Posted on 07/20/2021 7:42:41 AM PDT by Red Badger
Last week, the CEO of Black Rifle Coffee, Evan Hafer, gave a long-form interview to Jason Zengerle for the New York Times Magazine. I don’t know what he expected to achieve by the exercise, but I’m pretty certain that what he accomplished represented a significant deviation from the plan.
The piece framed Black Rifle Coffee as a “Starbucks for conservatives” and promoted the piece by saying that the company was trying to distance itself from some of its customers. Note that Black Rifle Coffee retweeted this tweet and that usually means that the tweet met with the approval of the person sending it:
============================================================================================================ Black Rifle Coffee, which offers an AK-47 Espresso blend, has explicitly presented itself as a troll-y, MAGA alternative to Starbucks. The company doubled its sales last year. It’s also trying to distance itself from some of its new customers. https://t.co/SX1RWupqsS
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 14, 2021
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Then the article proceeded with some newsworthy quotes by Hafer that Andy Ngo helpfully passed along.
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“It’s such a repugnant group of people.”
The executives behind @blckriflecoffee, a coffee and lifestyle brand hugely popular with conservatives, has some choice words to describe part of its customer base. https://t.co/BxTpq0kfQY pic.twitter.com/mbdrBSpwGs
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) July 16, 2021
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The pushback from the right was pretty amazing; you can read my take on the brew-ha-ha, sorry, brouhaha here Is Black Rifle Coffee About to Throw Its Customer Base Under the Bus for Fun and Profit? Things got heated on Twitter, and some interesting people ended up blocked by Black Rifle Coffee’s social media flunkies.
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Lmao what a bunch of soft wankers pic.twitter.com/6ykxieEpoT
— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) July 18, 2021
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Here's something I never expected…
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Amusingly, I was the guy telling my con friends, furious at #BlackRifleCoffee's perceived betrayal of its customers by dancing like organ grinder monkeys for the mainstream media, to give BRCC a chance to tell us its side.
I guess it has. pic.twitter.com/7dymLxELvi
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) July 18, 2021
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One of the more interesting revelations was that Hafer took his cues from the Pentagon’s “anti-extremist” bureaucracy.
Hafer and Best were talking in a glorified supply closet in the Salt Lake City offices, where potential designs for new coffee bags were hanging on the wall. One of them featured a Renaissance-style rendering of St. Michael the Archangel, a patron saint of military personnel, shooting a short-barreled rifle. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Hafer knew a number of squad mates who had a St. Michael tattoo; for a time, he wore into battle a St. Michael pendant that a Catholic friend gave him. But while the St. Michael design was being mocked up, Hafer said he learned from a friend at the Pentagon that an image of St. Michael trampling on Satan had been embraced by white supremacists because it was reminiscent of the murder of George Floyd. Now any plans for the coffee bag had been scrapped. “This won’t see the light of day,” Hafer said.
Think about that. An iconic Biblical figure, the angel who will lead the forces of Good to its final victory over Evil (see Revelation 12:7-9), is labeled an extremist symbol by some toad in the Pentagon, and the company immediately kowtows.
By yesterday, things were hot enough that Hafer felt like he had to issue a personal response.
After his disastrous response to Kyle Rittenhouse wearing a Black Rifle Coffee t-shirt when he was released from jail, he probably should have sent out a substitute on this play because I’m not sure that his answer does him a lot of good.
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A message from our CEO @EvanHafer. #brcc #americascoffee pic.twitter.com/QCAvGQezXo
— Black Rifle Coffee (@blckriflecoffee) November 22, 2020
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These are the main points.
1. He didn’t make derogatory statements about his customers or conservatives.
2. The conversation he had with the New York Times Magazine reporter was in the contest of racism and antisemitism in America in light of an organized attack on Hafer last year because of “my last name and my heritage.” From this, I’m assuming that Hafer is Jewish.
3. “We were purely discussing that.”
4. He never conflated “those groups with conservatives.”
5. He is a conservative.
6. He has no personal problem with St. Michael and carried a St. Michael’s medal while on active duty.
7. He does not know why Defense labeled the St. Michael image as extremist, and they are awaiting “clarifcation” from Defense.
8. He gave an interview to the New York Times because he has a “responsibility to give reporters an objective story about the company.”
9. He says he knew the “odds of the New York Times being objective were fairly slim but we gave them the opportunity.”
10. He says he tried to highlight the veterans’ programs that Black Rifle Coffee is involved with, but they “chose to write a salacious headline.”
11. “There is no chance in hell that I’m going to talk sh** about conservatives to the New York Times, it ain’t going to happen.”
12. It is more difficult than ever to “navigate the culture war.”
13. “We are about having a positive impact on our communities, not about who’s right and who’s wrong.”
Hafer seems to believe what he’s saying, and I don’t know the man, so I’ll take him at his word on his intent.
Having said that, here are some observations.
Re-reading the article with Hafer’s context, it is clear that Hafer did mention the attacks on him and tried to highlight his commitment to serving veterans. However, it is equally clear that Zengerle was not interested in that story.
There is zero linkage in the story between Hafer’s comments about “repugnanat people” and the antisemitic attacks on him. Instead, the article reads, at least to me, as though he’s describing Kyle Rittenhouse’s supporters in that manner.
“You can’t let sections of your customers hijack your brand and say, ‘This is who you are,’” Best told me. “It’s like, no, no, we define that.” The Rittenhouse episode may have cost the company thousands of customers, but, Hafer believed, it also allowed Black Rifle to draw a line in the sand. “It’s such a repugnant group of people,” Hafer said. “It’s like the worst of American society, and I got to flush the toilet of some of those people that kind of hijacked portions of the brand.” Then again, what Hafer insisted was a “superclear delineation” was not too clear to everyone, as Munchel’s choice of headgear vividly demonstrated.
