It's Time to Boycott

General Discussion Introductions
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Our side lost this battle but the war is still on. We should boycott any business who donated to any organization which conflicts with our values (medicare for all, pro-science, anti-religion). Yes, I know that means workers are going to be put out of jobs but if we keep feeding the beast we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. We gotta hit em where it hurts.

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Let’s start a list!

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Ok, Here’s a start. Lets boycott the below people/businesses and anyone who does business with them. If you need help finding this information wikipedia is a good place to start.

  1. Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, X (FKA Twitter)) Elon Musk - Wikipedia
  2. Joe Rogan & his Podcast
  3. UFC - employs Rogan and partially owned by Dana White
  4. Anything Dana White is involved in.
  5. Tom Brady
  6. WWE - The McMahons are all Trump Supporters
  7. NewsCorp & any of its subsidiaries. News Corporation - Wikipedia
  8. Anything Rupert Murdoch or the Murdoch family are involved with.
  9. Koch, Inc and subsidiaries - Owned by the Koch Brothers. Koch, Inc. - Wikipedia

Let’s add more! Again, I’m not insensitive to the fact that lost revenue means people will be fired but if we keep feeding the beast we might as well stay home on future election days…

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There is only so far I am willing to go in hurting myself in order to remove a good or service from my life. However, my own list, for now, includes, Amazon and anything Bezos works on. I don’t know how much Bezos supports Trump, and some would say he’s more of a tacit non-opponent. I stopped my Washington Post subscription a few months ago in response to Lewis as the head of it (Lewis is a former Murdoch editor and the concern is that his hiring signals that Bezos will ruin the Washington Post’s integrity.) It is possible to move somewhat away from amazon.com but it is harder for some of us. I am trying now to use other sites (such as Sears.com, ebay and walmart.com) for some items. For viewing activity, there are other places to rent videos such as youtube.com

I got rid of my Tesla (in favor of a competing used EV) about 9 months ago due to Musk’s duplicity and shift to the hard right. There are plenty of new EVs now that are somewhat competitive in quality and price with a Tesla. However, the process of buying and selling vehicles is costly, and there are almost no EVs that have been selling as long as Teslas, so the used markets are difficult. All of this for me added up to a loss on the elective transaction, and significant harm to my personal finances. So, this brings home that these decisions are personal for each of us, and there are going to be times when someone onboard with drawing these lines does decide not to immediately move away from the Trump-supporting good or service that they have.

I got rid of my AT&T cell phone about 4 years ago when it came out that AT&T had played a significant role in supporting the OAN tv network. They tried to spin it otherwise, but my understanding remains that they were involved. So far as I am concerned, that is a significant black mark on their corporate record.

I am not convinced that it will do any good to boycott this or that, but maybe in the end it is not just about whether it does any good, but gives me slightly more peace-of-mind. I can report that since I got rid of my Tesla I am less happy about my car situation but more comfortable that a wealthy billionaire is no longer getting away with renting nearly as much space in my thoughts. I compare this Tesla move on my part somewhat to folks choosing not to drive Ford due to Henry Ford’s anti-semitism. Now that Elon is so intensely in bed with Trump, perhaps it can also be compared to refusing to own German vehicles or other goods. Trump has not committed anything as awful as Hitler yet, but he certainly is (or seems to be) an enemy of the rule of the law.

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I understand everyone has a different situation and I’m not saying everyone can sacrifice the same way. But the concept is very simple. We need to stop feeding the beasts that are killing us BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY! We need to go Malcolm X on their asses! If we’re not willing to do what is necessary we’re wasting our time. I’m tired of losing and I’m PISSED OFF. When people get pissed off they’re willing to do whatever is necessary to fix it.

No slave revolt has succeeded without great pain. Make no mistake, we are economic slaves on the American Plantation.

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Cults are always about labor.

(See Daniella Mestyanek Young, The Knitting Cult Lady on YouTube)

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I really like all of her videos that you put links to! (I’m going to subscribe to her now before I forget, thanks for the reminder. :blush:)

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Is there a way TYT could get behind this and help us organize a national boycott? If we don’t stop feeding the beast it’ll never stop killing us.
If we can’t do it nationally we should organize state by state.

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Come to the next Operation Hope Town Hall and bring it up.

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Oh my God, this is beyond horrible and terrifying!

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Where and when is the town hall?

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They’re on Zoom, they’re on most Wednesdays at 7:30 CST. You totally should go! There’s one next Wednesday the 20th. I know @karaeastman usually puts a link in the discussions to sign up and you can get on an email list. @mggbwmn8 is also a great resource. :smiling_face:

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I work during those times.

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That sucks!

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We’re a team though…maybe someone who can make it should bring it up. This is something we have to do. We can’t keep feeding the beast.

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I’m still skeptical that this would have much impact (and many of us are probably already boycotting some of the most Trump-aligned businesses, but to add a nomination to the list, I think we should debate if Bezos’s businesses should be on the list. This would be one of the hardest (of those named so far) for most of us to boycott.

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I updated my original post to read “any organization with conflicts with our values”

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There is a boycott (or related) type action that I want to spell out, as I do not think it will be mentioned by anyone else (ever?):

A few years ago I did some research on equity tickers (stocks) that platformed such right-wing pundits as Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and the others. I can’t seem to readily find my notes, but, from memory, the basics were:

  • iHeartMedia (was this just a re-constituted ClearChannel?)
  • AT&T (they had helped the development of right-wing OAN news, though they tried ever-so-corporate-hard to publicize some distance for themselves).
  • I think there is a German insurance company of some sort that shows up as a major investor?
  • Fox and Newscorp (two different but related tickers)
    there were probably a few others.
  • At the time I did not include Spotify, but I think they should be there now.
  • one or more of the Liberty Media tickers (relating to Trump-supporter major billionaire John Malone). The exact corporate relationships were in flux and hard to track down, but they involved past ownership or involvement in ClearChannel, and some recent activity around CNN and perhaps iHeart Media. I don’t know if this one would still hold, I’d have to research Mr. Malone’s present stances.

These ticker lists are difficult judgment calls. For example, at this point, I’m sure Spotify and iHeartMedia and other media providers platform many good podcasts and shows which enrich our lives greatly. But, if they are simply going to platform the spreading of deadly disinformation, and get so many people killed, without saying or doing anything about it, then I think responsible evaluators should be able to define what we expect from them and measure if they repair their stances. I do not advocate for engaging in vindictive angry permanent boycotts to the point of trying to ruin companies. I suggest a much more carefully delimited campaign of defining what we want, making those demands reasonable, and when it is provided, then the boycott be fully lifted, and the improvement publicized.

But to take this a step further, the idea was not just to boycott these companies and their stock tickers, but to boycott mutual funds which do not offer the ability to filter out (via ESG or some-such) equity tickers of media companies which platform these sources of disinformation. I think most ESG systems do not properly screen out media companies which platform deadly disinformation. I defined the most deadly disinformation, at the time, as:

  • Covid vaccine disinformation
  • Climate emergency disinformation
  • 2020 election results disinformation

If a mutual fund company, or an investable index company, fails to allow investors to exclude those companies most strongly and clearly involved in platforming the most deadly forms of disinformation, then we should advocate for pulling our savings from those funds and invest only in funds where the ESG filters are calibrated to allow for appropriate exclusions.

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This page explores these ideas and others. But I’m not sure if you have to be logged in to github to view it. If so I"ll try to paste the text.

Holding Companies Accountable For Their Indirect And Direct Financing Of Deadly Disinformation
This page is maintained by activists seeking to reduce corporate financing of deadly disinformation.
This page was first set up in November of 2021