Interview with Kalle Lasn

As 2011 draws to a close one of the biggest stories of the year was Occupy Wall Street (OWS). It went from an almost total mainstream media blackout about two-and-a-half months ago to becoming a major story poised to continue into 2012. NYT eXaminer (NYTX) is hosting a panel event on December 20^th, “Unspinning Occupy Wall Street: Mainstream Media & the 99%” at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan, NYC. NYTX editor Chris Spannos contacted Kalle Lasn, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Adbusters magazine, and also author of “Culture Jam” to discuss mainstream media’s coverage of Occupy Wall Street. Kalle and Adbusters were the ones who put out the call to “Occupy Wall Street” which kicked off events last September 17^th. Listen to the audio or read a transcribed version of the interview below.

NYTX: First of all, congratulations to you and Adbusters for the wildly successful proposition to “Occupy Wall Street.”

Kalle Lasn: Yeah, it’s been quite a blast hasn’t it?

NYTX: It most certainly has. We’ve gone through this big rollercoaster of OWS being in a media blackout in the early days. To now being, overwhelmingly, one of the biggest stories. What do you think is behind this transition?

Kalle Lasn: I was really surprised for the first few weeks, there was the beginning of a pretty powerful movement, possibly even a revolution, brewing right in the New York Times backyard there and they didn’t catch on to it for quite a long time. I was kind of surprised by that.

After the young girls got pepper sprayed, and after those 700 people were arrested there on the Brooklyn Bridge, then it seemed to me like the media really jumped on board and started covering it with a vengeance—even though the coverage was often very very superficial.

Some of the real magic of what was going on there in so many occupations around the U.S. and around the world—that magic of what was drawing young people in and giving them this feeling of camaraderie, and this feeling that for the first time in their lives they’re engaging with the world and engaging with their leaders and having something to say and living without dead-time—for a lot of young people this was a great moment in their lives. And that magical side of it was nowhere evident in any of the media that I saw.

NYTX: Also missing from the media was a lot of the movement and organization and struggle happening around the world leading up to OWS. This context and background is often missing. There is a recent article in the New York Times, “The Branding of the Occupy Movement” by William Yardley. In it Yardley writes “Kalle Lasn, the longtime editor of the anticonsumerist magazine Adbusters, did not invent the anger that has been feeding the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations across the United States. But he did brand it.” Can you say more about the history and background of struggles that inspired the idea for you?

Kalle Lasn: Well, first of all, Yardley’s use of the word “branding” really pissed me off. I mean, that’s kind of a weirdo way of explaining what really happened. And so using this strange kind of marketing language… I wasn’t happy with that word “branding.”

We certainly did not brand anything to do with Occupy Wall Street.

What happened was that around September the 17^th the moment was ripe. And when the moment is ripe all it takes is a spark. Adbusters Media Foundation provided a spark with this poster that we had and that had a certain kind of magic to it with a ballerina poised on top of a raging bull. And then we came up with this hashtag “#occupywallstreet” that had a nice magical ring to it.

Then, after that we, of course, chose September 17^th as being the Saturday that this should begin. And after that we put out a couple of dozen “tactical briefings” that continually talked about the strategic and tactical side and where the movement could go. That was our role.

After September 17^th, when it actually took hold, after that, it was like a tiger. And we weren’t able to ride the tiger at all. The whole movement started having a life of its own and we were left behind.

NYTX: Looking at more New York Times coverage of Adbusters role in Occupy Wall Street, it’s been mixed—with some positive coverage but also some negative coverage too that seem to contaminate Adbusters and you with allegations of “anti-Semitism.” Can you explain what happened here? I’m referring to David Brooks op-ed “The Milquetoast Radicals” and there are other articles too…

Kalle Lasn: Well, I don’t know why, but I think for some reason the New York Times, I guess they had an editorial meeting, and I think that at their meetings they must have decided that this Occupy Wall Street movement—this movement of young idealistic Americans who felt that the future doesn’t compute and that they were fighting for a different kind of future—that somehow it was perhaps destine to fail.

Maybe it was going to be another one of those loony Left type phenomena where the old Lefties strut their stuff and it doesn’t last all that long and it will just fizzle out—I don’t know exactly. I would have loved to be sitting in on some of their editorial meetings…

But they came to a kind of ambivalent conclusion—an ambivalent feeling about the movement. That’s been reflected in just about everything they’ve done. Especially the stuff they’ve done on Adbusters—it’s been a plus/minus type of affair.

Again, some of the real magic, the idealism—this idea that the young people of America were rising up and sensing that there was something fundamentally wrong with their country. And then they wanted to engage with their power centers, including the New York Times, and including president Obama, including Bernanke and everybody. They wanted to basically engage with America and talk about a different kind of future.

That magical side of it was hardly reflected in the New York Times and it was certainly never reflected in any of the evening news by ABC, NBC, or CBS. It was basically missing in action. You had to actually go to Zuccotti Park or one of the other occupations if you wanted to feel the camaraderie and the magic that was really going on there.

