#rC3 - The Yes Men from Tricksters in an age of dirty tricks

rc3 preroll music

Herald: So the next talk is Mike Bonanno
of the Yes Men, and I think we'll just

allow him to get started right away. Mike,
please go.

Mike Bonanno: Thank you so much and hello
everybody. It's so good to be here

participating in the chaos. I can say that
I've intended to for years, but finally,

maybe due to the pandemic, I'm finally
here. So and it's great to to be here

after observing from afar for about twenty
five years. Anyway, I was told that the

other day that I'm getting kind of old.
The Yes Men are elderly now. And so a lot

of people wouldn't, you know, know very
much about the types of things or what we

had been doing. And I'll admit I've
forgotten most of it myself. So I look

through it, I looked through the archives,
just something that would introduce what

we do a little bit. And I found this
picture that you see here where I'm

holding up an ExxonMobil card, business
card. And then Andy, who's the guy that I

work with at the Yes Men, the co-founder
of the group is there holding a National

Petroleum Council card. And this is from
an event that we were at and I think

2009 or so where we went to a
conference in Calgary, Alberta,

representing these two companies. We've
been weaseling, weaseling our way into

events, conferences and sometimes online
types of venues for over two decades now

and representing people in power. And we
do one of two things. Either we do

something satirical and funny in front of
an audience that usually thinks we are the

most powerful people in the room, or we do
something that is more utopian where we

announce the reality that we might like to
see, like in our wildest dreams, what we

might think ExxonMobil might say if they
suddenly turned around and stopped being

some of the world's largest climate
criminals and had a kind of reckoning and

woke up and decided to fight climate
change. So anyway, there's been a lot of

things that have happened over the last
two decades in terms of the media

landscape and the sort of flexibility of
reality that have made our tactics more or

less useful. Also, like who's in power
politically makes a difference, because

this, the types of things that we do, this
kind of mischief we find works pretty well

when there's people who are movable, who's
in office. Whereas if you have a total

despotic tyrant, then you have to go to
more tactical methods instead of the types

of things that we do that are all about,
you know, pushing political leaders to

change or about sort of bolstering a
movement like creating some exciting, fun,

entertaining media that shows us all that
the people that we're fighting are

actually really fallible and no different
than you and I, despite the kind of power

that they hold. So I'm going to go ahead
and play a little video clip here.

Hopefully it works. This is a video clip
from our second, third Yes Men film.

Narrator within video: We don't usually
get arrested, but ever since the 1990's,

Mike and I have been dressing up
in secondhand suits and impersonating big

and powerful people.
Actor: Hello, this is Reggie Lambrick

calling. I'm from the "Yes Bush Can"
campaign

A: Hi, this is Kinnithrung Sprat
from the WTO.

A: My name is Francesco Guerrero
A: My name is Brad, I'm Halliburton's

N: We weasel our way onto center stage, at
least for a little while.

Rr: Mr. Oswin, you're not even on the
directory. You're not even listed. You

don't even have a phone number.
A: It's come to that.

Rr: The hoax was an elaborate one.
A: For the first time, Dow is accepting

full responsibility for the Bhopal
catastrophe.

R: So the prank, which briefly knocked
three percent of Dow shares.

N: When the jig is up, it makes the news.
R: It's a group of pranksters who call

themselves The Yes Men.
R: An activist group called Yes Men…

N: It's not the way most people protest,

but it's our way to say
no to corporate greed.

pop
Oooh!

M: Oops! OK laughing. So, I just want to

give a little bit of backstory: I've made
three films, three feature docs in the

last 15 years. We released one, it seems,
every five years. That's kind of a

compilation of a bunch of the antics that
weave the exploits, whatever we want to

call them. But a lot of people ask, well,
how do you start doing this? With what

initiative? Why, how? And it all kind of
happened by accident. I just wanted to

start out by showing you the World Trade
Organization headquarters in Geneva. This

is obviously a pretty large building in
one of the most expensive real estate

markets in the world. And how did we get
our first major kind of exploit like this

was when we when we actually impersonated
the WTO. And so this is their

headquarters. This at the time was our
headquarters. You can see this little plot

here is where we lived. This is a meeting
of the OMC, the WTO. And of course, this

is the kind of meeting that we used to
have. And so people would say, well, how

did you end up representing the WTO on
television? You know, on stage? At

business meetings? Here we are standing
with several dignitaries in Australia

after a trade conference there. And the
answer was, is actually way simpler

than it needs to be. Like a lot of things
with social engineering, it's actually a

lot dumber and less technical than people
imagine. This is Andy at a computer. At

that thing down there. And that's called
that's called the computer. There's a

television in the background, a CRT. We
had put up a website called gwbush.com

that was meant to be a satirical website
for George Bush, who at the time was

running for president. He wasn't president
yet, but you can see that his banner for

his website said valuable, said
"education, values, responsibility". It's

the banner on the bottom. And then our
banner at the top said, "valuable,

educated, prosperous". These are subtle
differences, but they're differences that

make a big difference in English because
there and of course, in this one, instead

of sitting with his wife smiling in front
of the Texas state capitol, he's pointing

his finger at black people. So it was
meant to be satirical, but it turned out a

lot of people took it seriously anyway.
And it got a lot of press coverage. This

is some old, an old Netscape window,
browser window here. And then, sorry, it

got a lot of press coverage and then
actually, George Bush denounced it at

several press conferences and he made it
famous, quote, at the time, although he

made tons of famous gaffes and at this
press conference he said about us, there

ought to be limits to freedom. That was
what he was suggesting when they asked

what they should do about us for making
this website that look like he hasn't made

fun of them. We put up a website at
gatt.org, which a lot of people associated

with the World Trade Organization, because
GATT, the Global Agreement on Tariffs and

