talkpolitics | Lidl: the backlash

asthfghl posting in

Notice something wrong on these pictures? Well yeah, duh! A famous church in Santorini, Greece, was used to advertise a Greek cheese product in one of the Lidl stores (a German chain). Except, the most prominent feature of that landmark (beside the blue roof) was removed:

Lidl airbrushes Christian cross from church pictured on its Greek food range because the supermarket chain 'does not wish to exclude any religious beliefs'

Well, guess what. You've done just that - excluded a religious belief. And I'm saying it as non-believer. Savor the irony.

There was indeed a huge backlash (mostly around the social networks) about this picture. Lidl even had to come up with an official apology for screwing up on this one. People were shocked, shocked I tell you! Selling Greek products while trying to remove an important part of the Greek identity from sight. People have called for boycott. And probably rightly so. Why?

Because it's one thing to be sensitive to religious and ethnic identities, be inclusive, tolerant, etc. But it's quite another to bend over backwards and scrap one identity for another, for the sake of pandering to a particular customer segment. This is just business, some would say. You're free to go buy crappy food elsewhere. Sure thing, Ahmed! (HA!) And that's exactly what people are doing here. Voting with their feet. And with their wallets. You wanted to appear super-tolerant and super-inclusive, and attract a few Muslim customers? (Hey, Lidl may claim they don't want to offend anyone so they prefer to remove all religious symbols from their shelves, but how do you explain the fact that their German and Dutch stores have entire sections dedicated to Halal food!?) I guess you were prepared for the backlash from non-Muslim customers, then! Being inclusive through exclusion - how does that work, Ahmed?

Removing the cross from a Greek landmark is NOT an act of religious neutrality. It's an act of cowardice. It's removing the very identity of that landmark, the part that makes it Greek. The cross is probably 80% of the "Greekness" in that Greek landmark, like the crescent is 80% of what makes a Saudi, Saudi. And to use Photoshop to delete this, and hope no one notices? Wow. You've got to have balls for that much cowardice (amazing, huh?)

That's cultural castration, sorry to say it. It's multicultural idiotism. It's PC schizophrenia. And no, this isn't just about some food store, or just about a business, one of many. It's a symptom of a much wider phenomenon. The same one forcing German mayors to look their own constituents in the face and advise them to avoid walking near certain areas of town while wearing short skirts from now on, lest they offend the refugees residing there.

I'm all for cultural inclusiveness. But this is not right. It just isn't.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

fridi

The tension is building up on this issue. I expect it to spill over at some point if things don't get changed - probably sooner than most are suspecting.

From:

mahnmut

Cultural inclusiveness through exclusion. Me likey.
I say remove ALL religious symbols and references from ANYwhere.
Religion should stay at home and in the temple.

Oh, and make them pay taxes like everyone else, while we're at it. Sound fair?

From:

asthfghl

Especially if they conduct business for profit (the Orthodox Church here in BG has monopolized the entire candle-making industry, and I can tell you it's a huge enterprise; not to mention all the property they rent out).

From:

kiaa

Choosing a church, desecrating it, then claiming to maintain religious neutrality? This is just insanely moronic. What sort of people do they hire in Lidl?

(reply from suspended user)

From:

luzribeiro

Whether this decision is good or bad from a trade POV, only the market can tell. But the ethical dimension is indeed very tricky. Essentially, these folks have turned out unprepared for the civilizational shock that comes with globalization. It's a dangerous tendency to sacrifice one's own identity for the sake of accommodating new incoming ones. It inevitably causes a clash. It would've been amusing if it weren't so frightening.

Western societies need to be more assertive about their own principles. The supremacy of law is above all - it's what defines them, after all. And once you've started bending your own rules and laws to appease this or that group, you're already down a very slippery slope. And the futher down you go, the more difficult it would become to reverse the trend.

From:

johnny9fingers

I agree entirely. But also we have to ensure our laws are just, are not stupid, and work for the betterment of society and individuals. The gay equality thing has happened. Decriminalisation of drugs would remove one of the last laws which could be regarded as unnaturally oppressive to the individual. The supremacy of law is above all, but also should be above reproach in its proper and even-handed dealing with the individual and the society around the individual. We're getting there slowly.

There will always be miscarriages of justice in any system. The trick is to minimise them, and to correct them whenever possible.

There are frameworks in English law where cultural courts operate in a limited fashion subordinate to English law. Beth Din and Sharia both work in this way. This allows a modified expression of culture appropriate to England (and Wales, which shares the same legal system). Ideally this pluralism leads to an enrichment of English culture, a broadening of vista, and a borrowing of what is best and what suits our position. But conversely it also leads to envy, provincialism, xenophobia, and fear.

You'd have thought a bunch of mongrels like the us (the Brits) would have been more tolerant.

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Lidl: the backlash