this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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[–] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 32 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Stop calling it a boycott then.

A boycott is named after Charles Boycott, an English land agent who was cheating his master Lord Erne's Irish tenant farmers. When they "Boycotted" him in 1880, the local people wouldn't just not give him money - they wouldn't interact with him or his agents in any way. Pretended they didn't exist. Pretended they didn't hear him or his lackeys speak his lackeys when they went to the shop. Cut them off entirely from their lives.

It should be noted that then he appealed to British establishment media and the British government sent 1000 police to protect 50 replacement workers - scabs - and provisions delivered from Protestant areas. It cost the Brits £10,000 to harvest £500 worth of crops, but they paid it to send a message. The government is not on your side.

This was 145 years ago. I know that seems like a lot to most people. In terms of the Irish resistance to British rule, it is remarkably recent. Not only that, but within 35 years, Britain had agreed to Irish home rule (and reneged on it). Within 40 years Ireland was independent.

In the words of Michael Davitt, leader of the Land League who inspired the protest:

You must shun him on the roadside when you meet him – you must shun him in the streets of the town – you must shun him in the shop – you must shun him on the fair green and in the market place, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of the country, as if he were the leper of old – you must show him your detestation of the crime he committed.

And in the weasel words of Boycott himself:

My farm is public property; the people wander over it with impunity. My crops are trampled upon, carried away in quantities, and destroyed wholesale. The locks on my gates are smashed, the gates thrown open, the walls thrown down, and the stock driven out on the roads. I can get no workmen to do anything, and my ruin is openly avowed as the object of the Land League unless I throw up everything and leave the country. I say nothing about the danger to my own life, which is apparent to anybody who knows the country.

Don't interact with these business. Don't interact with people who obey these businesses.

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 16 points 2 days ago

Charles Boycott

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott

For the lazy, like me, who wanted a ~~source~~ link to our favourite source aggregator.

[–] JandroDelSol@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Look, I agree with you, and I avoid those places like the plauge, but I think you're overestimating how much people care about the details. In an ideal world, yes, all communication would be accurate, but when addressing the masses, you have to use the common definition of words rather yellowstone the technical definition.