Time magazine is working hard to make sure that Barack Obama is reelected. That is why it is the perfect place to see how liberals think. Its October 24 issue contains a report on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which I consider to be part and parcel of the Obama reelection campaign.Time’s reporter writes of the movement:
It all started in Canada, of all places. The editors of the Vancouver-based anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters called for a Tahrir Square "moment" on Sept. 17 in lower Manhattan to protest what they called the disproportionate power of the U.S. corporate elite.
It turns out that the Adbusters Media Foundation, which publishes Adbusters, was founded in 1989 by two radicals, Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz. Lasn, the intellectual driving force behind the magazine, was born in Estonia in 1942. He spent his childhood in a German refugee camp and in Australia. In the 1960s, he founded a market research company in Toyko, and in 1970, moved to Vancouver. For 20 years, he produced documentaries for PBS and Canada’s National Film Board.
But then, somewhere along the line he developed an intense hatred of the American consumer economy and became an anti-capitalist revolutionary. The magazine has fostered the development of an international anti-consumerist movement described in this way:
We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century.
His second book, Design Anarchy, calls on graphic designers, illustrators, and other creative professionals to turn from working in service to corporate and political pollution of both the planet and "the mental environment," and instead embrace a radical new aesthetic devoted to social and environmental responsibility.
Lasn has been accused of anti-Semitism by members of the media for his self-published 2004 article, "Why won't anyone admit they're Jewish?" establishing a link between Jewish groups who do not explicitly announce their religion and ultimate control of the U.S. financial community. In 2010, Lasn's magazine published a photo montage featuring spurious comparisons of the WWII Warsaw ghetto to the current day Gaza Strip. This has drawn the ire of historians and Holocaust survivors. It may also explain why some of the OWS participants have made anti-Semitic remarks,and are pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel.
So far Adbusters has successfully launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week, and Occupy Wall Street. The magazine is also known for its "subvertisements" that spoof popular advertisements. In English, Adbusters has bi-monthly American, Canadian, Australian, UK, and international editions of each issue. The sister organizations of Adbusters include Résistance à l'Aggression Publicitaire and Casseurs de Pub in France, Adbusters Norge in Norway, Adbusters Sverige in Sweden, and Culture Jammers in Japan.
Lawrence Morley writes in Adbusters:
Revolt, if it is to be successful, must come from the mind; a growing unease and dissatisfaction with things as they are. Revolt may be leaderless, but it cannot be idea-less. ... It could be said that any society has vested interests in the status quo which could not be unseated by argument. I disagree. For any revolution to succeed, even those interests must be shown to gain, or to lose less by cooperation than they would otherwise.
I, as a Progressive Anarchist, want the complete overthrow of present societies, but not now, not immediately, not violently, but gradually and peacefully as ideas gradually seep through one’s mind. The intention of this revolutionary is to assault your mind and destroy your beliefs.
