How Ben & Jerry's ice cream exposed the limits of Trump's free speech world

Independent

22-03-2025

And now they have cancelled Ben and Jerry. You remember: peace, love and ice cream. Yes, it introduced novel chunks of cookies, chocolate and nuts where previously there had been none. But Ben and Jerry also wanted their ice cream to 'strike the perfect balance of joy and justice'. They would use ice cream to make the world a better place.
It's all there on their website. Except that the website is now hosted by Unilever, the gargantuan company which scooped up Ben & Jerry's for $326m in 2000, agreeing to an independent board of directors who would safeguard the company's social mission and brand integrity.
Well, that was a very sweet idea, but you will be amazed to hear that, a few weeks into the Trump ascendancy, it has melted like a cheap Cornetto. Earlier this month, the bosses at Unilever – makers of Domestos, Knorr stock cubes and Magnum Classics – fired Ben & Jerry's CEO, Dave Stever, for being too woke.
That's not exactly how they put it, of course. But tensions had been bubbling away since November when Ben & Jerry's sued Unilever over what it claims was the parent group's attempt to end its progressive social activism, which has included protesting the war in Gaza, climate change, supporting LGBTQ+ rights … and criticising the incoming president, Donald J Trump.
You'd think this wouldn't be a problem since Trump and his little marionette VP, JD Vance, are outspoken champions of free speech and may even have enjoyed the odd tub of Chocolate Fudge Brownie in their time. But Unilever bosses sniffed the changing wind in Washington and decided brand integrity wasn't everything.
So now we must ditch Ben & Jerry's for the same reason we can no longer drive a Tesla and may have to consider joining our European friends in boycotting Coca-Cola, Colgate toothpaste and Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Maybe even Magnums.
The Ben & Jerry's debacle came the same week America tried to cancel Greenpeace. Did you follow that one? A North Dakota jury found the environmental campaign group liable for defamation, ordering it to pay more than $660m (£507m) in damages to a giant oil company, which is heavily involved in building a lucrative oil pipeline.
The environmental group was also accused by the company, Energy Transfer, of trespass, nuisance and civil conspiracy – and of orchestrating criminal behaviour by protesters against the pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation almost a decade ago.
In a statement after the case, Energy Transfer said: 'This win is really for the people of Mandan and throughout North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters who were funded and trained by Greenpeace.'
For its part, Greenpeace has vowed to appeal and has promised it will 'not be silenced'.
The staggering fine would likely wipe Greenpeace out in the US, which would be music to the ears of the millionaires and billionaires who want to drill for, and burn, ever more gas and oil. Silencing Greenpeace is, no question, a shrewd business move on their part. Whether it is good for the planet or the cause of free speech is more debatable.
Fun fact: Kelcy Warren, the co-founder and board chairman of Energy Transfer, which sued Greenpeace, is an ally and donor to President Trump. But he is litigious and very rich, so I'll just leave that there.
It was not the first time Warren's company had gone after Greenpeace over the protests, which ended in 2017. It previously even tried to charge the protest group under the Rico Act, which covers racketeering and corrupt organisations. And if you thought the first amendment counted for something in these Trumpian days, I invite you to pay closer attention.
Greenpeace has called the latest lawsuit a Slapp – a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or the deliberate use of horrendously expensive litigation to silence critics.
But I think I am still free to say that I find the silencing of speech around matters of social and environmental concern deeply troubling. Not that it appears to trouble the well-funded organisations which proclaim themselves to be the greatest defenders of free speech. Look at the website of [My Lord] Toby Young's Free Speech Union, for instance, and you will find nothing on gagging woke ice cream makers or silencing champions of the environment. But you will find it very exercised about fringe left-wing groups criticising GB News. Myopic, blinkered, obtuse or hypocritical? You decide.
Now, here's the thing. The cleverest scientists in the world have told us that we need to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 to have some chance of staying on the pathway to allow our children and grandchildren to live in a reasonably habitable world. We don't have much time.
But how often do you read anything that reminds you of that urgency? Or are you more often assailed by columnists and pundits telling you that net zero is a load of old cobblers and that Ed Miliband is single-handedly destroying a once-great nation?
Because I believe in free speech I would not, of course, dream of silencing these aforementioned columnists and pundits. But the editor in me notes that most of them are humanities graduates, not scientists, and I can't help wondering if they have any deep understanding of what they're blah-ing on about.
And then I note how rarely any of these sages advance a single idea for averting the environmental catastrophe that – according to the vast majority of people who actually know the science – awaits us. Net zero's a crap idea? Fine. So what's yours?
I am, myself, a humanities graduate. But I have listened to enough scientists to believe that we are, as a species, in deep and urgent danger. I believe this to be a fact. I respect facts. I find it odd that some people who like to think of themselves as journalists don't.
So I am rather in favour of ice cream makers with a conscience and very much hope they can continue to speak out. I find Greenpeace a rather more reliable guide to reality than numerous celebrated opinion formers who seem unanchored from reality, and bereft of ideas or any sense of urgency.
And I increasingly appreciate the actions of climate protestors who keep the issue in the headlines, even if Britain's ever more draconian anti-free speech laws dictate that they may have to spend time in our overcrowded jails.
Most of us know that history will prove Donald Trump wholly wrong on climate change. So three cheers to all who resist and no cheers at all to those who collude.
'The economics of this are so powerful that eventually we'll run the world on sun and wind,' said the tireless environmental campaigner and writer Bill McKibben recently. 'But 'eventually' doesn't help much with the climate, not when we're watching the North and the South Poles melt in real time.'
Bye, bye then, Ben & Jerry's. Sorry, but the flavour has gone a bit sour.