Why I will be boycotting Lego because of their boycott of the Daily Mail

[Skyfire2020]

To be honest It was very unlikely I would have bought any Lego this Christmas anyway (haven't owned any of their bricks in decades) but after the company allowed itself to become associated with the communist thought police, I will definitely not be buying anything from the Lego brand until they publicly renounce their part in this idiocy.
http://news.sky.com/story/lego-ends-dai ... n-10654476
Mark

[nocarename]

I'm going to ask for more background here.
A quick googling tells me that Stop Funding Hate is trying to get corporations to quit putting adds in the Daily Mail, The Sun and Daily Express.
I know very little about British Newspapers, but everything I do know tells me that the Daily Mail has a surplus of scare headlines from of loud jerks, so I'm immediately sympathetic to the cause.

What's the part that I'm missing here?

[Matrix Dragon]

Company exercises its right to not do business with another company, based off the second companies behaviour and public statements. Sounds fair.

[Skyfire2020]

As the Evelyn Beatrice Hall quote goes "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
Actual Hate speech is illegal in the UK.  Stop Funding Hate is actually Stop funding politically incorrect opinions and I view that as the political equivalent of the discredited use of blasphemy laws against religious opponents.  Don't like what someone says?  Don't bother having a rational argument or giving your side of the argument.  Just accuse them of hate speech/blasphemy and wave as they are dragged away to the kangaroo courts.
Lets look at the opposite situation.  Lets imagine Donald Trump calls on advertisers to boycott CNN because of its coverage of republicans and Lego posts on Trump's twitter feed that it is not renewing its advertising with CNN.  I suspect the howls of protest would be deafening and I also suspect they would be from the same people who support Stop Funding Hate.
There are several newspapers, TV channels and websites I disagree with, but I hope I never become the type of person who would campaign to get them shut down.

[nocarename]

skyfire2020 wrote:

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Don't bother having a rational argument or giving your side of the argument.  Just accuse them of hate speech/blasphemy and wave as they are dragged away to the kangaroo courts.

Um.

skyfire2020 wrote:

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... but after the company allowed itself to become associated with the communist thought police, I will definitely not be buying anything from the Lego brand until they publicly renounce their part in this idiocy.

There is a wide space between the legal limits of hate speech and the edge of good taste and I see no reason to boycott Lego for wanting to lean towards good taste and to keep in a better odour with the public on average . Which appears to be what they're doing. So.If you really want to do dueling boycotts, prepare carefully.

[Matrix Dragon]

Hmm, fair point. I was looking at it more from the angle of LEGO having the right to decide who they did business with, not so much the latest hashtag movement. I suspect my instinctive response of thinking 'oh boy, what's the racist/homophobic/sexist/insane thing they've said now?' every time I hear the words 'Daily Mail' didn't help

Of course, the same right to choose that LEGO has also applies to you, so carry on!

[Spoilsport]

So I'm going to spell this out, let me know if I got anything wrong:
1) Lego had a limited-run advertising deal with the Daily Mail paper
2) A Lego customer expressed their views to the folks at Lego in a letter (in short "I like you better than them, do you like me better than them?")
3) Lego has chosen to cancel the limited-run advertising (or it expired, I haven't seen the answer as to which anywhere), which may or may not have anything to do with the second item
4) outrage over free speech and association, somehow, because someone else has it, too

Did I miss anything?

[Morganite]

3) Lego has chosen to cancel the limited-run advertising (or it expired, I haven't seen the answer as to which anywhere), which may or may not have anything to do with the second item

As Lego directly addressed StopFundingHate in a tweet about this, it seems reasonably likely that the decision had something to do with it, or at least with other similar actions.

-Morgan.

[LynnInDenver]

Spoilsport wrote:

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So I'm going to spell this out, let me know if I got anything wrong:
1) Lego had a limited-run advertising deal with the Daily Mail paper
2) A Lego customer expressed their views to the folks at Lego in a letter (in short "I like you better than them, do you like me better than them?")
3) Lego has chosen to cancel the limited-run advertising (or it expired, I haven't seen the answer as to which anywhere), which may or may not have anything to do with the second item
4) outrage over free speech and association, somehow, because someone else has it, too

Did I miss anything?

And as a note, even if 2 and 3 are related, it could be that it was only a small note in a whole series of notes of an advertising campaign that was no longer making sense. Skyfire, you can still decide to not buy their stuff, but I don't think it's entirely kosher to claim that they've decided to align with the "Communist Thought Police". As noted, it's quite likely that the campaign no longer made sense, either in terms of return on investment, or just that they've made the choice to go with other, less incendiary venues.
In other words, you have the right to not buy LEGO products, but LEGO also has the right to not advertise with a firm that they find distasteful. In fact, I'd hope that they'd see you proclaiming it, and do a John Scalzi: "Hey, good luck, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!"
--

"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor

[Skyfire2020]

