Power in Marketing:

A Broadly Dimensional Approach

© John Desmond

First published, October, 2025

Grianan Publishing,

John’s Brae,

Shrove, ROI, F93E7R9

Cover design, “Feeding Frenzy” © Jean Hall

Chapter Seven: The Second Dimension of Power

Introduction

While Dahl (1961) found no evidence to support the view that the political field is dominated by an elite, for Bachrach and Baratz (1962), that is not the end of the story as Dahl did not consider a second, hidden face of power, where issues that are in B’s interests, but not in A’s, simply do not arise for discussion. As they put it,

... power is also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating or reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous to A. To the extent that A succeeds in doing this, B is prevented, for all practical purposes, from bringing to the fore any issues that might in their resolution be seriously detrimental to A's in their resolution be seriously detrimental to A's set of preferences. (Bachrach & Baratz, 1962: 948).

They offer the example of a discontented academic who in the privacy of his office decides that at the next School meeting he is going to confront the Head of School, ‘but when the moment of truth arrives, he sits frozen in silence’.¹ They suggest several putative reasons for the academic’s inaction; he is fearful of being thought disloyal to the School; he feels that he would be in a minority, or that his views will be ‘pigeon-holed’, or sat on permanently. Or perhaps, as I have heard from colleagues, he has been privately warned off by colleagues that it would be unwise for him to stick his head over the parapet? Just as an academic Head of School enjoys considerable power, so community politics in the USA can still be dominated by wealthy, predominantly white, citizens whose interests are quite different to those from the poor who shun participation in the political process. The cynical response from some commentators might be that this is simply a matter of choice; the system is neutral and so the poor have every right to engage in the political process but choose not to. Bachrach and Baratz argue to the contrary that the non-response of the poor can better be understood as a means to perpetuate the interests of the wealthy. By focusing purely on overt conflict and actual disagreement between A and B, Dahl failed to account for a second dimension of power which operates in favour of A, through non-decision making.²

Non-Decisionmaking

As the name implies, non-decisionmaking is concerned more with what fails to happen than what does. Bachrach and Baratz distinguish non-decisions, which are individual and discrete, from non-decisionmaking, which describes the systematic process engaged in by agents who actively create, or shape, a mobilization of bias to preserve the status quo such that,

All forms of political organization have a bias in favour of the exploitation of some kinds of conflict and the suppression of others because organization is the mobilization of bias. Some issues are organized into politics whilst others are organized out.³

Power infuses the mobilization of bias which maintains this unfair division of benefits, consisting of norms and procedures, ‘that operate…in favour of the expression of some kinds of conflict and the suppression of others.”⁴ Nondecision making can involve a number of techniques to preserve a particular version of the status quo, ranging from intimidation and force against those who seek to change the system, to more subtle covert means. Dahl’s decision-making model fails to take account of this by focusing purely on interactions between actors and so takes norms as given. For Bachrach and Baratz, shaping norms is central to power, which, ‘is not exercised so much by those who make decisions or make agendas but by those who direct their energy in shaping or reinforcing the predominant norms and myths that underpin the political process.⁵

Overt and Covert Non-Decisionmaking

Bachrach and Baratz (1975) argue that to describe non decisionmaking as covert control is too broad and also too narrow.  It is too broad, because one-dimensional power can also be exercised covertly.  Covert strategies may be used to avoid an issue arising (non decisionmaking) or to assure victory (decision making). 

A recent case of the use of covert and overt power, albeit not in the context of marketing, illustrates how Donald Trump managed to obtain substantial damages for a lawsuit many considered to be without merit and to have a satirist removed who had been a constant thorn in his side. This complex case tied the fortunes of the media giants Paramount, CBS and Skydance to those of two individuals, Stephen Colbert and Donald Trump, although in this context, it is more fitting to fit Trump to his institutional role as President of the USA.

The background was that Paramount Global, owner of broadcaster CBS, posted its intention to merge with Skydance Media for a return to shareholders of $8 billion. Then, following an interview by CBS “Sixty Minutes” news team with Vice-President Kamala Harris in the run-up to the 2024 Presidential election, candidate Donald Trump issued a lawsuit against Paramount Global, owners of CBS, claiming damages of $16 million alleging that the interview with Harris had harmed his campaign. It was commented at the time that Trump’s case was baseless, as “Sixty Minutes” had followed traditional journalistic practice. Trump also declined an invitation from CBS for an interview, accusing the programme of bias. Following Trump’s election to the Presidency, Federal approval for the merger between Paramount Global and Skydance failed to appear. On the 18th June 2025, Trump said he supported the deal, “but went on to talk about his lawsuit against Paramount, apparently linking the two”.⁶ Not long after this, Paramount Global, which had earlier described Trump’s action as a nuisance lawsuit ‘without merit’, paid Trump the $16 million dollars he had claimed in damages, which was widely reported to have then “cleared the way” for the Trump administration to approve the delayed sale of Paramount to Skydance.

The saga did not end there as, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was one of the most popular CBS programmes in its time-slot. Shortly after Paramount made the payment to Trump, Colbert, a long-time Trump critic, referred to it on air as “a big fat bribe” and cited reports that once the merger was complete, Skydance might seek to please Trump by getting rid of Colbert (Trump had once labelled him “no talent Stephen Colbert”). And indeed just a few days later, Paramount announced the cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”. The reason given was ostensibly on financial grounds, which seemed curious, as Colbert’s was the top-rated show in its time-slot. Just before the Paramount-Skydance deal was approved, Trump had written on social media, “I just love that Colbert got fired”. Jon Stewart pointed to a more serious issue surrounding this, of a spreading “fear and compliance that is gripping all of America’s institutions at this very moment’.⁷ Not long after the furore over Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, another broadcaster who had attracted Trump’s ire was removed for a time from his satirical programme.⁸

Bachrach and Baratz argue that to describe non-decisiionmaking as covert is too narrow because it omits consideration of overt acts such as the co-option of opponents, or rejection of the legitimacy of demands for change.⁹ Covertly, A may seek to persuade those in pivotal positions who frame the agenda for discussion, that the harm to B’s interests from A’s action is minimal and so persuade them to steer discussion towards issues that are innocuous to A. Or, if the actions do make it onto the agenda, then A may delay the outcome by tying B up in endless requests for clarification. Alternatively, B may recognize A’s vastly superior resources and decide that it is simply not worth contesting the issue. This is similar to the concept of learned helplessness; once a person has tried and failed to change a situation against overwhelming odds, one may simply give up.