Trade, was the predecessor organization to
the WTO and the predecessor, the

previously existing agreement. So we had
that website. This is actually Bretton

Woods where they first set up the GATT, I
believe, in 1946. And then of course the

WTO building that you've already seen on
the shores of Geneva. Now in the early

1990s, the mid late 1990s, there was a big
global movement against neoliberalization

and neoliberal policies. And the WTO was a
big focus of that. And Andy and I were

participating. This is one of the marches
that you see of people mostly in the

global south who are rebelling against the
free market ideologies that were really

hurting the poorest of people in many of
those countries. And of course, there are

protests like the famous Battle of
Seattle, which was famous because it shut

down the city of Seattle during a OMC
meeting. And this is a great picture of

what it's like to be to be there at that
event. It was. But unfortunately, we

couldn't be there. I mean, Andy couldn't
be there to experience this wonderful

feeling of tear gas. And so, feeling left
out, we put up a fake website for the WTO.

And again, it's a satirical website,
but it's at gatt.org.

And unlike the WTO's web sites that…

The WTO website was very hard to
find out how to talk to anybody there.

Although they emphasized their
transparency as an organization, they were

very hard to actually speak to. And since
their web page had literally thousands of

pages of documents, legal documents that
you needed to be a lawyer to understand.

Ultimately, it wasn't very transparent.
And so our web site, on the other hand,

gatt.org, was very easy to hit the contact
button and get in touch with what a lot of

people turned out to think was the, were
the WTO. Now, that became news and the WTO

issued a press release saying: warning,
fake WTO website. And so since they had

actually then sent this press release to
their entire mailing list, the Google

algorithm, which was fairly new at the
time, ranked our web site very high in the

rankings just below theirs actually.
Without any warnings about it being fake.

So many people would go to their real WTO
website, would fail to be able to get in

touch with them, and then instead would
actually come to our website and on our

website, we posted these alerts like fake
WTO website, misleading the public just to

make sure that people knew that we that we
existed. We wanted to help them help the

WTO do this work of warning people about
the fakes, this sort of hall of mirrors.

So once again, the word deplorable gets
used in reference to us. This here is the

then director general of the WTO whose
name happened to be Mike Moore, and he was

from New Zealand, very different. He's a
former prime minister of New Zealand, very

different prime minister than they have
now, really. But he held a press

conference where he announced that he
deplored the fake website and said that

they undermine the transparency. And so,
of course, we published this on our fake

website as well. And then immediately it
gets picked up and widely, widely picked

up by the press. So without actually going
to Seattle, we managed to actually engage

the WTO and to get them to talk to us, to
address us, and then to get several rounds

of media attention that we used to try to
redirect traffic to what was happening in

Seattle, to what was happening on the
ground with the movement. And actually,

this for us, we've been doing things like
this before, but for us this was like a

really big win because we realized, wow,
this took very little work. It was a lot of

fun and with absolutely no power - you
remember what our office looked like

compared to the WTO - we were able to sort
of do these moves that would throw a much

heavier opponent like judo moves. And so,
anyway, we got into it. So many people

then were mistaking our website for
theirs, thanks to the sort of internet

being so new and the you know, I mean, the
web, the world wide web and the way search

engines worked, that we got a lot of email
from people, questions like: "Could you

advise me of the relationship of Gibraltar
to the WTO?" And this is the Treasury

Department of the Isle of Man asking us
this question. So, you know, it's fun,

it's entertaining. Another question might
be: "I would like to interview a WTO

spokesperson on South America's new
technology sector." By the way, on the

relationship of Gibraltar to the WTO, we
explained in detail how Gibraltar was a

rock south of Spain, a really big rock laughs in
the, basically, in between the

Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean and
the WTO is this human construction,

imagination organization, very different
thing. So we we became experts basically

very quickly overnight. It was a lot of
fun. And then finally, we were so good at

it, so good at being the WTO that we
started to get invitations. "Can the director

general, Mike Moore, address our
conference in Salzburg?" was a question we

got and well, this is Mike Moore. This is
what he looks like. And we realize, damn,

we can't we can't possibly be that guy.
This is a problem. We can't send him

either. So we wrote to them and we said,
well, we can't send you Director General

Mike Moore, but we would very much like to
send a substitute. And that's when they

embraced the idea of Andreas Bicklbauer,
Dr. Andreas Bicklbauer, which is a name we

got out of the Vienna phone book.
Actually, a friend of ours, Hans of Uber

Morgan, had sort of sponsored our trip by
leaving some cash on the table of his

apartment and leaving us the keys. So when
we arrived in Vienna with our new

thrift store suits, we were immediately
ready to go to this conference as the

World Trade Organization. So that's sort
of how it happened in the beginning. This

adventure in mischief, which has now
lasted twenty years, doing these things in

person was something that just almost sort
of like occurred spontaneously. But then

once we were onto that and into that, it
became quite an energizing and addictive

sport thing that we've got a sportcoat
that launched us onto the twenty years of

fun and excitement. And we haven't quite
landed yet. But I'm worried about that

landing because it could could be a rough
one. So I want to just frame what we're

doing a little more. You know, some of you
probably recognize this guy. This is Santa

