LUSH & “the right side of History”

[NitroNine]

LUSH’s Dublin branch (on Henry Street) have decided to effectively announce their support for Hamas despite it being a proscribed organisation in the EU, UK & US. Jaysus.

To just run through some of their greatest hits as discussed on MN:
• in 2012 they ran a hugely sexualised campaign to oppose animal testing
• they foist a guide on “How To Be A Trans Ally” on customers (2018)
• donations from November 2019‘s Charity Pots go to Trans Media Watch (controlling the media narrative doesn’t come cheap)
• the Edinburgh branch announce they wouldn’t serve anyone in a “woman: adult human female” t-shirt (2020)
• facilitating providing binders to children without the knowledge of parents in 2021
• refusing funding to lesbian groups (2021)
• the 2022 “trans kids belong” campaign

Even living in London & despairing utterly of the Met Police as I do I still think their 2018 Spy Cops campaign was cynical, manipulative, & just a marginally more sophisticated way to say “ACAB” rather than a genuine attempt to address the incredibly serious issues that had been uncovered.

”The right side of history” indeed 🤨

@MalagaNights thank you for this post. Everything I wanted to say but expressed so much more eloquently than I could.

I agree, it is a moral 'both sides' equivalence that GC feminists would not tolerate if it was about TRAs versus GC women.

Once again I'm with JKR. Her moral compass never seems to be off:

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1711770980446532002?s=20

Now is not a time for whataboutery, or context, or both sides.

When true evil rears it's head you don't look away, you don't minimise it, you don't say it nuanced.

And you don't put up signs blaming the victims.

People's moral compasses are way way out and it's frightening.

They haven’t said they support Hamas. They’ve said boycott a country who according to the UN are acting illegally. Massive difference.

saying that I think Lush needs to stay out of politics. I imagine it’s a crackers member of staff gone rogue rather than official company policy.

Thank you.
I don't feel eloquent I feel emotional and floored and destabilised by the swathes of people not recognising evil when it's raises it's head.

So many things have made me realise over the past 5 years how atrocities happened in the past and how they could happen again in a way I wouldn't hev previously believed.

The Trans issue has been one of those awakening issues for me. People will deny reality to conform, and sacrifuce childern for it.

And now this, when the very worst of our imaginations is made real and people still say 'ah it's only a sign.'

I just don't know what to say anymore.

I do not think Lush should have that sign in their window this week, but I wonder very much is it really new? It could have been there for months without anyone commenting on it, and nobody on the staff had the sense or sensitivity to remove it.

I boycott Israel
I support Palestine

I do not support Hamas. Targeting innocent civilians is never justified and in taking the actions they have, they have condemned many more innocent Palestinians to death.

Sounds like a cult!

saying that I think Lush needs to stay out of politics. I imagine it’s a crackers member of staff gone rogue rather than official company policy.

I doubt this is true given their previous history. In contrast I can believe that they don't have an HR department. I belong to a community website in the area where their factory is based. There are regular stories of young first jobbers being treated poorly. Their staff turnover must be staggering. Forget their Mermaids links and their virtue signalling, I would avoid them for the way they treat their staff.

It’s a new sign, I walk by there most days

Most of the employees in that particular branch of Lush are of the blue haired variety. I would suggest mostly ignorant & jumping on what they see as a PC bandwagon.

So they're anti-Semites who support the beheading of children. I won't be setting foot in their stores again.

I’m so happy I’ve recently found a Korean moisturiser that I can finally replace my LUSH ‘gorgeous’ with (I’d tried many alternatives before but could never get one which didn’t irritate my skin) for a quarter of the price.

Finally never have to pay them a single penny again.

Fucking hell.

I was unaware of that particularly grim detail.

i have no truck with Lush but you can't equate boycotting the state of Israel with anti-semitism.

That is part of the problem - if nobody is allowed to criticise the state of Israel, then we're all lost.

Some of the news outlets reporting this have now retracted it citing that there's no evidence of it thankfully. It was an allegation made by an IDF soldier.

