On Boycotts and Disinvites
Scott Alexander and the commentariat of Slate Star Codex are very, very concerned over so-called “social justice warriors” using their voices and boycotts to change policies that they don’t like and possibly even saying “So and so is an objectionable crank with freak ideas.” The so and so in this case is Chuck Yarvin who is very well outside the mainstream and has authoritarian tendencies.
I gotta say that I am a bit perplexed by concerns over boycotting and open criticisms of speech and association. Scott Alexander admits that he does not want restaurants to discriminate against same-sex couples and he understands why Chuck Yarvin’s political views are indeed scary for many people (Not so much for his commentariat though). Yet he doesn’t want people to boycott businesses or call out cranks either.
So what are people to do? I don’t agree with all boycotts. I am quite critical of the BDS movement. But boycotts are really one of the few ways for people to cause change, real change. You show your moral and ethical disagreement by refusing to support a business, regime, or conference with your money. There seems to be a basic free speech and association right by saying “I am not supporting this business or regime because of practices X, Y, and Z and I don’t think other people should either” or saying “Conference X invited this crank because of X, Y, and Z to speak and I think that is dangerous even if he or she is speaking on apolitical matters.” Then you have a fight or debate in the public sphere. The conference clearly saw that inviting Yarvin was a mistake and that many people thought he was odious.
This is why many people on the left see conservatism as being nothing more than a maintenance of privilege. The view is simply that liberals are not to do anything to voice their displeasure over anything because that means conservatives might have to do something.
So what are people supposed to do? Just boycott silently? Why shouldn’t they speak out?
I think the point of Scott’s piece is not so much about the efficacy of those tactics in a vacuum but to wonder about their effectiveness in a world where all sides use those tactics constantly to police everything (this is where his analogy to MAD makes a lot of sense). So yes, feel free to boycott/protest and police people’s thoughts according to your preferences. Just understand that someone with different preferences has access to the same tactics and is just as willing to resort to them as you are.Report
I think Limbaugh’s shrinking market and vanishing advertisers suggest boycotts as protests actually work.Report
I’d say the Israeli Supreme Court’s calling a boycott treasonous (and worth punishing with the full force of the law) suggests that people are actually quite scared of boycotts.Report
To which I would then point out that part of what made/makes the GamerGate and Sad Puppies stuff fascinating is the degree to which it is reactionary forces adopting the tactics of social shaming and boycotts and using them against targets that they argue have used those same tactics against them.Report
@karl can you untangle your pronouns here? Who did what, and how does that counter Kim’s example?Report
Sorry, you are right that got convoluted.
My point wasn’t that boycotts/shaming tactics work, they clearly do when used properly. Scott’s point (as I understood it) was to wonder about a future when both the Left and the Right engage in escalating attacks in the same fight (be it gay marriage or ethics in gaming journalism) using those same shaming/boycott tactics.
You both mentioned instances where the boycotts worked (from the Left perspective) and I was just noting two where it could be argued that the Right succeeded in adopting those same tactics (and which coincidently there was much online discussion about how dare they from folks who are ok with those tactics when aimed at a target they approve of).Report
“can you untangle your pronouns here?”
It’s just the “Ron Paul cashes his Social Security checks” argument.Report
Or, perhaps, people are just getting tired of the same schtick. Limbaugh’s always been something of a one trick pony, I’m always surprised at how long that trick keeps people entertained.Report
I boycott Rush. I haven’t willingly listened to him since the third time I heard him call Hilary Clinton a feminazi, sometime back in the 1990’s, and everything I know of him and his show comes through media discussing him. But I remain so offended by that word, and his embrace of its offensiveness, that I refuse to listen to him. I also have purposely looked for other brands when I knew companies advertised on his show. I wrote two letters to companies that made stuff I like, advertised with him, and told them I liked their stuff but, no go because of Rush.
What’s interesting to me here is that until the Rush boycotts started happening, there was the wall of market putting corporations advertising at arms distance from their ads; they hire ad agencies, and those agencies purchased packages on media stations. The whole process added a layer of corporate review of ad placement, an awareness that when you sponsor a program, you’re taking on the veneer of that program and its goodwill amongst your customers. Yet this was obvious in the 1950s and ’60s.Report
So, any evidence Rush is suffering from the boycotts rather than just audience disinterest? Like his listener numbers are strong, but he’s unable to command the advertising rates he used to because big money advertisers won’t bid up the price?Report
There’s a lot of evidence for that very thing; he’s lost a lot of advertisers.