Claus. This is an actual photograph of
Santa Claus emerging from a chimney,

looking at a photographer who happens to
be crouched in this room in somebody's

house. They both had to break in, in order
to do this. And so my point here is that,

you know, we love mischief, we love
mischief, and we actually even love

trespass. We love breaking in. We love
breaking and entering. The stories of

crossing borders, crossing boundaries,
changing shape, putting on disguises, the

masquerade. These are the stories that
really carry us through history. They are

some of our oldest stories. And this
season, with Christmas is no exception.

Now, the stories have been hijacked and
manipulated in a number of ways, just as

all information and stories are in our
culture and Santa Claus is reckless, break

in in order to leave gifts, have become
something hijacked by capitalism, in part

created by capitalism. But the fact that
we want to lean on this idea of him

trespassing, I think is that's really
important. That's a key to something. So

remember, don't tell anybody, though.
Santa Claus will do so. We have this

history we see it fitting into something
that's sort of common to all cultures, and

this is the idea of the trickster. This is
often a deity or sometimes it's actually

based on a real historical figure that's
more recent. But all cultures have these.

I won't say all, but nearly all cultures
have these trickster characters. There's a

few listed on this sort of cartoon image
here, Kokopelli of the Hopi or the Zooni,

which is, you know, in the United States,
in North America, Aboriginal people in

North America, Anansi, the spider of West
Africa, the Raven and the Pacific

Northwest. It goes on and on because
they're everywhere. Everybody has these.

And it doesn't take too much digging to
find out about your own trickster

character in your culture. And since we're
kind of in, I think mostly in Germany

right now, and actually my mother is
Dutch, so I'm going to stick with, I'm

going to go with Reynard, the Fox or the
Fox as a character, as a trickster

character. And so we're going to look at a
little bit more history through the Fox's

lens to frame the types of things that
we're doing through the eyes of the of the

trickster. Jesus, another trickster. Laughs. And
I'm not a big fan, although I am a fan of

some of his original tactics. You know, he
rode in on this donkey and this is an

actual photograph of him because, you
know, somebody had a time machine and went

back and got this shot of him riding a
donkey into Bethlehem. And, you know, this

is like nobody rides a donkey into
Jerusalem. Nobody rides a donkey. It

didn't make sense. He did it because he
knew that people would talk about it. It

was a symbolic action that was meant to
project the kind of humility and make

people tell stories about what happened.
So the idea was to propagate this myth,

which, of course, works so well that now
we have you know, we have Christianity.

But here's Nasrudin riding a donkey
backwards a century later. And again, an

original photo. This is sort of a wise
aged coming from out of Turkey and part of

Islamic tradition. And again, all these
stories, though, are stories of a kind of

wisdom. And these are sort of the reason I
say they're Trickster's is that they were

fighting larger powers. I mean, Jesus was
fighting the Romans. Jesus was leading a

movement of liberation at the time. It
became something entirely different. But

we see the same thing. This version of the
trickster, that's Nasrudin is like a wise

man is usually about telling a story where
through cleverness and sometimes agility,

a character can outwit others who have
more power, who would otherwise exercise

power over them. I mean, there are good
trickster's and bad, but we like to focus

on the idea of the good trickster, which
is those who are fighting power instead of

those who are serving power. So here's
another example, a modest proposal. This

is a pamphlet published by Jonathan Swift
where he suggested that the Irish eat

their babies in order to solve the hunger
problem in Ireland. Because, of course,

the potato famine was not a famine that
was caused by lack of food in that

country. It was caused by lack of money,
as most famines are. The British were

still shipping grains out of Ireland
because they made money when people were

starving to death because the potato crops
had failed. So this is a comment on that.

Well, why don't the Irish just eat their
own babies? And then it was, it's become

one of the most famous examples of, you
know, English satire in history and

English language that is. This is the
seventeen hundreds. So the whole point

here is that this pamphlet, like a lot of
this sort of hacking techniques that we

end up using now, this pamphlet was like
disguising itself as something else when

it was first published. OK, I'm going to
skip ahead. These are a few pictures of

the women's movement, but I want to get
through this stuff quickly. The whole

purpose here is to show you that, again,
this obsession with stories with

infiltrating with causing trouble, which
they did, is something that's constant,

has continued to happen, to occur. Hang on
a second ... he's showing a low power, but

I'm a power problem. I'm going to have to
go and get another power supply because

this one is not working. But this is a
group called Climate Rush that was, that

was repeating those actions. So I'm going
to run off and get another power supply. I

will be back in just a moment. I'm going
to leave you with a picture of a Gandy's

saltmarsh. Now, just a minute. This is
actually Surmont Sumati Naidu, who is

leading one of the salt marches. I'll be
right back.

Herald: I will use this interruption to
remind you that you can ask questions at

the hashtag "#rc3one", "one" spelled out as
a word on Twitter and Mastodon and also on

the IRC. And now we all sing some songs
together and wait.

