News Round-up: Trans Campaigns in Retail, Criticism of Covid Restrictions in the US Supreme Court and Viewing the Media as the Enemy
News Round-up: Trans Campaigns in Retail, Criticism of Covid Restrictions in the US Supreme Court and Viewing the Media as the Enemy
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
Men advertising women's sportswear and other trans campaigns in retail.
US Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sharply critical of Covid restrictions.
Long-time Canadian national broadcaster journalist admits censorship.
French police hunt posters depicting Emmanuel Macron as Adolf Hitler.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans do not trust the media.
Adidas promotes women's swimsuits on men's backs and other trans campaigns: companies risk customer outrage and a huge loss of profit, but they do it anyway
Sports equipment brand Adidas has launched a Pride ad campaign, with a male model with a hairy chest wearing a women's swimsuit. Adidas describes the model, without mentioning his gender, as 188 cm tall, with a chest circumference of 86 cm and a waist circumference of 68 cm. The lower part of the swimsuit also reveals the contours of a man's genitals.
As expected, the Adidas campaign led to sharp criticism, in particular to loud protests from women, and calls to boycott the company's products in the future. "It's moving more and more towards an absolute assault on being female ," said former swimmer Sharron Davies.
This trans campaign is not an isolated case. Recently, Nike received the same sharp criticism when it hired a male influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who calls himself a woman, to promote women's sportswear. This led similarly to a sharp backlash and a call to boycott the company in future. Nike responded to the critics with a plea to “be kind, be inclusive".
Companies that run such advertising campaigns need to think about the economic impact of their decisions. While there has been less talk of a drop in sales for sportswear and equipment manufacturers, beverage producer Anheuser-Busch InBev, which hired the same Mulvaney as its social media partner for beer advertising, learned a painful lesson. Sales of the best-selling beer in the United States – a beer brand that Mulvaney promoted is called Bud Light – have now been in decline for six weeks in a row. In the second week of May, for example, the beer sold 25% less than at the same time a year ago, and in total the company has sold $110 million, or more than €100 million, less Bud Light in the US since the start of the year than it did at the same time last year. The decision has also had a negative impact on sales of the company's other beer brands.
Anheuser-Busch is also listed on the stock exchange and once the scandal broke, the company lost five billion dollars, or around €4.65 billion, of its market value in a short period of time.
Last week, Target, the big US supermarket chain, suffered a similar setback when it launched its campaign celebrating the so-called Pride month which has been announced for the month of June. A range of 'Pride' clothing was put on sale – for example, a swimsuit designed to conceal the genitals of 'transwomen', i.e. men. In the children's section, shirts were sold with messages that positively highlighted the transgender theme – e.g. "Proud adult drag queen Katya", etc.. Due to strong criticism from the customers, Target decided to withdraw some of the products on sale, referring to its employees being threatened.
Target is also listed on the stock exchange and lost nine billion dollars, or about 8.4 billion euros, of its market value in a week.
Alongside Target, most of major US retailers are running similar trans campaigns for the Pride month.
US Chief Justice: Covid restrictions were the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in US history
US Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch issued an eight-page statement last week in a lawsuit over Covid restrictions and immigration, calling the pandemic policy in the United States "the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country”. He said that both the states and the federal government were issuing emergency decrees on “a breathtaking scale”. Mr Gorsuch criticised the lockdown policy, the closure of businesses, schools and other public institutions. "They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too," he criticised.
Gorsuch also criticised the federal government's policy of forced vaccination, i.e. the dismissal of workers who refused vaccination. In addition, he pointed out that there was strong pressure from the state on social media companies to block the spread of information that did not support the pandemic policy and was therefore labelled "inappropriate". Congress and state legislatures that "too often fell silent" during the issuance of emergency regulations, were also among the targets of his criticism. While Gorsuch asserted that he understands the need to act decisively in emergency situations, there is a risk that such action will leave behind no more than a hollow shell of democracy and civil liberties.
Gorsuch's statement was met with a considerable response in the United States. On the positive side, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem said the judge was correct. She called the pandemic policy communist and noted that South Dakota had never implemented the policies of lockdowns, mask mandates or forced vaccination.
CBC journalists were not allowed to write about vaccine injuries
Former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) journalist Marianne Klowak admitted that journalists working for the CBC were banned from doing stories on the negative effects of the lockdown policy, vaccine injuries or protests against forced vaccination. Klowak gave evidence to the National Citizen's Inquiry, a citizens' initiative convened to assess the pandemic policies. According to Klowak, what the public expects from public broadcasting above all else is truth-telling. "We stopped that," she said. The veteran journalist who spent 34 years in the CBC noted that the practice changed essentially overnight and the topics she proposed were rejected. She added that, in her view, the CBC deceived Canadians by portraying one side of experts as "competent and trustworthy " while portraying those who questioned the restrictions as "dangerous and spreading misinformation".
"I had witnessed in a very short time the collapse of journalism, news gathering, investigative reporting—and the way I saw it is that we were in fact pushing propaganda," she said.
Klowak left the CBC in December 2021.
French police are hunting for the persons who put up posters depicting Macron as Hitler
In Avignon, southern France, 30 posters depicting French President Emmanuel Macron as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler appeared on billboards on the night from May 17 to May 18. The posters depicted Macron with grey hair and a moustache. The moustache forms the numbers 49.3 – the very article of the constitution that Macron used to push through his pension reform, with parliament unable to vote on it.
The posters reproduced a mural created by a local artist in April on the edge of a city parking lot, which was immediately erased by the city authorities. The posters were also quickly collected and a complaint was lodged to the police. Those who put up the posters could face a fine of €12,000 for insulting the president, plus €7,500 for inciting a riot, plus a two-month prison sentence.
It would not be the first time in France that the author of a poster depicting Macron as Hitler has been fined in France. In September 2021, a man who had put up a poster depicting Macron as Hitler was fined €10,000 in southern France. That poster was a protest against Covid restrictions. The case was initiated by President Macron himself, being a rather hypocritical move on his part. The point is that, in selected cases, Mr Macron had celebrated the opposite, i.e. freedom of expression being the ultimate good. For example, when the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo re-published cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in September 2020, and Muslims protested, Macron spoke out in defence of freedom of expression. “In France, one can criticize a president, governors, one can blaspheme,” he said back then. But as we see, this is not true. We've written about the state of free speech and freedom of expression in France here.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans see the media as "truly the enemy of the people"
According to a Rasmussen poll, 59% of likely voters in the United States fully or partly agree with the statement that "the media are truly the enemy of the people". According to the poll of 1,002 respondents, this assessment is more common among Republican voters – 77% strongly agree or somewhat agree with the statement. On the Democratic side, those who strongly agree or somewhat agree are in the minority – 44% of respondents. Meanwhile, 51% of them strongly disagree or somewhat disagree with the claim. Among voters with a preference for someone outside the two main parties, 56% of respondents consider or rather consider the media to be the enemy of the people, and 35% do not or rather not think that. Out of all the respondents to the survey, there were also 5% of respondents who said they were not sure whether the media were the enemy of the people or not.