Here’s a piece from the Fluke controversy, which pushed the left to really go after his advertisers big time: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/73675.html
There’s a steady trickle of this kind of news; and as advertisers have declined, he’s lost stations willing to syndicate his show.
http://www.alternet.org/media/bam-rush-limbaugh-loses-4-radio-stations-3-weeksReport
Hrmm, a google of ‘Rush Limbaugh advertisers’ does showing an ongoing & concerted effort to influence his advertisers, so your point is probably valid (absent hard numbers from his producers, which I bet they are reluctant to share).Report
There is a valid question and concern there but most of Alexander’s critiques seem to be against the Left and criticizing the Left for doing things.
I don’t have a big bone to fight in the Hugo awards but Vox Day seems to have truly noxious politics and the commentariat seem to be actively trying to downplay how noxious Vox Day is in his politics.
So I am suspicious. I also think that the Twitter social justice fear is overblown and there has been real world effect but it still amounts to a handful of anecdotes over the Twitter sphere taking over the Democratic Party.Report
Good point, but I would say that it is because the Left is who typically uses those tactics, and it is only more recently (with stuff like GamerGate and Sad Puppies being the most prominent) that folks on the Right have adopted them and used them against the Left.Report
I think you underestimate the boycotting history of the religious right.
and that post, btw, is a very interesting read; really attaching moral obligation to boycotting companies that hold natural-law instead of Christian morals.Report
Good point zic. As I was typing originally, I started thinking of things like the FCC complaints about Janet Jackson’s nipple and Tipper Gore (ironically enough). So you are right, but it seems like up until recently the Left and Right had very different targets for when they would deploy these tactics.Report
The religious right tends to have phone books of “approved people” who they can buy from. It’s a defacto boycott on everyone else.Report
I make distinctions between two kinds of boycotts. One I like very much. One I dislike very much.
I am a fan of saying “I can’t believe that (Organization X) did this thing of which I disapprove. I will never buy a widget from them again!” That’s awesome. If Organization X sucks, hell yeah. Refuse to do business with them. Vote with your feet.
I very much dislike the whole “I can’t believe that (Organization X) did this thing of which I disapprove. I will call the people who advertise with (Organization X) and tell them that I will stop patronizing *THEM* if they patronize (Organization X)!”
It’s cool to refuse to watch (television show). It’s not cool to call up (corporation that advertises on (television show)) and threaten them in order to make them stop advertising.
The issue that you raise of having a whitelist of businesses is pretty much the first kind.Report
I think I’m totally cool with calling up advertisers of organization.
Totally cool with that. That’s also free speech; the right to criticize speech you don’t like. This particularly matters in a world where money is now considered free speech.Report
So you were down with the taking of “All American Muslim” off the air? With Gamergaters currently calling and writing Intel and yelling about Anita Sarkeesian?Report
I’d agree that it’s their free-speech right to make such calls and others to call them out for it.Report
We agree, and have never disagreed, that the second kind of boycott is covered by free speech.
Arguing that offensive television shows should be taken off of the air is covered by free speech. Calling up advertisers and threatening to never shop with them again if they don’t pull their ads from offensive television shows is covered by free speech.
Let me assure you, I am not calling for regulations preventing free speech when I ask about whether you’re totally cool with how special interest groups got All American Muslim off of the air.Report
Given Intel’s new discriminatory hiring policies as their way of apologizing for the Anita thing, I have a problem with seeing Gamergate as the big issue in what came out of that.Report
*I can’t believe that (Organization X) did this thing of which I disapprove. I will call the people who advertise with (Organization X) and tell them that I will stop patronizing *THEM* if they patronize (Organization X)!*
However, you didn’t have a problem with this during the Heroes 5/Starforce boycott.
More to the point, that is the reality of an internet-based economy. Penny Arcade (or whatever webcomic/website you choose) doesn’t really give a damn if you stop reading their comic over dickwolves. The only real way to affect a business such as this is to either boycott PAX (which only worked with Dickwolves because you got a large enough group of women and women gamer groups) or you call their advertisers and say “I’m not going to buy from you if you advertise on a site that does rape jokes.” Gabe doesn’t care about your opinions but he cares about his advertiser’s opinions.
This is the reality of a services-based economy where the services are often intangible. Maybe it is a bit more sneaky and a bit less of an “honest head-on” confrontation but this is the reality of our economy.Report
As I understand it, the Sad and Rabid puppies merely exploited a long-standing kink in the voting system to get their slate nominated. I can’t really blame them for noticing this.
