratered.
The Pattern Corporate America Keeps Repeating
There’s a playbook here, and it isn’t subtle. A company gets caught pushing left-wing ideology. Customers push back. The company issues a statement about “getting back to basics.” Then, when the heat dies down, it quietly hires the same kind of executives it always did, and the whole cycle starts over.
Starbuck’s social media activism has led to major companies including John Deere, Black and Decker, Walmart, Target, and Pepsi reconsidering their left-wing policies. But reconsidering and actually changing are two different things, and Harley-Davidson may be the clearest example yet of a company that said all the right words without ever meaning them.
Ordinary Americans who buy Harley motorcycles aren’t asking for much. They want a company that builds great bikes, treats its workers fairly, and stays out of the culture war the Left keeps dragging every major brand into. That’s it. Build the bike. Sell the bike. Cash the check.
But the corporate class can’t seem to help itself. The consulting firms, the HR departments, the advertising agencies — they all pull in the same direction, and that direction is left. And when a brand as iconic as Harley-Davidson lets that crowd back through the front door, it’s not just a business story. It’s a betrayal of the people who wore that eagle on their chest for decades.
Starbuck put it plainly. Companies should be “politically neutral, merit-based and focused on making great products,” not chasing activist agendas that their own customers despise. That’s not a complicated ask. It just turns out that a lot of boardrooms don’t actually believe it.
And loyal Harley riders who stood with the brand through the 2024 fight are now left wondering whether any of it mattered at all.
Sources: Fox Business; Daily Caller News Foundation; Yahoo Finance; Fortune; Daily Fetched