A co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is behind a media campaign against American military support for Ukraine, according to reports.
Ben Cohen, a progressive activist and former CEO of the Unilever-owned dairy brand, has deep ties to the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), a project of the People’s Power Initiative (PPI). Cohen is PPI’s president as well as its largest donor, having given over $1 million to the nonprofit, the Daily Beast reported.
EMN describes itself as an “independent resource for journalists” that offers “high-level veteran military and national security experts” and uses their experience to provide “credible, independent and critical analysis grounded in real-world practitioner experience.”
The Daily Beast reports that some of EMN’s experts “have been echoing Kremlin propaganda lines by claiming that U.S. military support for Ukraine is extending and intensifying the fighting, and suggesting that NATO expansion was one of the causes of the war.”
One of EMN’s recent email blasts included a quote from associate director Matthew Hoh, who denounced “outrageous federal spending on the Ukraine war” and said it was “time to think about pausing funding for Ukraine,” according to the outlet.
My iconoclastic approach is that I get my ice cream from people who are good at ice cream and my geopolitics and journalism from people who actually understand geopolitics and journalism. I urge others to consider this admittedly radical path. https://t.co/FbyHpnVq6P
— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) March 16, 2023
Cohen claimed that he would like to see America scale back its economic commitment to fighting the Russian invasion of Ukraine and push for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, according to the Daily Beast.
“I think the U.S. should use its power to negotiate an end to the war, not prolong the death and destruction by supplying more weapons,” Cohen told the outlet.