Across the country, small business owners who attended the pro-Trump event are facing backlash and in some cases boycotts as their images circulate online. Some of those who didn’t storm the Capitol but simply attended the event or were in Washington D.C. to support Trump are also facing fallout, a sign of a shift in consumer behavior. In an era of ideological polarization and economic hardship, people don’t just care about the products a business provides; they care about the politics behind the business, and thanks to social media, that’s easy to figure out.
“Firms are made up of people, and individuals want to buy from firms or use the product that can represent them,” Pinar Yildirim, an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, tells TIME. “We want to buy from firms that share our values, that represent us, that seem to see a future for this country, for the world, or for ourselves, the way that we do.”
Even some of those who didn’t storm the Capitol but simply attended the event or were in Washington D.C. are also facing fallout. After Donald Rouse, Sr., a Louisiana businessman and retired CEO and co-owner of the grocery chain Rouse’s Markets, was spotted on social media at the rally, there were widespread calls online to boycott the stores bearing his name. Rouse later issued a statement saying he had left before the riots began and condemning the violence. In Chicago, Thien Ly, the general manager of the restaurant Tank Noodle, posted a photo of himself on a plane, as well as a plane ticket to Washington D.C., on social media, leading to a deluge of negative Yelp reviews, calls online to boycott the restaurant, and even a virtual protest. In an interview with NBC Chicago, Ly said that he and his family were in D.C. to show support for Trump but were not near the Capitol building; since the riots, they have received death threats, harassment and intimidation at the restaurant, he said.
Owner of Northside Chicago restaurant Tank Noodle, Thien Ly, took a trip to DC to take part in the riots.
University of Chicago professor of political science Robert Pape has spent the past year gathering information about the insurrectionists and their co-ideologues. According to Pape, 26 percent of the rioters charged were business owners; an additional 28 percent were white-collar workers.
“There are relatively more business owners in the insurrectionist pool than in America,” Pape notes. The composition of those charged with a crime – with 716 individuals studied by Pape thus far – undermines what “we’re used to thinking about far-right violence and extremism.” This was a heavily white-collar riot – a businessperson’s riot – which is in some ways unsurprising because the protest that set it off was fomented, as President Joe Biden just reminded us, by the businessman/president who lost his bid for reelection.
For context:
Small Businesses Boycotted After Owners Attend Capitol Riot | Time
Why Did So Many Small-Business Owners Storm the Capitol? Here’s What One of the Most Outspoken Had to Say | Inc.com