The term "boycott" originated in the 19th century in Ireland, coined by a news reporter for the New York Tribune, writing about Catholic tenant farmers' protest against a land tax and a Protestant land agent name of Charles Boycott.
The idea caught on fast and, if you haven't boycotted most news organizations, you might think it has reached a peak, a week ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. In just the past week, I've read news stories about boycotts of L.L.Bean, boycotts of the publisher Simon & Schuster and how Legal Seafoods clam chowder won't be served at the presidential inauguration this year--after Legal ran ads mocking Trump's hands.
What with S&S imprints publishing books by both John Irving and Stephen King, it's getting hard to be a proud Yankee without stepping in it, politically. At least we've still got John Updike (Knopf) and Emily Dickinson (public domain).
Maybe the peak was sometime last fall, when the #GrabMyWallet hashtag brought in boycotts against some retailers carrying Trump-branded goods (including Boston-based Wayfair and RueLaLa, and the Framingham-based parent co. of TJ Maxx and Marshalls). On the other side of the boycott coin, Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's found itself the target of a pro-Trump boycott for its support of Black Lives Matter.
It'd be understandable if you thought we'd hit peak boycott, but you'd be wrong, says Cornell University Professor Lawrence Glickman. He wrote a book on the history of American boycotts and assures me that their popularity with the American buying public has hit higher peaks in the past--the 1930s, the Progressive Era, or the United Farm Workers grape boycott of the 1960s and 70s, for example, in which some 17 million Americans said they participated. The Boston Tea Party was a boycott (ahem).
However, at no time in history is Glickman aware of such intense interest in boycotts focused on a president. Much like the boycotters themselves, Trump is known to wade personally into the economy, brandishing his Twitter following as a carrot or a stick against large consumer brands like Boeing, Ford, Carrier and CNN.
Is Donald Trump the boycotter-in-chief?
"What Trump does really effectively is he personalizes the economy," Glickman told me, noting that, according to at least one analysis he has read, Trump prefers concrete words like "jobs" over abstract phrases like "the economy."
"That’s exactly what boycotts have always tried to do is connect individuals and their actions to this abstract thing we call the economy," Glickman said.
So, is Trump the boycotter-in-chief?
Whatever he is, the fate of Yankee swag isn't high on anyone's priority list right now, including mine. I'm not originally from New England. And I don't really care for John Irving or Stephen King. But I read with interest yesterday about the boycott of Simon & Schuster that's led the Chicago Review of Books to abstain from reviewing any of the publishing house's titles in 2017. S&S had signed the Breitbart editor and alt-right celebrity, Milo Yiannopoulos, for a book deal.
Yiannopoulos is a hatemonger by anyone's yardstick. But it made me wonder, can't we separate politics and commerce? Can't we disagree, and still spend our money in the same restaurant?
The answer is, clearly, no. Not when it's war. And when you say things that threaten people's freedom, security and health, it's not surprising that many see it as a declaration of war.
