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Online Boycott Targets Brand America
Posted by Nimrod Kozlovski on Friday, March 14 @ 17:24:30 EST News
The anti-war front uses the Internet to mobilize public opinion against the war in Iraq. As part of the anti-war campaign, the activists call to boycott American products. Identifying America with consumption and the American policy with corporations' control, the activists aim to attack America in its pocket. According to the activists’ agenda , devaluing American brands will also decrease America’s position in the geo-political arena: “Because I am one of the millions of people against the war. And because the American government has made it clear that it won’t listen to world opinion. And because the symbols of American power are its corporations and their brands; I herby pledge to boycott Brand America, from the moment the war begins and to the best of my ability until the empire learns to listen”.

I conceive this use of the Internet as a fatal mistake. This is the time to use the internet and other deliberation-enabling technologies to engage in a genuine public debate about the war. Boycott does not establish a public discourse but mute it. If you want someone to “learn to listen”, you don’t do that by destroying the platform for discourse. In the past, online social activists proved to be the “true” globalists who seek to use the Internet decentralized open platform to foster a wide “glocalised” debate. Setting a negative agenda of boycott makes it easy to tag then as “anti” and ignore the content of their arguments.



The culture jamming movement , which hosts the boycott initiative, aims regularly to establish a semiotic discourse and present a counter-force to the culture of consumption. Through brands people engage in a dynamic process of assigning meaning to symbols. The brand is a shell that can host diverse and competing meanings. America itself can be described as a complex brand with different contesting meanings. When culture jammers call to boycott all brands they also mute the semiotic discourse conducted through them. Instead of presenting the full spectrum of views and opinions, all brands are depicted as a shallow dichotomy of pro and against. The cultural and social dialogue conducted through brands is richer than such a binary choice.

Having said that, I think that the activists choose an unwise strategy. In the virtual designed space of the Internet, the activists’ messages could be better echoed if they were juxtaposed next to the corporations' messages. They were better off by subverting corporations' power to carry their messages. When the commercial and communication platforms merge, as on the Internet, you can more efficiently deliver your communicative message by free-riding the commercial message. When you call to boycott the commercial message you lose your audience. You separate the commercial environment from the communication platform and left with no meaningful mean to deliver your message.
 
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I support US Policy (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 15 @ 00:17:52 EST
The anti-war front needs to get some new ideas. It really seems to me that they are acting like robots and simply recycling ideas and protest methods from the previous Iraq war and from Vietnam.

I have never heard anyone make the case for why Saddam should be in power. I cannot understand why anyone believes that the moral approach is to support him. I listen to the explainations anti-war protesters give and find them totally unpersuasive and incoherent.

Those who refuse to back the use of force:
1) Protect the continued oppression of the Iraqi people
2) Protect the leading supporter of destabalizing terrorism in the Palastinian cause and thus prolong the suffering of both Palastinians and Israelis
3) Protect a dictator who uses torture and murder to remain in power and stiffle dissent
4) Protect a dictator who tried to assassinate a former US president
5) Protect a dictator who cheered the 9/11 attacks
6) Protect a dictator who has demonstrated he will use chemical weapons against civilians
7) Protect a dictator who has launched missles at the civilian population of Israel
8) Protect a dictator who has invaded his neighbors
9) Protect a dictator who created enough anthrax to kill everyone on the planet
10) Protect a dictator who has defied the United Nations multiple resolutions for decades

If "world opinion" says that these things should be protected then world opion SHOULD be ignored, because it is based on corrupt values and an irrational belief that peace can be achieved by failing to confront danger.

The bottom line is you either believe that Iraq should at some point be compelled, using force, to obey the basic standards of the civilized world, or you believe the opposite, which is that Iraq should never be forced to stop being a threat.

Anti-war activists desparately try to explain why choosing the later road is not equivalent to supporting oppression and evil, when in fact they do exactly this. If you will not confont evil, then you support it's continued reign.


