The above title is an example of a novel international counterculture offensive called “culture jamming” or “meme warfare,” popularized by the Vancouver-based Adbusters Magazine and Adbusters Media Foundation (https://www.adbusters.org/). A “meme,” as defined in Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn’s 2000 book Culture Jam, is defined as a unit of information (a catchphrase, tune, fashion, philosophy or politics) that leaps from brain to brain. According to Lasn, memes compete with one another and can alter behaviour, catalyze collective mindshifts and transform cultures. In Lasn’s view, meme warfare is about challenging the mental stranglehold of the advertising culture, reversing America’s suicidal consumer binge and launching a revolution that ultimately frees us from the corporate stranglehold over society, government and our lives.

Culture Jamming: the Movie

 

Culture Jamming, which I first saw in 2004 and is one of my favourite all time films, gives real life examples of culture jammers in action. As they take a common media messages or images (on billboards, for example) and tweak them a little to call attention – in a humorous and mind blowing way – to the bullshit the media bombards us with on a daily basis. And simultaneously remind us of some unspoken truth the media is trying to conceal from us.

For example Adbusters has redesigned the American flag with corporate logos (I got one free with my subscription) instead of stars:

***

Here are some other familiar Adbusters images:

***

The film Cultural Jamming also taught me that you don’t have to belong to a group to participate. A lot of individuals use stencil art – on trash cans, construction site fences, vacant buildings, etc. – to deliver culture jamming messages. When I get depressed, I sometimes indulge in a little culture jamming myself (like a woman in the movie), by writing culture jamming messages on address labels (for example, “Sorry I destroyed your planet”) and sticking them on trash cans and telephone poles and in phone booths and other prominent locations in New Plymouth’s central business district.

I also culture jam by incorporating the following footer in all my emails, lest people forget the US government monitors all their communications:

NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice, and certainly without probable cause. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight. You have no recourse other than petitioning your elected officials and exercising your constitutional rights. See: https://ssd.eff.org/ for solutions.

***

Adbusters‘  Call for Revolution

When Lasne talks about revolution, he means it. In fact the last two Adbusters – which call for an international Carnivalesque Rebellion Nov 22-28 (a “tsunami of global dissent”) – are quite literally about revolution. Both describe in a graphic and detailed way the strategies and tactics of revolution.  The most recent issue, for example, contains some very thoughtful discussions about Black Bloc tactics, about creatively reinventing civil disobedience to increase its mass appeal, about the role of vandalism as “an intentional mode of aesthetic expression,” and finally about the controversy regarding the role of violence in civil protest – including commentary from Hannah Arrendt, Ken O’Keefe and Gandhi himself about instances in which a violent response to authority is absolutely indicated (I have recently read a fascinating book, 1968, by British author Mark Kurlunsky describing instances in which Martin Luther King allowed the use of violence in protest marches to increase media coverage).

However most striking in the current issue are numerous full page images of demonstrators from around the world confronting armed, violent authority.

The Adbusters blog is also well worth a visit: https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters It talks about the potential of building on the growing unrest in Europe (funny how poorly the Sept 29th general strike in Spain and large anti-austerity protests in Belgium, Greece, Iceland and elsewhere in Europe have been covered in the US media). Adbusters find it particularly significant that Portugal’s largest union has called for a general strike for Nov 24^th – right in the middle of the Nov 22-28 Carnivalesque Rebellion.

---