Add the humble Oreo cookie to the long and growing list of ordinary bits of Americana the self-declared patriots of the MAGA movement now are expected to shun. As Ashlie Stevens reported at Salon on Monday, the usual yapping heads of the right are so furious at the brand for sponsoring a pro-LGBTQ short film that they are calling on their followers to "boycott" the company. Well, not the actual company — Oreos are owned by a multinational corporation that owns hundreds of everyday brands — but just the cookie itself. Ideally, you also issue a lecture on the evils of homosexuality to the poor checkout girl who didn't even ask why you were going with Nillas instead of Oreos for your cookie purchase today.
Like every right-wing "boycott" before — from the one against Starbucks to the one against Gillette to the various Twitter "boycotts" to this current Disney "boycott" — the Oreo "boycott" isn't really a boycott. A genuine boycott is much like an economic sanction, except imposed by organized citizens instead of governements. It's an effort to cause economic pain for a company or other entity, with an eye towards pressuring them to change their political behavior. The most famous example is the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, in which Black residents of the Alabama city refused to ride the bus until it was desegregated. A more recent example was the targeted boycott of Wirecutter, in which the union asked readers to avoid the site during their strike.
