Boycott, Starbucks

I guess we’ve just all collectively lost out minds, huh?

I recently saw a tweet of moral outrage over RuPaul’s Drag Race doing a sponsored branding post with coffee giant Starbucks. People were calling it immoral. They were disappointed about drag, an artform that is currently inherently subversive and political, apparently taking the side of… Of what?

Following boycott efforts from various sources over the past couple of months, fast-food coffee company Starbucks has lost billions of dollars. They’re cutting thousands of jobs in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. A decent chunk of these losses, as pointed out in The Arizona Republic by Laura Daniella Sepulveda, is the result of organized boycotts directed by Starbucks Workers United, the union quickly gaining steam amongst Starbucks workers. On the union’s press release page, there are no calls for a current boycott. There is not a call for a strike. So. If the union is currently not calling for a boycott, and therefore can’t be behind the continued one talked about online, what is?

Supposedly, Palestine.

In reality, mass hypnosis.

First Cup - Lawsuit Bonanza

What started the calls for boycott?

According to an article at the Cod Courier, “Calls to boycott Starbucks began following a legal dispute between the franchise and Starbucks Workers United … over the union’s pro-Palestinian social media posts. … (T)he corporation filed a litigation suit claiming trademark infringement. … In retaliation, Workers United countersued, defending their logo and title, while accusing Starbucks of defamation.”

So, what was the tweet? Well, as Ryan Grim reports in The Intercept, “The union’s post read ‘Solidarity with Palestine!’ and quote-tweeted an image of a bulldozer breaking through the fence encicling Gaza.” As the AP notes, the union says that was posted without authorization from leaders.

I want to take a moment to talk about an unfortunate conflation of events and celebrations. On October 7th, Palestinians did break down the fence. That is a powerful symbolic image for liberation. That same day, Hamas fighters committed a massacre. On that day, there were likely those who, for a few hours, only found images of one or the other. That likely colors your initial response. Afterwards, you have to deal with the other half. Then you have to account for Israel’s response. There were those who celebrated only one half of October 7, the part that signaled liberation, and less people, though unfortunately much louder ones, celebrating and defending the massacre part.

So when the union tweeted “Solidarity with Palestine” on October 9th with the image of the bulldozer and the fence, there’s the charitable read of supporting an event of freedom. Then there’s the uncharitable read which would be support for disturbing violence against civilians. I’m inclined to believe it’s the former. The parent organization SEIU, the AP reports, put out a statement saying, “all Israelis and Palestinians deserve safety, freedom from violence, and the opportunity to thrive.” The union later tweeted on October 20th, “The members of Starbucks Workers United stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. We are opposed to violence, and each death occurring as the result of violence is a tragedy. We absolutely condemn antisemitism and islmaphobia. … Furthermore, we condemn Starbucks for shamefully using this devastating humanitarian crisis to make false statements against out union and to vilify us.”

That tweet was put out two days after an article on Starbuck’s anti-union website, one.starbucks. On the 18th, Starbucks said they were moving forward with suing the union due to its “continue(d) use [of] our name, logo, and intellectual property.” They claim the union’s statements led to Starbucks workers, union or not, to be threatened.

So. Here’s the starbucks logo, and here’s the Starbucks Workers United logo. Is the use of the word Starbucks in the union’s name an infringement of trademark? I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know. But my instinct is… maybe. If the union had a different name, one without “Starbucks” prominently in the title, would they have sued the union? If they remove the “Starbucks” from their name and change their logo, would the union theoretically lose some of its bargaining power by losing recognition with the public? It seems to me like the battle is really over the use of that word more than anything to do with any statements or positions on Israel. But a very important segment of the population disagrees with me here.

Second Cup - TikTok

TikTok is that social media you hear everyone complain about and love because once you download it, you waste hours of your life scrolling through video after video, some of it insanely creative and some of it the most mindless definition of content you could think of. Copyright abuse is rampant with people posting films, shows, musicals, and other creator’s content without permission. I use the app quite a bit. I shouldn’t. My feed is mostly handsome men being handsome, cats being cats, and people who are great at singing being great at singing.

