As regular readers know (and by “know,” I mean, “are probably sick of hearing”), I’m against it when folks organize to economically punish others for their political views.
Very frequently, when I write or talk about this, I’ll run into some fellow lefty1 who doesn’t see any substantive difference between an organized boycott or blacklist against (say) hiring Orson Scott Card, and an individual reader choosing not to buy Card’s books.
Then I realized that one of the Sad Puppy/Rabid Puppy arguments about the Hugo awards that I find most frustrating, is really the exact same argument. One side is saying that collective organization – be it an anti-OSC petition or slate voting – is substantively different than individuals making individual decisions. The other side is denying that there’s any meaningful difference.
I’m not saying the folks who disagree with me about petitions (who are usually people I like and respect) are Just Like The Puppies or anything like that. I’m not making any larger point at all, actually, so please don’t read a larger point into this; I just find the parallel striking.
(I realize this isn’t 100% on topic, but I asked Amp who is the handsomest man in the world, and his beauty blinded me, and I lost all sense of myself. And he said it was fine. [1])
So, because I’m curious and because this seems like a decent opportunity to ask, I’m curious. I see you posting a lot about your dislike of boycotts. Under what circumstances, if any, do you think boycotts are morally acceptable?
I understand that there’s not going to be a 100% clear line here, and I’m not expecting that there will be. But I’m curious what the shape of your assessment is.
(For myself: I find any boycott not under false pretenses to be morally acceptable, but for the most part the modern ad-hoc boycotts seem totally ineffective and a huge waste of effort and energy.)
[1] Barry made me write some of this.
You forgot to mention how much my voice reminds you of James Earl Jones’ voice, but more resonant.
I think boycotts to pressure a business to change a specific business practice or practices – stop abusing employees, pay a living wage, recognize the union, don’t buy from this supplier that abuses its employees, etc – are often wonderful. (I can imagine individual boycotts in this category I’d disagree with, but I don’t object to the category itself.)
It’s really only a specific, narrow category of boycott – boycotts intended to punish people for their speech – that I’m objecting to.
Cool, thank you.
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I’ve been curious about your position on boycotts, too, mostly because I hadn’t particularly thought about the ethics of boycotts before (I can’t remember a time when something I’ve made a particular sacrifice to participate in a boycott, so it’s never been all that relevant to me. As opposed to situations like OSC, whose books I was already planning not to buy anymore because knowing his worldview tainted the experience of reading them.)
Anyway, you mentioned that you would support organized boycotts of companies for their actions, and would not support organized boycotts of individuals for their speech. What do you feel about boycotting individuals for their actions? Or maybe a better question would be, where does the line lie between political speech and political action? Is you objection to boycotting indovidials more about the chilling effect it has on speech, or because you feel that a mass movement of that kind is an inappropriate weapon to use against an individual? Just curious to know more about where you’re coming from on this issue.
As regards the topic of this post, I would agree that both arguments are similar—it’s one thing to argue that a boycott against an individual is valid for whatever reason, but it strikes me as disingenuous to argue that there’s no difference between individual choice and collective action.
Both! They are independent rationals leading to similar conclusions.
I can imagine collective actions against an individual that would be appropriate – if the town of Bedford Falls were to take collective action against Mr. Potter, demanding he repair his slums and offer fair terms on loans, say. It’s a matter of power – collective action is far too powerful a tool to justify using against an ordinary schlub, but it’s justified if it’s used by ordinary people to stand up against the powerful. In our society, “the powerful” will usually be corporations or government entities, but it could also be an individual if the individual is powerful enough.
It’s very rarely an “ordinary schlub” who’s the target of these boycotts. It’s usually a high profile, and very often rich, white person. Often a man.
There’s a big difference between boycotting some homophobic bus driver or plumber, and boycotting Orson Scott Card.
Tamme:
I agree. I object to boycotting OSC more because I think it’s a harmful principle to support, than because I think OSC was harmed in any significant way by DC not publishing his Superman story.
That said, I do think the same problem is also behind some ordinary schlubs getting harmed; it’s just that ordinary schlubs are far less likely to make the news when this happens. Here in Portland, a small family-owned grocery story was subject to an organized boycott because the owners had argued against marriage equality on their personal facebook pages. There’s currently a petition to get a professor (a black woman) fired because conservatives don’t like her angry anti-racist tweets (which they call racist, naturally). Adria Richards is a black woman who lost her job because of an organized campaign of harassment targeting her employer until she was fired.
I also think the organized campaigns against high-profile targets may help legitimize the tactic of going after people’s livelihoods because we disagree with them politically. In recent months, we’ve seen people from both sides of the marriage equality issue engage in a harassment campaign against a pizza shop in Indiana, and against a cake shop in Florida. I don’t think there’s any way to count the number of people who have had their employers contacted because they said something that people on the internet found offensive.
Besides, the tactic of trying to get people fired for their political opinions is inherently one that advantages wealthy people (who need their jobs less) over ordinary schlubs.
I feel like you’re conflating boycotting with harassment with trying to get people fired, here. It may be that, to you, these things are identical, but I don’t think that’s an obvious identity.
Particularly on the topic of the thread, two of these things (harassment and trying to get someone fired) are wrong even if one person does it. If I’m following your logic, boycotts are only wrong if they’re an organized group, right? Whereas harassment (including trying to get someone fired) is wrong regardless.
Let me using OSC as an example. An individual person not buying OSC’s books, for whatever reason, is not really a problem. But an individual person harassing him or trying to get him fired is a problem, right?
yrs–
–Ben
I think I was unclear. When I wrote “I also think the organized campaigns against high-profile targets may help legitimize the tactic of going after people’s livelihoods because we disagree with them politically,” I was trying to say that tactic A legitimizes tactic B, a construction which by definition acknowledges that A and B are not identical.
But I could have made that a lot clearer!
So yes, the two things are different, and I didn’t mean to conflate them. But they do have something in common, which is that they both respond to someone’s political speech by going after that person’s livelihood.
On the other hand it also advantages us bottom-of-the-heap schlubs (who don’t have jobs) over both ordinary schlubs and wealthy schlubs. It’s the only weapon we have that cannot be used against us.