With Hillary Clinton vanquished and America well on its way to becoming "great again" (ya know, whatever that means), fans of the alt-right website/bigotry safe space Breitbart have found a new target for their unbridled, venomous hatred: Kellogg's.
On the battlefield of Twitter, where the miserable and lonely win glory, a new war is being waged by an army of miserable trolls who are calling for a total boycott of Kellogg's products.
Kellogg Co. recently decided to pull all advertising from Breitbart, a website that many have deemed a hate-site for preaching anti-Semitic, misogynous, and white supremacist views. Breitbart gained prominence this year for being highly supportive of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Steven Bannon, the executive of Breitbart, served as the chief executive officer of Trump's presidential campaign and has been tapped to serve in the President-elect's administration as chief strategist.
“We regularly work with our media-buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren’t aligned with our values as a company,” said Kris Charles, a spokeswoman for Kellogg. “We recently reviewed the list of sites where our ads can be placed and decided to discontinue advertising on Breitbart.com. We are working to remove our ads from that site.”
The decision by the makers of products like Pringles, Pop Tarts and Frosted Flakes was met with swift outrage by both Breitbart and supporters of the site.
According to Breitbart, Kellogg's decision, "represent[s] an escalation in the war by leftist companies like Target and Allstate against conservative customers whose values propelled Donald Trump into the White House."
Breitbart, skilled at mobilizing their highly impressionable troll mob, announced the #DumpKelloggs, which urges their followers to boycott the brand.
While lashing out at a company for deciding they want to distance themselves for your brand sounds less like a movement and more like a petty temper tantrum, it hasn't stopped Breitbart's followers from being able feel like they're part of yet another self-righteous crusade.
As of Friday, over 237,000 people have signed an online petition distributed by Breitbart to allow supporters to pledge their support for the Kellogg's boycott. Breitbart accuses people who purchase Kellogg's products of being proponents of "serving up bigotry at your breakfast table."
It's been a tough year for Kellogg's on social media. In January, Tony the Tiger, Frosted Flakes' mascot and superlative-loving animated jungle cat, issued a simple request to Twitter trolls: please stop sexually harassing and tweeting porn at me.