Mike: Hey, everybody, sorry. They are good
laughs.

H: Welcome back.
M: Thank you. That's not the thing that I

expected to stop working. Never had a
power supply just stop in the middle. OK,

well, anyway, I was also going to say that
a lot of the stuff that we get inspiration

from comes from principles of nonviolence
going where you're not supposed to go,

crossing borders. This is, again,
trickster tactics. So the tactics of

civil disobedience are the same kind of
tactics that we use when we infiltrate and

do something in a business meeting. It's
doing something illegal, something that is

illegal, but might, of course, have just
ends in mind or might even be the right

thing to do. So the salt march in India
during the Indian independence movement

was where people marched to the sea and
made salt, which was illegal because it

was being taxed by the British. And it's
one of the ways that the British crown was

suppressing the local populations and
preventing India from having autonomy and

from being able to break the yoke of
colonialism. So, again, the idea was to

try to cross those boundaries and to do it
in a way that was visible to the world.

Another example is the bus protests in the
United States during the civil rights

movement. This is a woman actually well
before Rosa Parks who this photo here is

of, there was this woman whose last name
is Morgan, who - this is over a decade

earlier -, who was riding on the bus and
refused to give up her seat. And so there

are many, many people doing these sorts of
tactics which were really about crossing

these borders, crossing these boundaries.
All right. I'm going to move ahead here

through a few more slides of occupations,
things like the American Indian movement

that was, sorry, this is Indians of all
tribes occupying Alcatraz saying this is,

this space is ours. This is after the
prison had left the island. This is just

off the coast of San Francisco in 1971
and again at Standing Rock,

same kinds of tactics, occupation,
refusing to move and getting moved by the

authorities and a display of violence that
shows really that should in theory at

least be embarrassing for those wielding
power when they claim to be benevolent.

Billboard alteration, another simple
transgression. It's just like going up

there and changing a billboard. Street
signs, you can change the street signs in

Malcolm X Street, which is something that
in the early 90's I was doing in Portland,

Oregon, and this was in protest of them
not naming a street for Martin Luther

King. Sometimes it is as simple as
changing an existing sign. Like Hollyweed.

I show this because it's a successful
campaign. You know, weed is now pretty

much legal. Well, it's legal in California
and in it will be soon, probably in most

of the United States, if not all. And
things like banner hangs, again, going

where you're not supposed to. Getting your
message there. If you don't have the money

for a banner, you can draw it on a beach.
You can put on a costume like Superbarrio

in Mexico City. This is after the
earthquake in 1987. This guy showed up

wearing a wrestling outfit and demanded
rights for the poor people in Mexico. And

the neighborhoods that weren't being
repaired by the government. And people

loved him so much and the media loved him
so much. That when he started to challenge

political leaders to wrestling matches,
they kind of had to show up and talk to

him. Otherwise, it would be very
embarrassing. So this is an example of

using some kind of flamboyant tactic in
plain sight to go places you're not

allowed to go. And then again, the masked
man, the identity here for the Zapatistas

as a sort of the flip side of that is the
obscured identity, you know. Wearing a

mask because you have to. Because you're
actually participating in an armed

rebellion. But also this movement of the
Zapatistas was really thinking very much

about their media image and about
presenting their revolution to the world.

And having it exists on a global stage.
Oh, and here is Comandante Ramona, who's

the leader of the Zapatistas with
Subcomandante Marcos. And again, thinking

about who is in charge here. And it's this
under five foot tall indigenous elder who

is running the Zapatista revolution at the
time in 1994. Just one or two more slides

here of other things. To put it all in
context, here's a group called the Space

Hijackers with one of their tanks. They
had a few they bought a few tanks. It

turns out that in the UK it's not that
hard to buy them. And they dressed as

these sort of comic riot police. And this
was sort of the clown car that distracted

the real riot police who followed them.
And then let their other tank roll right

into the largest arms show in the world in
London. So sometimes these plots involve

decoys, involved many layers in order to
access these venues. But this is a picture

of a teddy bear catapult. The fun thing
about this, this is that the FTAA, a

protest in in Quebec City, in Canada. And
the fun thing about this is that it

created a dilemma for the police. Because
the world leaders are meeting inside the

fortress city. Literally, it's the only
fortress city in North America. Europe has

a lot of them. But this is at the top of
the hill. There's a fort in Quebec and

that's where they were meeting. And, of
course, the antiglobalization activists

surrounded it and laid siege to it. And
one group built this hilarious catapult

and were flinging teddy bears in. And the
police were faced with the decision. Do we

arrest? Do we stop the teddy bears from
being flung in? And do we arrest the

catapult and then look ridiculous walking
away with it? Or do we let them keep

flinging? Neither option was a good one.
They arrested the activists. And

they then there's this hilarious picture
of them hauling around their catapult

teddy bears. If you can't make a catapult,
you don't have the means, maybe you have

some bread and you can strap it to your
head like in the Egyptian... the recent

revolution in the Arab Spring. Where
people were strapping all kinds of things

to their heads to make a statement about
the violence that was being perpetrated

against them. Because, of course, the
state is saying that they were creating

the violence and the activists were
saying, no, we don't even have helmets.

