Where DEI and ESG Came From
3. Reviewing the Past to Understand the Present: DEI and ESG appeared out of nowhere, with ESG privatizing business regulation.
No accountability for the new private regulations. A clearinghouse appears out of nowhere and decides if your business is a winner or loser.
Meryl Nass
Apr 9
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DEI and ESG: Things I left out of Part 2
The concepts of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) appeared suddenly in the 2000s, but where did they come from? Did they develop organically? I was unable to discover where DEI came from. Many sources deflected to the 1960s Civil Rights movement, but the term DEI never appeared then or for decades later. These sources used almost identical language about the so-called history of DEI. I got the impression that they were trying to provide the term with a manufactured background because it did not actually have any clear precedent. They were creating a narrative to make it appear that it had developed organically.
In December 2024, Forbes published an article about DEI which viewed it as an industry, rather than an ethical imperative.
DEI is at a pivot point. The pendulum has swung hard these past few years, with the backlash spiking in 2022 through 2023 and stabilizing in 2024. This shakeout separated those serious about DEI from those who were performative. Most businesses are quietly doing DEI work with less publicity.
According to Business Wire, the DEI industry is projected to experience significant growth, with the global market estimated to reach around $24.4 billion by 2030…
Here is how it was forcibly thrust on the American public on Day 1 of the Biden administration:
The Trump administration did its best to undo the DEI imperative, though some institutions merely changed the terminology and continued on.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliekratz/2024/12/29/history-of-dei-why-it-matters-for-the-future/
I looked up the job title “Diversity Officer” and it appears this appellation moved into universities in the early 2000s and then really became prominent in the corporate world around 10-20 years later, echoing what was happening in government.
ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance)
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/environmental-social-and-governance-history
“Who Cares Wins” was a 2017 United Nations publication with the World Bank. It is they who created the ESG terminology, and originated (or were probably given) the remit to attach conditions to the ability to obtain finance for businesses—and pushed it out to the world.
https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/280911488968799581
Companies would need to submit data on their diversity, their social good and environmental impact to a clearinghouse that would evaluate their score and decide whether financing could take place. There may have been additional impediments to business success placed in front of them if they did not have a proper score. This placed a new, nongovernmental yet regulatory burden on businesses and had the effect of choosing winners and losers, with the losers in general being small businesses. A pseudo-regulatory function had been privatized, affecting businesses across the board—and nobody obvious was responsible. The ESG concept had simply integrated itself into the system, and businesses just had to live with it.
Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, once controlled up to $10 trillion in investments, and was a strong proponent of ESG—with the ability to impose it on companies in which his company was invested.
The Rothschild bank was also a big ESG supporter, even in June 2025, after a large outvlow in ESG funds that followed the inauguration of President Trump. Of course, we all want fairness in hiring, and for companies to take their social and environmental role seriously. The problem with ESG ratings is that they could easily be gamed. Thereby they assisted large companies to consume smaller ones that lacked the staff to creatively fudge the data they provided, and were thus being denied business loans.
Part 4 will be next.
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Comment: They all come from the Rothschild’s Synagogue of Satan.