There is a vast disconnect between Hafer’s explanation of the Saint Michael incident and the article’s account. According to Hafer, they don’t know the reason that imagery of St. Michael casting Satan into Hell is forbidden, and the coffee bag design is on hold. However, according to the article, they know why, and the bag design is dead.
In my post, I reference Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics, to wit, “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” Hafer claims to be conservative but, as best I could glean from his explanation, he doesn’t claim the company is conservative or supports conservative causes. In fact, he says he can’t be bothered to argue about what is right and what is wrong. There is a reason for that.
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As Black Rifle Coffee blocks conservatives, it's important to understand that CEO @EvanHafer hired ActBlue Dem donors to run his IT and social media. pic.twitter.com/XfncLVYN1e
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) July 19, 2021
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If key senior staff are donors to ActBlue, your company is not a conservative enterprise.
Hafer is playing a dangerous game and not playing it all that well. His company is a lifestyle brand that will flop the moment the buzz and image about the company stop comporting with its actions. My personal view is that any conservative giving an interview to the New York Times or Washington Post deserves whatever happens to them. In this case, the variance between Hafer’s version of events and the article is serious enough that some sort of clarification needs to be issued in writing by someone. On the plus side, you can see the traces of Hafer’s version of events in the New York Times Magazine story, but they aren’t always easy to find. The question is, how much longer will Black Rifle Coffee’s customers continue to take Hafer at his word?
You have just described practically every Republican in Congress..........................
“it’s important to understand that CEO @EvanHafer hired ActBlue Dem donors to run his IT and social media”
Pretty soon they will be advising him to change the name to Black Lives Matter Coffee and drop the rifle reference.
I won’t patronize but then I am one of those strange birds who hates coffee period and thinks the smell is horrid. lol
If he is truly a conservative - as he claims - then he should have known better than to give the NYT an audience. He knew what he was doing. And hiring ActBlue was the icing on the cake.
The Black Rifle Company, like an old soldier, is going to fade away.
Never talk to the Press. Never. Reporter’s stories are written before they leave the office. All you do is give them ammunition if you talk to them.
There are all sorts of products I might buy where the company or ownership supports causes in which I may not believe. I’m not going to build my life around that unless the company goes out of its way to advertise that fact.
That makes no sense.
Why would he want to distance himself from his customers?
He has an explicitly conservative brand.
He has *no* leftist customers, and he won't be getting any.
There are lots of Conservatives who think they can outsmart the NYTs.
He was one. He lost. He has to be a bit more humble.
He has not been willing to credit the evil of the Left.
He needs to do so.
Disavowing a BRCC T-shirt wearing Kyle Rittenhouse is what I would call “an unforced error.” It’s a free country (or it used to be) and Kyle Rittenhouse is entitled to wear any T-shirt he wants and only Media-morons would try to establish that the manufacturer of the T-shirt supports the actions of the wearer. What if Rittenhouse had been wearing a Harley Davidson shirt? Or a “Co-Exist” shirt?
You do. I have not eat one of their sandwiches since they started that crap. Don’t intend to.
They might confuse the contents of the litter box with coffee beans.
In all seriousness, they will drop Black Rifle meme eventually in order to secure funding and access to markets.
It will be BRCC (just the letters) for a bit first, with some of the names of the products being softened and managed out. Murdered out will become MO or something like.
Then the bank will push out Mike Best and the CEO to some advisory role, and then out the door.
In short, they (Black Rifle) took the ticket and now are going on the ride.
Hope I am wrong.
The fact Hafar defers to the DoD on art design is a big tell.
Controlled opposition.
BTW, I have a copy of Bruce Campbells Chin! Anyway, you are right that there are way too many Woke Companies to avoid them all. But at least avoid the more noxious ones. BRCC is in the news, and if their sales tank, them that is an object lesson for others. Same with Coke. They are in the news and vulnerable. There are plenty of coffee companies out there, and lotz of independent, non-franchise ones. Give the your business. And turn off NFL for Heaven’s Sake.
“His biggest mistake was giving them an interview.”
‘Hello.‘
‘???’
I see. Perhaps I was not clear in my attempt to reiterate in agreement with your statement
Yes. That was his first and only mistake. He won’t be allowed sny others as it was too huge.
Having grown up in the NYC suburbs I struggle to this day with family who take the Times seriously. I do the Sunday puzzles but I throw the rest out and I would never speak with them. They like many New Yorkers I know would misconstrue every word As they have been brainwashed for oropaganda
How does the ceo of a conservative organization not know this?
He was agreeing with you.
It has hurt them as far as I'm concerned. I used to eat there occasionally, now I avoid Chick Fil-A like I do the AIDS virus.
Did he bother explaining his comments about kyle?
The Act Blue connection appears to be a false flag to discredit the BRCC.
The only connection to Act Blue I can find is a couple of small donations made to Democrats by Hafner.
There have apparantly been some photoshoped stuff which attempts to connect him to Act Blue.
If anyone can show real proof BRCC has hired Act Blue to manage their social media, I would love to see it.
I do not believe it exists.
This appears to be a highly successful attack on BRCC, to stop it from becomeing an organizing and rally point for Conservatives.
Maybe Hafner can smarten up and realize the fight he is in.
Maybe not.
He cannot stay apolitical.
It will not be allowed.
Nope, I do not think you are wrong. We must destroy BRCC to save BRCC! Make them completely unattractive to Wall Street.
Saint Michael the Archangel is in the Old Testament. In Catholic traditions he is the defender of the Church and nemesis of Satan.
Our priest always leads us in Saint Michael's prayer at the conclusion of mass:
"Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen."
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