July 4 is a complicated day for us Brits.
If it hadn’t been for the woeful incompetence of mad King George III, there’s a chance that America would still be ruled by the British monarchy, and I might be ruling over the country as King Piers.
Laugh, or howl in horror, but would I be doing a worse job than Joe Biden?
At least I know what day it is, though I accept some of my US subjects probably wouldn’t have liked my requirement for cricket to be the main national sport.
I also know that July 4 is a very special day for all Americans, a day to celebrate freedom with friends and family with parades, fireworks, recitals of the Declaration of Independence beside roaring bonfires, and lots of jokes about running the British redcoats out of town.
As Conan O’Brien once quipped: “Just found out that every Fourth of July, the British celebrate ‘We Dodged a Bullet Day.'”
Above all, it’s supposed to be a day of unity and pride — a moment to set aside differences and come together with a shared love of the country.
But not, it would seem, for those who run Ben & Jerry’s.
Instead, the ice cream makers decided July 4 was a good day to declare war on July 4.
“Ah, the Fourth of July,” it stated. “Who doesn’t love a good parade, some tasty barbecue, and a stirring fireworks display? The only problem with all that, though, is that it can distract from an essential truth about this nation’s birth: The US was founded on stolen Indigenous land. This year, let’s commit to returning it.”
Then came the real kicker: “Here’s why we need to start with Mount Rushmore.”
Why?
It explained: “The faces on Mount Rushmore are the faces of men who actively worked to destroy Indigenous cultures and ways of life, to deny Indigenous people their basic rights.”
Those faces, of course, are four of America’s greatest presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
These were all truly magnificent men whose collective accomplishments are stunning bedrocks of American history.
Yet Ben & Jerry’s decided July 4 was a day not to celebrate any of that or to rejoice in America’s independence, but instead to just categorize these American presidential heroes as nothing more than a bunch of barbaric thieves.
On its website, beneath its statement, the firm urged customers to sign a petition to “return Mount Rushmore to the Lakota.”
But then, right below, it also urged them to subscribe to their special offers email service.
“Subscribe Now,” it pleaded, “and We’ll Make Sure You Get The Inside Scoop On Ben & Jerry’s Fun And Flavors! It’s Like Dessert For Your Inbox, And You’re Going To Want Seconds.”
Seconds?
I don’t even want firsts, thanks all the same.
Don’t get me wrong — I love ice cream.
But why would I want to buy a product from a company that’s gone out of its way to trash its own country’s biggest day of celebration, and encouraged hate toward some of the nation’s finest historical legends?
And how pathetically shameless to make it so transparently obvious that this isn’t really about Indigenous rights — an undeniably important debate — but about selling more ice cream.
It may as well have had the slogan: “Hate America … then buy our chocolate chip cookie!”
It’s not the first time Ben & Jerry’s has pulled this kind of stunt.
It spoke out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and the LGBTQ+ community and sparked fury from Israelis in 2021 when it announced it was putting a freeze on selling ice cream in “the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” despite parent company Unilever doing business everywhere from China to Russia.
And B&J co-founder Ben Cohen donated more than $1 million to a group demanding the US end its military aid to Ukraine, which seems kinda perverse if you believe so strongly in people not having land stolen from them.
Ben & Jerry’s justifies all this activism by saying it wants to “eliminate injustices in our communities by integrating these concerns into our day-to-day business activities.”
But as with all virtue signalers, the hypocrisy is enough to make me choke on their caramel chew.
For example, a popular Twitter account named Show Me The Data posted: “Ben and Jerry’s corporate office is in South Burlington, VT, Home of the Abenaki people. There are 3,200 of them still residing in the area. Ben and Jerry’s – give them their land back.”
I won’t be holding my breath.
Hypocrisy comes easy to Ben & Jerry’s.
They were exposed by the New York Times earlier this year as being among the companies whose supply chains use migrant child labor, despite their supposed progressive values and pledge to “honor and stand with” immigrants.
As with so many woke corporate lecturers, they prefer not to practice what they preach.
But it will be very interesting to see what happens to Ben & Jerry’s now, given the increasing public intolerance with brands forcing this kind of virtue-signaling BS down people’s throats.
A few years ago, Gillette tried to demonize its male consumer base as a bunch of would-be Harvey Weinsteins with an appalling #MeToo ad campaign that cratered its stock price — and had to perform a screeching U-turn to save its business.
More recently, Anheuser-Busch destroyed its sales almost overnight by inexplicably using woman-mocking transgender “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney to market its Bud Light beer.
Its new “Backyard Grunts” commercial, hurriedly released to counter the backlash, is about as alpha-male as any ad in history.
And last month, Target also had to abruptly backtrack after customers reacted furiously to it filling its stores with LGBTQ-themed merchandise during Pride Month.
The message from the public couldn’t be clearer: They’ve had enough of this endless woke propaganda garbage, and they’re now going to hit the brands that do it where it hurts them most — on the bottom line.
Ben & Jerry’s should stick to whipping up ice cream, not division.
