Even having a beer is not an innocent act in the United States.
As American as the brand is and has as many patriotic overtones as Budweiser, even sharing a beer has turned into a confrontation. And this is not about alcoholic poisoning –the product is light–, nor about wild drunkenness, nor about an ethylic coma, nor about a health issue.
The legacy of Trumpism has spread a fever for banning the reading of books or for criminalizing cabaret shows.
At least 26 bills have been introduced so far in 2023 in 14 states, whose legislatures are dominated by Republicans, against drag shows. This is a prohibitionist movement that has emerged this year as a conservative reaction to the expansion of LGBTQ rights.
But, as analysts point out, few events capture the divisive cultural, political and social toxicity in the US as perfectly as the so-called great Bud Light debacle.
The earthquake has its starting point in early April. Bud Light, part of the Anheuser Busch conglomerate (now in Belgian hands), sent transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney a package of his products to celebrate the first anniversary of his transition.
Mulvaney, 26, has more than 10 million followers on TikTok and his Days of Girlhood video series has surpassed 1 billion views. Last October she spoke with President Joe Biden about transgender rights.
Now you have as much to write down in your history. The gift package contained cans of this beer personalized with illustrations of Mulvaney's face, which she was in charge of spreading in a video on her Instagram. As soon as this spread, the bomb. "It radically changed the sale of beers and the price of shares literally overnight, after the conservative boycott spread from bar to bar," described the Axios portal.
The anger of anti-transgenders spread like wildfire in the media and on right-wing social media, outraged at what they saw as a betrayal, as Republican leaders tried to put out the fire and protect one of the party's biggest donors. .
As of Tuesday, according to the NewsWhip database, 5,600 articles on this controversy had been published, with more than six million interactions.
The company's shares fell 5%, leading to losses of about 6,000 million dollars.
The most shared articles were those published in the ultras media, the main propagators of viral virulence against a company known to be positioned in favor of conservatives. In the protest, personalities such as Ben Shapiro, with 5.5 million followers on Twitter, or Kid Rock, who posted a video shooting at Bud Light cans to call for a boycott, stood out. The affair led to an internal war. Donald Trump Jr., who if he learned anything from his father is that he cannot bite the hand that he feeds you, positioned himself on his Twitter against attacking the beer company. He said that his colleagues had undertaken a campaign that he defined as “shoot first and aim later”.
Without serving as a precedent, many of the promoters of the ninguneo to this brand shot at the son of the former president. They also attacked the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) for deleting a tweet thanking Mulvaney too quickly: "We can finally admit that Bud Light tastes like water."
The economic shock prompted Anheurser-Bush to issue an apology statement, recalling its 165 years of service, and to issue a new ad this week. A horse runs through iconic places in the country, while a solemn voice is heard. "This is a story bigger than beer," it is stated, "this is a story of the American spirit."
The company's shares have risen. The next round, at the expense of the house.
