Pinkwashing

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pinkwashing describes strategies to advertise certain products, people, countries or organizations by specifying an identification with the LGBT movement in order to appear modern, progressive and tolerant. As a portmanteau it is made up of the words pink (color) and whitewashing ( whitewashing ). First the term was coined by a marketing campaign against breast cancer ; she was accused that the company behind it pretended to want to help breast cancer sufferers while it actually benefited from their disease.

Pinkwashing allegations

immigration

In 2013, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) officially supported a comprehensive immigration reform US government and agreed to support immigrants in the asylum and naturalization process. That support came days after an incident in which the HRC prevented a homosexual migrant from discussing his legal status at a rally in front of the Supreme Court. The HRC later apologized for this. The Huffington Post referred to the HRC's actions as pinkwashing . Attempts have been made to make the immigration reform appear "pro-LGBT" and thus to get support from the LGBT movement and to cover up the serious setbacks in the reform - these setbacks included financing the deportation of migrants and militarization of the United States.

In 2012, Jason Kenney , Canada's Minister for Immigration and Naturalization, was charged with pink washing after emailing thousands of Canadians with the subject line “LGBT Refugees from Iran”. That message also included a comment from Secretary of State John Baird on Canada's steadfastness against the persecution and marginalization of gays, lesbians and women around the world. A group of activists said it was a "poor pinkwashing attempt by a conservative government," with the real objective, the obvious, being to wage war with Iran.

United States

According to Omar G. Encarnación, Professor of Political Science at Bard College , Barack Obama's administration Pinkwashing has been accused of “avoiding such events as the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants or the failure to do so by those responsible for human rights abuses under the guise of ' War on terror 'under Bush to be held accountable ”.

Israel

The anarcho-LGBT collective Mashpritzot protests through die -in against the pinkwashing of the Israeli government and the priorities of the LGBT center in Tel Aviv (2013)

Historian Sarah Schulman claims that the Israeli government's public relations strategy is to promote the LGBT-friendly idea of Israel in order to portray Israel as a "modern democracy", a "safe place to invest" and a "sun and beach tourist destination". In August 2011, The Jerusalem Post reported that the State Department was portraying Israel as LGBT-friendly in order to mitigate negative prejudices against Israel by liberal Americans and Europeans. Jasbir Puar , a professor of Women and Gender Studies at Rutgers University , brings up the example of LGBT rights in Israel during the simultaneous occupation of the Palestinian territories as an example of pinkwashing. She refers to the WorldPride , which took place in Jerusalem in 2006 and wrote "In the international gay and lesbian movement, being gay- friendly means being modern, cosmopolitan, highly developed, belonging to the global north and, most importantly, democratic". Joseph Massad , a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University , wrote that the Israeli government “insists on promoting and covering up LGBT rights records ... in order to promote international condemnation of the violations of the population To defend against human rights of the Palestinians ”.

Others believe that the pinkwashing accusations against Israel are a straw man argument , as Israel's support for the LGBT community has never been used to justify the occupation of the Palestinian territories. It is also taken into account that Israel is generally tolerant of LGBT groups and individuals - in contrast to the discriminatory and often brutal treatment of LGBT groups in Arab or Muslim areas. Ido Aharoni, the former head of the Brand Israel project, replied to the criticism: “We are not trying to cover up anything, but are trying to expand the discourse. We want to make other communities public ”. Alan M. Dershowitz , a Harvard law professor and a frequent advocate of Israel, said the term pinkwashing is often used against Israel by "some radical LGBT activists" who are actually " anti-Semitic hypocrites." In this context he described the use of the word pinkwashing as "nothing more than anti-Semitism with a pink face".

Yair Qedar , a gay Israeli filmmaker and human rights activist, has said that Israel has a laudable record for LGBT rights, and that failure to recognize it ends up " taking homophobia much further than dialogue and peace." He criticized Israeli LGBT groups for not opposing the pinkwashing allegations. Shaul Ganon of Israel-based LGBT + rights group Aquda assessed the dispute by saying, “Each side is trying to score points on different levels. The truth is that the only group that is being disadvantaged is the Palestinian LGBT community. "

Examples from marketing

A campaign aimed at gaining more support for the Keystone pipeline , which would run Canadian oil to the United States , was known as pinkwashing . It was said that the argument that the project would merit support because of Canada's record of LGBT rights compared to that of other oil-exporting nations. The campaign referred to OpecHatesgay.com with the headline: "Compare Canadian Ethical Oil to OPEC Conflict Oil."

In 2014, British oil company BP hosted an LGBT careers event - seen as an attempt by pinkwashing to cover up the circumstances that led to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill . This has been described as the greatest environmental disaster America has ever experienced.

In Australia , concerns have also been raised about the commodification of LGBT rights by large companies.

