The Playbook
Chapter Three
THE MATH:
If we don’t participate by thinking it through we remain unprotected for the next assault.
+ The powerful force of the PR campaign can disconnect us from our own survival instincts and our allegiance to Natural Law.
+ Their Pattern of deception and concealment of harm leads to addiction, disease and death.
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In the investigation of Bad Companies who put humans at great risk, we know Who they are and we know What they’ve done. Good things uplift society and aid its evolution and progress; bad things degrade society’s health and personality and thwart its evolution. Tobacco products, forever chemicals, glyphosate, genetically modified farming, and our increasing dependency on pharmaceutical drugs are degrading our life, while the industries responsible for this de-evolution only continue to amass more wealth and power. They’ve done this, they do this, using the PR campaign Playbook—that’s the How. (The Why we will have to leave for another book.)
If you will permit me to lay it out in an orderly fashion, you’ll find it isn’t physically difficult to see, since the patterns are loud and clear and the tricks used are identical and repetitive. Yet often, for an array of complex psychological reasons, it is still mentally and emotionally difficult to open your eyes to the whole picture, enough to see what it all means, to you.
To remind, this is less a historical analyses of evil corporations and more an honest examination of our relationship to them. While we need to look objectively and fully digest each component of the damage inflicted, the more important factor for US to analyze is the undeniable consent we’ve given to it. This is the part of the dynamic we can change.
The basic tenet of their approach, the manipulation of the system, centers on that notion from Bernays that if the current cultural environment was not favorable to the product, a shrewd and creative PR scheme could change the culture to fit the product. In our lifetime, there have been some standout examples of this manipulation, from the aforementioned industry giants, all following this same Pattern & Playbook to the letter. For every bit of data which plainly exposed the dangers of their products, the Bad Companies had counter moves to eke out more sales and more customers and outplay the watchdogs. In every instance, the Bad Company had a smooth and profitable run with the product before the truth somehow miraculously got leaked out to the public. This is when they turned to their bag of tricks which is:
THE PLAYBOOK
1. THE FALSE CLAIM:
Using incredible wealth, power, and reputation, the Bad Company launches a fraudulent counter campaign, which follows a script that emphasizes their personal responsibility, criticizes and/or buries the “junk” science that found harms associated with their product, makes pledges to self-regulate, etc. Above all, the campaign will produce constant doubt by offering a manufactured version of the truth which competes with the reality.
2. CAPTURE:
This is the process where the Bad Company exerts undue and undemocratic influence on government agencies, lawmakers, regulators, the judiciary, and the media, leading to policies and narratives that favor their interests.
Regulatory capture is the situation where the regulators charged with serving the public interest fall beholden to private-sector interests. Its main feature, the “Revolving Door”, is the all-to-common movement of employees from the corporate sector into management of the public agencies who regulate their “former” industry, and vice versa, back and forth.
Political capture is where private industry uses lobbying, political donations, and public relations campaigns to influence the decision-making apparatus of the state, resulting in laws and policies that primarily benefit corporations, potentially at the expense of the public. Using massive resources they pressure legislatures and policy makers to draft legislation which will provide greater opportunities for corporations, or stifle government action, or remove regulation of corporate activities.
Court capture is the process by which judicial decisions are repeatedly directed toward the interests of certain political or corporate actors, undermining the principle of equal justice under law. Powerful groups actively aim to shape judicial outcomes in their favor with financial incentives, appoint judges who align with their ideology, or undermine the legitimacy of courts that challenge their actions. The lack of independence and impartiality weakens the rule of law, subverts democracy, and jeopardizes the protection of individual rights and freedoms.
Academia and Research capture is the increasing involvement of corporate money financing academic institutions, affording wealthy companies opportunities to influence which studies get funded and which do not, which results get published and which are suppressed, and even the research agenda itself—how the purpose of the study is defined and how the questions are framed. This seizure of the research agenda has given any industry the potential to affect policymaking by influencing the type of evidence that is available and the kinds of public health solutions considered. Despite the right to publish being a mainstay of academic freedom, university research contracts often include clauses that give the funder the final say on whether the research can be published, and there is little institutional oversight.