Gamergate does not seem to be using left-wing tactics to me as it is an open counter-revolution against the changing nature of video games. I don’t really play games but I would be embarrassed to be associated with Gamergate if I did.Report
With Sad Puppies, the thing to note isn’t the voting rules issue, it’s Puppies response to the reactions of those invested in the Hugo status quo. When Gallo made that remark, the Puppies pulled the playbook and started organizing a boycott campaign against Gallo, and began demanding that Tor disavow her.Report
To be honest, the Sad Puppies failed. They’d have gone nowhere without the Rabids, who handily beat them whenever they competed. The Rabid Puppies won, mostly by getting in bed with “Ethics in Games Journalism” crowd.
The Sads were basically the front man, the saner, less objectionable face co-opted by Beale and the people he whistled up. (They like to claim they’re separate movements, who just happened to have coordinating icons created by the same artist. Like total coincidence, man).
As for the exploiting — *shrug*. I’m a gamer, and I know a rules lawyer when I see one. It’s called “being a dick” when you don’t adhere to house rules.Report
I’ve lost track of the number of boycotts the religious right is pulling in my neighborhood this week. (Rebbe X says you must buy brisket from Z, Rebbe J is a good friend of the car dealer, who goes to his synagogue, so you must buy cars from him. Never buy anything from that green grocer, he doesn’t kasher things correctly — according to X but not J…) My religion is not this complicated… I suppose that’s why they call it reform!Report
One of the biggest criticism of the Chuck Yarvin boycott is that Church Yarvin was going to give a talk on his day job rather than his political opinions. Chuch Yarvin wasn’t even supposed to speak about his neo-reactionary politics. It would be like conservatives demanding that a solar power specialist who also happened to be a transgendered rights activist from giving a speech about solar power. It is attempting to silence a person from not only speaking about his or her viewpoints but from speaking about anything at all because of unrelated opinions. This strikes me as a real attempt to silence people and goes beyond protesting. It is an attempt to enforce conformity by making sure that holders of unpopular opinions can not give public speeches about anything.Report
Church Yavin? He is his own Church, and worships himself?Report
“Chuck Yarvin boycott is that Church Yarvin was going to give a talk on his day job rather than his political opinions. ”
Yep, this is where I’m at too. The guy was going to talk about x. It has NOTHING to do with his blog about y. If you don’t like him because you think he’s a pig, don’t attend the presentation. And, for some reason, should he stray into talking about stuff off topic, the sponsors can reign him in.Report
@leeesq — I agree. Blocking him from speaking about software is a pretty big mistake. Not because I think his tech is so innocuous. Which, there is a way he ties his tech work into his politics — which is entirely goofy, but neoreation is entirely goofy and so…
But the point is, if he gets up and talks about tech and math, and mostly just tech and math, and if his results are good, then anyone can use those results. If his results are crap, well then, let us see that clearly.
The fact is, his tech work is pretty far out in loony field. The other fact is, I actually share many of his tech insights, with an interest in type theory and provable correctness and solid foundations for computation. The fact the ideas are coming from a man with terrible politics, well so what? Let’s see his math. Let’s see his tech. Let’s mock his staggeringly idiotic politics. But let him speak.Report
Is your opposition to the BDS movement based on anything more than “but I like the thing that they’re boycotting, disinvesting, and sanctioning”?Report
It’s suddenly treason not to buy stuff from “The Approved List” of people, you know. Even if you are WB Palestinian, and didn’t really have much of a say in being under Israeli law in the first place.Report
While I have been asked/told to refrain from buying from, for example, Chick-fil-A, I have never been told that I should buy from, for example, Subway and if I don’t then I am betraying The Cause.Report
Indeed. You’ve also not been held legally accountable for not buying from Israeli companies, nor been called treasonous for a country you are well on record for not wanting to be a part of anyway.
This is an issue for a considerable number of people right now, and they’re a lot poorer than Adelman.Report
I consider myself a Zionist and a firm believer in the Jewish state. But I also think that BDS has a right to do what they are doing. That was the whole point. No one is going to like or support every boycott.
The tactic is to say why BDS is wrong and Zionism is right, not to complain about boycotts in general.Report
It seems rather self-contradictory to be a firm believer in the Jewish state and then support treasonous actions, or even the ability to perform treasonous actions.
I’m more of the opinion that Israel should be boycotted until they can get a better Supreme Court. Taking legal action against “traitors” who won’t buy your private goods is a pretty blatant fascistic thing to do, innit?Report
Related: Woman refused a tattoo because the artist didn’t feel comfortable doing it. Outrage commences (link to the original at the linked site).