Finally, A can dominate B without B becoming aware of this through the mobilization of bias. This relates to the degree of control that A has over the political process and the flow of information that influences the beliefs and opinions of less powerful groups to enable the elite to effectively determine not only whether certain demands are to be expressed but also whether those demands will even enter peoples’ minds. Today a real problem for social cohesion has been created since the rapid growth of social media where many subscribe to podcasts in information silos where presenters attune their content to the preferences of their audiences by channeling sharply contrasting and often biased versions of reality. Members of the same family, or friends living in the same apartment, can consequently inhabit very different media realities. For instance, in the USA, democratic voters who proportionately favour mainstream broadcast media will recently have witnessed brutal actions by the Trump regime in dispatching Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the National Guard to cities such as New York and Chicago, whilst ‘MAGA’ republicans, who distrust those they label as “legacy media” apart from Fox News, Newsmax, Tucker Carlson and Breitbart, are more likely to be drawn to narrowcasts which depict historical scenes of rioting which are presented as current events, coupled to warnings of an imminent insurrection by an “Antifa” conspiracy fuelled by the Trump administration designation of this mythical organization¹⁰ as a terrorist threat.¹¹

Conscious and Unconscious Power

For Bachrach and Baratz, ‘to the extent that a person or group consciously or unconsciously – creates or reinforces barriers to the public airing of policy conflicts, that person or group has power.”¹² They also recognise the “impact of indirect relations in which communication between the power wielder and power receiver is wholly or partly obstructed”. In the context of consumption, it was once argued that although the lifestyle enjoyed by ‘northern’ consumers can cause harm to those who are suborned as indentured labour into the cocoa or coffee trades, and others who labour in sweatshops, as well as the millions living in Africa and Asia who drown in a sea of rotting waste exported from the ‘ global north’, that these practices are largely hidden, so the fault should be laid at the door of industry and government, as consumers themselves are largely unaware of these and of other egregious practices.

Can it really be the case that, in light of years of broadcasting of ‘behind the scenes’ documentaries modelled on NBC Dateline, discussed in chapter six, to assert that consumers aren’t aware of the harms done in their name? A 2023 report found that although 78 percent of US consumers supported corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, companies launching new products experienced sales well-below expectations. Delving further into behavioural data, the researchers found that products that made ESG claims had averaged 28 percent cumulative growth compared to 20 percent for those that did not make such a claim.¹³

Academic research in this area has largely been informed by the Theory of Planned Behaviour to explore the gap that exists between a person’s positive attitudes towards ethical behaviour and their actual behaviour.¹⁴ In one study, which explored why professedly ‘ethical’ individuals leave their morals at the door of the supermarket, the authors conclude that this can result as a consequence of the need to reduce the discomforting dissonance that can be experienced when a person’s abstract belief in fair trade is countered in the actual purchase situation by factors such as the range of choice, the relative price, (as fair trade goods trade at a premium), and the perceived quality of the goods on offer.¹⁵  Some informants told the researchers that although they were generally in favour of fair trade, that this is a systemic issue and they are just a tiny cog in a very big wheel. Dissonance reduction was also a strategy employed by informants to Carrington et al., (2020) which questioned them about modern slavery and their potential role in perpetuating and/or eradicating this. As with fair trade, informants sought to neutralise this as a problem, for instance, by denying the victimhood of the victim, or denying that the victim had suffered an injury; or if they accepted this, denying their personal responsibility for such situations. More stridently, some condemned those who condemned such practices, while finally, some appealed to higher loyalties. Informants also engaged in what the authors call the politics of legitimation, by seeking to reduce the moral significance of modern slavery and thus normalising their indifference. One informant adopted bluntly likened his relation to enslaved labour to a cost-benefit analysis, that although slavery caused “problems”, those enslaved worked to his benefit. Others displaced their responsibility onto the parents of child slaves by arguing that they ‘pimped’ their children out because they themselves were too lazy to work.

It is important that this study constituted a small sample of just forty individuals. That said it could be argued that there is little new in the dismal picture of humanity described above, given such failings were described by the ancients in their religious texts. But of course science can take nothing for granted and so everything must be discovered anew! By focusing on dissonance and the preservation of identity and narrow self-interest, the study offers a psychological perspective on the second face of power which suggests that identity and the self-preservation of imputed interest are common to the behaviour of individuals and of organisations.

J.K. Galbraith: Marketing and the Revised Sequence

It is useful to turn to the work of the economist J.K. Galbraith given the affinity between his concept of conditioned power and the second face of power described by Bachrach and Baratz (1962). Moreover, although non-decisionmaking can help explain the actions of corporations and industries that have fought long, hard and sometimes viciously, to sustain their business model when they know that this is doing harm to consumers, Galbraith’s argument, which was influenced by Thorstein Veblen’s (1899) Theory of the Leisure Class, focuses more directly on the context of business and marketing. In The Affluent Society, Galbraith (1958), argued that demand is the outcome of production and not the other way round and in The New Industrial State (1967), he extended his attack on the presumption of consumer sovereignty, by claiming that the ‘revised sequence” is a better explanation for real conduct in the marketplace. In so doing, Galbraith aligned with Veblen who had written in 1923 of the “fabrication of customers’ by “publicity engineers’¹⁶ thus reversing the mainstream presumption that business is subservient to the whims of sovereign consumers and that in practice, consumers are largely submissive to the interests of firms. Understood in this way the marketing provides as a useful fiction to disguises the real operation of power in the market.

Galbraith (1967) argued that such was the concentration of economic power in the hands of those who controlled the corporate landscape that one could no longer think of individual corporate actors, but rather of a self-serving technocratic elite, the technostructure.¹⁷ This idea is similar to Weber’s idea of a machine bureaucracy, comprising an ill-defined entity that enfolds a range of processes from specialized knowledge to group decision-making.¹⁸ Galbraith's argument was in tune with that of C. Wright Mills, who warned of the threat posed by the centralisation of information and of the power amassed by an elite group of politicians, business moguls and the heads of the military who occupied, “the strategic command posts of the social structure’.¹⁹ While Dawson (2005) expands on Veblen and Galbraith to argue that marketing acts as a vehicle of class coercion between business and the public, I should mention that Bachrach and Baratz (1962) did not hold to the idea that society is controlled by a self-serving elite and instead subscribed to Robert Dahl’s pluralist argument that power relations comprise shifting coalitions of interest.

Galbraith’s definition of power is similar to that of Dahl as the exercise of one’s will on others, such that the greater the imposition of the will, the greater the power. He goes further than Dahl to argue that some uses of power depends on concealment and that B’s submission is not always evident to those who render it. He describes three instruments for wielding power comprising condign, compensatory and conditioned power. Condign power consists of the application of force by A which is sufficiently unpleasant to lead B to abandon their preferences. For instance, in the case of the MacDonald’s lawsuit against London Greenpeace, the threatened legal action by the former led three members of the latter to abandon their position and apologize. While condign power is a negative instrument, compensatory power is positive, based on the offer of a reward or inducement of some kind. While condign and compensatory power are consistent with a one-dimensional understanding of power, conditioned power is similar to the mobilization of bias described by Bachrach and Baratz (1962) and indeed to Lukes, (1974) third dimension of power, as it is exercised by influencing a person’s beliefs through persuasion, education or social commitment as to what seems to be proper and right, which causes the individual to submit to the will of others without them necessarily being aware that they are doing so. Submission takes place in this instance because this seems the right and natural thing to do and so the fact of submission is not recognized.

