My reaction to people trying to shut down the Royal Vauxhall Tavern for showing Eurovision a few weeks ago:
Stop telling other people what they need to boycott. You boycott what you like, but don’t make other people feel bad when there are 100s of things you’re not boycotting.
When you have successfully cut out all *Mars*, *Starbucks* and *Nestle* products for their child slavery (last year) and negative impact on people’s access to clean drinking water, cut out anything with *palm oil* for its continuing damage to the orangutan habitat, cut out *Lego* for its sexist gendered stereotypes, supporting a Holocaust set and its marketing partnership with environment-destroying *Shell* and successfully avoided all cloud software exported from Israel and Russia including *eToro*, *Fiverr*, *Babylon*, *MyHeritage*, *Wix*, *Viber*, *FaceApp* and *Groupon*,
When you have stopped using *Airbnb*, *booking(.)com* and *Expedia* for offering illegal rentals from Israeli people on stolen Palestinian soil, stopped using *Amazon* and *Google* for providing cloud software and servers to the Israeli government throughout the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and tax avoidance, avoided *AXA* banking/insurance for its lending of money to Israeli banks and government while it carpet bombed Palestine and *Barclays bank* for its 1 million investment in arms for Israel,
When you have cut out *McDonald’s, Burger King, Papa John’s and Pizza Hut* for supporting the Israeli-Palestinian apartheid and donating to the Israeli army, *Coca-Cola* for operating on land stolen from Palestinians, *coconuts* that were picked using cruelty to monkeys, *ecover* for testing products on animals,
When you have cut out *JCB and Volvo* for providing the means to knock down Palestinian homes to Israeli land thieves, *puma* for sponsoring Israel’s participation in football while their government carpet bombed innocent Palestinian civilians, *Siemens* for providing power to Israel’s settlements on land stolen from Palestine,
when you have cut out *Wendy’s* for violations of slavery acts in 2022, and *Chick-fil-A* for their contributions to a “charity” that lobbies for the death penalty for LGBTQIA+ people in Uganda, and avoided *Lush* and *the National Lottery* for their contributions to the LGB Alliance and boycotted all *Harry Potter* products, *Monty Python* entertainment, *Ricky Gervais* media and avoided the *IT Crowd* and *Father Ted* because of their authors’ vocal opposition to trans rights in the UK
when you have avoided Quinoa because consuming it in the Western world is making it too pricey for the people for whom it is a staple, avoided bananas and peaches because their farming in the third world often consumes a lot of water and makes water too expensive for locals and avoided mineral water for its contribution to plastic waste
Then, and only then, can you come and ask me or anyone else not to watch a TV show which has no real impact on Israel and only provides a token of impact on international affairs. If you’re not boycotting all of these things then take a long hard look at yourself before you judge what other people are boycotting. You go boycott what you want to boycott. That’s fine, but stop making other people feel bad when you’re just as bad.