Fighting for the Right to Boycott
Hi friends,
Boycotts can be a powerful tool for political change. The Montgomery bus boycotts of the 50s paved the way for racial desegregation in the U.S. The economic boycotts of South Africa in the 80s contributed to the demise of apartheid. And just this year, the boycotts of Tesla shamed many car owners into selling their vehicles, tanked the company’s stock price, and surely helped usher Elon Musk out of government.
So it should probably come as no surprise that there is a right wing movement pushing to limit the right to engage in politically-motivated boycotts.
My latest for piece for New York Times Opinion (gift link) highlights how the Trump Administration’s Federal Trade Commission (there are no Democratic commissioners because they have been fired in a move that is being legally contested) is using its power in an unusual effort to try to stop advertisers and brands from boycotting right-leaning businesses.
What is Happening?
Last month, the FTC placed an unusual condition on the merger of two advertising giants Omnicom and IPG that would prevent the merged company from refusing to place ads on websites for political reasons.
This requirement is a dangerous encroachment on free speech, says First Amendment scholar Olivier Sylvain. The merger conditions are “blatantly inconsistent with the First Amendment right of advertisers not to associate their brands with content or viewpoints that they know consumers find objectionable," he said.
And that's not all. The FTC is also investigating media watchdog groups such as Media Matters for possible collusion because they have warned advertisers when their ads appear near objectionable content -- sometimes prompting those advertisers to pull their ads. Media Matters has sued the FTC claiming that the investigation is retaliation for its First Amendment protected speech. But the harm has already been done: the steep legal fees have forced Media Matters to cut costs and even consider shutting down.
This comes after a decade of conservative-led crackdowns on politically motivated boycotts beyond advertising. Since 2015, an anti-boycott movement – spearheaded by the right wing Heritage Foundation, which distributed model legislation – persuaded dozens of states to enact laws banning states from employing contractors or vendors who have engaged in politically motivated boycotts.
The state legislative campaign started as a movement to block boycotts of Israeli products and services, but now has expanded to broader anti-boycott bills that aim to protect gunmakers, oil and gas companies and other businesses from economic protests.
Why it Matters
In a country whose founding was shaped by an economic boycott — after all, what was the Boston Tea Party if not a gleeful boycott? — the freedom to boycott is one of our most foundational rights.
So far, the anti-boycott movement has largely focused on blocking businesses from refusing to deal with other businesses or allowing states to deny contracts to businesses that are engaged in political boycotts. That can sound rather innocuous – it’s just business to business contracts, who cares?
But curtailing companies’ freedom to decide where to place their ads is a back door route to controlling media — a goal of all aspiring authoritarians. Very few media outlets can survive without the support of advertisers, and if advertisers feel they have to advertise on government-friendly networks to avoid being investigated, they very likely will.
In fact, they most likely already are. Forrester Research recently published a post titled “X-tortion: How Advertisers are Losing Control of Media Choice” suggesting that advertisers should buy ads on Elon Musk's platform X in order to avoid landing in the administration's cross hairs.
If we want a media that is willing to stand up to the government, we need to fight for the right to boycott, not just for ourselves but also for advertisers. And if we let these rights slip away, don’t think they aren’t coming for our rights to engage in individual consumer protests, too.
As always, thanks for reading.
Best
Julia Angwin