You might know TikTok for its fame of making people talk like insane babies. “Unalive” is maybe one of the worst introductions to contemporary pointless censorship and people just accepted this, rolled over, and started using that stupid instinct elsewhere on the internet. Hi guys, please stop it. Use actual words. “But the algorithm.” Okay, get on the company’s nerves until they change their shitty policies.

TikTok users love the Starbucks boycott. Earlier this very April, a user who I’m not going to name or show because they don’t have many followers so that feels icky even as a fellow small creator, talked about the boycott, trying to explain it and get other people to join. They got the date of the initial tweet incorrect. They claimed Howard Schultz still has control over the company despite, you know, no longer being the CEO of the company. Apparently they were conspiring with some Jewish people in finance to close down franchises that voted to unionize because of their support for Israel. Um, hi, that’s… not connected to reality.

User Fe(redacted) posted about the “truth” behind the Starbucks boycott. In her framing, she makes it seem like Starbucks disagrees with the union because they’re anti-Palestinian. Based on the statements made by the company, I don’t think that logically follows. Each of the statements they put out made sure to include the phrase “continuing violence” against innocents in both Israel and Gaza. To me, that sounds like a pretty middle of the road, “We’re not a fan of October 7th and we’re not a fan of innocent Palestinians dying either.” She contends that they’re suing the union primarily for the statement and the use of their name is secondary. When, in reality, there would likely be no suit without the use of the word “Starbucks.” It’s not ancillary to the suit. That is the suit, they’re just using the confusion amongst the public about who put out what statement as part of their legal reasoning that continued use of the word Starbucks will interfere with their brand.

User Nat(redacted) completely misrepresents the timeline and facts of the lawsuit. She claims the October 20th tweet from the union came before the October 18th lawsuit. That’s not how time works. The letter she uses in her own video does refer to a statement by the union! That statement, explicitly referenced in the letter, is the October 9th tweet. Her TikTok is lying.

There are a bunch of TikToks citing Starbucks’s treatment of unions, but… wouldn’t that boycott only make sense when the union is calling for one? The boycott and the strike is a tool of the laborer. If you take that option away from them, they lose bargaining power. There are TikToks talking about how even if Starbucks puts out anti-Israel statements, the boycott wouldn’t end, and that shows that they have no interest in what boycotts are for. Boycotts are supposed to cause change. If you say it won’t end no matter what, you leave no incentive to capitulate to you. Why are you taking away your own power?

According to Lucas Frau, for the month before the article, TikTok videos used #boycottstarbucks 5000 times with 42 million views. According to this tweet, one of their buildings was chalked with messages claiming Starbucks is killing people in Palestine. What evidence do they have? None. Because it’s not happening.

According to this Times article, which links to a TikTok of the event, people in NYC chanted “Starbucks Starbucks you can’t hide, you make drinks for genocide.” And that would only make sense if Starbucks had any investments in Israel. It does not. Do they give freebies to the IDF? No, they don’t do business in Israel. So what does that mean? Nothing. It means nothing. It’s a lie. Why are people doing this instead of focusing on actual boycott targets that would maybe make an actual difference? When people point out that it’s not on the BDS list, they roll their eyes and claim BDS isn’t the end all be all of the movement. They’ve decided to aim their ire at this company instead of one that does business with Israel. And they don’t want to be told that their mass movement is even a little unconnected to reality.

