On July 19th, Ben & Jerry’s have announced that they would stop selling ice cream in the contested territories of Israel. The product is still available everywhere else in the country allowing residents to boycott it. The move is designed to … yes, well, what actually? It is designed to signal a purpose, a virtue, a moral. Ben & Jerry’s don’t just see themselves as morally superior to Israel, but also to Brazil (homophobic), Europe (xenophobic) and, most of all, America (all of it). Yet, even the kaleidoscope of madness that is their (activist) company website would not cause concern if they were just a wayward little business. They are, however, a node in the cobweb of the emerging ‘woke capitalism’ and a front-runner at that.
Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis stands up against the politisation of our major corporations and aims right at Unilever, the British-Dutch parent company. It is one step of many to reverse a larger trend. Fanatic companies everywhere pressure profit-oriented businesses into activism as well. More and more big brands feign an interest in all kind of left-wing politics. The climate is never cool enough, hate is never controlled well, police is never soft enough and prison times are never too short. Unless you bear the consequences and side effects of the agenda points, you can demand ever more and ever harder policies. The brunt will be borne by smaller businesses.
Ben & Jerry’s also donate to United4Rescue, the activist group operating the “refugee rescue ships” Sea-Eye 4 and Sea-Watch 4. They team up with organizations like ‘Science Based Targets Initiative’ that certify carbon emissions which will eventually establish a red-tape web strangling our economy. And this is the real danger. What looks liked an early hippie idea is likely to sweep away our prosperity if we don’t wake up to it.
[The sources are, as always, in the Youtube description box.]
Goldstein 