Top Watchdog: Unilever Should Part Ways With Ben & Jerry’s

David Ridenour, President of the National Center for Public Policy Research and a friend of NLPC, has written a commentary for The Daily Signal that argues for British mega-corporation Unilever to unload its problematic, anti-Semitic subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s.

We have covered extensively how the ice cream maker decided to discontinue sales of its products in the “West Bank” and East Jerusalem areas of Israel, due to the virulent anti-Semitism of its company leadership and its co-founders. Unilever has said it has no control over Ben & Jerry’s decision making and progressive activism, but Ridenour says there is one thing it can do:

The future of Unilever—a $151 billion enterprise—is now being held hostage by a subsidiary it purchased for just $326 million.

 

But there may be a way out. While Unilever’s acquisition agreement may prevent it from reversing the sales ban, it is under no obligation to keep the brand and harm its own brand.

And Ridenour argues that, in fact, Unilever would be wise to jettison it’s a comparatively small headache. Why? Because the parent corporation has an image problem due to its own cozy history with the Nazis, as he explains in detail:

In response to anti-Jewish measures in Germany during the 1930s, Unilever replaced Jews on its supervisory boards. In 1938, the company even appointed Karl Blessing to lead Unilever NV’s presidium. Blessing was a member of the Reichsbank executive board, the central bank of the German Reich from 1876 until 1945…

 

Unable to take its profits out of Germany due to strict foreign-exchange restrictions, Unilever used its German profits during the 1930s to buy stakes in railways, raw materials, and ship building—industries critical to the Third Reich’s war effort and its ongoing persecution of non-Aryans.

Ridenour offers a much more extensive history of Unilever’s Nazi-sympathizing, which you can read here.

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Tags: anti-Semitism, Ben and Jerry's, Israel, Unilever