Friday 14 August 2020

Strange Bedfellows

You wouldn't think that Donald Trumps Supporters and Muslim groups would share much in common  ....

Various Groups Boycott Starbucks - Strange Bedfellows
Various Groups Boycott Starbucks - Strange Bedfellows

However when Muslim groups in Malaysia and Indonesia in 2017, called on all good Muslims to boycott Starbucks, they created a strange alliance of purpose with Trumps supporters.

Their boycott call was because of the coffee chains support for LGBT rights. The two primary Muslim groups calling for the boycott, have 29 million members. That's an awful lot of Java. But these are not the only groups to boycott Starbucks over the years. 
 
An American Muslim group had also called for a boycott, because the firm CEO Howard Schultz, was spinning (according to them), the fact that the group supported Israel. It was claimed that Starbucks sends part of its profits to the Israeli military. This conspiracy theory was taken up by other Muslim groups as well.

The fact that this claim was based on a hoax letter was ignored by the groups. Simply the fact that he was Jewish, meant that in their eyes it wouldn't be a surprise that he did so, and that seems to have been enough for these groups limited intelligence. Also the fact that if he had been a Palestinian, they would have expected Starbucks to be sympathetic to Muslim causes, made it believable in the opposite scenario, but that doesn't matter.

As a result, Starbucks was forced to close a store in Beirut, Lebanon due to demonstrators shouting anti-Israeli slogans, causing customers to flee, and later in London, pro-Palestinian supporters trashed a Starbucks in Piccadilly (Q. Where were the London police?).

But then there was the strange case of Donald Trumps supporters also calling for a boycott of Starbucks under Mr Shultz's management, also in 2017..... the reason? He had promised to offer job interviews to 10,000 refugees (some of whom might be Muslims), which sparked outrage amongst Trumps supporters. Many wanted an American first recruitment policy, and some supporters even called for the company to recruit forces veterans .... little caring that Starbucks had actually been giving US veterans preferential recruitment for many years.

Mug Not Christmassy Enough For Some Trump Supporters?
Not Christmassy Enough For Some ....

Back in November 2015, some Americans had also boycotted Starbucks (Trump had also joined in the fun as well) ..... it was because the company’s holiday cups weren’t “Christmassy” enough for their tastes. But as Americans usually say "Happy Holidays," I'm not sure what the beef really was. 

Ignorance creates some strange bedfellows .....

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