“Elitist morons and hypocrites” at Harley-Davidson and other brands like Bud Light are to blame for the “woke”-induced collapse that has plagued corporate America in recent years, an entrepreneur in the trenches of the corporate culture wars told Fox New Digital.
“That’s the ABC of business. You don’t disrespect your core consumers and you certainly don’t alienate them and abandon them in search of growth and expansion elsewhere,” said Jennifer Sey, a former senior marketing director at Levi Strauss & Co.
Harley-Davidson’s German-born CEO and chairman Jochen Zeitz has been lambasted by longtime loyal customers for trying to reshape the bike’s muscular American image, accused by critics of employing a progressive agenda that conflicts with the values of his most devoted customers.
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“We’re trying to take on traditional capitalism and redefine it,” Zeitz said in a speech to world leaders at a conference in Switzerland in 2020, the same year he took over as Harley CEO.
In the same speech, Zeitz compared himself to the Taliban to express his commitment to “sustainability.”
Former Levi Strauss & Co. executive Jennifer Sey clashed with executives over COVID lockdowns in 2020. She launched XX-XY Athletics in March 2024. (XX-XY Athletics)
Simmering discontent among loyal Harley-Davidson customers exploded into open rebellion against the brand after Zeitz’s internal agenda was exposed by corporate watchdog Robby Starbuck on X.
“They killed Harley. It breaks my heart,” Vinny Terranova, owner of Pappy’s Vintage Cycles in Sturgis, South Dakota, and a former Harley-Davidson dealer, told Fox News Digital.
“It’s ‘Business 101.’ You don’t disrespect your core consumers.”
Sey, a former Levi’s executive, has witnessed the corporate culture wars from the trenches of the boardroom battlefield. She was a celebrity executive in 2020, tasked with managing, refining and growing the iconic Levi’s brand. Founded by German immigrant Levi Strauss in San Francisco in 1853, Levi’s jeans have enjoyed global prestige as a symbol of American culture and opportunity.
Harley-Davidson Chairman, President and CEO Jochen Zeitz attends the start of trading of Livewire, an electric motorcycle subsidiary, at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., September 27, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)
But the “lifelong Democrat” was shaken from her comfort zone as she pushed back against the city, state of California and her own employer’s onerous responses to COVID-19.
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“I was a leader in the community and I was vilified for speaking out against school closures,” Sey said. “I was demonized for wanting schools to stay open. I mean, it became an unlivable place for me.”
Sey was forced to leave Levi’s after a 23-year career in 2022.
“San Francisco is the most aggressively conformist place you can imagine,” she said. “It’s not inclusive. It’s not logical. And it’s not progressive.”
“Canceled,” she says, by big American companies, she was unable to land a management position that reflected her excellent credentials.
Sey moved to Colorado and launched XX-XY Athletics, a performance apparel company, in March.
She is now a warrior against wokeness. The name of her company is itself an act of defiance against the idea that femininity exists on a spectrum of sorts.
“The elites adopt all these crazy far-left positions to assuage their guilt about having tons of money and privilege.”
“The message is that there is an empirical truth. Biology is true,” Sey said. “It’s very simple, really. There’s XX and there’s XY. We can corrupt the truth with language all we want. But ultimately, the truth is that sex is binary.”
The corruption of long-held truths and embrace of a radical ideology that drove her out of Levi’s and alienated customers from Harley-Davidson, Bud Light and other revered American brands are the product of many factors, she believes.
“The elites are taking all these crazy far-left positions to assuage their guilt about having tons of money and privilege,” she said.
Jennifer Sey was the 1986 U.S. national champion in all-around gymnastics. She competed in the Goodwill Games in Moscow that same year. (Athletics XX-XY/Jennifer Sey)
Business leaders speak out in favor of public education, for example, “but they send all their kids to $60,000-a-year private schools.”
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“The other thing is that these companies are now populated by Gen Z employees who came from a woke education system and woke universities who were raised in safe spaces and want you to know their pronouns,” she added.
Leaders fear coming into conflict with the crowd around them, stirring up their anger on social media and jeopardizing the wealth, privilege and benefits they claim to reject.
“It’s the inmates who run the asylum” in corporate America, Sey said.
A red, white and blue Harley Davidson motorcycle in Chicago, Illinois (Photo by: Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) (Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
His career within the “woke bubble” of high-level corporate culture and the current battles against it give Sey unique insight into Harley-Davidson’s recent troubles.
Harley CEO Zeitz rose to global fame by turning discount Puma sneakers into a global fashion brand, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, starting a yacht racing team, opening an art museum in his name in South Africa and counting the likes of Richard Branson in his social circle.
Critics accused him of having little in common with Harley-Davidson customers and of apparently failing to understand the key to the motorcycle brand’s global appeal: its American character.
Levi’s enjoys the same global prestige.
Jennifer Sey founded XX-XY Athletics in March 2024. The message of the brand name “is that there is empirical truth. Biology is true,” she said. (XX-XY Athletics)
“What people find interesting about these brands is that they represent the best of American values,” Sey said. “They represent freedom, individualism, progress and democracy.”
Harley-Davidson, she believes, represented “rugged masculinity and individualism, living life on your own terms.”
Sey experienced the power of American brands when he competed in the world gymnastics competition at the Goodwill Games in Moscow in 1986.
She bought 20 pairs of jeans at Macy’s and took them with her to trade with Soviet and foreign athletes. Classic Levi’s 501 jeans could fetch up to $1,000 a pair on the Moscow black market in the 1980s, she said.
“Levi’s jeans represent freedom and progress,” she said.
Today’s “progressive” policies are progress in name only, she said.
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“What they call progressivism is actually incredibly backward,” she said. “It’s a policy advocated by elitist hypocrites. I can’t even stand to be around them anymore.”