In Palestine and other Arab states, unlike Israel, homosexuals are persecuted. Many Palestinians who are persecuted for their sexuality are therefore fleeing to Israel.

Anti-Islamic activists

An amalgamation of some grassroots movements in Europe, such as the far-right English Defense League (EDL), organized demonstrations at the same time as the LGBT Pride in Helsinki and Stockholm in July and August 2012. In an interview with Radio Sweden, the Swedish author and activist Lisa Bjurwald said, that the EDL had used Prides in Britain to draw attention to Islamic homophobia. The group Queers Against Pinkwashing - the group that started a counter-protest in Stockholm - is against having any discussion about homophobia in Islam. Such attempts would immediately be referred to as pinkwashing and would be a " divide et impera " strategy.

See also

Web links

What does pinkwashing mean? on Tagesspiegel.de

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anja Kühne: Queer knows that (16): What does “pinkwashing” mean? In: Tagesspiegel.de . July 20, 2016, accessed June 20, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Immigration | Topics | Human Rights Campaign. June 27, 2014, accessed June 12, 2019 .
  3. ↑ HRC Apologizes for Mistreating Trans and Immigrant Activists at the Supreme Court rally. In: transitiontransmission.com. April 1, 2013, accessed July 1, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Prerna Lal, Justin Feldman: How Pink Washing Masks the Retrograde Effects of Immigration Reform. In: The Huffington Post . June 15, 2013, accessed July 1, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Critics accuse Kenney of 'pink washing' in targeted emails , CTV News. Archived from the original on May 15, 2015. 
  6. ^ Trump and Gay Rights: The Future of the Global Movement . In: Foreign Affairs , February 13, 2017. Retrieved February 14, 2017. "There is even the cynical charge that Obama engaged in" pink washing, "or the use of the gay rights issue to distract from other unsavory policies such as the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants and the failure to prosecute those responsible for the human rights abuses of the Bush administration's War on Terror. " 
  7. ↑ Avraham, Eli. (2009): Marketing and managing nation branding during prolonged crisis: The case of Israel. Vol. 5, 3, pp. 202-212.
  8. ^ Foreign Ministry promoting Gay Israel. In: The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved March 22, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Jasbir Puar: Israel's gay propaganda war. In: The Guardian. July 1, 2010, accessed March 22, 2014 .
  10. ^ A b c David Kaufman: Is Israel Using Gay Rights to Excuse Its Policy on Palestine? In: Time magazine. May 13, 2011, accessed January 26, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Stop using Palestinian gays to whitewash Israel's image. In: Haaretz . October 1, 2009, accessed January 26, 2015 .
  12. ↑ James Kirchick: The Fallacy of the 'Pinkwashing' Argument. In: Haaretz. April 6, 2012, accessed May 5, 2016 .
  13. ↑ The Pink Washing Campaign Against Israel: Another Conspiracy Theory. In: The Huffington Post. Retrieved March 22, 2014 .
  14. ^ Alan Dershowitz: The Next Hate Fest. In: New York Post. Retrieved December 29, 2014 .
  15. ^ Trustee Blasts CUNY Anti-Israel 'Homonationalism and Pinkwashing' Conference. In: General Journal. June 8, 2012, accessed January 26, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Michael Luongo: Gay Palestinians caught in the middle of the conflict. In: Global Post. June 8, 2012, accessed January 25, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Jay Michaelson: How Canadian Oilmen Pinkwash the Keystone Pipeline. In: The Daily Beast. December 28, 2014, accessed December 29, 2014 .
  18. ^ Compare Canadian Ethical Oil to OPEC conflict oil. In: OpenHatesGays. Retrieved December 29, 2014 .
  19. ↑ Naomi Wilkins: BP reach for the pinkwash with 'LGBT Careers Event'. In: Bright Green. November 11, 2014, accessed January 25, 2015 .
  20. ^ Jill Stark: "Pink washing": marketing stunt or corporate revolution? In: smh.com.au. June 7, 2015, accessed July 1, 2017 .
  21. ↑ https://homepage.univie.ac.at/thomas.schmidinger/php/texte/migration_homosexualitaet.pdf
  22. ↑ https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/schwule-palaestinenser-fluechten-nach-israel-a-825320.html
  23. ↑ https://www.humanrights.ch/de/menschenrechte-themen/islam/spannungsfelder/homosexualitaet/
  24. ^ Mats Deland, Michael Minkenberg, Christin Mays: In the Tracks of Breivik: Far Right Networks in Northern and Eastern Europe . LIT Verlag, 2014, p. 12 .
  25. ↑ a b Queers against Pinkwashing reject Counter Jihad. In: Radio Sweden. August 3, 2012, accessed January 27, 2015 .