Here’s a somewhat popular twitter thread attempting to cancel popular blind tiktoker and author Paul Castle. Because not only must the boycott be accepted, to not know of it or to disagree or to associate with Starbucks in anyway has become the moral equivalent of cheering on the murder of Palestinian civilians. So here’s a quick reminder that most people aren’t on social media. Even fewer are actively spending a lot of time on it, and even fewer are exposed to your corner of the internet. That’s still true for influencers. Not everyone is aware of what you’ve seen despite how loud people are on your feed about it. Back to the thread. Ha! Imagine using threads. No, the tweet. Notice how the poster’s follow up immediately makes a joke at the expense of Paul’s blindness. You could pass this off as a pre-2010s joke. A bit malicious but an attempt at humor. Ableist, yes. Well, in their replies to someone being confused about the boycott given that it still isn’t on the BDS list, this poster said, “Does it fucking matter if it’s not on the list? Starbucks has been one of the most notorious boycott targets and people have explained why multiple times.” Please note the explanations are inventions made to deflect from the reality that it’s not an effective target if your cause is supporting Palestinians. When they were told there was no need to be rude, they said, “That’s just how I talk. Sorry if it came off as snippy.” Now you may recognize that apology style. It’s the style of all people who make cruel jokes. It’s the apology of, “I’m sorry if you got offended. I did nothing wrong.” Combine that with the joke about Paul’s blindness, and it’s clear that this specific person doesn’t care about the cause. This is just an excuse to throw their anger and cruelty out at the world and then throw up a self-righteous wall to deflect from criticism. So here’s a little wake-up call: No. That is not just how you talk. It is a choice. You are choosing to be an asshole. And you can just as easily choose not to be. It’s along the same type of excuse as people who say they’re “just being real” when they throw out rude comments. Your need to express cruelty is not the most important thing, even if you then give a cheeky grin, curtsy, and pretend it’s in the name of “honesty.”

Anyway. Back to BDS…

Third Cup - BDS DSA

Here’s a fun thing to ask yourself: Do the Democratic Socialists of America believe there is such a thing as an Israeli civilian? My instinct is to say yes. I want to support DSA as we agree on a lot of things and I want there to be a popular, strong organization for the left in my country. I truly do think they aren’t for the deaths of civilians on October 7th.

On their platform, DSA opposes sanctions as part of their anti-war position. Further down on their platform, they say, “Stop using economic and financial sanctions to punish other countries… End all broad-based sanctions that are designed to punish entire populations, violently coerce foreign governments, and instigate regime change.”

The Metro DC chapter of DSA calls sanctions a violent weapon of war and cite numbers of people apparently killed by sanctions. On their post about sanctions, they say, “sanctions inflict suffering on civilian populations that have nothing to do with the actions of their government…”

The DSA platform also supports BDS - the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, an international movement aimed at helping achieve Palestinian liberation.

I know this is going to shock you, but the BDS website reads, “The BDS movement calls for sanctions against Israel.” Apparently they mean each part of their name. Who would’ve guessed.

So here’s a question. If sanctions are an act of war that harm civilians, and DSA supports BDS without any reservations stated in their platform, then one of two things must be true: Either 1) they support the potential harm to Israeli civilians they say sanctions inevitably bring or 2) they believe there are no Israeli civilians. Which is it? And if sanctions are an act of war, does DSA want the US to engage in a cold, economic war with Israel? If you’re one of those, “They’re all settlers and conscription is mandatory so every Israeli is a valid target,” then, hi, you’re evil. Two, what do you call Israeli children?

The view that there are no civilians is that taken by a lot of users of the Deprogram subreddit, one of those dirtbag leftist podcasts that enjoy the idea of hell and eternal suffering for their enemies because they’re bloodthirsty sadists. Host of the show JT Chapman, known as Second Thought, tweeted on Oct. 7th using scare quotes around atrocities… on a day covered with reports of civilian deaths. That’s actually the same sort of response that BDS put out on October 7, putting scare quotes around “violence.” The idea is that supporting Palestinian liberation and being against the destruction of Palestine necessitates supporting the harm done against Israeli civilians on October 7th. I’m not saying BDS supports Hamas. I do not think that. I think that post of theirs is idiotic and made without a singular thought for how it would reflect on them and I think the online left as a whole needs a come to Jesus moments about optics and empathy. A poster on that Deprogram subreddit linked to an article on Electronic Intifada which defended October 7 and called it a “spectacular moment” where “brave Palestinian fighters overtook Israeli colonies built on their ancestral villages.” The article talks about attacking watchtowers and fences separately, so the bravery is about the mass murder.

