Astroturfing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Organizations can hire fake advocates who create the illusion of real support for their message. It’s a shady practice called astroturfing that can warp the public perception of anything...even astroturfing.

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Astroturfing, which sounds like a new
teen trend of fucking artificial grass

while eating Cascade pods.

That's right. The teens have moved on from
Tide. It's all about Cascade now.

Astroturfing is the practice of corporations or
political groups disguising themselves

as spontaneous, authentic, popular
movements. It's basically fake grassroots.

That's why they call it, "Astroturfing."
It's a very funny, very clever name.

Now, you're probably familiar with
Astroturfing as a concept from seeing ads by

groups with a generic populist-sounding
names like Americans Against Food Taxes

delivering weirdly specific messages
like these.

[Mother] Washington is talking about a

new tax on juice drinks and soda. They say
it's only pennies.

Well, those pennies add up when you're
trying to feed a family.

Washington, if you're listening, what
doesn't seem like much to you, can be a lot to us.

[Male Voice] Tell Congress, no taxes on juice drinks and sodas.

Now, it won't surprise you to
learn that Americans Against Food Taxes
was not started by regular Americans

pooling their resources together to take
out a large ad buy on national TV about

their number one problem priority, a
proposed soda tax. No, it was a front

group for the food and beverage industry
which makes a lot more sense.

Soda companies have a lot of money.
At least enough to convince LeBron James

to pretend he drinks Sprite. Sprite: diabetes
you can taste.

And, while you might
think well, yeah, but that's obvious.

I'd never fall for astroturf bullshit like that,
don't be quite so sure

because with dark money surging in the wake of decisions like Citizens United.

Astroturf techniques are now becoming more
sophisticated, effective and dangerous

and they are not going away, so tonight,
we thought it might be useful to take a

look at some of those techniques to help
us better spot them in the future.

Let's just start with the names
themselves because sometimes groups are

created with deliberately misleading names.

For instance, the group Save our
Tips which purportedly speaks for

waitstaff is an anti-minimum wage
increase group funded by restaurant owners.

The National Wetlands Coalition
worked on behalf of oil companies and

real estate developers and the American
Council on Science and Health has been

funded by among other things,
fracking interests, soda companies,

E-cigarette companies and chemical
manufacturers, so it's pure straight-up
opposite world.

It's like if this show is called Funny Time
Happy Hour with Chuckle-Hunk John Oliver,

It's just demonstrably false. We can't
back that shit up. And, look it's not

always easy to spot exactly what the
group's motive is especially with
an ad like this.

{Male voice] Don't eat here! I'm mad! What's with your people tossing money at

the Humane Society of the United States?
These HSUS losers aren't even affiliated

with your local pet shelter. For more
information go to humanewatch.org.

That is a very strange ad because first of
all, if you're going to have a talking dog,

why would you make him such a gruff
asshole? Hey, I'm Tony and I'm mad

the Humane Society's a bunch of losers
and if you disagree you can suck my dog dick!

[Audience Laughing]

And second.. second, who would take out an
attack ad on the Humane Society? A rival

even Humane-er Society? Puppy mills?
Self-loathing dogs? It's impossible to

say for sure. All I can tell you is that
ad is the work of Rick Berman,

a PR expert who's known in the industry
as Dr. Evil. He is known for his defenses

of controversial products from
secondhand smoke, to trans fats, to payday
loans.

He's also created nonprofit groups
that have fought regulation of all of
those things.

In fact, it's one of those groups the Center for
Consumer Freedom,

which was credited on that Humane Society
attack ad, so if is the Center for Consumer Freedom

a front group for Berman's corporate clients?
Is it at all relevant that Rick Berman has

shown up at events for the Pork industry,
an industry which has been targeted by

the Humane Society in the past for the
use of gestation crates, or as Rick

Berman insists on calling them "maternity
pens," I can't say. I legally can't say.

I want to. I badly want to, but I've been
explicitly told I can't. You can probably

guess but I can't say it out loud. What I
can say is that Berman rejects any

accusation that he runs front groups for
corporate clients saying, "There is no

front because there is total
transparency" which is a little odd

considering we don't know who's behind
many of his campaigns and that message

of transparency does seem to
significantly change whenever he's

behind closed doors because here is
audio of Berman pitching his services to

a group of oil executives.

