The (almost) complete archive of all the stuff that Adbusters has ever made - Articles! Podcasts! Spoof ads! - in one convenient place for your viewing pleasure.
Usually exclusive to our physical magazine, we’ve treated non-subscribers to a selection of some of our best print pieces.
Every revolution, every authentic revolution, promises to redeem the failures of its predecessors. This is what Walter Benjamin thought — or at least, this is what Slavoj Žižek says Benjamin thought at the end of The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012). Paraphrasing Benjamin, Žižek says in the film that all the unsettled ghosts of the past will at last find rest in the new freedom born out of the true revolution to come. Yet he warns the path to this freedom comes with no guarantees. There is no train of historical inevitability that can be ridden to the safe harbour of emancipation. Getting there all depends on a fickle crowd of free riders, a ragtag huddle of the flighty and the faithless. They should be a familiar bunch because, it turns out, they are us. Our liberation rests on nobody’s shoulders but our own.
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The UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the liberal international order sought to guarantee rights on an individual level. These promoted freedom of thought and expression, of religion, of movement and association and of sexual orientation, whereby ‘any particular freedom is to be respected only insofar as it does not violate the equal freedom of others.’ Within a liberal international order, such ‘rule by the people’ encompassed freedom of political participation, representation, expression and association. It also included having regular free, inclusive and equal elections, the presence of accountable and transparent political institutions to guarantee the individual liberties and rights of citizens, and access to competing information. At its core, the US endorsed electoral democracy as the central and unquestionable pillar of its preferred international order. Such social and political rights are seen as being generalizable to the internal basis of all countries, and hence the whole international system. They also produced a sense of solidarity among Western countries concerning the preservation of a common social and political basis.
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Scientists used to think there were only six human emotions — anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear and sadness. We now know there is a seventh: awe. Awe is the feeling, registering more in our body than our mind, that we’re in the presence of something so vast and deep and powerful that it swamps our present understanding of the world. A skyful of stars in the middle of nowhere. A soaring piece of art. An act of wild kindness, fugitively glimpsed. Or an existential threat.
Read More...Dive deep into long form features on everything from smartphone addiction to what a True-Cost global marketplace would mean for the economy.
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YOU HAVE TO KEEP AT IT,AGAIN AND AGAIN,THROUGHOUT YOUR LIFE.From the moment you start dreaming as a teenager, start delving into philosophy and following artists, sense a first hint of awe at your existence and wonder if life has any meaning at all.Riddles wrapped in enigmas wrapped in mysteries. What the hell happened before the Big Bang? Does AI totally vanquish the idea of a human soul? And who is this "I" asking all these things, anyway?You'll keep asking questions like that ... again and again and again.
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While punk emerged as a reaction to the hippie movement of the 1960s, it has faced its own challenges in maintaining its revolutionary spirit. The commercialization of punk rock and the descent into mere escapism through drugs and loud music have buried the movement's original principles. However, Zen philosophy offers a powerful framework for revitalizing punk's core values.The Convergence of Zen and Punk EthicsAt first glance, Zen's emphasis on silence and punk's loud rebellion might seem contradictory. Yet both share fundamental values: authenticity, rejection of materialism, and the importance of direct action over empty talk. As Zen teaches, "The more you talk about it, the less you understand" - a principle that aligns perfectly with punk's emphasis on action over rhetoric.Beyond Nihilism: Zen as a Tool for Punk Revival
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Near the end of Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot, the hero finds himself standing in the gallows, about to be hanged. In one minute it'll all be over. It suddenly occurs to him what an enormous amount of time that is. A full minute. He takes ten seconds to think about his family, then allows his mind to roam over the play of light on the church steeple in the distance, the granular subtleties of his entire life. His impending demise – or so he thought – had smashed his last moment on earth like an atom.You could say that's all of us now. We're standing on the gallows having an existential moment together. And performing in our heads what the writer Mitchell Jackson called "survival math" – a term he hatched after being held up at gunpoint and realizing his odds of living would swing wildly depending on what he said and did in the next thirty seconds.Call it a hinge moment.
Read More...Our fingers are on the global pulse, counting beats as we stutter towards the throes of death. If you want to know what Adbusters thinks about the news, this is where you find it.
We're in the middle of a guerrilla marketing war for the future of the planet. Conventional weapons are useless — all we have are ideas. These are the best of our culture jams.
Listen to the voice of Adbusters proffering sweet ASMR vibes about the end of capitalism and where Occupy Wall Street went wrong.
Memes can be cinematic too. Turn up the volume and watch the chaos of the world unfold and disintegrate before your very eyes.
"This is an invitation to come together across the world for a memorial carnival in the spirit of the one and only, David Graeber, who just left us so suddenly and unexpectedly.
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After months of downplaying the threat of the virus that has killed over 200,000 Americans (and, tragically, counting), the president and first lady have both tested positive for COVID-19.
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In his book Rethinking China’s Rise: A Liberal Critique, Xu [Jilin] gives a wide-ranging analysis of China’s recent history. His main point is that China has headed down the dangerous path of historicism...
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