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This March 20th, see you in the streets for
the Blackspot Full Moon — a 24 hour blackout of the advertising industry.

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You may have noticed a number of ideas in recent issues of Adbusters seem far-fetched — quixotic, even. Is it really possible to pull off wildly idealistic schemes like the total elimination of secrecy in politics or the creation of a global marketplace in which the price of every product tells the ecological truth? Is it at all likely that artists and designers will rise up and create new moods, ambiences and aesthetics for us to live by? And perhaps the biggest moon shot of them all: Making Usury Taboo . . . but the beautiful thing about these ideas is that they are all nonviolent.
I’m not blind; this is a tough moment for idealism. It’s a time when things look hopeless, when people around the world are scared and hunkering down, putting their trust in strongmen with fascist tendencies. The system is fundamentally broken. So am I a lunatic for being optimistic? Perhaps. Hope alone may be audacious, but hope with a plan is an insurgency. That’s where the Adbusters Metameme Insurrection comes in. To me, it’s not just a beautiful idea (though beautiful it is) — it’s nothing less than the blueprint for a new world order . . . a way to reset the hidden coordinates of our current reality and forge a path towards a future that computes.
The next five to ten years will be critical.
We must decide whether a regressive alt-right, ethno-religious, me-first, make-my-country-great-again ideology will permanently infect the body politic . . . a sure path to global catastrophe and World War III . . . or whether a big-ideas march toward a new world order will emerge on the Left. This is the defining ideological clash of our time, the Meme War that will decide our fate.
To win the war, we on the Left have to rethink the assumptions, habits and rules that govern society, politics, and economics. (You’ll find a cheat sheet titled “Really?” and a “Metameme Insurgency” card in Adbusters #142) It means like-minded students getting together and creating a little mayhem on campus. It means think tanks and NGOs starting a conversation about the total elimination of secrecy. It means a take-no-prisoners fight for surveillance-free information delivery systems. It means artists and designers abandoning product lustre for cultural combat. And it means all of us getting moonstruck and, in the spirit of EXTINCTION REBELLION, joining the global wave of civil disobedience now sweeping the globe.
We can clean up the toxic areas of the mental environment. We can make prices tell the ecological truth. We can take power back from corporations. We can shift the economic paradigm. We can take the straight line in curvy new directions. We can make the future work.
Far-fetched: yes. Unlikely: indeed. Insane? Absolutely. But possible. Remember: the future is not yet written.— Kalle Lasn, from Adbusters #142
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Fascism is the result of the failure
‍
of the left to provide an alternative.
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— Leon Trotsky

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Hey all you wild hearts out there,

We've spent the last couple of months cooking up a dangerous mind bomb.

Adbusters #142, The Metameme Insurrection, freeze-frames the crazed cultural moment we're living through . . .

It's raw, strange, essential, mind-blowing. Don't miss it.

Get a hard copy or digital version of it HERE.

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Adbusters #142
The Metameme Insurrection

Adbusters #142 The Metameme Insurrection

Push the reset button of your mind and journey into Adbusters #142, where cheerful ignorance, mundane complacency, and mental anguish from the status quo fizzle and pop — this is toneshifting territory. The Metameme Insurrection surfs the brainwashing waves of advertising through the years and lands you on the shore of the art, politics, and crises du jour. Take a look at phallic sculptures through the #metoo lens. Muse over virtually stimulated pleasure. Dive into seemingly unconnected truths — they may unearth our collective memory and pull us from our digitized trance. Hopefully, it will spark moments of clarity to give this generation — embracers of change, maverick bullshit-detectors — the vim to swim through surveillance capitalism and the insect armageddon with creative force. Plus, life lessons from Stan Lee!

Get this issue