Galbraith cites as examples of conditioned power, the role played by formal education in the transmission of ‘acceptable codes’ through the family, schools and universities which seek to create submission to group values such as ‘patriotism’ or the virtues of ‘free enterprise’ that are taken for granted as the right way to think of one’s country and the functioning of the economic system. In relation to marketing he singles out the role played by advertising in bringing the buyer to a belief in the purposes of the seller as a form of submission, who; “submits to the will of the purveyor of the beer, cigarettes, detergent or political purpose” (Galbraith, 1984: 30).²⁰

Galbraith describes three sources of power based on personality, property, and organization. In the modern era personal power has not so much been directed to force others through condign power but rather to instil beliefs through conditioned power. He suggests that there are many ways in which property and wealth enables some to gain the submission of others, arguing that advertising is a central tool used by marketers to win the submission of customers. However, this depends on the prior effectiveness of organization to secure the submission of employees, particularly full-time employees, and most especially the most senior employees, in the pursuance of corporate goals,

‘No senior executive would presume to suggest that the cigarettes his company makes cause cancer, that its automobiles are unsafe, that its pharmaceuticals are medically suspect. Or that some political initiative sought by the company – improvement of competition allowances or the reduction of foreign competition, is in conflict with the public interest’ (Galbraith, 1984: 59).

Here Galbraith anticipates a difficulty with Kotler’s (1972) societal marketing concept, mentioned in chapters three and eight, by which may fall at the first hurdle, as it rests fundamentally on the presumption that executives will be receptive to the discovery that their products can cause harm to consumers or others and will act promptly to remedy such harm. As discussed below, this presumption has been refuted time and again in situations where executives have done precisely the opposite, by digging in and holding on regardless of the consequences. If senior managers tend to avoid such uncomfortable considerations for reasons of self-interest and the avoidance of dissonance, what hope is there for the lowly whistleblower to gain a respectful hearing?

Galbraith’s view of power is systemic in that it holds that modern society is in equilibrium between those who exercise power and those who counter it. In this view the usual and most effective response to an unwelcome exercise of power is to build a countervailing power. For example, if sellers overcharge then buyers will come together with other buyers to boycott or bargain. In modern societies, he argues, it is the state that acts as the arbiter of power. Different groups in society seek the support of the state in winning the submission of others or to resist the power of others. The state regulates condign power. It also regulates forms of compensatory power such as the use of bribes or kickbacks. In the USA particularly, the state guarantees the use of conditioned power through the exercise of “freedom of speech”.

In discussing the exercise of power in contemporary society Galbraith refers his reader to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and to Malthus, Ricardo and Bentham, as particularly influential in socially conditioning those who rule the state to a belief in industrial capitalism. Thus, Bentham’s argument for utilitarianism representing ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ seemed best adapted to Smith’s policy of ‘laissez-faire’, which equates the pursuit of economic self-interest with the public good. Galbraith comments that it would be hard to think of any idea so serviceable to industrial power. In this view the actions of industrialists are rendered ultimately virtuous ‘by an overriding law to which he, however selfish or sordid his purpose or motivations, was wholly subject’.²¹

Referring to those who proselytised the operation of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ in the ‘free market”, Galbraith argued that to use this terminology was risible given the lack of competition between corporations in the 1950s and 1960s, when massive corporate power was concentrated in the hands of a few oligopolists. This was especially so given that Smith had argued for the operation of free market competition as an alternative to the almost overwhelming power of the mercantile system that prevailed in his own day. For Galbraith, the deployment of Smith’s rhetoric in such a cynical manner operated as a powerful tool for corporations to fool the public into believing that competition still prevailed. Tracing the lineage of the disappearance of competition from the economy, Galbraith argued that capitalism first grew on the back of powerful personalities such as Carnegie, and Rockefeller, who controlled vast enterprises which in time passed over to the technostructure presided over by management technocrats. This class comprised a vast managerial bureaucracy that subverted the operation of the marketplace by placing its own interests over those of shareholders and of customers. The main aim of the technostructure was to ensure its own survival free from control by either customer or stockholder.²² Through compensatory power these industrialists bought off legislators and consumers. It sought to ensure that consumers bought what was available at whatever price it determined and additionally that stockholders received a return adequate or enough for them not to wish to rock the boat.²³ The need to manage both aggregate and specific demand was due to the ability through increased technology and operational efficiencies to produce very large volumes.

By proposing the ‘revised sequence’, Galbraith challenged the ‘accepted sequence’ proposed by the marketing concept, that all needs start with consumers, whose choices send signals to producers who are responsive to these. The revised sequence refers instead to the situation where producers condition the creation and satisfaction of needs and wants in the interests of the technostructure. Advertising is especially important to Galbraith’s explanation, as there is a need to create a ready market for the goods on offer. In response to the riposte that much advertising is informational, Galbraith replied sardonically that, ‘Only a gravely retarded person would need to be told that the American Tobacco Company has cigarettes for sale’.

The presumption that the marketplace is dominated by homo economicus, that individual rational agent, utility maximizer and originator of his needs, supposes any interference with the expressed preferences of this sovereign individual is unwarranted. As a result, any public objections to lethal automobile design, disabling drugs, disfiguring beauty aids or high-calorie reducing compounds are interpreted as constituting interference with the individual’s design for maximizing his satisfaction and with the resulting economic response. This provides a powerful protection for the technostructure which hides behind the rhetoric of the sovereign individual as a cover for its wholesale manipulation of the marketplace. As a result everything from retail strip developments; industrial farms; air and river pollution is justified on the basis of the rhetoric of ‘freedom of individual choice’.²⁴

What solutions did Galbraith offer to this abuse of power wielded by the technostructure? Back in the 1960s he argued that this must be broken to ensure a safer basis for underwriting technology, the expansion of socially useful services and the emancipation of education. He suggested that there was no point in looking to the state for this, as there was an ‘increasingly artificial and indistinct’ line drawn between the technostructure and the state. Rather he saw the intellectual community as the vanguard of this change. This is because he believed that at that time (in the 1960s) there was a strong and independent sense of academic freedom of intellectuals in the USA which was not constrained by bureaucracy nor compromised through reliance on the technostructure.

Galbraith’s ideas were influential throughout the 1960s and the early 1970s when the vision of an omniscient elite binding the ‘technostructure’ to the ‘Military-Industrial-Complex’ inflamed youthful imaginings and formed a rallying ground for countercultural striving. At around the time of the millennium the Bilderberg group appeared as the incarnation of the technostructure, depending on one’s viewpoint as either providing a chance for the elite to discuss pressing global issues away from the media spotlight, or alternatively, as a shadowy malign presence aiming towards world domination. If anything, fears of a hidden oppressive and unaccountable elite are even more pressing today amongst those who lurk in social media echo-chambers such as Q-Anon. Nowadays the sheer size and scope of corporations and the influence of the individuals who run them is much greater than it was in Galbraith’s day. ‘Global’ and ‘anti-capitalist’ protestors take aim at the perceived non-accountable actions of the transnational elite formed by those working for the European Union, the G7, World Bank and other powerful interests. While the Bilderberg group may be a conspiracy theorist’s dream, and while, as discussed in chapter four there are actually are conspiracies, one might conjecture that any attempt to control the global economy in the era of ‘post-Fordism’ and the ‘electronic herd’ will be doomed to failure. Likewise, if history is anything to go by, the corporate behemoths that strut the global stage today will one day succumb to the creative destruction of the market; just two of corporations from the top ten listed in Galbraith’s time are here today.²⁵ On the other hand as discussed in chapter four, powerful vested interests continue to exert influence behind the scenes.