I know next to nothing about tattoo culture, but this seems a bit like demanding an artist paint a picture or make a sculpture he/she does not want to do.Report
And why would you want someone stabbing your neck with a needle thousands of times if they didn’t feel comfortable with it.Report
All he was doing, was enforcing a waiting and consideration period before embarking on such a potentially-life-altering course as a neck tattoo.
Luckily, for inconsequential things like guns and abortions, we understand that enforcing any waiting period at all would be an intolerable intrusion on the purchaser’s rights.Report
I had a client who had a giant neck tat. She had been a prostitute and her pimp made her get it. I think it said Champagne but frankly trying to read a big tat on someones neck is near impossible. Waiting periods and sobriety tests and a VR simulation of how the neck tat will look in 10 years should be required.Report
That was the tattooist’s explanation for his refusal – that there is a tattoo custom or tradition amongst ethical tattooists to not do neck tats, unless/until someone is already so tatted-up as to be considered “all-in” on tattoos and tattoo culture, since a neck tattoo can affect job prospects and social standing etc, and therefore someone’s entire life path.
Which strikes me as reasonable; but then I got to thinking about the kerfuffles whenever someone proposes waiting periods to obtain abortions or guns.
Seems to me that a small “are you sure?” waiting period isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world.Report
I don’t disagree but I think a big issue with are you sure waiting periods for abortion is that legislatures often require doctors to do stuff which is emotionally manipulative and state the plainly untrue.Report
Yes, but make it “the same day” if possible, for abortions. It is completely and utterly medically unethical to let someone decide to do that while drunk, anyway!Report
Well a tat is for life, but you can kick your kids out at 18. One is permanent the other a bit less so.Report
Well, there is a difference between a tattoo artist enforcing a waiting period, and government demanding the same by law.
@greginak
Also, re tattoos, they are not as permanent as they once were.Report
@oscar-gordon – true enough.
But I’m not sure “ethical” is the term people would apply to a gunseller or abortion doctor who said, “I’ll do it, if you come back in three days’ time”. Seems like people would try to make a court case out of it.
Maybe I’m wrong about that.Report
No, you aren’t. I imagine there would undoubtedly be someone who would drag either hypothetical into court, despite the lack of government interference in the decision to request a waiting period.Report
I doubt there would be a “wait three days” issue for a particular abortion doc. Where people gets antsy is when it’s the law. A doctor, for example, might make an exception where it is prudent and/or use his/her professional judgment.
I mean, there’d be some negative publicity, but for the most part the shortage of abortion providers would limit the degree to which pro-choice individuals would want to target docs that do it for not being sufficiently accommodating.
Doctors have a degree of flexibility. They often refuse to perform vasectomies or tubal ligations, for example, for childfree patients under a particular age or without a spouse’s notification or approval. Other physicians might suggest a week to think it over. Abortions are more urgent, for sure, but I don’t see any likely legal issue here.Report
@oscar-gordon
I got to thinking about the kerfuffles whenever someone proposes waiting periods to obtain abortions or guns.
Abortions are one of those things where a waiting period would be fine in *theory*, but is not actually fine in a universe where the religious right has managed to force abortion clinics to shutter all over the place, *and* keeps trying to reduce the amount of time allowed to get one.
I, as someone who is completely and utterly pro-choice, would actually be completely fine with someone walking into a local hospital one evening and being told she had to come back tomorrow for an abortion. Or, even better, having her call up and schedule an abortion a day in advance. I don’t think this is very *useful*, but I have no real problems with it. Hell, with the medical system working the way it is in this country, waiting just a *day* for an elective procedure is awesome…it takes me a month to schedule a doctor’s appointment if it’s not an emergency.
But I am not fine with making someone driving a hundred miles and fight her way through a screaming mob, be forced to be feed misinformation by her doctor, and then have to come back and do it the next day, all while a clock is ticking down after which she can’t legally get one.
I would gladly give up a ‘waiting period’ in exchange for ‘any hospitals can provide them without screaming protesters’ and ‘targeted laws no longer force clinics to close’. The pro-forced-birth side does not seem willing to negotiate with me, though.
For the record, I don’t have much problem with gun waiting periods, although I *also* rather doubt they accomplish anything. They seem to be based in a hypothetical universe where a) someone wants to kill someone right now, and b) they need to use a gun, and c) they don’t own a gun, and d) they want to buy a gun legally, and e) if they are forced to wait for a few days, this urge will pass.