What’s insanely frustrating to me here is that these are unforced errors. When I talked about optics in a previous video, someone claimed leftists shouldn’t care about that. But that’s just a rejection of how politics work. You HAVE to care about how people see you and your movement. You have to think about the statements you’re going to make and how they’re going to play to the masses that you have to convince in order to win. “Hi, the images you’re seeing of dead civilians are fine actually,” is a bad message. “There are no Israeli civilians” is a psychotic message. The proper response to October 7th was to morn the lives lost, to contextualize the events by shining light on the suffering of the Palestinian people, to condemn Hamas, and to condemn Israel’s response that came after.

And it’s not like protestors are unaware of optics. Look at the city councils making statements on Palestine. Like land acknowledgements, they don’t do anything. A small or mid-sized city in the US passing a statement on foreign policy doesn’t have any impact on the real world… outside of building a narrative. Getting these statements creates a rising sense of support for the movement. City councils, too, are about as local as you can get in government. Getting statements from them feels like the bubbling of a grassroots campaign. While people might roll their eyes at it, the thoughts behind it, the need for narrative building, is what politics is all about. That’s partially why every influencer and person of popularity is expected to make a statement on every issue, a thing I think is insane and stupid and you should stop harassing people over. If you get those statements, though, it increases the seeming popularity of whatever cause you’re supporting.

So what does this have to do with Starbucks? Well, again, Starbucks is not on the BDS list. It doesn’t do business with Israel. Because the boycott isn’t really based in reality, the optics aren’t great. But! The attempt at optics is important to explaining the movement.

Popular TikToker Your(redacted) has a video going over the effects of recent boycotts on Starbucks. He makes a false claim in the video that Starbucks “wants to support Israel” when there aren’t really indications of that. For all intents and purposes, the company really just seems like they want nothing to do with the conflict, Israel, or Palestine. After celebrating the change in data over the past couple of months, he says that people were worried the boycott wasn’t working until then. But then the data started to change.

“The boycott is working.” That is an important narrative. In order to sustain a movement, you need victories. Otherwise it’s easy to lose motivation. As Marley Hamil wrote in The Courier, the boycott effecting Starbucks’s bottom line is good optically for the concept of boycotts and for anti-capitalist leftist instincts. It shows that boycotts work. Not only that, if you combine boycotts for labor reasons with political or moral reasons, you have a higher chance of succeeding. This is great for the morale or certain leftist elements. As this Daily Tar Heel article seems to argue, it shows how late-stage capitalism can be fought. And, theoretically, it shows how social media can be useful for creating narratives loosely connected to reality and how to use those to attack your opponenets. Who cares about whether or not the union or the leading activist group for Palestinian-based boycotts want you to do this?

And I think that focus on the emotional layer of the boycott is what stands between those who support BDS and think the Starbucks boycott is good and those who support BDS while thinking the Starbucks boycott is an unhelpful, undisciplined distraction. After all, what is the goal? To bankrupt the company? To get them to put out a statement? They already don’t do business in Israel. Do you want to cause actual change or do you want the performance of attempting change while really just yelling at people online? Does the narrative of a popular boycott matter more than the negative optics of that boycott being based on vibes instead of reality?

Do negative optics matter at all?

