On Boycotts, General Strikes, and Misplaced Efforts

and why 'feel good' actions often do more harm than good

It’s been all over my FB feed for at least two weeks now, a call for a “one-day economic strike” this Friday, February 28th. And for at least two weeks now, I’ve been groaning and rolling my eyes every time it comes across my feed, especially if it’s being shared by someone I care for and/or respect. But I also know that rolling my eyes not only does nothing to help, instead it makes me come off as somewhat as an asshole, which is something that I try to go out of my way to avoid. So here is my attempt to channel my groaning-and-eye-rolling energy into an actual coherent response/explanation that will hopefully help a few folks understand why I’m groaning so much about it in the first place.

First off, I should elaborate a bit on the various permutations of what I see being shared around social media. There’s the basic one, which just calls to not buy anything for one day, the 28th. Some of these specify online purchases only, some specify that you should only buy from “mom and pop”, others state that you should not buy anything, period. Then there’s a more detailed version that calls for a boycott of a different company/website (Nestlé, Amazon, Walmart, etc) for a week at a time over the coming months, and then there’s one with a whole lot of unnecessary capital letters scattered throughout that randomly mentions historian Heather Cox Richardson’s name several times, suggesting that she is involved somewhat. That one has gotten enough traction that Richardson herself made it clear here on Substack the other day that she has nothing to do with it and has not endorsed anything.

All clipped from my FB feed

But here’s the thing. No matter which version of this one chooses to implement, the bottom line is that this will have absolutely no meaningful effect. Not only will it be ineffective, I would argue that these actions do much more harm than good in the long run. Which is a statement that in my experience of the past two weeks on social media has shown to generate a whole lot of defensiveness and pushback. And so I will break it down for you to the best of my ability.

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Part 1: Boycotts

First, let’s start with boycotts as a whole, and the most important and simple truth about them. Ready? Most consumer boycotts are ineffective. Let me repeat that: most consumer boycotts are ineffective.

Now, before you come at me with your “gotcha”, note that I said most. Yes, there is an exception here and there. There are always exceptions, but I’m talking about the rule. For example, people have been boycotting Nestlé for various reasons (of which all are worthy of outrage to be clear) for literally over four decades now. And yet, not only has this not been very effective, Nestlé’s profits for the most part have steadily risen the entire time. The sad reality about the boycotts against Nestlé is that given that they have now stretched over three generations, the young folks who boycott them over their harmful “water grabs” in both the US and abroad are often completely unaware that four decades ago their grandmothers were up in arms and boycotting over the horrific effects of Nestlé’s campaigns to encourage formula feeding over breast feeding in the underdeveloped world.

BDS is another example of a long-term boycott that overall has had little economic effect. I’ve been admonished countless times over the years, both in person and online, for my refusal to boycott businesses that are on the BDS list. The irony of this all is that most of this chastizing was of the latter type, online, which more than anything exposes the unfortunate futility of the BDS effort, for nearly 20% of Israel’s GDP is in tech and the industry accounts for over 50% of Israeli exports. If you’re reading this article, you’re using Israeli technology. You can refuse to buy all the Starbucks coffee and Sabra hummus that you want, but unless you’re willing to give up your smartphone or your Internet connection, you’re financially supporting Israel. And lets be honest here, in this day and age, it’s simply impossible for most people to forgo modern technology, and one crucial factor that does make or break a successful boycott is whether there is a viable alternative to the target of the boycott or not. And in this case there isn’t one, which leaves us in a position where those who chastize me for the occasional Starbucks while using Waze to avoid traffic are engaging in hypocritical virtue signaling more than anything else. And while I’m fully aware that BDS was modeled after the Anti-Apartheid Movement, which overall did have an actual effect, the material conditions and geopolitical realities that differentiate apartheid-era South Africa from modern-day Israel absolutely cannot be ignored and are significant enough to make any attempt at a meaningful comparison fall flat. BDS is effective in as much as it damages Israel’s reputation, one could argue that it has a certain amount of psychological impact as well. But the actual economic damage it inflicts is very minor. A painful truth that should be stated for the record is that the violence that Israel has wreaked upon Gaza over the past year and half has done more to negatively affect the Israeli economy than BDS ever has by far.