NYTX: Even those omissions from the coverage were some of the more positive aspects compared to negative ones—the accusations of anti-Semitism towards you and the Occupy movement. You actually wrote back to the New York Times to have your letter printed. What happened with that?

Kalle Lasn: Yeah, well, very early on, before they even did anything about Adbusters role in sparking this movement, David Brooks took a very quick 15 word swipe at us and basically said that Adbusters is “best known” for an article about the neo-cons that we wrote seven years ago. It was just a really quick swipe. Actually, it was totally false. Adbusters is not “best known” for this article that I wrote seven years ago, in an issue of Adbusters—a half page article.

But none-the-less, he took that swipe at us and then after that there was another article by another journalist there [Cries of Anti-Semitism, but Not at Zuccotti Park by Joseph Berger] and he also did something similar. He said awe, Adbusters, many people think that they’re “anti-Jewish” and “anti-Semitic,” and without explaining—basically just quoting somebody else saying that.

Those kinds of swipes in one of the great newspapers of the world like the New York Times can be very very damaging. They may look innocuous because they only last for ten words—some little mini-paragraph in a longer column by a guy like David Brooks—but they can do a lot of damage.

So I wrote a letter and I tried to have my right of reply explaining my side of the story and the New York Times, to my absolute dismay and surprise, they refused to run my letter.

I’ve got this ongoing tussle with them now to try to get them to do what I think is journalistically the ethical thing to do. If you are going to take a couple swipes at people then you have to give the other side some sort of a right of reply. And they haven’t given me that, it’s very dismaying.

NYTX: From what I understand it is very disappointing for you because you have relied on the New York Times for many years.

Kalle Lasn: Yes, the New York Times, I actually get the hard copy sent to me every morning. It’s the newspaper—despite what’s happened and despite what I think are the many flaws that the newspaper has—I still think it is one of the great newspapers of the world and I continue reading it every morning. It does give me a snapshot of what’s happening in the world. It’s a wonderful filter. There is so much information these days you can’t keep up with it. So the New York Times is a very nice way to filter the noise and to hone in on what really matters in this world.

Yeah, I still love the New York Times but I feel that there is smoothing fundamentally wrong with their coverage of Israel and their coverage of the Palestinians. I think that Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kirchner shouldn’t be the main journalists who are writing continuous stories almost every day about Israel-Palestine matters. And I think that the New York Times is basically anti-Palestine. I think that we should keep on pointing this out to them and get to the place where they finally come clean on this matter.

NYTX: That’s a matter where we are certainly seeking balance and consistency (in mainstream media) at NYT eXaminer.

Early November, the Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane asked in a column, how Occupy Wall Street should be covered now. That was over a month ago. Brisbane asks:

“If you were the assignment editor, and had control over all desks, what are the stories you would like to see about Occupy Wall Street and its affiliated Occupy branches around the U.S. and the world?”

I wonder, Kalle, now that we’re seeing winter arrive, and the Occupy movement transform and go through another defining stage, how would you answer Brisbane’s question today?

Kalle Lasn: Well, I think that this first phase of the movement is kind of winding down now. People are starting to get ready for the winter. I know that there is a lot of brainstorming and a lot of networking going on. I have a feeling that there is going to be a phase two that will begin probably in January when the campuses go back—I predict that campuses will be one of the next big battle grounds. Especially next spring after the winter is over.

I think that this movement will come out swinging with smaller occupations. I think that these larger occupations—they are so hard to manage, like Zuccotti Park and all these other occupations around the world—they have an intrinsic kind of a flaw in them, in that you can keep the magic going in them for maybe a few weeks or a month or six weeks at the most if you’re lucky. But I think in this next phase of the movement I think we’re going to see surprise one-day occupations of banks and corporate headquarters and Economics Departments all around the world I think will be occupied.

I predict that there’s going to be kind of a positive program of political and social change—very specific stuff with crystal clear policy objectives. All kinds of occupations and projects will emerge out of this movement.

We are going to branch out. I think that this initial part of the movement was all about global economy. It was about the global casino. It was about Robin Hood taxes and basically ways of slowing down fast money. It was very much concentrated on the economic side of things.

Whereas I think that in the future, starting next January and beyond, I think we are going to start talking about cultural matters; we are going to branch out into a critique of the commercial mass media and how it doesn’t really give us information we need to make wise decisions about the future on any number of fronts—least of all climate change and global warming.

And I think also that this movement will branch out into geo-politics and put a magnifying glass on American foreign policy as it relates to Israel and as it relates to Palestine and what America did for 40 years in Egypt. And I think this Occupy movement has a lot to say about geo-politics and especially American foreign policy, which in so many ways has been shown to be so seriously flawed.

NYTX: Thanks for joining NYT eXaminer Kalle.

Kalle Lasn: Okay! It was delightful talking to you.

Kalle Lasn is Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Adbusters magazine. He is also author of “Culture Jam”. Chris Spannos is editor of NYT eXaminer.