Wealthy corporations can even capture a whole field of study by creating their own “research agencies” and “institutes”, where their paid scientists deliver research that shows their product in a favorable light and/or instills doubt on any unfavorable data.
Media capture is massive conglomerates controlling a myriad of media sources such as TV channels, news networks, publishing houses and film studios, which gains them significant influence over news content and entertainment through their ownership and advertising revenue. Control over mass media has become concentrated into the hands of just a few corporations, which has limited the diversity of voices and perspectives, reduced risk-taking in journalism, and put a focus on sensationalism over public interest. Because the people consume such a high volume of media content in a day, the potential power wielded by one single corporation who controls the majority of content can be tyrannical. Big corporations can easily sway public opinion by manipulating the media and spreading dominant narratives about progress and development in one area, while delegitimizing the struggles of affected groups and communities that stand up against corporate interests.
3. SMEAR CAMPAIGN:
This is the intentional, carefully crafted effort to undermine the reputation, credibility, and character of any individual or group who is attempting to expose the harm of the corporation’s product or practices. These campaigns often employ tactics like spreading rumors, distortions, half-truths, or outright lies, to discredit the target and discourage people from believing in them or supporting their cause. They will attack a target’s character in lieu of addressing any actual arguments. Industry will spare no expense to ruin the reputations or careers or lives of the truth-tellers. The 116th Congress created The Office of the Whistleblower OMBUDS to protect and prepare any of those brave persons from the smearing and harassment which will likely come: “You could be forced out of your chosen career field, subjected to public smear campaigns, and undergo severe psychological trauma.” Even if the facts behind a smear campaign are later proven false, the damage to the target’s reputation can be significant and long-lasting and the public can often cling to their first opinions, however manipulated or untrue.
The smear campaign extends to not only those uncovering the wrongdoing but also to those who believe any of the information which has come to light. Their public relations strategists build a narrative characterizing this group as something extremely negative and undesirable, often to be perceived as a danger to society, and will create a new pejorative phrase to define and condemn them.
4. LAWFARE:
This is how corporations strategically use legal proceedings to intimidate or hinder any opposition to their product or profit, mostly to outspend and exhaust them. Strategic lawsuits against public participation (known ironically as SLAPP) are lawsuits intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.
5. SLEIGHT OF HAND TRICKS:
These are all the multitudes of deceptive tactics used by Bad Companies to mislead the public, manipulate perception and deflect from their negative actions. There are countless methods of distraction, to pull consumer focus to some false positive image of themselves they have created, through virtue signaling public relation stunts, or to shift blame to another issue, another company or scapegoated individuals. They often introduce another product, a “safer” version, which is not safe and creates another new problem. After disclosure of corporate malfeasance, there is often a huge PR rebranding campaign, or a merger that moves the business to a new company name, or even a complete shift of their practices to another industry.
6. COERCION:
Coercion includes not only force but also acts of manipulation and persuasion. A Bad Company is well versed on the manipulation and persuasion methods but will need the collaboration of government in order to successfully force consumers to use a product. Government lawmakers, by means of the laws and regulations they write, require or compel the public to abide. Perceived coercion, the feeling of being coerced or pressured regardless of whether actual coercion occurred, is just as forceful yet requires no actual law. It is about the individual’s subjective experience and perception of pressure.
7. DELAY:
If and when the Bad Company can no longer keep up the fraud, when the public has come to see through all or most of their tricks, the corporation can still employ a barrage of delaying tactics to keep selling some more product, somewhere. They can bury opposition with time consuming legal paperwork, with an array of strategy to prolong the fight (even actually just outliving people), drawing out criminal cases with appeal after appeal. Delay strategies also include outrunning their negative headlines by moving into faraway markets, stalling for time in other countries, harming those populations until their reputation catches up with them.
SO— that’s a lot of trickery! Because the Pattern & Playbook are only that, a tired game of smoke and mirrors, we as consumers, as human beings, have more than enough intelligence to evolve beyond this obstruction. In the same simple way we have always adapted our behavior to our environment—we learned not to touch the hot stove after the first time we burned our hand—we can avoid the Bad Company’s traps when we spot them. The trick for us then, is to spot them.