disinformation | storming the golden arches of heaven: the war against mcdonalds

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storming the golden arches of heaven: the war against mcdonalds
by Nick Mamatas (laddertrick@gvny.com) - December 28, 2000

Millau, France: Jose Bove leads eleven people in the heart of Roquefort country to destroy a McDonald's restaurant before it opens.

Hinchley Wood, UK: local residents stage a 552-day occupation of a local pub in order to keep it from being leased to the hamburger chain.

Ankara, Turkey: students at Middle East Technical University organize to shut down a McDonald's on campus, calling the store an example of the "culturelessness of imperialism." Some are arrested and beaten.

Australia: media prankster John Safran dresses up like Ronald McDonald and "vomits" green handkerchiefs as part of a guerilla "kid's show" staged outside a McDonald's. He then registers the business name "McDonald's" in one of the few countries without the Golden Arches: Iraq.

Motivations for the assault on McDonald's range from concerns about meat-eating to import taxes on expensive cheeses, with an array of issues - labor organization, exploitation of children, rainforest protection, genetically modified foods - coming to the fore.

McDonald's entered the crosshairs of activists in the aftermath of the Cold War. In 1990, the McLibel case saw Helen Steel and Dave Morris, two members of London Greenpeace, defended themselves against the corporate giant after they were sued for passing out flyers.

The trial itself, which stretched over two and a half years, was often comical. A witness for the burger chain insisted that McDonald's hamburgers could be considered part of a balanced diet, but later had to admit that eating cellophane could also be considered part of a balanced diet.

Thanks to Britain's strict libel laws, even the court's findings that the chain does "exploit children," deceptively promote their food as "nutritious," and pays very low wages were not sufficient. The McLibel two were told to pay 60 000 pounds in damages. The anti-McDonald's campaign was born.

McDonald's is often seen as a sign of cultural imperialism. Jose Bove, founder of the French Peasant Confederation, turned his trial for vandalism into an indictment of US trade policy, taxes on Roquefort cheese and 'malbouffe' (bad food). Bove's trial was a political powderkeg and media event involving concerts and spectacle, but he was sentenced to three months in prison.

New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman has long touted the supremacy of capitalism's political and economic machine by pointing to McDonald's. The opening of the first store near the Kremlin fed headlines for months, and it is often claimed that no two countries with McDonald's have ever gone to war. By Friedman's geopolitical logic, if the company hadn't waited until 1986 to open the first store in Argentina, the Falkland Islands War may never have happened.

McDonald's is an attractive target for activists because it is easy. With the end of the Cold War, the Left lost its sense of place in history. Instead of marching towards workers' utopia, capitalism was going to be all they had. The world wasn't going to be unified under the red flag, but under the Golden Arches. Unable to get their hands on history and economics, the Left looked for local targets. Luckily, there is a McDonald's within rock-throwing distance of pretty much anywhere. It is easier to trash a storefront than it is to assassinate a President. Handing out flyers with self-evident information on them (does anyone really think Big Macs are healthy?) is much easier than organizing a union.

The McDonald's war allows the Left to act locally while pretending to act globally. Much the same way the anti-McDonald's forces borrow the spectacle of advertising and marketing, they have borrowed the individualism of neoclassical economics.

Fighting capitalism and imperialism used to involve organizing the masses for a brighter future. Now it consists of voting with one's pocketbook and avoiding Big Macs.

Just the way the free market is supposed to work in the first place.

McDonald's Rain Forest Tour
To make up for the incredible damage it is doing to the world's rainforests, McDonald's has subsidized the creation of a few zoo exhibits, such as the one at the Aukland Zoo in New Zealand. The exhibits are designed to highlight the plight of endangered animals. Also endangered: the job of whoever designed this clunky Web page.

A McLibel Attack
On the Internet, everybody is a critic. Miles O'Neal lets the infamous McLibel leaflet have it with some alleged humor, a la Rush Limbaugh and his histrionics. His anti-McLibel slams include remarks against "the kind of people who apply at fast food restaurants" which he himself claims to have been. As O'Neal himself might say, "Which is it? Are you a brilliant economic analyst offering a blistering refutation to hippie blather, or a burger-flipping illiterate who just broke out of the mental hospital and got his hands on a computer?"

Super Fries Saboteur
A Time Magazine (December 6th, 1999, v.154, no. 23) article on Jose Bove. This personality profile manages to sell Bove as a celebrity fit for consumption without addressing a single issue his movement raises. The editorial subtext is that we know the facts of Bove's complaints, without any examination of what they mean and what they are. All of Bove's actions and rage are boiled down to him being a colorful character with weird facial accoutrements, not unlike Ronald McDonald.

McLibel Judgment Day
This One World News Service article (June 20th, 1997) by Mark Lynas declares McDonald's victory to be an empty one, in spite of the fact that the McLibel two have to pay up, and in spite of the fact that the burger giant keeps chugging along, movement or no. That the decision sparked an "International Day Of Action" against local McDonald's restaurants means little, if that action was limited to flyering and complaining about greasefat contact. Good links to the case and the original flyer though.

The Burger International
Liza Featherstone's Left Business Observer (November 1998) article focuses on the possibilities of a unionized workforce for the Golden Arches. The sheer number of retail outlets makes the chain the largest owner of retail property in the United States, and its anti-union activities border on the illegal. More promising are the union efforts in other countries, including Indonesia and Russia, which are examined in an article linked to this one. And you wonder why some kid might spit in your burger. Ptui!

Organic Consumers Association
The Organic Consumers Association is a group promoting organically grown food and anti-corporate politics (apparently, large farms full of migrant workers aren't corporations). A mishmash of policy positions, from meaningful concerns about mad cow disease and genetically modified foods, to rather milquetoast attempts to get corporations to reform themselves through letter-writing campaigns. Also included, links on the recent battles against the WTO and World Bank.

Jose Bove
Jose Bove's statement before a French court while on charges for destroying GM corn products. He sure likes to wreck things, doesn't he? This 1998 statement is cogently argued, but falls short. While pointing out that decisions about GM food are taken out of the hands of the people by the World Trade Organization, and explaining that there is sufficient maize in the European Union already, Bove fails to justify the utility of his actions. Moral necessity and probability for success are two different things.

McSpotlight
Ground zero for the anti-McDonald's movement. This very useful page has extensive for a and message boards, but hasn't been updated to include Jose Bove's sentencing (September 13th, 2000) for the trashing of a restaurant in France. Very good information on the continuing fallout from the McLibel case, however.

McDonald's
When you enter this Web site, you are greeted with a menu bar reading 'Select A Country.' Ah, but the chain has already selected nearly every country. The usual corporate garbage, but it is interesting to see the differences in menu items. In Paraguay, for example, McDonald's double as cybercafes, with Internet access.

Jihad vs. McWorld
Benjamin R. Barber's seminal Atlantic Monthly piece (March 1992, vol. 269, no. 3) on post-Cold War politics and economics and the two predominant trends of our time: homogenous globalization, and balkanized nationalism. He made a misstep though in predicting East/West tensions. Nations like China and Iran are reforming their political cultures and opening up to Western ideals of consumption, even while Western democracies like Austria and Switzerland prepare to pull up the drawbridges and eliminate foreign influence from their countries. Important to demonstrate how powerful a symbol McDonald's is as well. Barber's book of the same name (New York: Times Books, 1995) examines the same issues in greater depth.

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