[Berman's voice] "People always
ask me one question all the time.

You said, how do I know is that I won't be found out as a

supporter of what you're doing?

We run all of this stuff through nonprofit
organization

that are insulated from having to
disclose donors, there's total anonymity."

See, transparency. But, look...
look he is right.

There is total anonymity and just as a
general rule, if the most common question

you get asked is how do I know no one
will find out I'm doing business with you?

That's not a great sign. If the same
privacy guarantee that Hardee's gives

all of its customers,

"Don't worry none of your friends family
or coworkers will ever find out that you've
been doing this.

Now, go and enjoy your monster
thickburger before the horse meat gets cold."

But, astroturfing is more, way more than
just funneling money through nonprofit

front groups. Groups can also recruit
questionable experts to lend their

arguments credibility. There are multiple
examples of this, but my favorite

concerns a group called Citizens for
Fire Safety. A few years back, health

officials in California wanted to remove
a requirement that furniture contained

chemical flame retardants as they had
been linked to cancer, but Citizens for

Fire Safety produced a Burn Surgeon, Dr.
David Heimbach who argued for keeping

all of those flame-retardant requirements by telling them a pretty memorable story.

7- week old baby was in a
crib, laying on a fire-retardant mattress

on a non-fire retardant pillow. Mom put a
candle in the crib, candle fell over, the

baby sustained a 50-percent burn. The
entire upper half of her body was burned.

Now, this is a tiny little person, no
bigger than my Italian Greyhound at home.

She ultimately died after about three
weeks of pain and misery in the hospital.

Now, that sounds horrifying. But, there are
some weird things about what he just said.

First, I don't know why he felt the
need to compare the size of a baby to
his Italian Greyhound,

everyone knows what size a baby is.

Nobody's never seen a baby. So wait, it's
like a person but smaller. Tell me more!

Doesn't use stilts? How does it board a
bus?

What I'm picturing is something
about the size of five hamsters taped
together.

Or, very small lawnmower. Am I
around the right ballpark here?

But second, if part of you there was wondering

Hold on. Who puts a candle in their baby's crib?

You're not alone. Journalists with the
Chicago Tribune wondered the exact same

thing and they soon discovered that two
years earlier, Heimbach had testified

before a different California panel
telling a weirdly similar story.

I will tell you about a child I took care of in
April. Mom had a candle sitting

beside the bed, left the room for seven
minutes. For reasons we don't know, the

child that candle turned over, the child
sustained an 80 percent burn.

Okay so, now this is starting to sound a little
suspicious. How many people are putting

lit candles in and around their baby's
cribs? Oh, I just put little Ethan to bed.

I put plenty of lit candles in his crib
as a nightlight and I balance several

sharp knives and open cans of paint thinner
right on the crib wall so he has something to
look at.

Look.. look, Heimbach wasn't done because just a year later, he was testifying before

the state legislature in Alaska and guess
what?!

[Heimbach's voice] A six-week-old baby that
I took care

of earlier this year, mother went away, there
was a candle on the bureau, somehow the

dog knocked the candle onto the crib and
the little girl sustained this

seventy-five percent very devastating burn.

Wait, so now there's a dog involved all of a
sudden? What kind of dog would do such a
thing?

Wait a second, I know exactly what kind of dog.

A gruff, needlessly Italian dog like Tony.

By God! By God! As if... as if sensing that
lawmakers there were questioning his motives.

The very next sentence Heimbach said completely unprompted was this.

[Heimbach's voice] I am not in the pocket of anybody that makes a specific flame retardant.

Now, to be fair, he's actually right about that.

He was not in the pocket of someone that
made a specific flame retardant.

He was however, in the pocket of Citizens for
Fire Safety who paid him $240,000 for his
help and who it turned out only had

three members which were the three
largest makers of flame retardants in

the world, so I call it liar, liar pants
chemically incapable of catching on fire.

Oh, and one more thing. When a reporter
called the medical examiner's office,

they had no record of any burn victim
matching Heimbach's description whatsoever,

so one of them did the next
logical thing.