Galbraith was taken to task for his argument that marketing creates false needs and for other misdemeanours.²⁶. And, while there is something to be said for it his idea of a ‘revised sequence’ greatly exaggerates the true state of affairs as it is acceptable for production decisions to anticipate consumer demands, and while a customer may be led to a product, they are not obliged to buy it. Reckoned to be in real terms, the most expensively researched product ever developed and backed by a massive advertising blitz the Ford Edsel fell flat once launched because the style became unfashionable in the period between conception and launch. Galbraith tended to reinforce the collusive operations of corporate power while neglecting that of consumers to deviate from those intentions. However, just because consumers have choice, it scarcely follows that corporate collusion to withhold relevant information from them, deceive them or to seek to skew their opinions on issues of vital importance, is in any way acceptable.

Researching Non-Decisionmaking

Given that non-decisionmaking is about what fails to happen, then how is one to research what fails to occur? In response to criticism, Bachrach and Baratz (1975) stated, ‘(e)mpirical verification is much to be desired but it is not foremost in importance’,²⁷ - which is not very encouraging to the would-be researcher! They do however offer tips as to how to research the mobilization of bias, which they assume occurs in an institutional context. One should first consider, “the dominant values, myths, established political procedures and rules of the game”, and then discern which groups gain from the bias and which are handicapped by it, and finally, investigate the dynamics of nondecisionmaking.²⁸

For Steven Lukes (2021, 50-53), Crenson’s (1971) study of the “un-politics” of power exemplifies research conducted from a two-dimensional perspective.²⁹ The pluralist argument from Dahl would suggest that power relations are observable and that local politics should reflect the concerns of the population as a whole because the administration needs to accommodate a wide section of interests. In contrast, Crenson’s study of pollution legislation in the two broadly equivalent cities of Gary and East Chicago, Indiana, demonstrated that power relations can be unobservable and that the administration can long ignore issues of public interest. Although both cities suffered similar problems with air pollution, East Chicago had introduced legislation to control this in 1949, but itwas only in 1962 that those in Gary chose to do so. Given that this case is discussed further in the next chapter, to cut a rather long story short, it should suffice to mention here Crenson’s argument that although US Steel publicly remained silent on this issue, its massive presence in Gary acted as a dead weight against activists, such that for many years pollution was a “non-issue” for discussion.

The Super-Rich

The injunction by Bachrach and Baratz (1975) to consider the mobilisation of bias through “the dominant values, myths, established political procedures and rules of the game”, brings to mind the section in chapter four, where the change in the narrative surrounding meritocracy in the neoliberal era is discussed. In its traditional usage meritocracy was more or less aligned with the Christian message that the poor in spirit will inherit the earth and the rich will find it hard not to be damned to the eternal flames. In the neoliberal era meritocracy was reversed to signify that the rich deserve the fruits of what is presumed to be their labour, whilst the poor are indolent and are deserving of their misery.

In terms of their argument to look to who wins and who loses, non-decisionmaking can serve the interests of the super-rich over those of the ordinary citizen in a number of ways. For instance, following the near-collapse of the international finance system following the GFC in 2008, politicians were vociferous in calling for the end of so-called tax-havens. Despite this, decades later, the system remains more or less in place. Whilst the financial transactions entered into by ordinary citizens are subjected to meticulous scrutiny, criminals from Russian oligarchs to Mexican cartels have laundered billions of stolen funds with impunity through European and American banks and the City of London.³⁰ Russians who were sanctioned following the invasion of Ukraine were incredibly still allowed access to the UK courts. As mentioned in chapter six, in an episode that would have been farcical were it not true, Yevgeni Prigozhin head of the notorious Wagner Group, despite being under sanctions, was nonetheless permitted to take a SLAPP action suit for defamation against the award-winning Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat for alleging that Prigozhin was …. a member of Wagner!³¹

Sourcing Information

To reprise the above, non-decisionmaking involves keeping potential issues outside the political process. Where a decision is a choice amongst alternative modes of action, a non-decision is a decision that thwarts a challenge to the values or interests of the decision maker. There are potential issues which non-decision making prevents from becoming actual.³² A difficulty is how to discover evidence of non-decision making in marketing, given that precisely nothing happens as a result. Bachrach and Baratz (1975: 901) acknowledge that from an empirical perspective in relation to non decisionmaking, ‘the products of research may be impressionistic or ill-supported by data”.

While it seems obvious that it is easier to research contexts where decisions are made rather than where they are forestalled, huge amounts of previously hidden information have been made public. Much information has resulted from government investigations such as that pertaining to the notorious case of the Volkswagen Emissions scandal, discovered by the U.S, Environmental Protection Agency; from lawsuits, such as that involving the Ford Pinto (Grimshaw vs. Ford Motor Co., 1981), and McDonald’s (London Greenpeace vs McDonalds, 1990); from investigations prompted by boycotts such as that of End Loans to South Africa (ELTSA) directed against Barclays Bank and the IMF, and that against Nestlé organized by INFACT, IOCU, the New Internationalist and War on Want; from concerned scientists such as Barbara Demeneix, or of Anthony Ingraffea, who turned against his own discovery; and last, but not least, from whistelblowers and those individuals who happened to be drawn to investigate matters by chance.

Whistleblowers

Much information that was previously hidden is now available in the public domain thanks to leaks from whistleblowers. Sheila Fitzpatrick observes that while the term “whistleblowing” was apparently coined by Ralph Nader as a more positive than ‘snitching’ or ‘informing’, to describe reports of abuses by corporations and government departments. Although it is effectively a form of denunciation that can be looked on askance, it has acquired a positive gloss, as whistleblowers risk retaliation for speaking out and are thus generally regarded as ‘brave, public spirited truth tellers’.³³ The most noteworthy and disturbing feature of cases of whistleblowing apart from the massive scale of expropriation, is indeed the mistreatment caused by corporate retaliation of whistleblowers, concerned citizens and lawyers who dare to challenge the status quo.³⁴ One of the biggest money laundering cases to date featured Wachovia Bank, owned by Wells Fargo, which was involved in laundering over $378 billion. The bank got off lightly receiving a total fine that amounted to less than 2 percent of earnings. The whistleblower Martin Woods, a compliance officer employed by Wachovia, was first ignored and then threatened by senior management when he made them aware of the scandal. He subsequently stated that he felt he was, “the most toxic person in the bank”. Woods joined an exclusive club of whistleblowers, concerned citizens and lawyers whose lives became dominated and almost destroyed from the moment they took up arms against the might of corporate interests.

While there are literally hundreds of such instances, at time of writing a huge leak of internal documents revealed how Uber had avoided at least $556 million in global taxes, operating behind the scenes in thirty countries, meeting with powerful politicians including Emmanuel Macron to change the laws regulating taxis in Uber’s favour, deceiving regulators and benefitting from violence against taxi drivers from 2013-2017.

Chance encounters by individuals

A good deal of material has also leaked into the public domain as the result of the action of individuals who simply hooked onto a particular issue that then came to dominate their lives. For instance, from his discovery of abnormalities in animals near Brofiscin quarry in Wales, veterinary surgeon Douglas Gowan began an investigation which found that Monsanto had used the quarry as a dump for manmade endocrine disruptors known as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), the “forever chemicals” we all now carry in our bodies. Des Wilson (1984) and Peter Taylor (1984) who wrote respectively of the dangers of lead poisoning, and the tobacco industry, were both journalists who became engrossed with the subject of their study.