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Your dangerous illogic (Score: 1)
by kaos on Saturday, March 15 @ 07:33:21 EST
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If all the money and effort deployed to unseat Saddam had been used to capture Bin Laden and his henchmen, they'd all be in a Federal Prison right now awaiting execution, or at least, they would have been assassinated by now. What if anything other than Americam administration's lies does Saddam have to do with Sept 11? Where is Bin? Where are all the terrorists presently lining in the USA under your very nose? I believe it's time you started thinking a bit, and stopped letting yourself be continually brainwashed by hypocrital politico-economic interests. Bush either wants to attack Iraq because of the oil, which is understandable, or he wants to do it because he believes he is doing God's work, which is just as crazy as the person he wants to take out.


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Re: Online Boycott Targets Brand America (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 15 @ 09:30:07 EST
The Internet's spirit is deliberation not boycott!


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Re: Online Boycott Targets Brand America (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 16 @ 05:39:23 EST
Interesting that the respondents thus far haven't really addressed the train of thought that Mr. Kozolovski initiates is his contribution. This is perhaps the virtuous characteristic of the Internet to which Mr. Kozlovski refers to as "deliberation-enabling" technology?

Anyway, back to the argument, which goes something like this: A) The Brand America boycott, communicated via the Internet, is a mistake because it precludes other forms of communication via the same channel. This is loosely related to the idea that B) brand communication can be repurposed by parties who may be interested in doing so. Hence the boycott identified by the author is a "fatal" mistake because the boycotters could be doing something else, namely subversively repositioning brand communications.

Well lets think about a few things here in simple terms, relegating stuff like "semiotic discourse", "assigning meanings to symbols", "muting discourses", "message juxtaposition", and the like to the bin for the moment.

1) What prevents the organizers of this or other boycotts with undertaking other communicative efforts? (They run a rather interesting website as well …) So, where does this notion come from? "Boycott does not establish a public discourse but mute it." Say what?

2) Boycott is a form of abstinence, an everyman's form of "hit where it hurts" populist political and economic communication, when it works. With a federal government that clearly expresses little interest in taking international opinion seriously, (while ever so graciously acknowledging difference), and a corporate culture that is wholly uninterested in those facets of international politics that do not very directly bear upon their ability to amass wealth, why should the organizers of this particular protest against "Brand America" be interested in intellectual footsie with brand messages? I don't get the idea that the organizers think this is the time for clever semiotic gyrations, but for concrete measurable action. The boycott solicitation is explicit about this.

3) What is that singular Internet, the "virtual designed space", to which Mr. Kozlovski refers? Why such a foggy conception of the uses of the Internet? The Internet is a multi-purpose communications infrastructure. Or was Mr. Kozlovski referring sentimentally to his preferred institutionalization of its many meanings?

4) Brands are a medium of dialogue? (" The cultural and social dialogue conducted through brands is richer ...") This is a perplexing statement and if where true in anything other than a creepy intellectualization, a boycott would probably not be on the culture jammers' minds right now. Indeed, boycott may be the only way that those who would like to engage brand in "dialog" may make themselves heard to those who otherwise refuse to listen.

Mr. Kozlovski is attempting to enshrine the medium and missing both its affordances and the point of the protest.


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Re: Online Boycott Targets Brand America (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 16 @ 12:23:02 EST
Is cuture jamming a cultural movement or a political one? why they take a one sides stand in the political debate? does it follow the will of their supporters who joined to promote a counter-culture discourse?


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My issue is with United State foreign policy. (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 17 @ 20:03:11 EST
I am opposed to war not because I am a pacifist or support other regimes, but because I have a strong support for consistently applied International Law. If/when the United States government signs and ratifies the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and obeys rather than ignoring of vetoing United Nations resolutions, then it can join the international community trying to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction.

We have some serious problems as an international community to deal with, but currently United States foreign policy is making these problems worse rather than better.

My thoughts on this particular consumer boycott were posted to my own weblog: Another convenient consumer boycott


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