How do you boycott a country?

Naomi Klein recently called for a boycott of Israel. Speaking from the village of Bil’in in the West Bank, which she was visiting as part of an ongoing promotional tour for her book The Shock Doctrine, Klein clarified that what she’s calling for is “a boycott of Israeli institutions… a boycott of the Israeli economy.” You can read her full statement for details.

To be fair, the boycott wasn’t Klein’s idea. As this post explains, Klein was actually reiterating her support for a campaign called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions that was launched in 2005. Further background can be found in an article that Klein wrote for the Nation earlier this year.

But how do you boycott a country? For more, we can look to a book by Michael Norton called The Everyday Activist, which I’ve previously mentioned on this blog, and which contains a different social action for every day of the year. The page for the Fourth of July is all about boycotting the United States. “The language that the US government best understands is money,” Norton explains. “To resist its bullying and domination, we need to hit US corporations where it hurts most – in the pocket. That means everyone, including Americans, boycotting US goods and services.”

It might seem naïve to expect a significant number of people, much less “everyone,” to boycott an entire country’s goods and services. But it’s a tactic that’s been known to succeed in the past. “The most successful country boycott,” Norton writes, “was the Anti-Apartheid campaign against South Africa’s white minority regime.” Klein herself considers that campaign an inspirational success, explaining that the boycott is an attempt “to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa.”

“The USA depends on international trade to sustain its wealth,” Norton argues. “It has to sell goods and services abroad to maintain the affluence that funds its global political and military hegemony… If people stopped buying US products, corporate profits would begin to slide. The US government would then come under immense pressure from the major corporations to moderate its policies.”

No matter how you might feel about boycotting Israel or the United States, it’s food for thought – particularly at a time when the economy’s in bad shape and such a boycott could be especially potent. If nothing else, it adds a new twist to the current battle over the Buy American provision put forth by the Obama administration.

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