I've spent a week trying to sum up my views without posting something the length of war and peace.  This is the best I've come up with (still far too long but waiting another week is unlikely to make it any shorter) so here goes nothing.
There are 2 linked issues. The first is Lego not supporting the Daily Mail.  I think it would have been better for their business if they renewed the campaign but it is their money and their choice.  The second issue is Lego publicly supporting a communist hate group and giving coverage to the allegation that EVERY national conservative/right wing supporting newspaper in Britain (and I believe the only 3 that supported Brexit) is guilty of hate crimes and must be shut down.
So why do I think Stop Funding Hate is a communist hate group?  The flippant answer is that a Nazi hate group would be more likely to send a mob to smash up the newspaper offices.
On a serious note, the traditional tactics of left wing extremists (usually communist) are to bring false charges against their opponents.  You can see it in the current fake news controversy where strangely it is only the pro-Trump fake stories that are being criticised.  There were just as many pro-Clinton fake stories but for some reason the left wing media and left wing social media won't mention them and are using the opportunity to try to dismiss all right wing sites as fake.  Getting back on topic, Right wing dictators seem to be proud to be seen as such.  They stop holding elections, show off their loyal mobs and openly grab opponents off the streets just because they can.
Left wing dictators like to pretend that they are still democratic.  They want you to believe that you can vote for whoever you want.  Its just coincident that every single opposition member is in jail for fraud or making hurtful remarks about communists, or breathing without obtaining the correct paperwork.  All newspapers are allowed but people need to be protected against unapproved ideas and oh look ALL opposition newspapers editors are in prison after being found guilty of hate speech.  Its unfortunate but nothing to do with the current supreme leader who is so popular the dead rose from the grave to vote for him giving a world record 1000% election win.
Stop funding hate openly wants to shut down law abiding businesses for no other reason than they don't like the stories.    If a UKIP supporter was calling for the Daily Mirror and the Guardian to be shut down because of their anti-UKIP stories he/she would rightly be condemned as an extremist.  It doesn't become acceptable behaviour just because the person in charge is a communist rather than a Nazi.  Yes newspapers get things wrong sometimes but the benefits of a free press (despite the best efforts of certain MPs, judges and celebs to impose censorship) far outweigh the problems.
Also who decides what is hate speech?  We now know Lance Armstrong is a cheat, but before he confessed his supporters dismissed the allegations as anti-american / jealous hate speech.  Would Armstrong still have faced justice if he had been allowed to call the reports hate speech and stop the allegations being published?
Finally am I a hypocrite for boycotting Lego because of its support for a boycott? Quite possibly.  I would argue that I am only following Lego's own advice - if you don't agree with the political aims of a company then you shouldn't do business with them and I don't agree with Lego's views but I will leave that for any rules lawyers to argue.
Mark

[Spoilsport]

There are 2 linked issues. The first is Lego not supporting the Daily Mail.  *snip* The second issue is Lego publicly supporting a communist hate group*snip*.

Finally am I a hypocrite for boycotting Lego because of its support for a boycott? Quite possibly.  I would argue that I am only following Lego's own advice - if you don't agree with the political aims of a company then you shouldn't do business with them and I don't agree with Lego's views but I will leave that for any rules lawyers to argue.

Mark

IMO, no, you are NOT a hypocrite for choosing to not associate or do business with LEGO.

You ARE a hypocrite for presuming Lego doesn't have the right to freely dissociate from the Daily Mail, in pursuit of Lego's own interests (public image, f'rinstance.) Noone should be forced or coerced into an association they don't want, for whatever reason they don't want it. Likewise, you ARE a hypocrite for presuming Lego doesn't have the right to stand with others with a clear, stated purpose with which you don't agree. What's the point of free speech if we're all supposed to say the same thing?

Are you the "communist hate group" here? Or are you smashing presses, right now? Does it bother you when others express the same rights, but at purposes counter to your own? Is civility beyond the scope of your "perfect world" view? If you are, if it does, if it is, you've gone beyond hypocrite, and on to zealot.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, a leading campaigner for Brexit, last night criticised Lego’s decision as an attempt to influence the free press. He said: “Lego can place advertising where they wish. But with the free press no company should expect their advertisements to influence a newspaper’s editorial content or line."

Really, Bridgen? Sadly, Bridgen (also) failed to recognize that the advertising entity's image reputation and business can be damaged through association by the editorial brand of a paper. The Daily Mail is perfectly free to find other companies comfortable with their editorial brand, it just won't be Lego. And if the Daily Mail believes what Lego did was in violation of their limited-run legal agreement (i.e. contract, which I have since read expired at term), they are more than capable of bringing in real lawyers.

I'm just off-put by the idea that Lego didn't investigate better before entering into the limited-run deal in the first place; it isn't like the Daily Mail's brand changed radically over Brexit. Did it?

[Skyfire2020]

Decent people do not campaign to ban newspapers and decent companies do not support calls to ban newspapers. I don't care if the paper is the Hitler Daily, The Stalin Weekly, or the ISIS monthly. You either have free thought and free speech or you don't.

Yes I would expect the security services to be keeping an eye on whoever reads certain publications, but unless you are in a dictatorship, the state should judge people's actions not their thoughts.

How many Americans are praying for a meteor to smash into the Trump political headquarters and render the election result null and void? Should any of them be arrested for wishing to kill he president-elect? No. Thought crime and pre-crime have no place in a civilised society.

If you cloned the people of Stop Funding Hate and created a rival organisation that was identical in every way except it targeted left wing newspapers, I would bet my lifetime supply of virtual tin foil hats that Stop Funding Hate would be the first in the queue to label their counterpart as an extremist organisation and for the first time ever they would be right.

Mark