How they distracted us with boycotts
Boycotts are good for a lot of reasons. But they don't do what we expect them to. And we're wasting a huge opportunity unless we understand what's written below.
I’m going to teach you the difference between a million and a billion:
Can you picture how much a million dollars is?
Think about something you bought or wanted to buy for a hundred dollars. A million is ten thousand of those.
That might be a week’s worth of food. Or an expensive handbag.
It will differ depending where you live but please picture ten thousand of whatever you’re thinking of.
Picture it, then imagine a thousand of what you’re picturing.
That’s what a billion is.
There’s an even more shocking way to picture how colossal a billion truly is by using the most valuable asset we all share:
Time.
A million minutes is just under 2 years.
That sounds like a lot, right? Guess how long a billion minutes is…
One thousand nine hundred and two years and six months.
2 years vs 1902 years.
That’s the difference between a million and billion.
And yet, a lot of us are celebrating the alleged losses of millions for the enemy from not drinking coke or overpriced lattes…
While tens of billions get sent to Israel in the blink of an eye.
We’re celebrating removing a bucket of sand while an entire beach is being poured into the genocide… on a regular basis.
So how effective are the boycotts really?
Look, I’m not saying boycotts aren’t necessary.
Boycotting is the ethical thing to do. It drives positive changes in the narrative. And puts our issues at the forefront in arguably the most important arena: economics.
Effective boycotting is when you couple it with strategic demands such as getting a public statement of support for Palestine and/or condemnation of Israel in exchange for consumer support.
Boycotting achieves a lot. But it does not achieve (not even close) what we think it does.
The notion that Israeli guns are reloaded and tanks refueled every time you drink a cappuccino is just dumb (yes I’ve heard prominent activists say things like this).
It’s dumb when we know the west pumps money into the genocide in the billions. It’s why I started with showing you just how grotesque an amount of money a billion is.
And the enemy has received hundreds of billions to date.
This is my point: the perceived success of the boycotts—and the conversations around it—dominate the discourse on the solutions for Palestine.
Millions of people have took to the streets week after week for ten months. That’s a lot of effort for a bucket of sand.
All I’m saying is if we’re able to organise such large protests and organise global boycotts of minor contributors to the genocide…
Why can’t we do the same to target the major contributors?
It’s like they’re happy, even relieved, we’re expending all this energy on the minor things unlikely to make a large enough change.
I hope I was able to wake you up to the reality of the millions we think we stopped compared to the billions they’re receiving without resistance.
I’ll end here with three questions to ask yourself for next time:
Where are the billions coming from?
Why is so much being spent on this?
How do you stop it?
Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to contribute to these important discussions in the comments, the Substack chat and the private Strategic Sunnah Telegram group.
Be honest… did your thinking open up after reading this? Have you come across ideas like this elsewhere?
If you agree these are important discussions, wish to support Muslim Betterment and become more strategic in your thinking, join up now using the massive discount below: