Black activists organize Facebook boycott demanding progressive censorship

Progressive companies are boycotting Facebook now because they say the social media platform isn’t progressive enough with its content censorship.

Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream is the latest, high profile company to join the boycott.

“We will pause all paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram in the US in support of the #StopHateForProfit campaign,” said the company via Twitter. “Facebook, Inc. must take the clear and unequivocal actions to stop its platform from being used to spread and amplify racism and hate.”

The campaign, led by Black, progressive, political activists, is asking companies to “pause” advertising on Facebook for the month of July.    

The organizers say that Facebook helps spread white nationalism.

Eddie Bauer, The North Face, Patagonia, REI, Mozilla, Upwork and about 100 smaller companies have joined the boycott so far.

Facebook, already under fire for restricting content, launched an independent oversight board with content decision-making authority in May. The board reads like a who’s who of progressive celebrity thinkers, including the former prime minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

Thorning-Schmidt is best known to Americans as the woman who took selfies with Barack Obama at the funeral for Nelson Mandela, as Michelle Obama sat by frostily.

“The boycott idea was launched June 17 by the #StopHateForProfit campaign, which includes the NAACP,  Anti-Defamation League, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense,” says USAToday.  

Color of Change and the NAACP are the lead organizers of the boycott.

Color of Change is a thoroughly progressive political organization with objectives that include “challenging anti-progressive Trump administration and state policies,” “dismantling right-wing and white nationalist infrastructure and support” and “targeting corporate enablers of anti-black policies and culture.”   

Targeting corporations is important to both Color of Change and the NAACP.  

The NAACP has a long history of shaking down businesses via boycotts. For example, in 2005 the Washington Times cited an NAACP program that sought “reparations” from large companies that had some historical tie to slavery.

As one expert says, the threat of boycott isn’t necessarily an economic threat, so much as a moral and public relations threat.

“Usually boycotts are effective not because they affect revenue or sales but because they affect reputation,’’ Brayden King, professor of Management at the Kellogg School of Management said. “So when a company is the target of a boycott, it’s not that consumers are refusing to buy the product that makes the boycott effective.”

The real objective is to get people to view the company negatively with the shareholders, stakeholders and the general public says King.

Progressives are increasingly engaged in a war with conservatives for corporate American advertising dollars. The Tucker Carlson show recently lost a spate of advertisers after the companies responded to the same black progressive activists cited above who were upset because Carlson says that white nationalism isn’t a real issue.   

The goal is to demonize white Americans, especially conservatives, and deny a platform to those who oppose the violent extremism of the progressive left and its ineffectual liberal allies.

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