This all seems…improbable. Yes, I’m sure it’s happened at least once…but I suspect there are ten times as many people who, when suddenly confronted with a threat for the first time in their life, needed a gun, and couldn’t get one immediately…and the person who is threatening them is the sort of person who already has a lot of guns.
I’m all in favor of well-reasoned gun control…but waiting periods aren’t that.Report
I think we are pretty much aligned here, @davidtc.
Also with regard to waiting for a firearm, I’d punch two big exceptions into it: people with carry permits, and people with protection orders. One group most likely already owns firearms, and the other can be argued to have an immediate cause for one (if the courts have decided that person X has demonstrated themselves to be such a threat that they need to keep away from person Y, then person Y should get an immediate pass for whatever legal form of personal protection they feel is appropriate for them).Report
In domestic violence cases, especially when the attacker has a lawyer, the best the victim can often get is a mutual protective order. In practice, your policy will result in more guns getting into the hands of abusers more quickly.Report
That’s a wrinkle I hadn’t considered, although I wonder how common it is & how many abusers who don’t already own firearms would legally be able to acquire one (a protection order would not be a pass with regard to prohibited status, just a pass on waiting periods & other bureaucratic delays).Report
Protective orders often require surrendering weapons. And unfortunately, mutual protective orders are all too common.Report
I’ll have to take your word for it, which would make it a non-starter for the most part.Report
I’m amazed at how many neck tattoos I see on campus alone these days. Mostly the little one on the back of the neck, so that it can be covered up by hair or a collar when on an interview, but there are still some that are on the side or behind the ear.Report
The neck is the new bicep, as far as tattoos go.
The other day my wife and I were selling jewelry at a town fair. This was a tech-rich town, whiter than white, and I was amazed at the number of people who were clearly in the upper levels of income (as O’Rourke put it, “they had the healthy glow of people without enough to do”) who were tatted up to MMA-fighter levels. It’s the kind of thing where you can imagine a history book two hundred years from now saying “American culture in the early 2000s saw a resurgence of the Primitive Ideal, and upper-class members would often affect the styles of lower-income and criminal classes to emulate what they saw as physical vigor and potency…”Report
Well, not just what @greginak said, but there are (during my drinking days I hung out with a tattooist) a lot of lines they won’t cross. The guy I spent time with would do nothing that even remotely smacked of racism. No La Raza ink, no N-word for African Americans, no woody woodpecker for white guys. Nothing misogynistic (in his estimation, which takes into account classic tattoo art.) He, along with the men and women at his shop were all very progressive politically, and anything like that would be the death of the shop and the reputations that they brought with them to work.Report
… woody woodpecker for white guys?Report
Take the wood and pecker then switch their order, then google. Often used as a symbol of white supremacists.Report
Jezebel article *Eyeroll*
Kelly Turnbull (Does Manly Guys Doing Manly Things and did Ugly Americans) explained why that article isn’t about ‘GENDER DISCRIMINATION!!!” but is rather an example of how to be a shitty customer.
Interestingly, a lot of the Jezebel commentators, both artists and recipients, ripped that article to shreds. One of the things that was interesting is a lot of the artists have a “No Necks/No Hands” policy.Report
Here’s some more from her about it and why the Jezebel article is written by a petulant narcissist. (my words, not hers. My view of Jezebel’s clickbait crap is on the same level of *eyeroll* as the League’s view of MRA sites is. As such, their stuff doesn’t upset me so much as get me to say “business as usual”.)
http://coelasquid.tumblr.com/post/121624028063/im-still-so-upset-by-that-whole-jezebel-tattooReport
“I don’t agree with all boycotts. I am quite critical of the BDS movement. But boycotts are really one of the few ways for people to cause change, real change. You show your moral and ethical disagreement by refusing to support a business, regime, or conference with your money. There seems to be a basic free speech and association right by saying “I am not supporting this business or regime because of practices X, Y, and Z and I don’t think other people should either” or saying “Conference X invited this crank because of X, Y, and Z to speak and I think that is dangerous even if he or she is speaking on apolitical matters.” Then you have a fight or debate in the public sphere.”
Huh? Boycotts are a tactic. A strategy. They are either a legitimate strategy or they are not. We might say that there are more legitimate strategies that ought to be exhausted first. But it is unclear here if you think that the BDS Movement is wrong to employ the strategy or if they’ve simply chosen a target you disagree with them about. Because if the rule is, “Boycotts for me but not for thee,” than you haven’t really said anything about the legitimacy of them.Report
“This is why many people on the left see conservatism as being nothing more than a maintenance of privilege. The view is simply that liberals are not to do anything to voice their displeasure over anything because that means conservatives might have to do something.”
