Posted on 17-3-2003

Battling Big Business
Edited by Eveline Lubbers, foreword by Naomi Klein, 224 pages (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, (c)2002)
 
Now available in New Zealand book shops (published by Scribe, Australia). Includes chapters by two New Zealanders.

Battling Big Business is an anthology of essays that exposes an arsenal of counter-strategies multinationals have used against individuals and groups resisting globalization.  There is enough intrigue, bullying, and unscrupulousness here to arouse the most jaded citizen and discomfit the most placid.  For those (already) engaged in the battle for the environment, this book offers a shield of vicarious experience and cautionary advice. Every essay in this anthology underscores the importance of respecting the following revolutionary imperatives: know your enemies, be prepared, and do not get sucked into the very system you are trying to take down

The first part of Battling Big Business presents a series of excellent essays by investigative journalists in various corners of the world who have shared the experience of having their concern over a local social or environmental issue -be it the logging of public rainforests, the deportation of immigrants, incineration of toxic waste, or other indignity - expand into a global arena where the power brokers aren't political leaders or justices but those at the wheel of multinational corporations.

Some of the corporate counter-strategies exposed in Battling Big Business seem laughable at first glance, e.g., McDonald's launching a libel suit against a handful of anarchists for circulating a few hundred copies of a leaflet calling into question the nutritional value of their burgers and the source of their beef.  Yet the details of what can happen when a corporation shifts into high gear to silence its critics are sobering in that they often enough include people so morally bankrupt that they're willing to lie, spy,
loot, and infiltrate.

While infiltration is outright deception, some of the case studies archived in Battling Big Business bear testimony to the efficacy of corporate PR practices that don't appear to be underhanded at all.  Corporate 'largesse,' for example, has proven to be a brilliant strategy -to pre-empt criticism and strangle public discourse (particularly in recessionary periods that leach needed funds from public services). More recent developments of this sort of smiley-faced strategy is evidenced by the disturbing successes
corporations have had in cutting deals with their former adversaries, and in inducing the defection of elite members of prominent environmental groups (such as former Greenpeace UK director, Lord Melchett's defection to Burson-Marsteller).

Andy Rowell analyzes the former strategy in his perceptive essay 'Dialogue: Divide and Rule,' while George Monbiot in his gem 'The Greens Get Eaten,' speculates about the moral frailty of defectors as well as the particular weaknesses (and strengths) of environmentalism as one of the most ideologically diverse movements in history.

Rowell reveals how corporate counter-strategies such as dialogue lure NGOs from a public arena into a private one ­from the 'courtroom to the boardroom.'  He also points out how dialogue gives the appearance of fairness and goodwill so long as the public is led to believe that all have equal access.  Unfortunately, as plenty of the essays reveal, this has not been the case.  Invitations typically are extended to certain NGOs only ­a process that can hardly be construed to be democratic.  Furthermore, corporate hosts tightly control the terms of the debate.  The Shell Corporation, for example, may exert itself to create 'stakeholder dialogue'
about extracting oil in the homelands of the Nahua Indians in Peru (as it did in 1997 and 1998), but the discussion was limited to how the gas project should go ahead, not whether it should go ahead at all.

On a positive note, as destructive as these new strategies are in protecting corporate power against democracy, that these counter-strategies are being employed is a measure of the phenomenal attention activists have drawn to hypocrisies in 'corporate behavior' (and, one would also hope, to the sheer inability of corporations under capitalism to do anything more than just
rhetorically address the common good). As encouraging as this perspective is, Battling Big Business underscores the necessity for activists not to be just assiduous in the safekeeping and execution of their goals, but to be thinking faster and more creatively than their opponents.  This is where the second part of Battling Big Business comes in, offering a tactical menu so perceptive, and so ripe for experimentation, that it seems to have arrived from the future.

A stunning essay by autonome a.f.r.i.k.a. gruppe 'Communication Guerrillas: Using the Language of Power' calls attention to two interrelated political facts: 1), that a given public will become inured to rituals that become ubiquitous, and 2) that 'radical leftist rituals are needed by the state to provide symbolic balance against the extreme right as well as to justify new repressive laws.'  Keeping these facts in mind, a.f.r.i.k.a. creates a compelling argument for activists to set aside the conventional logic of 'us vs. them' trench warfare and instead to playfully 'distort the channels and modalities of communication.'

a.f.r.i.k.a. recounts a campaign by the German antiracist network 'kein mensch ist illegal' that employed these techniques with dramatic success against Lufthansa who was involved in the deportation of refugees.  'kein mensch ist illegal' produced a high-quality spoof leaflet in customer-friendly corporate language advertising Lufthansa's new 'Deportation Class.' The leaflet, overidentifying with the logic of profit, explained that the new lower-price fares were being offered to their customers for the reduced level of comfort they might experience sitting next to someone in handcuffs with tape over their mouth.

As it turned out, enough people believed the airline was capable of such cynical marketing that they started attacking the airline, the government, and the policy.  Ultimately, Lufthansa begged off on being the chauffer for the state's unwanted ­an achievement that most felt would never have occurred through direct or 'indirect' negotiation.

As a.f.r.i.k.a. pointed out, the Deportation Class campaign exposed one of many self-contradictions or 'hidden reversals' of the liberal market culture of political and economic choice. The image of all commercial airlines is based on the fantasy of a world without borders, that passengers are free to travel anywhere in the world in the pursuit of information, sensations, and goods.  The 'no one is illegal' campaign revealed that though airplanes make the pleasure of traveling available to all customers, they also take some people where they definitely do not want to go.

Subvertisments, like the Deportation Class leaflet, as well as other communication guerrilla tactics revealed in Battling Big Business have enormous revolutionary potential in that they remind their audiences, i.e., the consumer-citizens of the world's privileged regions, of the suffering, injustice, and destructive forces required to maintain modern industrial civilization.  Tactics like this -unexpected, irresistible, playful and deeply provocative- call attention not so much to the 'bad guys' as to the mind industry and ideology that allows them to rule.

I must admit I thought this book would depress me as yet another tally of hegemonic victories; on the contrary, Battling Big Business acted on me like an amphetamine of hope.  As part expose and part 'how to,' this book is powerful vaccine against corporate deception, as well as a deeply inspiring source of ideas about engineering the breakdown of corporate globalism and
other institutions that inhibit caring, justice, and nonviolence.