Litigation

Although its power may be waning, for better or worse, we still live under the ‘Pax Americana”. The USA derives considerable power from the dollar which at time of writing continues, despite attempts to weaken it by the regime of Trump-47, to limp along as the world reserve currency, enabling the USA to sanction those it considers threatening to its interests. While it is a land of stark contrasts between rich and poor, executives can be sent to jail and class-action lawsuits have forced the tobacco industry amongst others, to reveal massive amounts of information they had previously kept hidden.

Academics often must rely at third hand on the analyses of documents released as the result of litigation, which can provide to be a daunting time-consuming task. For example, in the course of their research into the tobacco industry Mugli et al. (2001) trawled through 618 boxes of archive material, each of which held 2500 pages. Muggli adds that in on top of that British American Tobacco was ordered to provide further public access to its approximately eight million internal documents. Given its complexity, research into the tobacco industry can involve collaboration between activists and academics. For instance, the research by Rotman et al., (2022) included authors from Action for Smoking and Health (ASH) and the Tobacco Control Research Group.

Hactivism

A growing source of information is yielded as a consequence of action by hacktivists and citizen journalists, such as those involved in the releases by Wikileaks and the Panama Papers. Kevin Higgins of Bellingcat mobilised the ability of technology to geolocate actual events along with the power of citizen journalism to provide a detailed account of the sequence of events and the personnel involved in the shooting down of flight MH-17 in 2014 by Russian paramilitaries of the Donetsk People’s Republic, as it flew over the Donbas, leading to the deaths of 298 people. Bellingcat, which has also investigated the illegal wildlife trade in the UAE, has now engaged in a wider project to train open source researchers and investigative journalists as part of its aim to protect democratic institutions.³⁵

Other leaks that have gained widespread publicity include the highly publicised release of revelations by Eric Snowden by Wikileaks which revealed many illegal actions including notorious footage of a US helicopter attack in Iraq, and the publication of the Panama Papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Scientific Concern

Much of two-dimensional power in marketing contexts pertains to harms caused to consumers and third-parties that are not recognized by them as such. In similar manner to the ancient Romans who suffered the insidious effects of the lead in their water pipes, consumers are today subjected to a range of harms of which they either have no inkling or from which they have been distracted. Non-decisionmaking in the context of marketing is thus largely about how the system operates in a way that is innocuous to A that perpetuates harm done to some B who does not necessarily recognize this harm, or if they do, who considers it as innocuous to them.

Given the difficulty in gaining research access to business corporations at the best of times, third parties, such as scientists have proved to be invaluable sources of information. Scientific experts in the know communicate their concerns to policy makers and consumers about the harms done by the products we consume. For example, Barbara Demeneix (2017) has raised awareness amongst a relatively select group of specialists concerning the damage done to metabolic functioning by endocrine disruptors that amongst other applications have been found to be present in a range of everyday furnishings.

Exploring Two-Dimensional Power

Reflecting on the above, it is worth mentioning that academics in marketing and in consumer research are not trained to spot dangers that may be hidden in plain sight in products that have been extensively marketed as safe. Indeed there should be no reason for them to do so as scientific specialism is required to reveal a link between smoking and cancer (Doll, 1959), to spot the dangers posed by chemical pollutants in furniture (Demeneix, 2017), by consumption of ultra-processed foods (Spector, 2015), or most obviously, by including asbestos in talcum powder. On the other hand when such dangers are revealed and when industries then launch a programme of denial and obfuscation, the institutional response can be slow and it can often be left up to individual campaigners and journalists such as Des Wilson (1884) who pressed the case for lead-free petrol and Peter Taylor (1984), who take up the cudgels first on behalf of the public.

It is perhaps unsurprising that journalists on the lookout for a good story are likely to be amongst the first to understand the significance of scientific research and bring findings to the public understanding, for that after all, is their job. Additionally, one of the challenges of understanding power relations is that these are often tied to a specific context that is dynamic and which changes over time as avenues are closed and new openings arise. For example, it was described in the last chapter that the approach to SLAPP actions is quite different in the USA and the UK. The main aim of the SLAPP action by McDonald’s against London Greenpeace in the ‘McLibel’ case was in line with non-decisionmaking as it was not to win damages from the defendants but to stifle dissent, in which they would have succeeded if Steel and Morris had joined the other three members of London Greenpeace and apologised to McDonald’s.

Global Heating Inaction: A Social Movement Theory Account

While events on the ground are often complex and specific to a particular context, it is nevertheless important to gain some kind of general understanding in relation to important questions such as the suppression of discussion of global heating in the public square. Here the tripartite scheme devised by Doug McAdam which was briefly introduced in the chapter six can make a useful contribution. To recap, this involves analysing the political environment to identify opportunities and constraints; the organizational environment that operates as a base for mobilization; and finally the framing of the issue. McAdam (2017) illustrates this form of analysis by referring to successful non-decisionmaking in the USA in relation to the lack of action on global heating.

In describing the US political scene McAdam (ibid.) observes that successful social movements tend to arise when the regime of institutional power is benevolent and broadly receptive to their aims. He mentions as instances, the rise of progressive movements for labour reform and for civil and gender rights during the long period of governance by the Democratic Party from 1932 until 1968. In relation to action pertaining to global heating he notes that the political environment had been negative from 1988 and especially from 1994 when the Republican Party began to dominate the House from 1994 (you may recall that this also had a chilling effect on the passage of the Harkin Bill on child labour discussed in the last chapter). However, he notes too that a much longer and more significant trend that had been building from the 1960s and gained pace from the 1980s was a counter-shift towards the political right, which was bad news for action against global heating.

McAdam describes that when he was writing in 2017, polarisation in the US Congress had never been higher at any time since 1879, and additionally, that the 112th and 113th Congressional sessions “earned the dubious distinction” of having enacted the fewest pieces of legislation since Roosevelt took office in 1933. He draws three telling points from Lessig (2011) which enable one to understand why climate action was thwarted in the political arena. Firstly, members of Congress, chronically short of funds spend between 30 percent and 70 percent of their time seeking out opportunities, leaving them wide open to influence from wealthy benefactors. Secondly, and related to the above, public trust in Congress has fallen and over three quarters of the public feel that it works in the interest of big business; and thirdly, and most insidiously, because of their need for funding politicians cultivate relations with lobbyists and attend more to their interests than to those of their citizens³⁶. In sum, politics is shaped by financial realities and institutions are captured because the wealthy set the agenda.

Moreover, McAdam argues that because the US system which grants anonymity to donations to “philanthropic” entities, it is exceedingly difficult to track the funding of anti-climate groups and indeed that this system was designed to be that way. He mentions that in 2014 this was estimated at $900 million, much of which came from fossil fuel interests (Brulle et al., 2021)³⁷. Money is channelled into institutions, funding lobbying and through contributions campaign funds and to public relations agencies and think tanks that sew doubt in the mind of the public to subvert grassroots action.

McAdam (ibid.) differentiates between formal bureaucratic organizations and social movements whose aim is to disrupt established political routines. He points to the arguments made by resource mobilization theorists that a social movement requires the resources and sustained organization necessary to achieve an outcome (think of the case of MPL discussed in the last chapter where these were lacking). By comparison informal groups, Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) and NGOs form part of the formal structure of society and so are loath to play a disruptive role. Added to this he describes how in the USA, the climate movement is dominated by the most moderate of reform organizations. However, even these nonthreatening groups struggle to gain access to either media or congressional fora, whereas lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry enjoy substantial entrée to both.

