Download or order stickers here: www.spellingmistakescostlives.com/defundthemail
Check list of advertisers: bit.ly/defundthemail
I've started adding these stickers to the products of companies who help fund racist propaganda by advertising in the Daily Mail.
If you'd like to get involved, you can download & print your own stickers or order pre-printed stickers here.
The Daily Mail is one of the most vicious and dangerous purveyors of racist propaganda in the UK, and that danger spreads globally through its website.
But like the rest of the media, the Mail’s ability to churn out racial hatred, misogyny and anti-LGBT bigotry is only made possible by the support of its advertisers.
The campaigns by Stop Funding Hate and Sleeping Giants have made incredible progress, in the way they have targeted and reduced the advertising revenue that keeps these racist media companies in business.
Stop Funding Hate regularly publish lists on twitter (twitter.com/stopfundinghate) of the top advertisers in the Daily Mail, with the hope that people can use that information to pressure those businesses to stop funding the Mail’s hatred through ad sales.
I wanted to make something that could help visualise the way advertisers fund racist propaganda, so I made these stickers and started going into businesses that advertise in the Mail and stickering their products, catalogues and leaflets, announcing their financial support for the Daily Mail’s bigotry.
The idea is that other people also get involved in this. I’ve made the printable file available on my website so you can print at home, or work. Or if you prefer you can order the stickers directly from me at cost price.
I think this idea will work best if you can also photograph the products with the stickers on them and share it online, tagging the company and calling on them to end their support for the Mail. We need to make their marketing departments feel uncomfortable about putting their money where racist mouths are.
You can also take a pile of leaflets home, sticker them, and then drop them back into the shops, as I did with Nectar card and Lloyds bank leaflets.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen it time and time again, the monetised racism spread by the right-wing press radicalises people to violence, and with the rise of the far-right globally, the violence and hatred and the profits the right-wing media make from that hatred, will only increase if left unchecked.
It’s important to remember we’re not powerless against media corporations. Through public pressure we can sabotage their advertising-based business model.
This is just one idea, it’s cheap and easy to do. But there are many other ways we can try to restrict the Daily Mail, and other media outlets, ability to spread racist and bigoted lies.
A previous project I started last year involved stickering the Metro’s distribution bins. The Metro is owned by the Daily Mail so I wanted to discourage people from supporting the Mail by picking it up. You can also get these stickers from my website. These stickers are still going up, and staying up. www.spellingmistakescostlives.com/dropthemetro
I hope some of you reading this can take part, or that this gives you ideas for other ways we can resist and subvert right-wing propaganda.
Massive thanks to Danny Squarelips for his help making this film.
2018 has mostly been a year in which I fraudulently impersonated corporations and governments. It was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who made it happen and who supported, bought, and shared my work. I really fucking appreciate it.
Here’s some of my favourite bits.
SHELL / HELL
After taking part in an anti-Shell greenwashing subvertising campaign, organised by Brandalism, Shell sent me a cease and desist regarding some Hell branded merch in my online shop.
Without the necessary means to fight them in court I used the one legal tool at my disposal: sarcasm. For some reason it worked. (see below)
In the end they stopped replying and left me to it. Since then I started selling a black version of the t-shirt with all profits going to anti-fracking organisations in the UK. There are still some left here.
Here's an article I wrote for the New Internationalist about Shell’s greenwashing festival ‘Make the Future’, our subvertising response to it and Shell’s legal threats against me.
I later found out Shell had added me to a list of anti-Shell artists (thanks guys).
THE SUN
While on residency with RRU News I attempted to sabotage The Sun’s advertising revenue with a fake leaflet sent to over 200 people working in the marketing department’s of The Sun’s advertisers. The card sets out a new pricing system for advertisers, in which they can pay more to have their advert placed directly next to the most attention grabbing terror stories. You can read the full leaflet here.
MINI DAILY MAIL
As part of the RRU residency I hand drew a Mini Daily Mail and gave it out on the streets of Liverpool.
I then did a Kickstarter to fund a reprint, added more pages, and sold almost 1500 copies. You can read the full thing online here, and also order a physical copy.
KREUZPFLICHT
In response to the Bavarian ‘Kreuzpflict’ or ‘cross obligation’ law, I pretended to be the Prime Minister of Bavaria and sent inverted crucifixes to state buildings with instructions to hang them upside down.
SUBVERTISING
Some more of my poster designs started appearing around London. The one above was done in collaboration with Veterans for Peace UK to commemorate the end of WWI. Others, like Jesus Christ Van Hire one below were done for no reason whatsoever. You can see all my subvertising work on a new page I added to my website.
TRIDENT
I got quoted in this article about the Royal Navy museum acquiring my anti-Royal Navy posters, (the proceeds of which paid for an anti-Royal Navy poster campaign)
From the article: “Museums are an important record of the peaks and troughs of human civilisation,” he said. “I hope this exhibition is housed deep enough to survive the Royal Navy’s plan to destroy civilisation entirely if Britain loses a war.
“Nuclear bombs are suicide bombs – it is impossible to use these weapons without also killing ourselves. They are an expression of a genocidal and suicidal, not to mention very expensive, form of national insanity.”
ANTI-METRO/DAILY MAIL STICKERS
As part of my residency with RRU News I started an anti-Metro/Daily Mail sticker campaign in which we gave away a few thousand free stickers for people to add to Metro distribution points, reminding commuters that the Metro is owned by the Mail and that every copy you pick up makes the Daily Mail money.
STUFF
I made these Male Man’s Product Conversion Kits to turn female-smelling or gender neutral products into male men’s sport products for men to use.
I also did this global-warming inspired Valentine’s Day card which I like a lot.
EMPIRE AIR
I opened a Boeing and Airbus sponsored neo-colonial travel agency in Munich called Empire Air. The installation was open for 10 days and featured an array of models, dioramas, posters and the below film. Photos and more details on my website.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST
The Army blocked me on Twitter
Thanks again to everyone who helped me make this happen, too many to list here but you know who you are, and to everyone who supported whatever the hell this all is. Looking forward to getting stuck into the hell of 2019.
x
Darren
www.spellingmistakescostlives.com
