Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, has lost about $2.5 billion in market cap as Conservatives call to boycott the woke ice cream company after they posted a July 4 tweet calling for the U.S. to return “stolen indigenous land.”

“This 4th of July, it’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it,” Ben & Jerry’s tweeted, linking to a page on their website that promoted the Indigenous-led “Land Back movement,” which is “about dismantling white supremacy and systems of oppression and ensuring that Indigenous people can again govern the land their communities called home for thousands of years.”

Ben & Jerry’s added that the Fourth of July celebrations can “distract from an essential truth about this nation’s birth.”

The woke ice cream company was quickly mocked on social media for this post, with many people asking them to return all of their property back to the Native Americans if they feel so strongly about this issue. Others called for a “Bud Light-style” boycott of the Liberal company.

After this post, shares of Unilever fell by as much as 0.63% on Wednesday.

Unilever has also been under fire for continuing to operate in Russia after over a year has gone by since the country invaded Ukraine.

One campaign group estimated that Unilever is contributing £579m annually to the Russian economy.

“Unilever must stop hiding behind its balance sheet and excuses to face the reality that selling an ice cream can allow Putin to pay for a bullet,” said Mark Dixon, the founder of the Moral Rating Agency (MRA).

While the firm claims that it is only selling “essential” products in Russia, MRA alleges that Unilever has continued to manufacture and sell most of its original goods.

Unilever has also been heavily criticized by Ukrainians, who have categorized the company as an “international sponsor of war.”

“Unilever cannot say it is opposed to the war while at the same time contributing to Putin’s war machine,” said Oleksandr Novikov, the head of Ukraine’s National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NACP). “We have added them as an International Sponsor of War because their hundreds of millions in tax contributions to the Russian state are helping to fund its attacks on Ukraine and could be indirectly funding a mercenary criminal group.”

“Unilever must leave Russia now or history will record its complicity.”

 

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