In contrast to the piecemeal organization of groups whose aim is to drive awareness of the urgency of taking action to confront the climate emergency, the Climate Change Counter-Movement (CCCM) is a highly organized well connected and well-funded network of libertarian institutions. Multi-purpose right-wing “think tanks” the Cato Institute and the Heritage foundation are among the top funders of the CCCM, and ranked below them are institutions such as the euphemistically named Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the Institute for Energy Research whose focus is entirely on this issue.³⁸ By comparison to those who advocate urgent action to combat global heating, for whom funding is haphazard and short-term, the stable funding and the strong network of right-wing institutions has enabled them to build and construct a highly misleading but none-the-less consistent message.³⁹

In relation to the framing of the issue of global heating, Bruhlle et al, (2021) discuss how the CCCM have engaged in a, “deliberate and organized effort to misdirect and distort public discussion of climate change”, which drives widespread misunderstanding of climate science and contributes to legislative gridlock.⁴⁰ Discussed further below, one of their chief weapons is to sew doubt in the mind of the average citizen. Discussing the rarity of a grassroots movements for action to address the danger posed to animal life on earth by global heating, McAdam argues that lack of engagement has more to do with subjective impediments to mobilization than with objective opportunities, or the presence or absence of mobilizing structures. He draws on an argument that would be familiar to Robert Dahl, pointing out that, “we humans are creatures of habit, deeply invested in the taken-for-granted routines, behavioural norms, and established worldviews that structure our lives”.⁴¹ Climate is an amorphous issue and although the intrusions into life by global heating are accumulating rapidly, it is still relatively easy for many to deflect these, perhaps through buying into the rhetoric that somehow technology driven by AI or by nuclear fusion will ride to the rescue and magically sort it out. To confront the realities presented by the climate crisis requires a wholesale re-evaluation of lifestyle, in relation to which MacAdam argues that to engage in collective action necessitates that we must free ourselves from the carapace of everyday concerns to “depart from those routines, violate those norms and begin to act in accordance with new conceptions of ourselves and the world”. For many, it seems that this was a step too far to consider then, years before Trump-47 began a ferocious and misguided attack on climate science as “woke”.

The Lead Industry: A Paradigm Case

In 1924 the death was announced of Joseph Leslie, a chemical operator in New Jersey. The reality, known only to a select group, was that he had been confined to a psychiatric unit until his actual death in 1964. It was only in 2005 that his wider family were shocked to learn that Leslie was amongst a number of Standard Oil employees who had succumbed to severe lead poisoning.⁴² While authors often point to the tobacco industry as a classic example of non-decision making, the actions of the lead industry predate this. At first glance it seems ridiculous to argue that lead is not severely damaging to human health, for surely every schoolchild knows the devastating effect that lead poisoning had on the ancient Romans?⁴³ A little known fact is that the lead content of ancient skeletons has been found to be less than half that of modern Europeans.⁴⁴ However, as Rosner and Markowitz (2007) explain, from the early twentieth century, the lead industry conducted an ingenious campaign to undermine arguments against its use, based on deceit, denial and delay.

In the USA, where lead was used as an anti-knock ingredient in petrol and as an additive in paint, the industry deployed three main methods to undermine the case against its use. Thomas Midgely of Standard Oil announced in 1924 that tetraethyl lead would be added to petrol to enhance its performance. This was in spite of vociferous opposition from Dr. Alice Hamilton, an expert in lead, who knew of its especially harmful effect on children. Shortly after production began the New Jersey factory where the additive was produced became known as the “loony-bin building” and the “house of butterflies because of the hallucinations experienced by employees. In 1925 this led the US Surgeon General to issue a temporary ban on the use of lead additive. General Motors volunteered to fund research by a government agency, adding that it required prior approval over the findings.

With DuPont and Standard Oil, General Motors established the Kettering Labs, a research unit at the University of Cincinnati, which for many decades was largely supported by industry funds. In that same decade, the lead industry sponsored the research of Joseph Aub at Harvard who worked on the neurophysiology of lead. Pressure was placed on researchers, directly influencing the scientific integrity of clinical observations such that anyone who described lead as a hazard knew that they could be sidelined and even subjected to intimidation. As a consequence, findings were benign for the industry.

An investigatory committee established by he government was dominated by industry members, with just one independent expert on the panel. Unsurprisingly, tetraethyl additive was given a clean bill of health and lead was exempted from normal measures of public health and from the regulatory apparatus that had largely controlled phosphorus poisoning, poor quality food and meats and other potential public health hazards.

Public health scientists insisted that alternatives to lead existed, but industry in general and General Motors in particular, vehemently insisted that tetraethyl lead was the only additive worthy of consideration. A difficulty for independent researchers is that no primary material was available until 1991 when General Motors made available its archive from 1919 to the late 1920s. A review of the archives suggested that despite concerns about lead poisoning General Motors and other corporations defended and maintained this deadly practice because of the profits yielded.⁴⁵

Thanks to the release of archival material much more is known about how, in the early twentieth century, the industry sought to undermine a growing body of evidence of the toxicity of lead. The Lead Industries Association was formed in 1928 to counteract opposition to the inclusion of lead in paint and as an additive to petroleum. The industry actively promoted lead as child-friendly in advertising and in comic books. Lead was portrayed as indispensable for modern life and safe for children to use and even touch. Indeed one advertisement depicted a smiling infant reaching for a can of evaporated condensed milk with the accompanying text stating that the milk is kept “pure” through the addition of a drop of lead solder!

The perverse genius of the industry strategy to counter negative publicity about lead poisoning arising from children sucking toys, cradles and woodwork painted with white lead was based on metonymy, focusing on children, but displacing the message from a negative to a positive register. This was channelled through the persona of the Dutch Paint Boy, to reassure retailers, and parents. In one advertisement the Paint Boy is depicted holding a bucket of lead paint with the strapline, “Painting the House that Jack Built”. The accompanying text admonishes the retailer “not to overlook children”, and to hand out free “paint books” containing comics to children who visit the retailer with their parent.

White lead paint was promoted as safe and even healthy for children to use throughout the 1930s, such that by 1940 the Lead Industry’s Association praised the campaign’s success in countering concerns about the effects of lead on health. In 1943 the reality that children were being poisoned by paint containing lead became national news.⁴⁶ In 1954 the American Medical Associated suggested that lead paint should carry the following: “WARNING This paint contains an amount of lead which may by POISONOUS and should not be used to paint children’s toys or furniture or interior surfaces in dwelling units which might be chewed by children”.⁴⁷ This was resisted by the industry which later adopted a warning that omitted the word “poison”. In 1971, US federal legislation banned the use of lead-based paint in federal buildings.⁴⁸

Researchers advocating the ‘lead-crime hypothesis’ cite evidence that the pernicious effects of lead are even more far-reaching, as humans are especially susceptible to react negatively to the amount of lead in the environment. They cite evidence that lead has had deleterious effects on IQ, and is linked to anti-social behaviour,⁴⁹ violent crime and homicide.⁵⁰ The US lead industry contended that it only became aware of the purported dangers of its products in the 1940s. However, this claim has since been belied by the release of internal documents which reveal that it had been aware of the danger for decades. Rather than facing up to the problem the industry chose to address it by engaging in a policy of deceit, denial and delay stretching over decades.

