Adbusters Archive

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.

Articles

Usually exclusive to our physical magazine, we’ve treated non-subscribers to a selection of some of our best print pieces.

I was deeply inspired.

I found you years ago and was deeply inspired. I never missed an issue until they started changing. The overall feeling had become extremely masculine and desperate, and I was forced to let go of a magazine I dearly loved. I see that you use the word “brutal” in your campaign as though it were a good thing, but I think it alienates people.

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After learning my flight had been detained...

After learning my flight had been detained four hours, I heard an announcement : “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well – one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

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Paradigm Shift

In 1930, the English economist John Maynard Keynes took a break from writing about the problems of the interwar economy and indulged in a bit of futurology. In an essay entitled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” he speculated that by the year 2030 capital investment and technological progress would have raised living standards as much as eightfold, creating a society so rich that people would work as little as fifteen hours a week, devoting the rest of their time to leisure and other “non-economic purposes.”

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Deep Dives

Dive deep into long form features on everything from smartphone addiction to what a True-Cost global marketplace would mean for the economy.

Welcome to the New Asceticism.

So there you have it. We take a little pain and our bodies reward us for it, instead of punishing us for our pleasure. We take a little pain as a culture and our ecosystems reward us for it, instead of punishing us for our greed. We take a little pain in order to stay above the grass, as a species, for just a little longer. Until one day we realize we’ve been using the wrong language around all this. What we called “sucking it up” is really just “pulling together.”

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The Savior Meme

The late Stanford philosopher and therapist Paul Watzlawick had a good way of explaining how to get out of impossible jams. When change is required, there are different ways to think about the level of creativity that’s needed.A “first-order” change is to stamp on the gas pedal. A second- order change is to shift gears. A third-order change is to get out of the car and find another way to get there.That’s where we are now. Here’s a radical new way to think about it all.

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Erasing Time

On an average day, a Palestinian who works in Jerusalem and resides in the West Bank must wake up at four in the morning in order to arrive at work by nine. The reason is not the distance between workplace and home. With the construction of the separation wall that began in 2002, and is still underway as of 2022, the Israeli state entered into a new stage of encroachment on Palestinian territory. The Palestinian worker has to wait in line for hours at checkpoints staffed by soldiers who are incentivized to make the line move as slowly as possible. Most of these bor-der-crossers have a long day ahead of them in various kinds of construction work. After crossing into Israel, they must spend hours every day passing through checkpoints to get to work, even though they often have only a few kilometres to travel.

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Spoof Ads

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.

KalleCasts

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.

Hummingbird

Media

Listen to the voice of Adbusters proffering sweet ASMR vibes about the end of capitalism and where Occupy Wall Street went wrong.

Adbusters 161: Hope/Nope

The Pulse

Memes can be cinematic too. Turn up the volume and watch the chaos of the world unfold and disintegrate before your very eyes.

Are We Plunging Into a New Dark Age?

Plagued by climate change–induced disasters, political turmoil, and the worst pandemic in a century, the world barely noticed when the United Nations released a report last month detailing calamitous prospects for the diversity of life on Earth.

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Trump is infected . . . with xenophobia

Just before it was revealed that he (and many other Republicans) had been infected with coronavirus, President Trump announced that he aims to limit the number of refugees allowed into the United States next year to just 15,000.

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Uncovered Anarcast: Anarchist Spirits

From Occupy to Antifa, why are anarchist ideas and tactics appealing to an ever broader, younger audience?

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