Go Woke, get broke: Unilever loses $3 billion over Ben & Jerry's boycott

The ice cream brand's parent company took a fall after posting a tweet accusing the U.S. of stealing land from indigenous people.

Montaje sobre una tienda de Ben — (QFamiliy/Flickr/VozMedia)

Published by

Israel Duro

8 de julio, 2023

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It has not been a good week for Ben & Jerry's. In addition to co-founder Ben Cohen's arrest for disobeying the police while protesting in support of Julian Assange, the company posted a controversial and unpatriotic tweet on their official Twitter account over the Fourth of July which has led people to boycott the ice cream maker's parent company, Unilever, costing them more than $3 billion.

Unilever's share price per share fell by $1

Unilever shares closed July 3 at $52.28 per share, while the company's capitalization was just over $131.5 billion at close. After three days of continuous declines, shares went down by more than a dollar ($51.06), so the company's value ended the week at $128.5 billion, down $3 billion in just three days. The worst thing for the company is that losses have been steadily increasing, so share prices are expected to continue going down.

It all began on the Fourth of July when the company posted a tweet accusing the Founding Fathers of benefiting at the expense of the land they stole from the indigenous people. In addition, they encouraged Americans to return the land to its rightful owners.

"Stolen land"

In addition, the ice cream brand published a press release in which it proposed returning Mount Rushmore to the indigenous people. It said that Mount Rushmore features the faces "of men who actively worked to destroy indigenous cultures and ways of life, to deny Indians their basic rights." The faces depicted are those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

What is the meaning of Independence Day for those whose land this country stole, those who were murdered and forced with brutal violence onto reservations, those who were pushed from their holy places and denied their freedom? 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.