The Yes Men Fix The World
Dow Chemical, The World Trade Organization (WTO), ExxonMobil, Halliburton, The New York Times, The New York Post, The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)… what do these entities have in common? They’ve all at some point fallen victim to or inadvertently taken part in Identity Correction.
Identity Correction: Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Our targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.” – from theyesmen.org
The modus operandi is tactical media* and the perpetrators and sometimes co-conspirators are The Yes Men – a grassroots network of social activists fronted by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano – if that is in fact their real names (it’s not). For more than a decade, Bichlbaum, Bonnano and co. have been engaged in asymmetrical conflict with centralized power blocs (that might also be networks? These theories and their explanations were a bit overwhelming).
* Taken verbatim from Encyclopedia Wikipedia, “Tactical Media is a form of media activism that privileges temporary, hit-and-run interventions in the media sphere over the creation of permanent and alternative media outlets.”
As has been illustrated to excruciating detail by Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker in their book The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, asymmetrical conflict, which my meager understanding of the reading tells me is synonymous with netwars, is/was required after the fall of the Berlin Wall as a means toward infiltrating and dismantling the exceptionalism and unilateralism of traditional symmetrical networks.
The Yes Men typically impersonate individuals and bodies of control that try to get away with committing heinous acts against the unsuspecting public. While in character, they make a public apology and some sort of costly gesture to make up for the act. They have created websites spoofing sites belonging to global organizations and a site belonging to a presidential candidate. They’ve granted interviews to global news organizations like CNN and the BBC, while impersonating fictitious officials from big, internationally networked institutions. They’ve given talks at conferences where they impersonated government officials, oil company agents. At these conferences, they make comically ridiculous presentations (like their unveiling of SurvivaBall at a Halliburton event) and suggestions to high-level officials of governments and corporations that are usually received with surprisingly enthusiastic approval from people in attendance. They’ve staged elaborate hoaxes involving widely read news publications.
These hoaxes, elaborate and isolated as they sometimes tend to be, exemplify new forms of protest that have replaced the old “centralized, uniform mass protests” that Galloway and Thacker write about. They go on to describe these new methods as “tactical modes of dissent that often use high and low forms of technology.” The Yes Men have found much of their success by relying on the resources of a robust, decentralized network of fellow activist groups, anonymous journalists, media professionals, fans and well-wishers all around the world wanting to get involved in whichever ways they can.
They’ve relied on web designers to help them craft spoof websites for the World Trade Organization and for George W. Bush during his first presidential run. The WTO site was so effective that it led to offers to speak at a conference in Austria. For one of their more popular hoaxes, they produced, in collaboration with the Anti-Advertising Agency and with the help of anonymous insiders, a full-print run of a July 4, 2009 edition of The New York Times (approximately 80,000 copies), handing them out in New York and Los Angeles. The edition featured headlines like “Iraq War Ends”, “Court Indicts Bush on High Treason Charge”, and articles announcing new initiatives like National Healthcare and the repealing of the Patriot Act.
Here’s a clip from Andy Bichlbaum’s interview on the BBC where he impersonates Jude Finisterra – a spokesman for Dow Chemical. Dow Chemical owns Union Carbide, a company responsible for the 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal that claimed thousands of lives and left thousands more in life-long critical conditions:
Trailer for their 2009 documentary film The Yes Men Fix The World:
This group seems a lot like the Onion, however it doesn’t seem as obvious that they are a hoax. When I watched the Youtube video you posted from an interview on BBC, I was wondering how they can get away with these impersonations.
I think we discussed this in class, but in response to Nick’s question – they use the tactic of the exploit. They rely on certain corporate protocols and exploit them in order to perform with a level of authenticity.
This is a great overview of the Yes Men and the type of work they do, Olu. I would have enjoyed reading more analysis of their hoaxes – what does it mean that they engage with these particular strategies? Is this an effective means of protest? etc.
Yeah.. I see similarities to the onion as well. As far as how they’re able to get away with what they do, as Kim said, I think they found a legal loophole and are basically exploiting that loophole. For one, they’ve never actually impersonated a real person. All their characters have been made up and I think the positions/job titles are usually so non-specific eg. spokesman, publicist, etc. I do know they’re constantly having to deal with potential lawsuits.
Awesome comparison! I really have nothing to add except for the fact that now I really want to see the documentary.
I loove that film. It’s completely genius. I can’t believe they get away with the stuff they do. It’s great to realize how (relatively) easy it is to get away with that kinda thing. Totally inspiring.
@kknight08 I think it is a pretty successul means of protest because it goes straight for the jugular of media. In the BBC example, they air something on the BBC and then it gets picked up by a litany of news outlets.. then once the BBC realize its fake they have to re-publish this fact, and so do all the outlets that picked it up. So its like a one-two punch of publicity for them. They exploit the media-network so well. I respect it at least =P