I was invited on the Warrior Nation podcast by ForcesWatch, where we talked about my anti-recruitment art, Action Man: Battlefield Casualties, child soldiers in the British army, and the ways that Hollywood works with the Pentagon to turn movie fans into military recruits (as elaborated on in the below video by Pop Culture Detective)
I do some talking in this great short doc from Dog Section Films about subvertising. (21mins).
Also featuring: Jonathan Barnbrook, Dr. D, Hogre, Double Why, Lydia Dagostino, Protest Stencil, Sila Yucel and Special Patrol Group.
Music: Algiers, Biege Thickness, Jonny Drop.
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.
