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.
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