BEN & JERRY’S CEO FIRED: Cancel Culture Warrior Gets Taste Of Own Medicine
Big advocate for weaponized boycotts now mad over being fired for his politics
When culture warriors become literal corporate sell-outs, they shouldn’t be surprised when the laws of economics come and bite them in the ass.
There’s a reason ‘go woke go broke’ has become axiomatic. Even institutions as big as Disney and Bud Light have learned they are not too big to feel the sting of a spurned public returning the favor.
As for politics, there aren’t many corporate political attention whores louder than Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
Ben & Jerry’s sold their company to Unilever in 2000, with the expectation that they could continue their political grandstanding. It looks like, 25 years later, reality has finally caught up with them.
In a legal complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday night, Ben & Jerry’s alleged that Unilever dismissed chief executive David Stever after he failed to comply with the parent company’s efforts to prevent it from speaking out on political issues.
“Unilever has repeatedly threatened Ben & Jerry’s personnel, including CEO David Stever, should they fail to comply with Unilever’s efforts to silence the Social Mission,” the filing read.
“On March 3, 2025, Unilever informed the Independent Board that they were removing and replacing Mr. Stever as Ben & Jerry’s CEO.” — Financial Times
A related case, from 2024, detailed the fights over Ben & Jerry’s fighting for the right to push their pro-Palestine, Anti-Israel positions, including donating money to groups like CAIR, who was once named an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing case in US history.
The old CEO has now been fired, and the case cited above involves claims that Unilever is attempting to disband the activist group steering B&J’s activism. The subsidiary is taking the case to court. Again.
It said Unilever chastised Stever in a January performance review for “repeatedly acquiescing” to Ben & Jerry’s promotion of social goals, and has repeatedly warned personnel not to defy its efforts to “silence the social mission.”
Ben & Jerry’s also said Unilever’s attacks on its social mission have reached “new levels of oppressiveness.”
It said Unilever blocked it in February from honoring Black History Month, and more recently from supporting the release from detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a U.S. legal permanent resident active in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University and who the Trump administration wants to deport. —Reuters
He gives a big thumbs-up to using financial pressure to force countries to bend to his will, and it doesn’t occur to this clown that his own obnoxious petulance can trigger the same response against the brand he claims to represent? Or that 25 years of this increasingly radical activism could poison all value of the brand to the company that bought it in the first place, turning it into a potential net-negative for the company’s bottom line?
The are literally aligning themselves with groups and individuals affiliated with designated foreign terror groups.
It hardly a zero-risk association for the parent brand. Especially seeing how little patience the public had with Bud Light.
Conservatives and independents probably don’t buy much Ben and Jerry’s anymore. But there are a whole host of OTHER products and brands that could hang in the balance if a backlash was triggered.
And that outcome is not beyond the realm of possiblity. Not at all.