Recently on the internet I saw celebration over the activities of a cyber-hacking group known only as “Anonymous”, who had taken down Monsanto’s website briefly and replaced it with a pirate flag. They also stole personal information of some Monsanto employees including their home addresses, seemingly taking a page out of the book of animal rights extremists like those who targed Huntingdon Life Sciences employees for their involvement with a company that tests on animals. I’m assuming these addresses were not taken with the intent to write polite letters to the employees explaining why the company they work for is bad news for society, bad news for the environment. The taking of names of those on the Monsanto payroll is to be seen as an implied threat. Anonymous has proudly declared that they “fight for farmers” against the New World Order Scum.
Not this farmer.
Not in my name.
As an animal activist, I’ve spent years thinking about this sort of activity, which was practically idolized some years ago in the animal advocacy movement (and thankfully, I think we’ve moved away from it a little these days). It is held up as ‘direct action’ and ‘civil disobedience’ which scores ‘wins’ for the movement. It appeals to the frustrations of those who have been fighting thanklessly against corporate abuses and the ransacking of the natural world; it’s a way of ‘striking back’ at the enemy. Bullhorns have been used at the homes of employees, bombs left on doorsteps – on the wrong doorsteps, giving government authorities fuel to crack down on protesters, all protesters, whether they are acting violently or not.
But there is no one enemy. Monsanto is a company made up of people, whose actions are supported by goverments made up of people, and permitted to act in a society made up of people. There is no one enemy, there is no mindless “evil corporation” to do battle with. The battle is with public opinion, which generally in North America has allowed transgenic experimentation with our food sources to continue as it will.
Yet in these last years, the tide is slowly turning, based on the experience of the very farmers who have been sold transgenic technology. Farmers are finding that weeds are becoming resistant to Round-Up, and that the ‘simple fix’ of applying the herbicide is no longer effective. They are scrambling to save their fields and their profits. At the same time, proof is coming in that Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disappearence en masse of the bees we depend on to pollinate a huge number of our food crops, is most likely caused by pesticides and the pollen from genetically-modified corn. Farmers are having to completely re-think their approach to pest management, realizing that anything which kills ‘pest’ insects is also liable to kill ‘beneficial’ insects, causing worse problems than when both kinds of insects were around to balance each other.
And even though the public is largely in support of labeling for genetically modified products, we’re finding that almost all canola has been contaminated with transgenic material – even organic canola seed. The public is worried about their loss of control over the production and regulation of the food which sustains us, and starting to wake up.
It’s a climate of disappointment – as the promises put forward by proponents of genetic modification for higher yield and other ‘miracle’ properties of laboratory-altered crops fail to take shape, as farmers in India continue to commit suicide over their debts to the seed and pesticide companies, and pesticide-resistant herbs set American agriculture back by decades.
So why the hell would so-called ‘activists’ choose this moment to act out, swinging attention away from the real problems caused by GMO technology and on to the bad behaviour of a few little cyber-brats? Why give Monsanto fodder to call those against them ‘eco-terrorists’? Why call this a ‘victory’ when nothing at all has been achieved?
… when the actions of a demonstrator divert public attention from the movement’s message, or turn a corporate plunderer into a public victim, or otherwise resemble acts conceived by someone attempting to discredit the movement, then that demonstrator’s tactic is probably a bad one.
-Lee Hall, Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror, p. 67
Don’t take a page from our book. Animal activists have tried this shit before, and seen how it turned out badly. Personal attacks agaisnt employees of ‘evil corporations’ have no place in a movement which seeks a world of justice and peace for all beings. Violence in the name of peace is more than hypocritical. It’s counterproductive. And it fails to acknowledge the interconnection of all things, and the complicity that we all hold, being part of a society that has helped thrust GMO crop technologies on underdeveloped nations, being governed by a government whose representatives are or have been in the payroll of the pesticide and gmo industries they are supposed to regulate.
Personal responsibility and reasoned discussion is less glamorous, and more arduous, and more long-term. But it’s the only thing that will move us forward. This little cyber-stunt is beneath us. Grow up and learn to talk to people. Get your grandparents, your teachers, your mayor to understand the problems of genetically modified foods. Get them behind the fight for safe food, for environmental protection, for small-scale organic local farming. Now that’s revolutionary.


