PHM-Exch> Know Your Enemy....

[David Woodward]

...and what they know (or at least think) about us! This is part of an article on the "divide and rule" strategy of the corporate sector towards civil society activists. It's quite old (1995), and from the environmental lobby rather than health, but it's one of the best things I've seen in terms of understanding corporate tactics and their implications for our own strategies - well worth reading! (It also seems quite useful in understanding WHO's relationship with the corporate sector...)


The strategy divides environmental and other activists into four categories: "radicals", "opportunists", "idealists" and "realists". Opportunists, attracted to campaigning because it "offers visibility, power, followers and, perhaps, even employment", are seen as being interested primarily in "personal gain". Their preoccupation with adding career triumphs to their track records, however, means that they can be dealt with by providing them "with at least the perception of a partial victory".

"Idealists" who "want a perfect world" are harder to neutralize. "Because of their intrinsic altruism and because they have nothing perceptible to be gained by holding their position, they are easily believed by both the media and the public and sometimes even politicians." The tactic employed to weaken or undermine such idealists' opposition is to convince them that their position is causing harm to others and cannot therefore be ethically justified. They can then be "educated" into a more "realistic" position.

So-called "realists", meanwhile, are the easiest category to deal with and "should always receive the highest priority in any strategy dealing with a public policy issue." Often relatively inexperienced in the workings of power outside the corridors of government, corporations or mainstream non-governmental organizations, they are particularly receptive to industry's claim to be "the only show in town". For them, the "real world" is the corporate world -- hence, for example, the view expressed by the Audubon Society's Don Naish, explaining his decision to approve oil drilling by Mobil under an Audubon bird sanctuary in Michigan, that "conservations have just got to learn to work with industry". "Realists" are also easily susceptible to industry's claim that the only way of ensuring effective "damage control" is to accept its language, learn to live with "trade-offs" and abjure radical change. Not surprisingly, "realist leaders and groups are the best candidates for constructive dialogue leading to mutually satisfactory solutions". Indeed, "in most issues, it is the solution agreed upon by the realists which becomes the accepted solution."

By contrast, the category likely to present the most effective challenge to advancement of corporate interests consists of "radicals" interested "in social justice and political empowerment", who cannot be restricted to single technical issues. Worse still, the radicals' belief that "individuals and local groups should have direct power over industry" not only "makes these groups difficult to deal with" but makes it "impossible to predict with any certainty what standards will be deemed acceptable."

Given this taxonomy, corporate divide-and-conquer strategy is obvious: isolate the "radicals", cultivate and educate the "idealists" into becoming "realists", then co-opt the "realists" into agreeing with industry. Without the support of "idealists" and "realists", the "radical" and "opportunistic" positions begin to "look shallow and self-serving" to the public. The credibility of the "radicals" will be lost while "the opportunists" can be counted on to share in the final "policy resolution".

Other strategies complement this approach. The public credibility of "radicals" who blame industry for environmental pollution, for example, is undermined by PR campaigns to disseminate educational materials to schoolchildren, television documentaries, newspaper articles and advertisements that paint corporations as key actors in "solving" pollution problems.2<http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/who-are-%E2%80%9Crealists%E2%80%9D#fn002> Meanwhile, corporate funding for "responsible" environmental groups is used to bestow increased credibility on those "realists" who argue for "co-operation" with industry. Where such funding encourages environmental groups to give industry or government representatives a place on their boards, the latter gain additional benefits through garnering information about what "the intelligent public" thinks on environmental issues, and "insider influence" to ward off potentially damaging campaigns.3<http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/who-are-%E2%80%9Crealists%E2%80%9D#fn003>

With the larger environmental organizations preoccupied with "speaking truth to power" while more or less ignoring supposedly "powerless" ordinary people, it becomes easier for the "powerful" to move in at the grassroots. Setting up or backing pro-industry groups among ordinary people to support the corporate agenda through letter writing campaigns, demonstrations and the like has thus become a major campaign strategy for industry. Companies are also mobilizing their own employees, former employees, customers and vendors -- their "extended family" in PR-speak -- into effective corporate support groups.

Environmentalists who lack experience of the diverse kinds of influence which operate in today's world, and who are impressed by the "have/lack" model of power, could learn a great deal about power from working more closely with those actors who, historically, have proved most effective in protecting the environment and who are most capable of becoming lasting allies -- the locally-oriented activists who have successfully combined to oppose dams, toxic waste dumps, roads, and forest master plans; who are forging new community-controlled networks of support through LETS schemes and other initiatives; or who are defending and reclaiming local ways of knowing and acting.

The complete article can be found at
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/who-are-%E2%80%9Crealists%E2%80%9D

The speech referred to in the article was given in 1991 by Ronald A Duchin, Senior Vice President of PR Firm, Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin, in which he describes the strategy used by PR firms to defeat public interest activist, and was reported in the first ever edition of PR watch:  http://www.prwatch.org/files/pdfs/prwatch/PRW1.1.pdf  (See page 5).











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