To be clear, I feel that it’s important to distinguish between individuals who boycott for personal ethical reasons and a boycott whose intention is to have an disruptive economic impact, and I absolutely support those who engage in the former. Frankly, I do it myself. When I lived in the US, I refused to spend a penny at Chick-Fil-A and I regularly side-eyed my so-called progressive friends who didn’t have a problem doing so and shrugged off the countless ways in which that corporation has and continues to materially harm the LGBTQ+ community.

But there are two factors that set this apart from say those who boycott Walmart and encourage/pressure others to do so but then still shop at Target (and often also encourage/pressure others to do so) . First off, I have absolutely no delusion that my refusal to give money to Chick-Fil-A will have any impact on them. Second, white progressives who criticize those who shop at Walmart instead of Target ignore a blunt reality: that in much of rural America, Walmart is the only accessible option. Such ignorance of one’s economic privilege in the matter does not apply to a business like Chick-Fil-A. Show me a town where Chick-Fil-A is the only fast food restaurant in a fifty-mile radius and I’ll show you a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.

And even if for the sake of argument it was the only fast food restaurant in a fifty-mile radius, generally speaking nobody needs a fried chicken sandwich. They do need toilet paper and new underwear and cornmeal and any of the other countless consumer items for which Walmart is unfortunately often the only option.

I have a lot of people in my life who boycott Nestlé and are mindful of the BDS list for personal ethical reasons, and again, more power to you if you can do it. My issue isn’t with choosing where your money goes, if anything we all should be doing more of that to the best of our ability. The distinction here is that one’s intent and impact need to be clear at the onset, and that those who are personally boycotting for ethical reasons related to a company’s behavior aren’t deluded into thinking that they’re engaging in a consumer boycott that will have an economic effect. I also have little patience for boycotters who are loud and proud about it and are convinced that their doing so is going to actually change things and especially for those who shame others who don’t follow along with them. It’s kind of like veganism: the less you talk about it and make it a part of your personality and/or identity, the more respect I have for you in doing it. Anti-consumer mentalities of any stripe are better for society and for the planet as a whole but should not be an exercise in virtue signaling.

And that’s what it comes down to in the end: most modern-day consumer boycotts are an act of virtue signaling amongst mostly white Anglophones with a certain amount of economic privilege, and some are utterly illogical in terms of the motivations or justifications behind them. For example, those who boycott Walmart but shop at Target are accomplishing absolutely nothing other than making themselves feel good and looking down on those who can’t make that choice. While yes, Walmart historically and presently has caused more damage especially to low income communities than Target has, the bottom line is that they’re both militantly anti-union megacorporations that have replaced the town square, who source most of their merchandise from China, and who exploit desperate workers and pay shit wages. The main difference between them is that Target spends a whole lot of money and effort in order to project a liberal feel-good image which is very effective at distracting progressive white folks from the fact that Target behaves almost identically to Walmart when it comes to the bottom line. Walmart, on the other hand, doesn’t care about its image, they know who they are and they have no shame in it.

Frankly, comparing Target and Walmart side by side acts as a rather clear mirror and/or accurate metaphor for the difference between the Democrats and Republicans. In both cases, while if I have to choose I will choose the former as they are slightly more palatable, but I will give the latter more credit at the end of the day for honesty, for showing us who they truly are and not trying to obscure that truth by using smoke and mirrors.

Which brings us back around to the current calls for an economic boycott this Friday. Every version of this boycott that I have seen overall reeks of virtue signaling and will have next to zero impact on the targeted corporations. Any money that the targeted corporations will theoretically lose for that one day will be quickly regained in the following days, as those who decided to forgo purchases for a day will inevitably need to buy those same items not long after.