I thought the best thing to do was just to call
him at home.

I said those kids you talked about, did they all die in your hospital?

He said it wasn't factual it, was anecdotal.
And I said, but that's not what you testified.

and he said, Well, I wasn't under oath.

Okay, okay. Well first of all, you're generally

expected to tell the truth, even when
you're not under oath and second of all,

anecdotes aren't the same as lies. I saw
Keri Russell walking out of a bakery.

That's an anecdote. It's not a good
anecdote, but it is an anecdote. I saw

Keri Russell riding a dragon out of a
bakery. That is a lie. Although, admittedly

would be a way better story. And, look the
real problem there is Heimbach's lies worked;

that flame-retardant bill in
California initially failed thanks in

part to his testimony. And.. and the final
and perhaps most controversial tool in

astroturfing relates to something that
our current president actually loves to
complain about.

I'll tell you what. You take a look outside.

These are paid protesters, folks. The
protesters are paid a lot of money by
the DNC. It turned out that the

protesters we used to have
were bought for $1,500 a piece.

We have a protester. By the way, were
you paid $1,500 to be a thug?

Now, I can't work it quite out there.

Is Trump angry there or is he excited he's just
stumbled onto a job opportunity that

Don, Jr and Eric would actually be
qualified for? But while Trump's specific

accusations were nonsense.
Paid demonstrators do exist which Trump

should frankly know himself because his
campaign reportedly had actors who were

paid $50 to cheer for him at his
campaign announcement.

But.. but paid demonstrators are one of the
most infuriating tools of Astroturfing.

Just... just look at what happened last year in
New Orleans.

A company called, Entergy needed city
council approval for a controversial power

plant which it got not long after a public meeting where by sheer chance,

a bunch of huge power plant fans in
orange shirts turned up.

Now, it later emerged that a PR firm working for Entergy hired

a company called, Crowds on Demand which
recruited actors to support the plant.

They did this with a Facebook ad
which offered and, I quote, $60 to $200

dollarydoos to help with a gig for three hours,
which in itself, right there, is a red flag.

Dollarydoos? Sounds like slang for
money that you'd find in a Mark Twain

novel called, "Even for the 1800s, there
are way too many "N" words in this."

Crowd on Demand even provided talking
points such as: Folks, this is 2017.

"We had a boil water advisory here last
month and I'm tired of feeling like I live in a

third world country." and it seems like some
of the people there took those notes and
ran with them.

I'm tired of feeling like we're living in a third world country. This is the United States of America.

It's 2017 going on 2018 and we have to worry
about these frequent water boil

advisories and so on, and so forth. I have
to be concerned that a grandmother, or a

son, or a pet could possibly drink or
take in some brain-eating amoeba.

Yeah, I'll give him credit for that last
bit. The brain-eating amoeba bit was all
his own.

He was just riffing hard at that
point. Now.. now, that man insists that he

believed everything he said and that he
wasn't paid by Crowds on Demand.

Although, you should know that another
person there who does admit to being paid

said he received instructions that read: A few
things to keep in mind. One, tell nobody

you're being paid. Two, tell nobody you're
being paid. Three, media will be present

do not talk to them. Four, tell nobody
you're being paid and Five, if somebody

approaches you, don't tell them you're
being paid, which are and this is true,

word-for-word the vows in a traditional
Scientology wedding. Now, they're

beautiful vows and you should go.
Now, if you are wondering who is behind

Crowds on Demand, let me introduce you to
their CEO Adam Swart. The answer to the

question, what if a lukewarm bottle of
Smirnoff Ice was a person? Now.. now, he's..

he's pretty unrepentant about what his
firm does.

[Interviewer's Voice] Have you ever provided protesters for an event?

[Swart] Of course.

Demonstrators?

[Swart] Of course.

Do you see anything wrong with that?

[Swart] Personally, nope.

Do you ever feel like you're tricking
people though into getting behind

something that they may have not gotten
behind if they didn't see all this activity there?

[Swart] We don't trick people, we engage them.

Yeah, yeah but you engage them by tricking them, don't you?

Both.. both of those things can be true at the
same time, it's like someone saying I'm

not masturbating in the middle of this Pinkberry.

