No modern boycotts have been shown to be effective.

The last genuinely effective “boycott” was the bds movement focused on SA, which created real pressure.

BDS movements have been effective because they go well above and beyond boycotts, and in some ways, its easier to target “all” of a national economy than it is to single out singular companies. That action also took place in a world of reduced globalization.

More broadly we should all be considering the relevance of individual versus collective action. There was a real propaganda effort to drive peoples thinking to be focused on individual action as a means for creating social change. Be the change, recycling, changing your habits, etc. It shifted the focus from the responsibility being on those creating the damage to consumers, and it had a range of outcomes.

One of the most important is that individual action, while basically meaningless, acts as an analgesic towards further action. Its a way to create a sense of relief that something has been “done” while nothing meaningful has changed. If this psychological pain reliever prevents the escalation to the use of force or more extreme actions, its done its job to protect the system. There are very good reasons why the system accepts individual actions, are supported almost exclusively over collective or more extreme behavior.