If true obviously thats behind horrific, but at the moment I think it's probably something to be taken with a small truckload of salt. Hopefully.

Here is 300 young people murdered at a music festival.

Oh Dear.

Here is my new sign about how much I dislike them.

You don't see the problen? It's evil that's the problem.

Hamas are the elected government of Gaza. The PA won't condemn them. Not all Palestinaians support them but a majority do, and they an evil barbaric death cult akin to Isis. Maybe the focus right now should be on that?
Put that sign in your window, see how it goes. Spot the difference?

I agree with this. I do think it is a very complex situation and there is always a danger that where a group feels legitimately oppressed, it allows extremism to sneak in. However, there are times when context doesn't matter. The causes don't matter at this moment. The deaths, the rapes, the kidnappings, all these things matter.

I don't know (or feel that I need to know) the answers. I absolutely do feel the horror and want to help the victims, while knowing that there is really nothing I can do that would make a difference. All I can know for sure at this time, is that these are people, who have been savagely and brutally harmed or murdered by other people, while they were going about their normal daily business.

I hope the Lush sign was planned some time ago and the timing is just really unfortunate. Even then, you'd hope that someone would think a bit and take it down because it's just so inappropriate. I can't boycott Lush because I never bought from them anyway- I tried to go into a shop of theirs once, but the smell made me wheeze and I had to leave and take copious inhalers then go home. As a company, they seem to have cornered the market in corporate twattery, but this seems low even for them.

There is a long thread in FWR: who has disappointed you the most? There is a long list of idols and close friends, even family. But did anyone write : myself?
Because this cancer of moral equivalency and lazy intellectual "thinking" (whether it is TWAW or Israel is a terrorist state) that affects the average liberal westerner is the root of the problem.

This is not true.
Independent jouranlists are now verifying they have seen the evidence.

People though are minimising and saying it's not true that 40 babies were beheaded, only some of the 40 muredered babies were beheaded.
Once we're at the minimising of the beheadding of babies we really are lost.

The Isrealis won't show the pictures, they are asking for people to remove Tiktok from children so that when the public beheaddings start it won't be seen. They have released some photos of the bloody cots and car seats to indicate what happened.

Hamas on the other hand are celebrating and sharing the images of raped women and hostages on the back of trucks being paraded. They say they will live stream the beheadings of the hostages.
Some of the hostages are 3 year children where they killed thier parents and have taken the babies to Gaza. They have shared videos of these children being taunted, and they are now threatening to kill them and stremm it live.

But yeh now is the time to talk about boycotting Isreal and politics.
If you have lost any sense of morality.

For anyone who has a tiktok account this is a very moving and informative (but old) speech from Lord Kaufman, an English Jewish MP who believes Israel was founded on terrorism. I totally condemn attacks on civilians on both sides. I think Hamas need finishing off. But both sides have blood of innocent people on their hands.

I really really hope the beheading of babies is propaganda.

Obviously, if it is propaganda, it would be an absolutely disgusting thing to lie about to try and win sympathy. But I'd still rather the truth of the matter was that the Israelis were lying about it than that babies were actually beheaded.

I think of my own babies and imagine that happening to them and my blood just runs cold.

Link. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJ343yE8/

I do kind of get the point that is this the right time to be talking about this. Obviously I hope the kidnapped civilians make it out safely. But also if we don’t talk about it now maybe it’s too late for the Palestinian children who are dying in large numbers as we speak.

Even if it is propaganda about the beheadings sadly I think it’s probably true that babies were killed. Saying that there have definitely been stories where adults were killed and children not, one house the Hamas soldiers wrote on the wall that they do not kill children. 🤷‍♀️

😢

An article about retraction came up on my Google feed earlier. Maybe that's been superceded then.

Despicable, inexcusable and totally grim if it is true.

I still boycott Israel though. Choosing to cut off electricity, water, and not allow medicines in, whilst bombing is just as deliberate a slaughter of innocents.

I would happily boycott Hamas too, but they don't really produce anything to boycott so it's a moot point really.