We're going to just strap whatever we have
to our head. And it became a hilarious

living meme. Where people are walking
around with all kinds of crazy makeshift

helmets. One more image, the flying penis
that attacked Garry Kasparov in, I think

what became a very popular viral video for
its moment. And you can look this up, but

this is also a warning. Because this
phallus, which is flying, it's like an RC

helicopter with a dildo attached to it.
And this thing, which was flown against

Kasparov, who was at the time the
strongest opposition candidate to Putin,

could very well be the KGB's flying
phallus. So everybody uses these tactics.

And I say that because, you know, it was,
it became a really popular and

embarrassing video that was against
Kasparov. And so who knows who was behind

it. Who was at the controls? So to go back
to what we do with the Yes Men. We are not

beneath a few phallic metaphors ourselves
because it works really well When you're

trying to impersonate people in power.
This is an example of one time when we

went to a conference in Finland
representing the WTO and announced that

the WTO's solution to the problem of
sweatshops was this thing called the

"Employee Visualization Appendage". Which
was a three foot long phallus that had a

kind of heads up display on it, that
allowed you to see your remote workers

anywhere in the world. And give them
electric shocks. And of course, the

audience loved it because because they
thought we were the most powerful people

in the room. At the beginning of the talk,
we were wearing business suits and we made

a breakaway business suit that I could tear
off of Andy, in one quick movement. And

then this three foot long inflatable
phallus was instantly deployed with a CO₂

cartridge. Inflated in a matter of maybe a
second and a half. And this is a story

from the newspaper, the second
largest daily in Finland, that sort of

explains a little bit about the WTO
plans. So I don't know, how well you could

see those videos.Can I get a little
feedback on that? Can anybody tell me how

easy it was to see some of the video?
H: It looked OK. The sound was great and

the video was very stuttery. But you
could do it.

M: OK, so I'll show a little bit more
video. I'm going to actually show... I'm

going to skip this one. This is probably
the most famous of the things that we've

done. It's in our second film, which is
called "The Yes Men fix the World". And

you can find that, it's on You Tube,
other places, file sharing. And this is

where Andy was representing Dow Chemical
on a live television broadcast on the 20th

anniversary of the Bhopal catastrophe. And
as Dow Chemical, he took responsibility

for the disaster and offered to pay back
the victims and meet their demands. And

clean up the plant site. So sometimes you
use that tactic where we, if we're given

enough power and we have the right
platform, it's incredibly useful to

announce that sort of utopian solution. Or
to announce that the company that you're

targeting is meeting the demands that
activists have been asking for

years. Because then it puts the company in
a real dilemma.They have no good

choice. They either have to say "That wasn't
us and we are not fixing the problem that

we created." Or if they ignore it, then they
have this disinformation out there in the

universe. That means they have to act. So
I'm going to skip that and I'm going to go

to this, which is a more slightly more
recent thing. This is also pretty old,

though. This is, I think in our last Yes
Men movie called 'The Yes Men Are

Revolting'. And what we're doing here is
creating a replica of the stage at the

Copenhagen climate conference. So this is
2009, the COP15. And the reason, we just

wanted to create something that looked
enough like it so that we can make

Internet videos to embed in our fake
website that would allow us to make

announcements as the COP15 that would, I
mean as the official climate conference on

behalf of Canada and Uganda. And I'm going
to play a little video here.

Newsreader: Well, while Terry was looking
through those documents, the world was

laughing at Canada because of another one.
It surfaced as a press release or so

everyone believed. But soon it was clear
Canada had been punked. Leslie McKinnon

reports.
McKinnon: First, there was this demo

inside parliament. 20 or so protesters who
caused a minor stir. Then this Greenpeace

paper, but that got mostly reported as a
breach of security story. Neither managed

to get Canada's climate policy as much
attention in Copenhagen as today's

multilayered hoax. The day began with this
press release announcing the astonishing

news that Canada was suddenly doubling its
emission cuts to 40 percent below 1990

levels by 2020 and that it would
generously pony up 13 billion dollars to

be allocated to the African countries for
emissions reduction. Then there was this

article about it on what looked like the
Wall Street Journal's website. See then

this, a news conference purportedly by the
Ugandan delegate, posted on what looked

like the Copenhagen conference website.
Delegate: Dearest Delegates.

McKinnon: It looked amazingly real until
the speaker compared Canada's oil reserves

to a loaded gun.
Delegate: ... and seemed ready to pull the

trigger on millions of us around the
globe. You left us no choice but to deal

as criminal.
McKinnon: But a press release from

Environment Canada followed, that
seemingly deplored the spoof releases and

false hopes. This turned out to be a hoax.
In fact, it was all a hoax.

Person 1 in video: I mean, you think it's
a game, but it's not a game. It's a

serious situation.
Person 2: You're playing games. I'm not

playing games.
McKinnon: Truth can be stranger than

fiction. This is the prime minister's
spokesman blaiming the stunt on Stephen

Elbo (?) of the environmental group
[inaudible].

Person 2: And I want an apology.
McKinnon: And this is also the real thing.

Jim Prentice: I was in the plenary session
at the time that this happened, and I

really can't comment any further.
Interviewee: Why is it a hoax that Canada

is going to do the right thing?
McKinnon: This environmentalist thinks the

whole elaborate joke worth.
Interviewee: I had nothing to do with this

one, but I'm really happy that they did
it.