I'm just engaging the police department.
You're actually doing both and one

doesn't make the other okay. Now, of
course, Swart's whole ruse is predicated

on people holding their nerve and not
giving the game away in real time.

But, amazingly, that has happened.

[Female's reporters voice] In the small town of Camarillo,

[Male citizen's voice] I think the city needs a shake up.

Citizens aren't shy about expressing
their opinions but one chilly Wednesday night in December,

[City Councilman's Voice] Prince Jordan Tyson?

City officials say this man stood out.

[Man's voice]This case is clearly common
sense.

[Reporter's voice] Because for three minutes,
he told the City Council what he later admits
was a lie.

[Tyson]I'm just a concerned citizen
coming up here and speaking to you.

[Reporter's voice] But, he's not. he's a
self-described struggling actor
from Beverly Hills

who goes by the name of Prince Jordan
Tyson.

Okay no, I don't believe it. I do not believe
it does anything about this face.

This face say struggling actor from Beverly Hills to you?

I'm sorry this story just doesn't check out.

But, incredibly, it's true. Because while they
know "Notorious PJT" initially claimed to be

from the area. He soon had a crisis of
confidence culminating in this.

[Reporter's voice] Forty minutes later,
Tyson came back to the podium.

[City Councilman's Voice] Prince is back.

[Reporter's voice] For one of the strangest
moments the City Council has ever seen.

[Tyson] I don't agree with the reason I'm here
and I was paid to be here.

[City Councilman's Voice] How much were you paid?

[Tyson] A hundred bucks.

[City Councilman's Voice] How much?

[Tyson] A hundred dollars.

You're fucking idiot, Prince! You just broke
Crowd on Demand's rules 1, 2, 4 and 5.

Now you won't get those hundred dollarydoos

which could have gone toward changing your name to

literally anything else, or getting a
haircut that doesn't make you look like

an al dente Owen Wilson. When you add
all of this together, faith groups hiring

fake experts and fake crowds which
managed to affect real world change, it

gets pretty dispiriting and it can do
real damage that goes way beyond the

narrow issues that each group is trying
to influence. The very existence of

companies like Crowds on Demand mean
that something authentic can now be tainted.

In fact, conspiracy boards now
regularly and wrongly cite Crowds on
Demand as providing everything from paid

protesters for Charlottesville, to crisis
actors for the Las Vegas shooting and
that is hugely dangerous because the

consequences of this cannot be that
everyone assumes that anyone who doesn't

agree with them is astroturf. You know
what? While skepticism is healthy,

cynicism, real cynicism is toxic and
because this problem isn't going it away,

it is now even more incumbent
on us to use our judgment diligently.

If the Ray Liotta of dogs is telling us
the Humane Society is terrible,

it's probably worth us all asking, why?
Why? Who might have trained him? and

What do they stand to gain? And,
unfortunately, until we find out a way to force

Astroturf groups to be more transparent
and accountable, that's about all we can
do right now.

Astroturf is a serious threat to our public discourse and it is

critical that we are all much more aware
of its dangers

and since astroturfers have left all
their tools lying around, at the very least,

we might as well use them to fight
candle fire with candle fire and deliver

a heartfelt message.

[Narrator's voice] We're all Americans. Real people definitely not actors. We're just a

coalition of concerned doctors,
mothers, teachers, and kidnappers

and we think you deserve the truth about Astroturfers.

Here are the facts.
Astroturfers are responsible for every

shark attack in American history. Wonder
all the bees have gone? Astroturfers shot

them in the face and according to the
Bipartisan Institute of Factual
Science Studies,

every single Astroturfer has
killed at least one puppy with their

bare hands, or maybe not. We're not under
oath. The point is that Astroturfers

set this baby on fire. That's not a dog,
that's a real baby, no bigger than an

Italian Greyhound. Her name's Eleanor and she likes four things.

Her binky, ba-ba, corporate and
political transparency, and not being on fire.

And right now, Eleanor is 0 for 4 and if you're not careful,

one day an Astroturfer is going to come to
your house and light your baby on fire.

Stop Astroturfing.

[Another Narrator's voice] Paid for by
Citizens for Fresher Orange Juice.

[Audience laughing]