Target blames extremism to avoid Bud Light’s fate

Conservative boycotts have proven largely ineffective in the past, but Bud Light’s attempt to push LGBTQ propaganda on its customers has created a sustained backlash that has tanked company profits, and other corporations like Target have taken notice. The retailer has recently come under fire as it gears up for the new American Ramadan, also known as Pride Month, by featuring increasingly controversial LGBTQ-themed merchandise.

Along with the now-standard “Love Is Love” gear, Target is offering “tuck-friendly" bottoms used by transitionists to hide male genitalia while wearing female swimsuits. The swimsuit is manufactured by the company Abprallen, whose designer Eric Carnell is an avowed Satanist. Carnell has designed shirts emblazed with the slogan “Satan respects pronouns” and pins in the shape of a guillotine featuring the phrase “homophobe headrest.” According to multiple reports, the sudden attention caused Target leadership to hold an emergency meeting this week in hopes of avoiding a “Bud Light situation.”

As I explained in an early piece, Anheuser-Bush executives doomed themselves by taking a middle-of-the-road approach to their boycott. Executives trapped themselves between a conservative customer base and the woke mob, hoping to please both. Instead, they found themselves in an inescapable situation where attempting to please either side would be treated as an unacceptable concession by the other.

In this no-win scenario, the only thing Bud Light can do is watch its sales plummet and hope the controversy blows over. Target has put itself in a similar situation. The retailer does have a different core customer base than Bud Light, catering to middle- and upper-middle-class suburbanites who do not want to be caught shopping at Walmart. But like Anheuser-Bush, Target still relies heavily on red-state consumers to pad its bottom line and must, at least to some degree, be responsive to their tastes.

Target executives are aware of the dynamic that played out in the Bud Light boycott and have no desire to become trapped in the same way, so they devised a different plan for damage control.

The company announced that it will be reducing its Pride displays and moving them to the back of the store. A statement from the corporation specified that this will be more common in Southern states, where the backlash is expected to be more severe. To avoid the perception of giving a concession to conservative pressure, however, Target has released a statement blaming volatile circumstances and “threats impacting our team members' sense of safety and well-being” as the motivation for the decision. No specifics were given about the nature or source of these alleged threats, but Target made sure to restate its commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community and dedicated itself to celebrating Pride Month throughout the year.

This strategy allows Target to present a head-fake where it gives a minor concession to conservatives hoping to satisfy them. At the same time the company gets to turn to the LGBTQ mob and woke investors with a vague accusation of “violence” that allows executives to pretend they are doing this for safety reasons. Target needs to avoid a protracted battle with its customer base, but it also cannot be seen as giving deference to the concerns of the deplorables. Framing this as an issue of worker safety allows the company to make minor concessions while reinforcing the “violent and dangerous Christian extremism” stereotype the media has been investing in for the last few years.

Read the rest at The Blaze