McKinnon: As to who pulled this off. There
are reports tonight it's a group of

pranksters who call themselves the Yes
Men. They say they'll have a press

conference tomorrow, if you can believe
that. Leslie McKinnon, CBC News, Ottawa.

Newsreader: Well that climate related
stunt is one of many that have happened

lately.
Bonanno: OK, so just to wrap that little

thing up. You can see here that we're just
in a basement. Basically, these

microphones are just made out of pipe
cleaners and electrical tape. We printed

out a bunch of you know, we had to make
our own teleprompter, print out a bunch of

the logos and paste them up on the wall.
We use the reverse shots of the audience

for the videos from other videos that we
found already on their website, and it

created this kind of illusion where we
could do both the big conference room and

the press briefing room fairly easily. So
we made several videos and then eventually

we had the press conference the next day,
which highlighted mostly the position of

the Ugandan participants in this project,
particularly Kodili Chandia, who's there

sitting in the middle in that red suit. So
I just wanted to show that, because it's

really interesting. And that's, again,
it's 10 years old and it was effective at

the... at that moment. And there weren't a
lot of people talking about fake news at

that time. But something that people are
really concerned about now is whether

these tactics work anymore. And I think it
just depends on the context. We found that

sometimes they work really well. In fact,
we had a successful action a few weeks ago

that got a lot of attention for the Bank
of England's fiscal policy. But they don't

really work very well against a rogue head
of state like Donald Trump or something.

There's no amount of satire or kind of
like utopian thinking that can work on

that... on that kind of wildcard. So just
to end the talking part or the ranting

part, this here we have an image of Renard
the fox, which is, of course, something

I'd like to leave you with. And I think
getting in touch with all of our trickster

roots is a good thing to do, because when
we find the roots, we also find that we

have common ground with everybody else who
has trickster characters in their cultural

histories. And this is forever confused,
only confuse from below. This is one of

our primary tenets of Confuse-ianism. And
we've started a school called the

Trickster Academy. We can talk about that
later. OK, I'm going to stop sharing and

talk to you in person.
Herald: I think I'm back.

B: Great. Sorry, that talk took so long.
I just…

H: That's OK.
You had a lot of interesting stuff to say.

B: I got ambitious with saying things.

H: And I think the phrase "the KGB's
flying phallus" is one for the ages.

B: Yeah. Yeah. I mean maybe the phallus

people are listen are here now and can
come forward and ask a question or tell us

who they are. But as far as I know, nobody
knows. Could still be the KGB.

H: All right. We have the first questions.
Questions.

Why are you guys always such assholes?

B: Yeah, that's a really good question.

We are always such assholes because

we don't care about
what people think about us.

I was once at a party where me and my
brother had built this giant tower of

chairs in in the swimming pool. Because it
was like this fancy place. We didn't get

to go to fancy places like that, and we
dive off the giant tower of chairs. It was

great fun and we thought we knew how to
have a party, but apparently people were

really offended and then somebody lost
their golden necklace in the pool. And so

we, of course, were swimming and we went
and found it for the guy. And he was so

excited and so overjoyed. He said, I don't
care what everybody else thinks. You guys

are OK. So I've always remembered that
word of wisdom. And I thought, OK, our

goal is not to make friends with people.
Our goal is to get to that place. In fact,

we can be the fall guy for a big
organization that's worried about the

reputation. So like if the Sierra Club,
big environmental organization, wants to

use the kind of tactics that we do, but is
worried that their membership will gonna

be unpleased, then they can get in touch
with us and we'll do it for them.

H: So that's how you finance working on
The Yes Men full time?

B: I actually finance it by working at a
university, so I still teach at

university, but Jacques more than I has
financed it through things like that. And,

and some of the actions–quite a few of
the actions–have been financed by, by

large NGOs like the Greenpeaces of the
world.

H: Nice. So people on the Internet want to
know if you've ever had to go to jail for

your actions.
B: I've never had to go to jail for these

kinds of actions.
H: You went to jail for unrelated reasons?

B: I went I went to jail for ice skating
once. Seriously, come on. New York City.

I just, you know…

I highly recommend ice skating on
Prospect Park Lake.

It was originally built for ice skating.

You know there's pictures of hundreds
of people doing it in the 19th century.

But if you do it now, you get arrested.

And they actually take you in overnight.

So you get to spend a night in jail.
Which, by the way,

is a very... it's not exclusive,
but it's expensive.

It costs the taxpayers $1700 per night.

H: It's a pretty good hotel for this kind of money.

B: Yes. Yes. It's like a five star.

H: So did you read any book
about social engineering

or did you just wing it until
you figured out all the tricks?

B: It was, sort of, yeah.

It was like reverse engineering the
social engineering for us.

Because it was figuring it out as we went,

but then starting to discover
a world of people doing things

and yeah reading about it.

So, and there are so many people
doing so many amazing things.

I mean, I'm loving following
some of these people now on

even Youtubers who do stuff like this.

So yeah, but there are a few books.

I'm reading a great book about early
con men right now that's really fun.

It's like… I can't remember the title.
I'd have to grab it to read the title.

but yeah, constantly constant education.

