On Boycotting

Whole Foods and Orson Scott Card.

Boycotts fascinate and disturb me though because it seems to me that they’ve taken on a punitive “wrongthink” quality in recent years. It isn’t so much that boycotts are being organized to protest a particular practice or right a particular wrong but that boycotts now seem to be organized to economically destroy someone who thinks the wrong thoughts and anyone who has the temerity to deal with them.

I agree with this. The irony, however, is that "boycotting" is about leverage and not exclusively about principle. If anything, we should boycott Saudi oil so long as they continue to fund radical mosques and other illiberal institutions that give an infrastructure for terrorism. But we can't, because we need it. We don't NEED a specific videogame or Whole Foods, so they are potential targets.