And I will repeat what I said above and elaborate further this time: these feel-good actions do more harm than good for several reasons. First off, they convince a lot of people that they’re doing something, which often satisfies the feeling that they need to materially participate in some form of “resistance” and prevents them from acting further and in more meaningful ways. Second, and perhaps more importantly, ineffective actions such as this only further empower the targets. The more someone throws weak punches that can’t hurt you, the more invincible you feel. This is a constant across all micro to macro levels, from the runt trying to hurt the bully in the schoolyard to those who claim that they’re going to “bring down” Walmart with a one-day action. It has been years now that well-meaning folks have been following Internet calls to boycott this and that on this day and that day. And it has never had any sort of measurable effect. Corporations know this and they count on your continuation of such actions. It only helps them further in the end if the masses are wasting their time and energy while convinced that they’re ‘fighting the system’. Finally, and perhaps most tragically, when those who participated realize that their actions had no effect, many come to the conclusion that it’s pointless to try to fight the system in the first place, and they resign themselves to accepting the present state of things. They become convinced that they are powerless when in reality they are anything but.

What would actually have a potential effect? A meticulously planned, organized, and sustained targeted boycott. But I don’t see that happening for two reasons which are summed up best as the problem of those who can’t and the problem of those who won’t.

For boycotts at the end of the day are for the most part exercises in economic privilege. And when it comes to the more precarious and vulnerable members of American society, they simply don’t have the ability or means to go without. The rural poor can’t eat for long without relying on Walmart, at least not given present material conditions. Would it be possible to create solidarity networks that would enable those folks to survive without Walmart? Sure, but that would be something that would have to be built from the ground up, and would take a significant amount of time, effort, and money. And many disabled people, most who are low-income, can’t survive for long without relying on online megaretailers such as Amazon that will deliver to their homes. Would it also be possible to create a mutual aid infrastructure that would allow those folks to have their basic needs met without ordering what they need to survive online? Yes, but again, the same principles apply. Such networks would have to be built from scratch, and the time to start that was a decade or so ago. And as I’m writing this, February 28th is four days away.

As for those who do have other options that they can freely exercise, allowing them to theoretically participate in a targeted and sustained boycott, the unfortunate reality is that most Americans have shown time and time again that they simply can’t be bothered to make everyday sacrifices for a greater good. Even amongst progressives and even some leftists, for whom in theory the ideas of collectivism are at the forefront of their values, the individualist indoctrination to which all Americans are subject to combined with the simple fact that they have for the most part never experienced true hardship and take their comfort for granted has created a climate in which most will refuse any significant amount of sustained sacrifice and instead choose to exclusively engage in one-time feel-good actions.

I would point once again to the number of progressives who can’t be bothered to refrain from eating at Chick-Fil-A despite the fact that the corporation actively funds hate groups that target the LGBTQ folks that these progressives claim to be “allies” of. Will this sentiment shift as everyday life in the US falls deeper and deeper into dystopia? Perhaps. I have my doubts but as always I would love to be proven wrong. But at this point right now when I’m writing this, I don’t see much of a shift in the attitudes of the masses.

I want to round back to the Anti-Apartheid Movement for a moment to wrap up my thoughts on boycotts. One aspect of that momement, which was key to its effectiveness, was its intense and impressive level of infrastructure and organization. It had an enormous hierarchal and bureaucratic structure behind it, spanning from local and regional chapters to international organizations. It engaged people at all levels of society, over the course of many years, in order to first plant the seeds of its goal and then to take meaningful steps to accomplish it. And it required a material sacrifice on the part of countless ordinary citizens, a sacrifice that as I just elaborated above, far too few people are willing to make today even as they are staring face-to-face at the end of democracy as they know it.

The AAM left a very clear and theoretically actionable blueprint for how a boycott can be carried out successfully, but their would-be successors have overall failed to take the reasons behind the AAM’s success into consideration. If one were to do so, I could see the potential for an effective consumer boycott in the future. But it would require the kind of planning and organization that modern-day activists for the most part have not shown the patience for, hence why my FB feed is filled with dozens of similar calls for boycotts coming from countless people and groups that have not at all coordinated with each other, many linked to one-man activist ‘influencer’ type IG accounts that IMO are more than a little suspect.

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Part II: General Strikes

For those of you who don’t know much about me or my history, I should state the following for context: I have lived in France for nearly a decade now, a country that is often regarded as the world champion of strikes. To live here is to experience consistent work stoppages in any and all sectors as a frequent and normalized part of everyday life, and countless tourists who have visited France over the years have had the experience of their carefully-laid plans go to shit due to workers taking to the picket lines en masse. (Hell, on a personal level, the only reason I ever came to the city I now call home in the first place is because nationwide prolonged rail strikes in the spring of 2016 prevented Rhyd and I from following our intended travel itinerary during our pilgrimage through France that spring, and we ended up in here in Rennes simply for need of somewhere to go, a detour that inadvertently shifted the trajectory of the rest of my life. But I digress).