The Lowes/American Muslim boycott that has already been mentioned is but one example where you could reverse the positions. I realize that League is often a big leftie echo chamber but trying to pretend that this is a left/right thing is delusional. The only difference between the two sides is what each side finds as a “just/fair” boycott as opposed to the ones that are “ignorant/evil”.Report
Well, I think we’re allowed to consider the reasons for a boycott when we criticize it. Which is to say, I believe that boycotts are valid political speech, and indeed they’ve certainly been regarded as such in the past. I also think that homophobes are shitty bigots. If a bunch of homophobes boycott a gay store, they are wrong, not on account of the boycott, but on account of their bigotry.
This seems a pretty unremarkable thing.
“Look at those dumbass hillbilly bigots boycotting that nice gay store. What a bunch of shitbirds.”
Nowadays there are two new tactics of political speech that concern people. The first is the social media outrage army, which by the way, is not limited to the left. The second is the calls to get some random nobody fired from their job for some small-ish public transgression. Again, plenty of this to go around.
(That said, speaking as an LGBT person, when folks on the right complain about losing their jobs, well, it’s hard to feel sorry for them. We’ve been losing our jobs in enormous numbers for decades. Welcome to the party. Feel the pain you’ve given, fuckers.)
In any event, I think people are beginning to see that these two tactics are kinda scorched-earth, and all sides are living with needless anxiety, and politics might be nicer if we all backed off a bit. So yeah.
But boycotts? Seems fair game. But that doesn’t diminish my right to criticize the reasons for the boycott. Why would it?Report
@veronica-d
But boycotts? Seems fair game. But that doesn’t diminish my right to criticize the reasons for the boycott. Why would it?
This is something the right does a lot….it confuses the *methods* and the *goals*.
Aka, ‘The left is in favor of boycotts, but look what happens when we boycott Lowes for showing Muslims as normal human beings! They complain! Hypocrites.’
That wasn’t what the complaint was about, dudes. It’s about the fact you explicitly just stated you have a problem with Muslims being shown on TV unless they’re bomb throwing terrorists…and Lowes thought it was a good idea to listen to you.
I’ve found myself noticing that a lot…the right seems to miss the basic fundamental reason the left disapproves of something, and as the right has become more pseudo-populist, has started taking the left’s tactics and crying ‘hypocrite’ when the left says ‘The thing you’re promoting still sucks’.
Now, this isn’t to say there aren’t people on left also that won’t pretend that some tactic is perfect and the moral high ground when *they’re* doing it, but horrible when the other side is doing it, and it’s fair to call those idiots out. The right is *really* bad at this…but there are prominent people on the left who screw this up, also.
Whenever the other side is doing something ‘outragous’, or my side is doing something they claim is outrageous’…I pretend the sides are flipped, and ask how I’d feel about the *tactics*. If it was my side being fillibustered, or my side protesting, or whatever. (And, yes, people will always have bias in complaining about the ref’s decisions, we get that in close cases, people give the benefit of the doubt to their side…but in politics, people often seem to be complaining about the basic rules, like ‘People shouldn’t be allowed to throw the football like that’.)
The Lowes thing is exceptionally funny because the backlash was also a boycott, and thus we had idiots on the right who had just finished making the case for a boycott that then turned around and pretended a counter-boycott was illegitimate, and we had people on the left, who had been making the case that boycotts were inappropriate, suddenly finding their own side doing one and having to scramble to rephrase their logic.
In reality, a boycott is always a valid tactic…but the right’s boycott was about Islamaphobic idiocy, and the left’s boycott was about a company *caving* to Islamaphobic idiocy. Both of the boycotts are ‘okay’ and ‘allowable’ or whatever, they are civil rights people are using…it’s just one was for a completely insane bigoted reason, and the other was not. And they should be judged on *that*.Report
Y’know, I thought about using a different boycott than the Lowes one that had been referenced earlier but then I thought:
1) Meh, that’d be more work.
2) It comfortably proves my point when people come in and say variants of my last point of “The only difference between the two sides is what each side finds as a “just/fair” boycott as opposed to the ones that are “ignorant/evil”.” While I admit that presenting it as a binary as well as stacking the example is an intellectually dishonest way of provoking predictable responses, sometimes it’s just better to take the easier way to illustrate “Case in Point…”Report