Fourth Cup - Anti-Semitism

A synagogue in Pennsylvania put an extra sign on their normal sign that said, “Our Community Stands with Israel.” Someone spray painted a swastika on that sign. Now, it’s easy, if you have a heart and a brain, to come to the conclusion that painting a swastika on the property of a Jewish place of worship, or any Jewish place, or pretty much anywhere, but especially at a synagogue is anti-semetic. But sometimes you don’t want to take the easy road. For instance, you could be legendary poster and author Malcolm Harris. He responded to the event by tweeting, “Wild that Israel’s genocide has literally reversed the meaning of a swastika on a synagogue, from a Nazi threat to a condemnation of genocide.” He suggested it would have been more effective if it was painted in blue so as to share a color with the Israeli flag. “Look, I don’t make Nazi comparisons like that, I don’t hold ‘Israeli Flag = Swastika” signs. But that we can’t look at this today and be sure of what it’s supposed to mean is a sign of the incomprehensible damage Israel has done in the last months.”

Now. We could give Harris’s thought process some consideration, but no. I refuse. You do not need to bend over backwards to read Nazi symbology charitably. The swastika is not anti-Israel imagery. It’s anti-Semetic imagery. “You’re bad Jews, so you get tagged with a symbol famous for its use in your attempted annihilation.” Sorry, Malcolm, but you’re defending bigotry here.

I think the instinct with Harris’s defense of Nazi imagery is part of the instinct behind the members and defenders of the dirtbag left in general. Remember when they used the events in Palestine and Noah Schnapp’s Zionism to hurl homophobia his way? Suddenly it was fine to call him the f-slur, sex shame him with the idea that being a gay man is embarrassing, and wish violent cruelty on him. He became a bad gay, and being a bad gay meant he was worthy of subjection to bigotry. Think of the amount of people who have decided it’s fine and edgy to use the r-slur against opponents. But… someone who isn’t homophobic wouldn’t suddenly deploy homophobia because they get the chance to be supported for using it against the “right people.” Non-anti-semetic anti-Zionists aren’t using the swastika. Nazis are. But they know their bigotry is shameful. What they’ve found is suddenly a political moment where they can deploy their inner bigortries and get ~~some~~ people to applaud them for it… and pretend that they’re on the left. It’s partially this whole “everything is just economics” thing. If you pretend that’s the only measure of leftism, you can be as socially reactionary as you want and still get called a leftist. China’s government is sexist and homophobic. A handful of leftists like to pretend they’re amazing. Dirtbag leftists don’t care about Palestine because they don’t care about anything. They just want to be cruel to people.

Take that person who used the Starbucks boycott to make fun of someone’s blindness and then desperately defended their cruelness as just “how they talk.” In that case, the boycott is an excuse, something to hijack and use to mask one’s cruelty.

Some people have taken the anti-semetic tropes of Jews secretly controlling the world and simply replaced the word Jews with the word Zionists. When the Houthis claimed they were randomly attacking civilians in the Red Sea because of Israel’s violent actions, some leftists uncritically accepted that idea. When people pointed out the Houthi slogan literally includes the words “A curse upon the Jews,” some would say, “Well of course they’re anti-semetic. All they know is Israel,” ignoring Yemen’s recent anti-semetic past. Are the Houthis heroes fighting against imperialism? No. They’re murderous pirates killing their own people who wanted to attack civilian ships while pretending to have a morally sound reason in order to get positive press and increasing international support.

Why do people support the Houthis? Is it a kneejerk reaction to support violence as long as it claims to be anti-West? Well, partially. Is it support for Palestinians misguidedly leading people to support murderous theocrats? Partially. Is it anti-semitism? For some people. I think a lot of it can come down to a feeling of helplessness about the event. When you feel as if there’s not much you can do to change things, in order to feel in control, to fight off the dread of nihilism, you might start to believe that “Something has to be done. This is something, so it must be done, and it must be good.”

So you support pirates who murder gay people for being gay. You support a boycott that has no effect on the violence that’s rightfully filling you with despair. When people question your protest methods, you claim you’re bringing attention to an issue… that’s dominated the news cycle, politics, and social media ever since October 7th. You ignore statements on optics because that would restrict the things you can do, and that would allow the nihilism and helplessness start to seep back in. When people say, “You should not kill yourself to bring attention to an issue. You can do more alive. The movements you support need you alive,” that becomes an attack.

Fifth Cup - So… What Do?

