So you’re saying that the 1965-1970 Delano Grape Strike and subsequent 10-year supermarket grape boycotts were useless and didn’t cause any real change? Or the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
Had to look up Delano, but I’m not surprised to find that it was apparently not a boycott, but a larger organized, ongoing labor conflict. I knew about Montgomery (which in itself is a crazy sign of cultural imperialism, because I have no business knowing that), and the same applies.
You can set up a genuine boycott of something as part of a larger set of organized actions, particularly in a local conflict. You can’t rely on consumers worldwide spontaneously abandoning a global oligopoly as a way to enact any meaningful change. At most you’ll get a PR response. At most.
But the boycott is still an important part of the social movement, isn’t it? Even if, as in the Delano Grape Strike, it takes a decade or more to force change, with plenty of activists disappearing, arrested, tortured, or killed.
That’s a hugely disingenuous counterargument. It doesn’t so much move the goalposts as sets them on fire over a pile of explosives and puts them somewhere in low orbit.
To that question the genuine answer is “what the OP is proposing is not a boycott”, then.
None of these “don’t support them with your money” online liberal fantasies are boycotts by the standards you’re setting. If anything, going back to those examples to get a grasp on what an actual boycott looks like in the context of larger action only exposes to what degree this nonsense isn’t that.
So you’re saying that the 1965-1970 Delano Grape Strike and subsequent 10-year supermarket grape boycotts were useless and didn’t cause any real change? Or the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
Had to look up Delano, but I’m not surprised to find that it was apparently not a boycott, but a larger organized, ongoing labor conflict. I knew about Montgomery (which in itself is a crazy sign of cultural imperialism, because I have no business knowing that), and the same applies.
You can set up a genuine boycott of something as part of a larger set of organized actions, particularly in a local conflict. You can’t rely on consumers worldwide spontaneously abandoning a global oligopoly as a way to enact any meaningful change. At most you’ll get a PR response. At most.
But the boycott is still an important part of the social movement, isn’t it? Even if, as in the Delano Grape Strike, it takes a decade or more to force change, with plenty of activists disappearing, arrested, tortured, or killed.
That’s a hugely disingenuous counterargument. It doesn’t so much move the goalposts as sets them on fire over a pile of explosives and puts them somewhere in low orbit.
To that question the genuine answer is “what the OP is proposing is not a boycott”, then.
None of these “don’t support them with your money” online liberal fantasies are boycotts by the standards you’re setting. If anything, going back to those examples to get a grasp on what an actual boycott looks like in the context of larger action only exposes to what degree this nonsense isn’t that.