As you read the above you may well be thinking that all of this happened a long time ago in the distant past and is no longer relevant today. The reality is that lead continues to be used in a number of products such that overall usage increased by 16 percent in the USA from 2001 to 2016. Some of the messages used to promote lead today are not so different from those employed one hundred years ago; lead is “modern” and “advanced”; lead is “durable” and “clean”; lead is “essential,” “green,” “sustainable,” “low carbon” and “responsible”; and, “lead is safe because it is not banned and is even required under government specifications”.⁵¹

Asbestos

The asbestos industry might equally serve as a paradigm case. Although pulmonary asbestosis was first recognised early in the twentieth century, the industry successfully delayed publication of reports about its toxicity. Asbestos was in wide use as an insulation material and here I should declare a personal interest in that for a brief time I worked as a labourer manually hauling sheets of white asbestos up six flights of stairs in London Bridge House. Bizarrely, the union I was a member of had made a deal that asI was to be paid a daily sum equivalent to the purchase of a pint of milk as some form of compensation – I still haven’t found the research that suggests milk as a curative! Less well known is that asbestos is also found in talcum powder. Recent court cases involving Johnson & Johnson and Cape Industry Holdings reveal that for years, executives in each company systematically withheld research that mesothelioma can be caused by brief exposure to asbestos.⁵²

In 2017 a court case by a shopfitting company resulted in the release of internal company documents which revealed that as far back as1958, Cape advised its partners not to put warning labels on asbestos-based insulation boards because of the damage this might do to profits. Over the years the company repeatedly assured buyers that its products were safe. Likewise, Johnson & Johnson engaged in a years-long policy of deception.⁵³

Volkswagen, Wirecard and the Failure of Regulation

It was only because Dan McCrum was a journalist operating with the substantial institutional backing of the Financial Times, that the massive criminality involving the theft of billions of Euros by Wirecard executives was exposed.⁵⁴ To discover that McCrum and the FT were subsequently themselves sued by Wirecard was not surprising, as that seems to be a standard tactic engaged in by corporations trying to silence their critic. Astonishingly, the German government regulator initiated a criminal investigation, not of Wirecard but of McCrum, instigating a long and bitter battle that could not have succeeded without the considerable resources of the FT. John Lanchester argues that the Wirecard and the Volkswagen emission scandal that erupted at around the same time are not examples of individual corporate misbehaviour but of a mobilisation of bias involving deeply embedded norms prevailing in the cultural and institutional context of Germany.

Lanchester argues that capitalism has a local flavour, whose German form has long been regarded as “grown-up” by comparison to the rife speculation and financialization of the US and UK. He argues that this led to a sense of complacency. In 2008, at the time of the Volkswagen and Wirecard scandals, Germany was the most powerful country in Europe, Volkswagen was the most valuable company in the world, and car manufacturing was the most powerful lobby in Germany. Volkswagen’s rival Toyota, when confronted with increasing concern over the use of fossil fuels, had made the move to hybrid vehicles. Volkswagen instead decided to focus on diesel fuel and lobbied German and EU regulators hard to persuade them of diesel’s advantages, the main one being that diesel is more energy-efficient than petrol and as a result, produces lower CO2 emissions. Lanchester describes what happened next; “so, as if by magic, Europe began a switch to diesel engines in cars, with government incentives persuading many consumers to move across… By 2002, 40 percent of car purchases in Europe were diesels.”⁵⁵

Lanchester points out that the physics were never quite as simple as made out by advocates of so-called “clean” diesel. Diesel has lower CO2 emissions but the engine must be run hot, which releases nitrogen oxide that is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Additionally, the relation between inhalation of diesel particulates to conditions such as lung cancer has been widely known since 1990.⁵⁶ Despite this, Volkswagen and other manufacturers of diesel engines joined fossil fuel companies to sponsor repeated critiques and reanalyses of studies that found diesel engine emission particulates increase lung cancer risk. At the same time Volkswagen secretly installed “defeat devices” to fool auto emissions testing systems into underestimating the pollution emitted by its cars’ diesel engines (Michaels, 2020). Brazenly, the car presented by Volkswagen presented for testing by US scientists in Albuquerque in 2014 was rigged to reduce emissions. Moreover, the organization that commissioned the Albuquerque study, the European Research Group on Environment and Health in the Transport Sector, received all of its funding from Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW. This shut down in 2021 amid controversy over its work. It sponsored research that challenged a 2012 decision by the World Health Organization to classify diesel exhaust as a carcinogen. It financed studies that cast doubt on whether banning older diesel vehicles from cities reduced pollution.⁵⁷

While full explication of events at Volkswagen and Wirecard would require volumes to explain the collusive actions of executives, regulators and other corporate stakeholders, the above description provides something of a snapshot of the key events. These are examples of non-decisionmaking in that each involved an active process of seeking to preserve the status quo so as to preserve a particular mobilization of bias on their behalf. In the case of Volkswagen, millions were duped for years into purchasing cars that they thought were “clean”. The period between Wirecard’s rise and fall from 2001 to 2020 was much shorter, although for much of that time it sought to obstruct and delay investigation. Non-decisionmaking in the case of Volkswagen involved a company that went all out to fool regulators and the public, as Lanchester puts it, “We are the car people, we want to make diesel engines; our diesel engines will not pass tests; therefore the tests are wrong and must be circumvented.”⁵⁸ What joins the Volkswagen and Wirecard cases is that critical voices came from outside German capitalism, and that in both cases the German regulator failed, in the case of Wirecard going so far as to attack the public-spirited critic.

Summarising The Playbook⁵⁹

When faced with an existential threat, a corporation, or corporate members of an industry, will tend to seek to defend their perceived interests by deploying mechanisms from a widely used ”playbook” that has been developed and refined over decades, perhaps from even before the lead industry devised its version. Bacharach and Baratz refer to mechanisms such as framing and the establishment of fruitless commissions of inquiry to ‘discover the facts’, when these are already well known.⁶⁰ Best known is the tobacco Industry playbook which operated over decades and is very well documented.⁶¹ Similar playbooks have been used by businesses involved in the development and marketing of harmful products such as sugar, asbestos, chemicals and, as described above, fossil fuels. A key approach developed by the tobacco industry was for competitors to take joint covert action by forming a committee which devised a dual strategy to tell the public one thing and by saying and doing the opposite behind closed doors. Reframing the narrative and focussing all resources on relaying this to all stakeholders to neutralise opposition was a central element in this enterprise.

