Ariana Grande has remained silent on Israel's genocide for the first 7 months, despite being the 6th most followed person on instagram. She broke the Starbucks boycott in December. But she changed course after months of public pressure for her to speak out.
She’s an American singer, Actress and the founder of R.E.M Beauty.
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Ariana Grande's career was funded and facilitated by her mom, Joan Grande, the CEO of Hose-McCann, a company that provides alarm and communication systems to the American Empire's Military. Grande began her career singing on Hose-McCann military ships. Grande was managed by hasbara, Scooter Braun, for a decade, and is still financially tied to him through their R.E.M. Beauty partnership and HYBE's social platform Weverse. She's currently managed by Zionist, Brandon Creed. The CEO of Grande's R.E.M. Beauty company, Michelle Shigemasa, is also the Senior Vice President at Estée Lauder, a company founded and led by Ronald Lauder, who financially supports the Zionist occupation of Palestinian land. Grande is the global brand ambassador for Swarovski, which has eighteen stores in occupied Palestine. Grande's face is advertised across the Zionist entity for the brand.
Ariana Grande was quiet for 7 months while her country was funding a genocide.
Despite the formation of the Starbucks boycott due to their support of Israel, Ariana was seen still indulging in their products. Although the evidence claims this was pre-boycott, the act of boycotting Starbucks began in mid-October. This picture had to have been taken in either November or December due to her current hair color and her shown cup.
On May 12 2024, she finally signed a letter calling for a ceasefire, after immense pressure from the public. She posted a link to a fundraiser for the PCRF on May 28, 2024, just hours after Kehlani called celebrities out for their continued silence.
Starbucks Boycott:
While boycotting Starbucks is warranted based on its unethical track record and it’s former CEO’s ties to Israeli cyber-surveillance firms, it should not be conflated with or represented as an official BDS campaign targeting companies complicit in occupied Palestinian territories.
Starbucks is not officially on the BDS boycott list for companies directly involved in oppressing Palestinians and so should not be targeted with the same intensity — doing so risks minimizing the focused work of Palestinian solidarity movements.
The reasoning behind the Starbucks boycott instead stems from its union-busting tactics and unethical business practices; namely sending cease-and-desist letters and filing lawsuits against pro-Palestinian voices within its workers' union.
While reprehensible, their silencing of protestors was an attempt to clamp down on union activism rather than a pro-Israel stance; in actuality, Starbucks has largely maintained a neutral corporate position on the Palestinian issue itself.
That being said, there are many legitimate ethical concerns with Starbucks worthy of boycott for reasons. These include issues around supply chain management, workers' rights, human rights violations, tax avoidance, environmental impacts, enabling factory farming practices and the investments of former CEO, Howard Schutlz.
Former CEO Howard Schultz's investments in Israeli cyber-surveillance firms like Wiz are also hugely problematic, especially as he has the 6th largest share of Starbucks with 21,795,538 shares (1.93%) valued at $1,991,894,218 as of 18/04/2024 — meaning he is directly benefiting monetarily from Starbucks. With this in mind, the act of visibly consuming Starbucks products has also taken on new symbolic meanings for some Zionist entities and individuals in the current political climate. As efforts to boycott companies complicit in Palestinian oppression gain momentum, publicly committing to consumerism has become a way for certain groups to overtly signal their rejection of such boycotts.
By ostentatiously patronizing Starbucks, certain individuals are attempting to declare their opposition to the non-violent economic pressure tactics employed by the Palestinian solidarity campaigns. This brandishing of Starbucks effectively co-opts the brand into a display of anti-Palestinian ideology, despite the company's official neutrality on the issue.
As such, the simple act of buying a Starbucks drink has been politicized as a statement against Palestinian rights by those who oppose the boycott efforts targeting the Israeli occupation.
Silence = Complicity:
For those who have passionately spoken out against other instances of genocide and massacres, yet fall silent when it comes to the suffering endured by Palestinians, their silence becomes a glaring indictment of the value placed on Palestinian lives and perpetuates a dangerous narrative that suggests Palestinian suffering is somehow less worthy of outrage, less deserving of empathy and less human than that of others.
By choosing silence in the face of Palestinian suffering, those with influential platforms inadvertently contribute to the erasure of Palestinian voices and experiences. They perpetuate a narrative of invisibility that allows the injustices inflicted upon Palestinians to continue unabated, shielded from the spotlight of global scrutiny.
Their silence sends a chilling message of complicity to the world – one that suggests Palestinian lives are expendable, their struggles inconsequential and their humanity negotiable. It emboldens perpetrators of violence and oppression, granting them impunity under the guise of indifference.
To remain silent in the face of Palestinian suffering is to betray the very essence of activism – the relentless pursuit of justice for all, without exception or equivocation. It’s a betrayal not only of the Palestinian people but of the universal principles of human dignity and equality and instead is a tacit endorsement of the dehumanization and marginalization of an entire population.
True activism demands consistency and integrity, an unwavering commitment to speaking truth to power and standing in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed, regardless of geography or politics.
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