FPI / August 17, 2020

Corporate WATCH

By Joe Schaeffer

It's hardly a surprise to see Netflix listed among Big Tech companies joining the cheap-labor-loving U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a treasonous assault on American workers.

The video streaming giant is among numerous tech corporations that have signed onto the Chamber's lawsuit against President Donald Trump's executive order halting work visa programs that allow these companies to import so-called "high-skilled" foreign laborers at the expense of job-seeking Americans, Breitbart's John Binder reports.

At a time when many patriotic Americans disgusted by corporate wokeness are boycotting professional sports and cutting the cable TV cord, too many still seem to believe Netflix is an acceptable alternative. In fact, Netflix executives are dedicated advocates for globalism, illegal immigration and population control with extremely intimate ties to former "fundamentally transform America" President Barack Obama.

It all starts at the top with Netflix co-founder, Chairman and CEO Reed Hastings. Hastings has long stressed his support for illegal aliens and unchecked Third World immigration. When Trump issued an executive order banning travelers from certain Muslim terrorist nations from coming into the U.S. in 2017, Hastings took it as a personal assault against his corporate vision, writing on his Facebook page:

"Trump's actions are hurting Netflix employees around the world, and are so un-American it pains us all. Worse, these actions will make America less safe (through hatred and loss of allies) rather than more safe. A very sad week, and more to come with the lives of over 600,000 Dreamers here in a America under imminent threat."

In August 2016, Hastings showed his vociferous antipathy toward Trump supporters by threatening fellow Facebook Board of Directors member Peter Thiel's standing just because he endorsed Trump. "I see our board being about great judgment, particularly in unlikely disaster where we have to pick new leaders," Hastings wrote in an email to Thiel that was obtained by The New York Times. "I'm so mystified by your endorsement of Trump for our President, that for me it moves from 'different judgment' to 'bad judgment.' Some diversity in views is healthy, but catastrophically bad judgment (in my view) is not what anyone wants in a fellow board member."

Hastings was a very public Hillary Clinton supporter at the time. "Trump would destroy much of what is great about America. Hillary Clinton is the strong leader we need, and it's important that Trump lose by a landslide to reject what he stands for," he was quoted as saying in a statement from the Clinton campaign touting his endorsement of the Democratic nominee.

As his email to Thiel shows, Hastings feels his personal political views absolutely should affect his business dealings. As we will see, his company operates accordingly.

Hastings and wife Patty Quillin are major Democratic donors. According to the Open Secrets website, the pair donated $2 million in 2018 alone to the Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC that funds efforts to elect Democrats to the U.S. Senate.

Netflix Co-CEO and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos and his wife Nicole Avant are also prominent Democrat donors. In fact, The Hollywood Reporter noted in 2012 that the couple had "just made the top tier of Obama 'bundlers,' raising more than half a million dollars in one night."

Avant was the Southern California finance co-chairwoman for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and was rewarded for her service by being named Ambassador to the Bahamas in the Obama administration.

As we noted in a June Corporate Watch column, former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice sits on the Board of Directors for Netflix.

It's not hard to see how this staunchly political executive orientation affects Netflix's product offerings. Nicole Avant previously served on the Board of Directors for influential leftist Hollywood television writer and producer Norman Lear's progressive organization People for The American Way and in 2017 was listed as a member of the Board of Directors for the pro-teen abortion-promoting group Girls Inc. What more needs to be said about an organization explicitly targeted toward young girls that declares "advancing reproductive health" to be among its four "top policy priorities" in the same 2017 annual report that includes Avant as a board member?

In 2019 Avant's husband Sarandos emphatically identified supporting abortion as a key facet of Netflix's corporate identity. "We have many women working on productions in Georgia, whose rights, along with millions of others, will be severely restricted by this law," Sarandos said in a public statement about Georgia's heartbeat bill that proposed banning abortion in the Peach State once a fetal heartbeat could be detected.

"It's why we will work with the ACLU and others to fight it in court," Sarandos's statement read. Yes, a corporation was vowing to work side-by-side with a prominent leftist activist group to fight government legislation on a social issue that it disagreed with.

"Given the legislation has not yet been implemented, we'll continue to film there — while also supporting partners and artists who choose not to," Sarandos continued. "Should it ever come into effect, we'd rethink our entire investment in Georgia."

The bill was indeed passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp but was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge last month. Ultimately, it seems, Netflix's backing of legal challenges to the law proved successful.

Keep in mind that Sarandos is Chief Content Officer of Netflix. He is the top voice in deciding what programming is green lighted by the company.

In June Sarandos was interviewed by transgender director Janet Mock for an article that appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. During the interview, Sarandos boasts about Netflix's support for the streaming show "Sex Education," a program whose entire content seems to consist of depictions of young teens engaging in heterosexual and homosexual sexual activity and being obsessed with masturbation.

At Rewire.com, a rabid pro-abortion site, a "sex ed teacher" wrote the following about one episode of the show:

But the writers pull this storyline back from the edge of the morality-tale cliff by treating Maeve’s abortion with sensitivity. She’s alone and she’s scared, though she doesn’t want to admit it. The clinic staff is nice to her. And she meets a loud older woman who is having a second (or possibly third) abortion and tells Maeve it will be OK. She says: “I have three kids, and I feel way more guilty about the ones that I had than the ones I chose not to.”

Netflix Chairman Hastings' wife Patty Quillin is on the Board of Directors of Chicken & Egg Pictures, a production company funded by leftist Big Philanthropy money. According to the watchdog site Influence Watch, Chicken & Egg is:

…an organization providing financial support to left-aligned female nonfiction filmmakers. Founded in 2005, the organization was originally a fiscally sponsored project of the left-wing Tides Center. Chicken and Egg Pictures became an independent organization in 2016, though its fund at Tides Center remains active. The organization has awarded over $7 million in grants and supported more than 300 filmmakers.

Her Chicken & Eggs bio states that Quillin is a patron of the Sundance Film Festival. We extensively reported on Sundance's devotion to a host of leftist social causes in an April Corporate Watch column.

Quillin is also an enthusiastic advocate of George Soros-style criminal justice reform. The Daily Wire detailed in February that:

According to campaign finance filings, Quillin recently contributed $1 million to a group attempting to replace two-term, incumbent L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey with a more progressive prosecutor. She also dropped another $500,000 in support of a voter referendum (Measure R) that would mandate sweeping changes for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and reduce the jail population.

Note that this came before the George Floyd killing and the rioting it triggered in support of radical Black Lives Matter and its attempts to enact radical change to our criminal justice system.

Hastings and Quillin also displayed their globalist bona fides in April with a whopping $30 million donation to Gavi, the organization set up to enact the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's global vaccine push. According to the official Gavi website, the "Gates Foundation pledged US$ 750 million to set up Gavi in 1999."

"The Foundation is a key Gavi partner in vaccine market shaping," the website declares.

Americans who have turned their backs on Comcast and other woke cable giants should realize that by opting for Netflix they are giving money to yet another inimical corporate goliath seeking to advance an agenda that has already proven to be destructive to the very fabric of this nation.

Joe Schaeffer is the former Managing Editor of The Washington Times National Weekly Edition. His columns appear at WorldTribune.com, LibertyNation.com and FreePressInternational.org.

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