And also, I think it's necessary also
to always have innovation.

You know, but ultimately, it seems like
it does boil down to the one thing

and that is understanding
what somebody wants, right?

Like if you know who you're talking to,

and you know what they want,

then you can build a world
that delivers it to them

and that seems to deliver to them
the thing that they desire.

And that is…
That usually works really well.

You know, it's a…

even on people who are expecting it.

laughing

H: All right,
the next one is a trivia question,

which I really enjoy as a concept.

What are the top three
most impactful events in world history

that you can summarize
in the fewest words possible?

Sounds like a game show. I like it.

B: Top three

H: Fewest words

B: In human history?

H: In the world history.
B: In world history.

H: So I guess it can include
geological events before humans.

B: Yeah, I kind of want to say, you know,
Big Bang, even though I don't know.

That's what I've been told,
I don't totally really understand it, but…

Big Bang. How many words am I left?

H: I think as few as possible.

B: Big Bang, asteroid, Anthropocene.

H: Very good.
I'm sure you won, whatever the game was.

B: I feel like I won.
I feel great about that answer.

H: How did you guys
come up with the human candle idea?

And maybe explain the human candle idea.

B: So the human candle idea was...

Actually this goes back to the very
first slide! Thanks for the call back.

When I'm holding up the
business card that says Exxon.

We were at a conference
representing ExxonMobil

in Calgary, Alberta,
at the stampede grounds

which is where they have
the largest rodeo in the world,

and they also have Canada's
largest oil conference.

And we had convinced them to host us

by telling them that Lee Raymond,
who is the former CEO of ExxonMobil,

would go to their conference.
So I claim that I was from a PR agency,

got in touch with the people
running the conference.

I had a domain name that looked like

Hill+Knowlton or Burson-Marsteller.
I can't remember who.

One of the big PR companies
that tends to do this kind of

high level, you know, bullshitting.

And so I promised them that
Lee Raymond had a very important

announcement to make that would really
put their conference on the map.

And, of course, they were excited about it.
But then…

This is the tricky part.

At that point, I had to tell them that,

you know, they had to keep it secret

until just before the announcement because

what he was going to say had
such repercussions for the global economy

that they could very well be breaking

various kinds of SEC
(that's like, stock market) laws,

if they didn't embargo the information.

So I said, this is important.
You're part of a web of, you know,

You're part of a bubble of secrecy.
We have to maintain the secret.

Because as soon as people know that
he's going to make a big announcement,

they're going to freak out, because
he had a new position with the government.

And so they bought it.
And, in fact, this is one of those

counterintuitive things where you would
think that telling them that you have this

great honeypot for their conference, this
guy who other people are going to register

to see at their conference, you think that
that then when you tell them that they

can't tell anyone that it would be
immediately blow you up, but it doesn't

because they feel like they're on
the inside of something big then.

And so they kept the secret.

And then what we decided
we're going to announce was that

ExxonMobil had a climate change solution.

Which was to turn the humans
who die as a result of climate change

into a new biofuel called Vivoleum.

And so we had an animated thing.

It's in our second movie,
The Yes Men Fix the World.

But that idea came from us thinking about

what is the logical extension
of ExxonMobil's climate policy?

Because at the time,
it had just been revealed

that ExxonMobil had done all of this

very shady suppression of knowledge
about the about climate change.

ExxonMobil had scientists working for them
in the 70s that knew that climate change

was huge problem and they had decided to
suppress the information themselves.

And then they went on a protracted campaign

of suppressing the information
at the federal level in the United States

and at the global level.

So they became the target,

and this announcement became the…
what we were going to do.

And then, of course, when we're at the
conference, at the very last minute,

Lee Raymond, the former CEO of ExxonMobil,

who's now has a federal position
with the US government,

Doesn't show up, and
a substitute takes his place on the stage.

Then that's. Yeah.

So did I answer the question?
I can't remember.

H: I think someone wanted to know
how you you came up with the idea.

H: But…
B: Yeah, that was...

H: But that is also difficult to answer,
right?

B: I think it was really just shooting the
shit, as they say, with with some friends.

And as I remember, it was a guy called Bob
Ostertag, who worked with us for a while,

who is actually a more of like a musician.
And, you know, anyway…

He was the one, I think,
who really pushed that idea forward.

And it turned out to be a really fun one.
laughs

H: I mean it's basically a direct callback
to the Jonathan Swift stuff, right?

You really get very into people's bodies.

B: It is. It's a classic. I mean,
babies, people eating them, cannibalism…

I mean, these are like…

You know, they hit you. They hit you.
Right where it, right where you feel it.

chuckles
H: Yeah. All right. Another question is:

Do you worry at all that your
campaigns erode trust in the media?

Or do you just think that they should
maybe pay some more attention?

B: Yeah, no, we don't worry
about that at all. I mean, it's…

It's weird because for a while, there
was something to worry about there,

because people's, y'know,
trust in the media.

I mean, now it's just a… it's just
a weird landscape, totally bizarre.

I mean, in terms of what people believe
or don't believe.

One of the things that
we do all the time, though, is

reveal our hoaxes immediately
after we perpetrate them.

And so the result is that
there is actually more information

as opposed to, you know,
what we see as fake news

which is people
who are perpetrating a hoax,

and they mean for it to
exist for eternity, ideally.