Well. First, you stay alive so you can do your best to see your political projects come to fruition and so that the people who love you can continue to enjoy the light of having you in their lives. If you want to boycott, boycott companies on the actual BDS list. Don’t start harassing people for not following you in your boycott. I haven’t eaten Chik fil a in years. I refuse to spend money there. Me being a dick to anyone else wouldn’t accomplish anything. Don’t make anti-semetic posts or defend swastikas. Don’t harass random Jewish people. Stop getting your information from TikTok or any social media for that matter. Call your representatives. Heck, join DSA. Lord knows they need the members. But also ask them about that contradiction they have on sanctions.

Am I saying the Starbucks boycotts are pointless? Yes. Are they bad? Maybe. The instincts driving them aren’t though. You want to improve the world. That’s a good thing. You want to support labor. That’s a great thing… Well so maybe hold off on joining DSA for now in that case.

Now here’s the thing: I fully believe the vast majority of people who support this boycott and other actions are truly in it for the benefit of the Palestinian people. There is despair at watching innocents die. There should be. But the movement is being directed in a way that is a waste of energy. Support is thrown at people who are actively using the support to launder their bigotry and cruelty, grifters who do not care about the actual plight of innocents but rather just want internet points to be assholes without judgement. In those instances, those people have to be cast out. PSL, Jackson Hinkle, TikTokers who actively and purposefully lie to you like the poster who lied about the timeline of events, people who use pictures of Syrian civilians harmed by Assad and pretend they’re pictures of Palestinian suffering, people who use this as an excuse to be homophobic, to make fun of someone’s blindness, all of them have to be thrown away and disavowed. Optics actually matter, and when movements are taken by people who are actively using them to be cruel, that hurts the movements. Dirtbaggery is doomed to fail. Populism, likewise, is doomed to fail or, otherwise, destroy the concept of liberal democracy and despite what accelerationists might tel youl, that destruction is not going to result in a socialist America and it certainly won’t result in a communist one.

And also. Despite what TikTok may tell you, despite what some people in my comments or on twitter might tell you, voting for the Democrats is the morally correct thing to do in 2024. The two parties are not the same. Trump is not going to be better on Palestine. Biden has called for a ceasefire. Alongside that, a GOP victory is going to vastly harm people at home as well as abroad. Speaker Johnson is pro-conversion therapy. Trump appointed judges have twisted the law and what counts as medicine to defend conversion therapy. The GOP is vehemently anti-trans. Their stances on abortion, contraception, the right to privacy, censorship, public schooling… A Trump presidency will continue to fill the judiciary with staunch conservatives who will serve long terms that will have long reaching effects that people will blame democrats for. There is no third party or independent candidate that has the ability to win. The public isn’t going to vote for PSL, and they shouldn’t. They’re likewise not going to vote for Cornel West especially since his media game has fallen off spectacularly since he announced and the news cycle finished making fun of him. The libertarians deserve to lose every race they run in. The Green Party looks poised to run toxic idiot Jill Stein. RFK Jr is an anti-vax conspiracy theorist. Sorry. It’s Biden or Trump. If you want there to be more options in the future, you have to have better candidates with more money and better infrastructure. How do you do that?

Well. You run for office. You support campaigns of the people closest to your beliefs in every race you have the chance to where they can win. If they can’t win and there is an option who can who is also closer to you than others, vote for them instead. You pay attention to local races and you go hard in the primaries. You build coalitions. You talk to the people in your life. You make friends. You go to events. You lobby for judicial appointments of scholars who most align with your political philosophies, and you get them in there young so they can stay in their positions for a long time. The revolution is not coming. There is no rapture. I’m sorry. If democracy ends, facism, not socialism is going to replace it. And that isn’t going to result in a communist utopia. It’ll just be suffering for a long time. I hope you are to the left of me, and I hope one day I get to vote for you for president. I would like a world that is better than I am. Best of luck to you. Best of luck to us all. Best of luck to the world.