Also on a personal level, witnessing the just-aforementioned general strikes in the spring of 2016 was one of the primary reasons why I fell in love with this country and decided to make it my home. After two decades of being on the front-lines of activist movements in the US which overall bore very little fruit, to then witness an actual general strike, to march in the streets here in Rennes with over 50,000 people (in a city with a population of around 200,000 - that’s one in four residents who took to the streets, kids) and then to realize that the same thing was occurring in every city in the country and was literally bringing the country to a standstill, was a life-changing moment for me. It brought home the idea that “another world is possible” and made that concept come alive.

strikes over the years, photos by yours truly

I point all of this out because as someone living here, I have learned a thing or two or twenty about general strikes over the years. And as is my nature, I have spent an inordinate amount of time comparing and contrasting the norms and attitudes and material conditions between France and the United States in order to understand as cohesively and coherently as possible why general strikes happen here on a regular basis while the US hasn’t seen a meaningful general strike since 1946.

Understanding these differences has been invaluable over the years, as since 2016 I have seen countless calls for a “general strike” in the US, usually either an uncredited internet meme or a call from an organization that has absolutely no ability whatsoever to pull off such a feat. I have also myself provoked countless situations where I had to inevitably play the roll of the killjoy, as I often post photos and videos of general strikes here only to be then met with Americans commenting something along the lines of “this is what we need to do here, this is what will change things”.

And I’m sorry, but taking into account current conditions, you can’t. While brevity isn’t necessarily my strong point, let me try to explain why as simply and succinctly as possible:

First off, as I mentioned earlier, the last significant general strike in the US was in 1946, a general strike in Oakland, California. It was the last of a series of strikes that historians generally refer to as the ‘strike wave of 1945-46’, which was the largest strikes in American history. That they were both the largest and the last is directly related as a year later in 1947, in direct response to the economic threat that the strike wave had posed, the US Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act which essentially made such strikes illegal.

Here in France on the other hand, the right to strike is a constitutional right, and subsequent legislation clarifies that right as one that exists regardless of union membership¹. Let me reword that for clarification: all workers in France, both public and private, have the right to strike and are legally protected in doing so (meaning that their employer cannot discipline them in any way for doing so) even if they’re not in a union. Non-union strikers sacrifice their pay for the time that they strike, but given that France’s generous social safety net results in a situation where the average worker is much more economically stable than their American counterparts, a significant amount of workers can forgo their pay now and then without it seriously disrupting their lives. And unionized workers are generally compensated somewhat by their union, absolutely not to the tune of their default salaries, but nonetheless the same circumstances apply in terms of the social safety net. For prolonged general strikes, online strike support funds are common and receive widespread and generous support.

So you have one country where strikes themselves are more often than not illegal in the first place, and even in the rare circumstances where one can strike, it’s exclusively restricted to union members, only applies to certain industries, and there is next to no infrastructure whatsoever to support would-be strikers. Compare that to France where striking is legally protected, commonplace, and open to everyone. Additionally, public support for any would-be strike in the US would likely be minimal, given the longstanding anti-union sentiment in the US compared to a country like France where trade unions enjoy widespread public support.

That public support is more than just support in and itself, it’s best described as ‘strike culture’ and is an element that is integral to French society and utterly absent from American society. In France, supporting strikes (while simultaneously complaining about them to be sure, as complaining is arguably the French national pastime) is almost akin to an act of patriotism. It is so deeply ingrained into the culture here that it’s almost impossible to truly describe it to an outsider, it is a phenomenon where the whole is much more than the sum of its parts. Even when one is significantly inconvenienced, there is a level of support and solidarity towards those doing the inconveniencing that would be utterly unheard of in the US. It again comes down to a value system that privileges collectivism over individualism, as despite the inconvenience and complaining there is a deep understanding that such actions benefit society as a whole, and that the current inconvenience is occurring in the name of a hopefully better future.

