Exclusive: Ben & Jerry's says parent Unilever silenced it over Gaza stance
Exclusive: Ben & Jerry's says parent Unilever silenced it over Gaza stance
Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that parent company Unilever has silenced its attempts to express support for Palestinian refugees, and threatened to dismantle its board and sue its members over the issue.
The lawsuit is the latest sign of the long-simmering tensions between Ben & Jerry’s and consumer products maker Unilever. A rift erupted between the two in 2021 after Ben & Jerry’s said it would stop selling its products in the Israeli-occupied West Bank because it was inconsistent with its values, a move that led some to divest Unilever shares.
The ice cream maker then sued Unilever for selling its business in Israel to its licensee there, which allowed marketing in the West Bank and Israel to continue. That lawsuit was settled in 2022.
If they didn't sell out to a corporation they wouldn't be getting orders from the corporation.
I was thinking this was a bit leopards ate my face.
Yeah the fuckers sold out. B&J quality has been in the shitter ever since. Yeah they still sell pint sizes but I fully expect them to fuck with that too.
It was a hostile takeover. One of the original founders tried to prevent it from happening.
Unilever-never-left-russia Unilever? Unilever the piece of shit fascist toadies Unilver? That one?
Huh.
The same Unilever known for abusing caged dogs while testing products on them?
Surprise! Corporate leftism is a lie!
If you want to keep a say over the political stances of your own company, the best way to do that is to [checks notes] sell it to Unilever
Boycott Unilever. Ironically that includes Ben & Jerry's until they manage to break free from Unilever.
I have been for a while now because they're still operating in Russia. Fuck 'em.
I know they make more than just cleaning products, but I always associate Unilever with soap, so whenever I see any food brand who has them as a parent I immediately thing their food tastes like soap.
Unilever is a conglomerate, much like Nestle, and has brands under many different types of products.
Yup, like I said I know they have more than cleaning products but i always associate them with soap.
Looks like I’ll never get to taste Chunky Gaza Green Tea Genocide…thanks a lot Unilever
Such a shame! Dairy Free Darfur Durian was one of their best flavors!
B&G have a good chance of coming out of this stronger than ever and with bigger profits. If Gaza was so bad that people could not bring themselves to elect a VP (who has no say in anything in the administration does) to the presidency, hopefully those people are gonna go full blown diabetic eating all their fucking ice cream for the next 4+ years.
You think way way way too much of voters if you think Gaza lost her the election. Pardon me if I'm completely misconstruing your comment.
There were certainly votes lost in Michigan over Gaza, but even if every single Jill Stein vote was a protest vote (they weren't), it wouldn't have been enough for Harris to carry the state.
The tougher thing to parse is the reason why so many voters seemingly stayed home this cycle. I think there is a very reasonable argument that not enough people were excited about her message, even the base.
It's a lot easier for door knockers, phone bankers, and everyday democrats to talk proudly about their candidate if they can rattle off a list of great things their candidate will do. It's even easier if those great things hit people where they're hurting the hardest or is the moral thing to do (healthcare for the uninsured, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.). It's a lot tougher to get low propensity voters to show up on the harm reduction argument alone, especially if you brush past where they're hurting or concede too much ground on your moral positions.
The biggest issue for most voters appears to have been inflation and the economy, and while democrats were technically correct to say the rate of inflation has come down and American economic indicators outperformed most other countries in this post-pandemic period, that's all pretty meaningless to someone whose real wage growth didn't keep up with inflation these past few years. The "opportunity economy" and targeted small business tax cuts is a much tougher sell to someone working two+ jobs to get by.
The other issue that dominated the media was immigration. Democrats forfeited their moral position when they offered the republican wishlist border bill earlier this year. The argument that republicans weren't serious on the border because they didn't support the bill fell flat, and instead democrats were (rightly) criticized for abandoning their framing of the issue as a choice between deportation and amnesty, and their previous claims the border wall was racist.
All of that to say, democrats failed to connect with their own base on the issues that make them the party's best messengers. Add Gaza to the list of issues where Harris could have pivoted away from Biden, instead of running into the arms of the Cheneys to chase the mythical moderate republican voter.
Problem is that Ben &Jerry's is still owned by Unilever. Supporting them means profits for Unilever which supports Israel. It is extremely paradoxical.
It’s incredible how transparently you’re admitting you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Although if liberals knew why they lost, they’d be too intelligent to be liberals.
p.s “B&G” is a different company, bud.
Bem & Georrey
I know they make more than just cleaning products, but I always associate Unilever with soap, so whenever I see any food brand who has them as a parent I immediately thing their food tastes like soap.
things just got exponentially worse for everyone on the planet who isn't a billionaire, but anyway let's talk about ice cream company's problems
Reducto ad absurdum
This is no time for casting spells.
Reducto ad absurdum is not a logical fallacy if that's what you're getting at. It's a very important logical tool that happens to be a Latin phrase with a similar cadence to Latin names of logical fallacies.
I don't think OP is right--there's lots of different layers to issues like this that can be explored--but not for that.
Oh really, how? I certainly haven't heard almost nothing but that news for the past few months. Oh shit it's only been a few days, it's going to be a long fucking four years isn't it.
Anyway my point is it's ok to have a little other news, you know, as a treat. Kind of like how you should be having ice cream.
it's ok to have a little other news, you know, as a treat. Kind of like how you should be having ice cream.
How very 2024 that even these little other ice cream news are indirectly about the genocide in Gaza.
After reading this comment and the article, I feel there is actually some perspective hidden here that may need addressing.
While a million dollars to most of us seems unobtainable, a billion dollars is still unobtainable to most millionaires. It's 1000x or 3 factors of 10 or however you wish to look at it. Huge difference. Nobody if offered either a million or a billion dollars would say there's no substantial difference.
Google tells me Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are worth about $150 million each. That's a hell of a lot of money to be sure.
Current market cap on Unilever is around $144 billion. One thousand times more than either Ben or Jerry.
When we're in a time where some are starting to say even a million dollars is no longer a guaranteed good retirement savings, and when people with 150x that much are being silenced, maybe we also need to update our thoughts on the ongoing class warfare around the world.
While most of us here have different realities than Ben and Jerry, their lives are drifting closer to ours than they are for the billionaire class. To me, that is a bit scary to think of. That's concentration of power to a much smaller group. About 1.1% of the world population, 59.4 million people, are millionaires, there are less than 3000 billionaires.
When division is what is keeping us fighting each other instead of focusing on who is really calling the shots, I feel this is an important distinction to consider. Maybe getting pissed at millionaires has now become futile. The upside is it is easier to focus on 3000 people than 60 million. That isnt to say millionaires are also an issue, but it may no longer be the most pressing one.
Open to your thoughts, I just think these numbers are pretty staggering.
For the US, definitely... But the rest of the world doesn't just stop happening because Donald Trump got elected.