Progressive-left news outlet Alternet weighs in on AdBusters' post-apocalyptic scenario shout-out to readers:

I understand theoretical catastrophe can sometimes be sexy. Like a lightning storm right until the moment it is over your own home. And thought experiments and apocalyptic scenario-planning has been around longer than Adbusters...

If you work for social justice you know that most positive change happens slowly. It takes time to build movements and reconcile all the pieces...[A]n apocalypse isn't the only way to attain that new world that Adbusters editors have always dreamed about.

The thing is that apocalypse is, really, where a lot of our opponents would like to drive the world - I don't mean in the foolish Biblican sense, no, not that - but a world where you need to pay licence fees to farm, where you need to pay to read every website online, where libraries only carry public domain works and charge readers fees for other works, where open source software is not used in business or government, where everything which can be owned is owned. Where the polluters run the EPA, abortion is murder, and "One Nation Under Jesus" is on the currency.

And things like that happen quickly: one administration with a sufficient power base could lay the legal foundation for that world, and if BushCo get in again and aren't tied up abroad with the Iraq situation and get to focus at home, they're going to do some serious damage.

Apocalypse gets people moving.

Posted by: Vinay on August 20, 2004 12:04 PM