Like, if you create a falsehood,
and you're not revealing it,

that's the type of thing
that the advertising industry,

PR agencies have done, and
governments have done for centuries.

But our types of hoaxes
are meant to be revealed right away.

H: All right. I have a mysterious question.
B: Yes!

H: Oh, OK. Now I understand. What are
your thoughts about the orange man?

And I've just realized that
that's Donald Trump.

B: Oh, I don't know if I would have gone...
H: Or just unrelated orange person,

if you know any.
B: Yeah, I mean, it's confusing for me

because an orange man. I started thinking
about Poland and about there's all kinds

of orange people here and there, but
chuckles Or orange movements. Anyway, the

orange man, oh, God, no. Horrible.
H: All right, so the Dutch national

football team, what's your opinion? That's
different orange men, right?

B: Yes, the Dutch football. I have to,
have to be a fan because my mother is

Dutch. What can I say? And also, it's like
a tiny country and I like kind of an

underdog that still out…like…does really
ridiculously well. I mean, I don't know.

I don't know. I'm not…
Football is awesome. Yes. Why not?

Nothing that wrong with it.
chuckles

H: Is there a reason you don't have a bulb
in your socket on your ceiling?

B: Oh, yeah.
It's because I moved it to here.

laughs
H: Ahh, nice.

B: This is my studio lighting and I got
rid of that one and I created this one.

H: It looks great. I also have
all the lights pointed at me now.

B: chuckles
Thanks for that question. I like it.

H: Here.That's interesting. Can we trace
the lineage of the tire rubber ducks into

Chinese umbrellas back to that taped
bread? I think it's about these helmets.

B: Yes. Yes, definitely.
chuckles

I don't know actually. If anybody can do
that, do let me know. The empty bulb,

though. I'm putting my finger on right
now. Here. Reminds me, though, that this

is like another… I remember the CIA
sabotage manual that they were dropping on

El Salvador…actually, on Nicaragua. Sorry.
Where they were encouraging people to like

sabotage everywhere because at the time it
was, y'know, communist. And so the idea

was that if people broke everything, then
the country would come to a standstill.

So they suggested things like taking the
light bulb out and putting a coin in there

and putting the light bulb back in. So, I
don't know. You know, everybody uses these

tactics. Again, thinking about the
CIA's flying penis. You know.

H: Oh, now it is the CIA.
B: Yeah, CIA sabotage manuals.

H: Maybe one last question.
Do you have any projects in the pipeline?

I mean, I assume you don't want
to talk about them, but you can.

B: You know, we have a movie about walls
that we're working on. But we took a

hiatus with COVID. And we have a whole
bunch of other things that are in the

works. Some of them we're doing
independently, not as the Yes Men. But I'm

doing stuff and Andy is doing stuff. And
yeah, we're also always trying to

recalibrate because, you know, the terrain
is changing so quickly. And it's such a

strange and interesting moment,
particularly in the United States,

but also all over the world.
H: Yeah, there's a... I mean, there's many

questions that are along the lines of
like, how do you feel about satire in this

year when it's just seems like half the
news is satire. Right? Or at least it

feels just completely unhinged. Right?
B: Yeah. And I don't think a lot of times

it doesn't... I don't think satire about
Donald Trump works. I don't even think

that any of this stuff that was on
Saturday Night Live was funny. You know,

where they impersonate the people in the
administration. It's just like worse

versions of the real thing that's really
funny if you could actually laugh about it

it if it wasn't real. I mean, it must
have been the same, like looking at Hitler

in the in the 30's, you know, like you
probably look at that and think this

cannot be real. But, you know, here's this
crazy looking guy saying crazy shit. And

so then what do you do? And I think that
you you choose different tactics for a

while, but you fight.
H: It seems like the funniest thing to do

for him, would to just pretend he's giving
a coherent speech. Right?

B: Totally. Yeah. I mean, it is like…
laughs

He keeps outdoing himself.

What happened in the final weeks of
the campaign and just after,

with Giuliani and the Four Seasons Total
Landscaping, and the face melting off,

and the… I mean, there were so
many things where you just like

the levels of crazy theater were…
Oh man. I… Yeah. Anyway.

H: I mean, you could have definitely just
claimed that as a Yes Men stunt.

B: Definitely. Definitely.
It was a stroke of genius that. laughs

H: Yes. Alright, maybe a last question.

Do you have any things
that failed spectacularly that you…

B: Yes!
H: …want reveal to the world?

B: Yes. We have many things that have
failed spectacularly. And there's some of

them that you can read about on the Yes
Men website, which is at theyesmen.org.

And one in particular that
I recommend reading about

that we documented, at least in text,
is an event where we impersonated a

group called the International Web Police
who claimed to be securing the Internet.

This is back in the late 90's,
or around 2002 or something.

Anyway, it was a funny event. And… yes.
I'm not going to get into it here.

But it amuses me just to think about it.
chuckles

H: All right. Thank you very much.

B: Thank you so much!
H: Somehow you have disappeared from my screen.

All right. Now there you are.
Well, thank you.

B: Thank you!

H: I think we will go offline
at some random point now.

Goodbye, Internet.

B: Goodbye.

postroll music

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