The Millennial Moment of Truth

An Interview with Kalle Lasn: Founder and Director of Adbusters

by David Edwards

These 'choices'are what we call 'democracy'. The fact that they all amount to the same choice - that is, to no choice - is the reality of what we call 'democracy'.

"Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip. " - George Orwell1

Weapons of Mass Distraction I f you go down to your local newsagents today, or even to a major store like WH Smiths, you might like to amuse yourself with a little game called: 'Hunt the Radical Title' . Consider Smiths: spread out before us are many hundreds of multi-coloured magazines and periodicals covering subjects of (almost) every kind. The variety is dazzling and yet they all have several features in common: they are all the product of profit-seeking media corporations; they are all filled with (that is, supported by) glossy corporate advertising; and they all have next to nothing to say about the crucial political, environmental and human rights issues of our time.

What we are here faced with, then, is an almost infinite choice and yet, at the same time, no choice at all: we are free to choose from thousands of corporate products, from thousands of business-friendly perspectives. These 'choices' are what we call 'democracy'. The fact that they all amount to the same choice - that is, to no choice - is the reality of what we call 'democracy'. But discussion of these issues is limited to the largely academic question of whether we should be free to choose from a few big corporate choices - Time Warner, Disney, Fox, etc. or from lots of smaller ones.

So what does a 'business-friendly' perspective mean in practice? It means that ideas and values which promote profits and reduce costs become 'normal'. As Sharon Beder writes of the media:

"Balance means ensuring that statements by those challenging the establishment are balanced with statements by those whom they are criticizing, though not necessarily the other way round."2

'Business-friendly' means a view of the world that assumes unrestrained consumption and automated, alienated production to be 'normal', 'just the way the world is'. It means casual acceptance, or superficial criticism, of the status quo, rather than critical evaluation of it.

It means cults of leadership alongside the

demonization of obstacles to corporate profit. Thus, when Saddam Hussein met the Sheikh of Qatar earlier this year, James Mates of ITN remarked that Saddam was "playing his favourite role of defender of the Arab people".3

ITN has yet to be heard describing Clinton as "playing his favourite role of defender of the free world". Instead, during the Gulf War, David Dimbleby asked one of his guests:

"Isn't it in fact true that America, by dint of the very accuracy of the weapons we've seen, is the only potential world policeman?"4

Status-quo-supportive bias is everywhere and, like the air we breathe, goes unnoticed.

Beyond these necessary truths there are only sinister silences - sinister because it is in these silences that many of the horrors and injustices of our world are born. In Smiths we can imagine a whole empty wall that should be full of magazines asking business-unfriendly questions. Nothing clever or 'intellectual' here, nothing complex, just questions that any ordinary person might ask:

One of the great problems with our modern situation is that it resembles a cheese-induced dream, a 1950s science fiction B-movie: we run past endless shelves of glossy magazines but they are always, in essence, the same magazine.

When did we gain our much-vaunted press freedom? Who did it? How did they do it? What are the threats to press freedom now? Does the corporate nature of our advertising-dependent free press compromise free reporting? Why is it that countries seeking independence from Western corporate domination are automatically declared 'terrorist states' against which we need to defend ourselves? Why is resource-rich South America tortured by poverty and dictatorship when i t backs onto the United States, the richest, most powerful 'democratic' nation the world has ever seen? Why has the United States - so keen to defend the 'infinite choice' of Smiths-style 'democracy' around the world - not been better

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able to defend democracy in its own 'backyard'?

How compatible would true democracy - by which the poor would be given their share of local natural resources - be with the massive Western profits hauled out of impoverished countries like Colombia, Mexico, Russia, Nigeria, Algeria, Indonesia, et all Why are the historical democratic credentials of our profit-hungry corporate society never held up for critical examination by our profit-hungry corporate press?

One of the great problems with our modern situation is that i t resembles a cheese-induced dream, a 1950s science fiction B-movie: we run past endless shelves of glossy magazines but they are always, in essence, the same magazine. We can wonder to ourselves whether we live in a truly free society, but we cannot discuss it because no-one ever discusses it, and so no-one understands what on earth we might be talking about, and so no-one ever discusses it.. . and so on, nightmare-like. We might run into the streets warning of the invasion of the "pod people", but not i f all of us have already, in a sense, been turned into "pod people" by a lifetime's exposure to corporate 'fun' and corporate 'common sense'.

Adbusters specializes in " subvertisements" - short, sharp still and video "mind bombs " designed to twist advertising cliches around, judo-like, to shock consumers into critical thought.

I t is interesting to see that there are now vast forces beginning to shake us from our slumber: global warming, ozone depletion, species depletion, the global corporate demolition of demo-cracy, the globalization of poverty and authoritarian government - all are beginning to reach deep into our dream to shake us, to call to us in our corporate sleep.

Into this fray - all but alone, tiny, but empowered by the truth - comes: Adbusters!

In the Dark - Fighting for Airtime "The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when i t remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight i t begins to evaporate."5

I spoke to Kalle Lasn - founder and director of Adbusters - on an overly-warm afternoon in August from a Spartan converted barn in Devon. In Canada i t was still morning and Lasn was still drinking his breakfast coffee.

Like me, Lasn began life in the corporate world from which he was to defect with such finality. He worked in advertising, of all things, and I asked him i f there had been a time when he had tried to be a good conformist, to fit in and make it work: KL: " I worked in the advertising business when I was in my twenties in Tokyo, Japan, so I got a

bit of a taste of the ethical neutrality of that industry when I was very young. Initially I was pleased to be part of the advertising industry but I gradually realized that I couldn't stand it, that it was somehow rotten to the core: I couldn't stand the people."

Adbusters specializes in "subvertisements" short, sharp still and video "mind bombs" designed to twist advertising cliches around, judo-like, to shock consumers into critical thought. The familiarity of their apparently standard advertising imagery means a first glance grants them entry into a viewer's awareness. This is crucial.

In his book Vital Lies, Simple Truths - The Psychology of Self-Deception, psychologist Daniel Goleman reveals how our minds automatically reject messages threatening to our version of reality before they have a chance to reach consciousness. In other words, the mind has the capacity to be aware, and yet unconscious, of what i t does not want to deal with. Goleman concludes:

"In order to avoid looking, some element of the mind must [know]... what to avoid. The mind somehow grasps what is going on and rushes a protective filter into place, thus steering awareness away from what threatens."6

Notice, then, the sophistication of the Adbusters ads illustrated throughout this article compared, say, with the standard, leftist sloganeering which crudely confronts the average

Into this fray - all but alone, tiny, but empowered by the truth - comes: Adbusters!

The Ecologist, Vol. 28, No 6, November/December 1998

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