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Notes -
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Business/companies-starbucks-mcdonalds-face-controversy-amid-israel-hamas/story?id=104219615
Meanwhile, https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/11/14/indonesians-boycott-mcdonalds-starbucks-over-support-for-israel
So, the Starbucks union posted pro-Palestinian messages on social media, as is their right to do. Starbucks in response distances itself from its union — not even to support Israel, but simply to stay out of it altogether. McDonald’s franchises are independently owned and operated, so McDonald’s in Israel gives free food to the IDF, and McDonald’s in Indonesia and other Muslim countries gives aid to Palestine instead.
And for just doing business as businesses do, https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/propalestine-vandals-who-targeted-starbucks-and-maccas-in-melbourne-dubbed-extremists/news-story/6f6c50b4316aa4426b90702d5ccf1c91?amp
I mean, I could at least see the Chick-fil-A boycott making sense. You eating at Chick-fil-A benefits the CEO and private owner of the company, so you want to stop giving money to that guy even if that might end up hurting others employed by Chick-fil-A who don’t share such views.
Or the Hogwarts Legacy boycott, where an argument could be made that even pirating the game gives cultural clout to the Harry Potter brand, and therefore you should avoid the game altogether if you dislike JK Rowling enough. I mean, I disagree, but I can at least see where that is coming from. You don’t want to benefit people you dislike, even if it also benefits others who you have nothing against at all.
This, though? This isn’t even hurting “the right people.” What? Am I missing a potential steel man here, or are these protestors not even bothering to pretend like what they’re doing has any rational basis beyond pure tribalism anymore?
Steel manning perhaps isn't the most appropriate response here. The people committing these actions are not careful intellectuals thinking in steel men. We are not debating college professors.
A better approach is to try to imagine and inhabit the emotional state that leads to these actions.
Specifically, the intoxicated perma berserk mental state of holy war. The serene vision of dominance and power, of divine righteousness, of inevitable victory. The crusader mindset.
You are right! You are powerful! The heathens will fall before you! The kingdom of god shall rise, and with it, you!
The reason for vandalizing a Starbucks or McDonalds is to exercise power. To revel in wrathful indulgence. To show that the will of god is in fact supreme over the heathen merchants.
Ultimately, they are breaking the rules, they are doing something to someone against their will, and they are getting away with it. This is almost worth doing for its own sake, a flimsy nonsensical political pretext pushes it into viability.
It's not entirely-obvious that they will get away with it; we don't have as much of an anti-police movement here in Oz (lack of a racial component helps a lot with that), and my understanding is that this kind of mass vandalism is not normal. There could well be some arrests (particularly if the protestors weren't masked; security cameras are a thing).
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