#you deciding to consume smth or not on the individual level and hoping others individually do so is not an affront to power

[queen-mabs-revenge]

noah fence but when ppl's political imagination begins and ends with their individual actions as a consumer it becomes really clear how thoroughly neoliberal ideology smashed any sense of class consciousness over the past 40ish years whew

like we can't be this far into imminent climate catastrophe and still think that diffuse and disorganised boycotts of products or events do anything? and that holds for other injustices and oppressions too... like boycotts absolutely can work but they have to be well organised and publicly stated with demands or else it's just moral masturbation i'm sorry. and that's not knocking those actions bc i get how doing them can make ppl feel like they have a tiny crumb of power in this capitalist chaos, but you can't conflate an individual decision with a political movement with stated intent to force a specific effect. it has never ever worked that way.

ideally boycott is an arm of a workers action - a strike, a sit-in, etc. workers actually stopping the gears of production and consumers not crossing the picket line. or at the very least a consumer boycott that works in an organised manner with that stated demand - at least that shows a consumer decision being made with deliberate and collective intent.

but making diffuse and disorganised consumer choice your metric for political action and a way to judge someone's political purity is just.... nah bro that's just a way to feel superior and have a moral bat to whack ppl with, bc any wider effect beyond that is negligible.

thinking political power is concentrated in someone's individual ability to consume or not consume is the kind of bleak shit this system relies on.

#sorry but the preachy boycott posts are just so bleak #like i promise you ppl watching or not watching Eurovision as individual actors does less than zero to confirm or deny power structures #like the boycotts in 2019 were organised and fronted with mass requests and statements #and caused solidarity actions from workers unions political groups and obv gen pop all over Europe #that's an effective boycott strategy #you deciding to consume smth or not on the individual level and hoping others individually do so is not an affront to power #and the myth of that is one of the most effective tricks the capitalist ruling order has ever pulled off #(also just as an aside - there is no continuous boycott of esc called by the bds movement. #2019 was obv an organised call to action - and it was met with solidarity actions by workers unions. politicians. and obv gen pop. #but you can check the bds website. you can literally read it with your own eyes. #but then we wouldn't be able to have moral pissing contests over who watched or not 🙄)