Then there’s what I would call the precarity factor, the fact that so many American workers are already only a paycheck or two away from homelessness in the first place. Even if they were fully protected in their right to strike like French workers were, they simply couldn’t afford to and would be left completely and utterly unprotected. When I lived in Oregon, landlord-tenant laws stipulated that if rent was not paid by the 8th of the month, the landlord had a right to issue a 10-day eviction notice. Compare that to here in France, where evictions are so rare (due to rental laws that weigh heavily in the tenant’s favor) that when they do happen, more often than not they become a local news story.

Now, similar to the earlier discussion of boycotts, do these differences mean that a general strike in the US is an outright impossibility? No, of course not. But just like when it comes to what it would take to pull off a successful consumer boycott, planting the seeds for any sort of meaningful general strike in the United States would literally take years of advanced planning and a buy-in from a much more significant percentage of the population than those who have been agitating for strikes on social media for the past decade. It would require a massive amount of cooperation across all segments of American society, a massive amount of money and infrastructure, and a massive amount of willpower and dedication.

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What I’ve written above is not intended to discourage you, to be clear. Actually, it’s the opposite. I say this all to encourage you, but because I’m militantly against false hope, I am going to be as bluntly realistic and honest as possible about it all.

Building a meaningful resistance is absolutely possible, but the bottom line is that it has to be built. It will not just come to be if enough people respond to a Facebook meme. It will not manifest itself in the form of one-day boycotts. If anything, such distractions prevent it from actually being built. As I said earlier, those in power, who are literally trying to destroy the world as we know it right now, benefit greatly when people are deluded into believing that they are making a difference while in reality they are wasting their time.

Don’t waste your time.

Instead, in lieu of keeping your wallets closed this Friday and then continuing about your lives as you did before, consider that significant, long-term changes to your consumer habits, especially if done en masse, would overall have a much more profound effect.

For instance, consider trying to stop buying anything that isn’t necessary if you can. Much of what you buy new can be found used, some of what you can buy can be made by hand, and some of what you buy simply isn’t essential. Some of your needs can be bartered for, some can be found for free on various Facebook groups or websites, some can be found simply by asking around. And yes, not everyone can do all or perhaps even any of the above, please don’t come at me with how I’m being ableist or whatever. I’m not talking to or about everyone, I use qualifiers for a reason. If you can, try to do so.

Because if enough people simply start to withdraw their money from the consumer market as a whole as opposed to boycotting Amazon for a week and then continuing to live as they did before, in the long-term those you want to affect actually will be affected and will undoubtedly react. Corporations respond to which way the wind is blowing. And if enough people blow slowly and steadily over a long period of time, the wind will shift and the business world will take notice. If anything, this is a lesson that the authoritarian takeover has to teach us, as the coup that has currenly engulfed the US government has been around five decades in the making. Something something slow and steady wins the race.

And for those of you not living on the edge of precarity, once you stop spending on non-essentials, suddenly you have a bit of what economists would call ‘disposable income’. Which you can then use to strengthen your communities and help to improve the lives of those around you, in remembering that nobody is coming to save us and if we want to save ourselves, it’s best that those around us be as strong and healthy and capable as possible. Invest in mutual aid networks, lift up those around you who are struggling, remember that collective strength is what will get us through this, as historically it is the only thing that ever has.

Another world actually is possible. But only if and when we decide to put forth the collective effort to actually build it.

1. A point of clarification, as I often see misinformation online regarding this issue: contrary to popular belief, the frequency of general strikes in France is not due to widespread union membership. In fact, union membership in France is comparable to union membership in the United States, both hover around 10%. The difference is that trade unions in France legally have much more power and enjoy much more widespread popular support despite their low membership numbers. The fact that French workers have the right to strike regardless of union membership creates a situation where many workers will strike alongside a union and support that union without actually being a part of it. From an outside stance, it seems somewhat paradoxical that unions hold the power and popularity that they do in France when so few workers are actually unionized, but this reality exists because the trade union model in France is fundamentally different than that of the US, one could arguable call it “proxy unionism”, which renders most comparisons between them moot. The strong worker’s rights that the French enjoy exist regardless of union membership, being in a union does not grant one any additional privileges. Unions materially negotiate in the rights that workers have on a governmental level and those rights apply to all, including the right to strike.