Reframe the Narrative: Sew Doubt

Learn the facts…then deny then in public

Insiders know very well the reality of the harms caused by consumption of their products to consumers, the public at large and to the wider environment, knowledge which they ruthlessly suppress in the interest of short-term product. They seek to sew doubt in the minds of policy makers and the public by controlling academic research through intimidating and seeking to co-opt independent researchers. Public relations agencies are employed to edit research that casts suggests that a product is harmful and to embellish contrarian findings as “sound science”. ⁶² For instance, in the above case lead was promoted as beneficial.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola sought to shift the focus of the obesity research agenda by funding research that focused on physical activity, thereby downplaying the role of sugar-sweetened beverages in developing obesity. The corporation also tried to conceal its role in funding the research.⁶³ The Global Energy Balance Network was established as a nonprofit concerned with preventing diseases associated with inactivity, poor nutrition and obesity. Anahad O’Connor investigating for The New York Times reported that Coca-Cola Corporation had given this group $1.5 million to get started and had supported the work of two of the group's founders to the tune of almost $4 million. Messaging on the site frames the core issue relating to obesity as lack of physical activity as opposed to diet. Investigating further O’Connor found that Coca-Cola had actually registered and launched this supposedly independent website, and were listed as its administrator.⁶⁴

British Petroleum and ExxonMobil

Although the US government had helped British Petroleum (BP) retain its assets in Iran in 1953, through the CIA overthrow of President Mossadegh, fossil fuel interests do not seem to have subsequently been as tightly aligned as those of the tobacco industry.⁶⁵ The initial response to scientific concern about global heating was similar on both sides of the Atlantic, so that for decades, corporate giants such as ExxonMobil and BP questioned, downplayed, or denied this. This was in spite of evidence that internally, executives were fully aware of the dire projections of their own scientists, which accorded with those of independent experts.⁶⁶

It seemed that a turning point might have been reached in 1997, when in a speech to Stanford University, John Browne, CEO of British Petroleum (BP) publicly broke ranks to acknowledge the serious threat caused by increasing emissions of fossil fuels and to announce the corporation’s commitment to renewable energy.⁶⁷ Browne recalled that he was subsequently visited by senior oil executives who asked him if he ‘had lost the plot’.⁶⁸ BP then launched its Beyond Petroleum initiative, appointing Ogilvy and Mather to produce a new “green” corporate identity, with a reputed overall budget of £200 million.⁶⁹ Despite this high profile campaign, spending on oil and gas projects by BP continued to dwarf that on renewables, which struggled to make a return, leading to accusations of “greenwashing”.  Additionally, incidents in Texas, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and especially the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, badly damaged BP’s image and financial security. In 2025, as Donald Trump proclaimed, “Drill Baby Drill”, BP announced that it was sidelining renewables to focus once more on its ‘core” oil and gas businesses.⁷⁰

In the USA, data analytics has provided a glimpse into the different stance adopted by ExxonMobil. In one study researchers compared internal and scientific peer reviewed publications from ExxonMobil with its public advertorials published between 1977 and 2014. The researchers found that 83 percent of peer-reviewed papers and 80 percent of internal documents were consistent with the opinions of external scientists, acknowledging the threat posed by global heating and that this is caused by human action through burning fossil fuels. In marked contrast, just 12 percent of advertorials admitted this with 81 percent expressing doubt. The researchers concluded that while the academic publications of ExxonMobil had contributed advanced understanding of global warming, the corporation had effectively misled the public by instilling doubt. In a follow-up study the authors provided evidence that Exxon also funded a number of organizations that sought to cast doubt on the reality of climate change and the contribution of human activity to global warming. Supran and Oreskes (2021) went into some detail to explain how ExxonMobil advertorials selectively framed global heating by emphasizing some terms and topics and by avoiding others. The authors found that three rhetorical frames were extensively used,

From “Uncertainty to Risk”: Initially the aim was as to create an image of uncertainty around the scientific basis of claims for global heating so as to cast doubt on the scientific consensus in the public mind. As evidence for global heating accumulated with a growing scientific consensus, the tone in advertorials moderated to describe global heating as a “potential risk”. This ploy is similar to that the tobacco industry when arguing that life is short and that smoking, which is pleasurable and can be enjoyed now, is just one risk amongst many. 

Individualisation: While Browne’s speech at Stanford may have suggested that British Petroleum was turning a corner, by devising the darkly ingenious notion of the carbon footprint, Ogilvy and Mather helped to reframe the problem of global heating as a matter of personal, not corporate responsibility. The second frame used by ExxonMobil operated in a similar way, to individualise responsibility and so deflect from industry responsibility through arguments for voluntary action as opposed to “costly” regulation. Advertorials constantly blamed energy demand, often framed in terms of “need” which was portrayed as inexorable, deflecting discussion away from specifics pertaining to the consumption of oil, coal and gas. This deflection of blame onto the individual by posing a social problem as a matter of individual choice and responsibility, has also been employed as a framing device to deflect responsibility amongst others, the lead, alcohol, food and tobacco industries.

Composite discourse: The third discourse is a composite of several elements:

Technology will save us:  This was promoted through advertorials such as ‘we have industry leading investments in technology”, offering “solutions” such as carbon capture.

Fossil Fuel Solutionism: This presented the fossil fuel industry as essential and indeed  indispensable into the long run prosperity of all.

Technology Shell Game: This refers to a conjuror’s trick where a coin is hidden underneath one of three shells.  In this context it refers to attacks on renewables as ‘variable’ and ‘requiring lots of land’. Additionally it sought to alleviate concern by promoting “natural” gas as “clean”.

When denial no longer works move to delay

Sew Doubt

Described above as the progression by ExxonMobil changed the framing of global heating by moving from silence or outright denial, to the attempt to create uncertainty about the evidence and to question the scientific consensus, then as a ‘potential risk’. Sewing doubt was also a tactic used by the tobacco industry when in 1977, seven of the world's major tobacco companies conspired to promote “controversy” over smoking and disease, in an exercise called Operation Berkshire. This conspiracy resulted in the International Committee on Smoking Issues (subsequently the International Tobacco Information Centre), which operated though an internationally coordinated network of national manufacturers' associations to retard measures for tobacco control. (Francey, & Chapman, 2000).

The lead industry had earlier supported Harvard professor Joseph Aub to perform research that ignored the effects of lead on children (Markowitz and Rosner, 2002). Chemical companies also routinely hire scientific consulting firms such as Exponent, ChemRisk, Ramboll, and Gradient to produce studies that dispute the hazards of products for lawmaking and litigation (Michaels 2020). The oil industry hired economists whom they referred to misleadingly as independent researchers to develop biased climate models that inflate the predicted costs of addressing global heating and omit discussion of the benefits for doing so. This played an important role in forestalling action on climate change over decades (Franta, 2022).

As overwhelmingly irrefutable evidence grows (For instance, that lead is poisonous, that cigarettes actually do cause cancer, or that fossil fuels do contribute to global heating), denial is no longer a viable option and instead the industry devises discourses of delay. Thus by the early 1980s in response to this the tobacco industry in the US and UK began to market “low tar” cigarettes to older consumers in a bid to stop them quitting. As mentioned above, the fossil-fuel industry has engaged in greenwashing, for instance by purchasing a small “sustainable” business and by widely promoting this, and by encouraging the idea that somehow a so-far unproven technology such as nuclear fusion will provide a solution.

Suppress critics

There are good reasons not to take action when one discovers corporate malfeasance. The fate of whistleblowers who are often ostracised by their colleagues is well-known and those indominable individuals who eventually succeed can be subjected to immense personal pressure. Such pressure was evident in the ‘McLibel’ case as three members of London Greenpeace backed down before the trial and it subsequently transpired that there was collusion between MacDonald’s and the police and private detectives.

The USA is most often chosen as the site for legal battles because of the ability to bring criminal suits against corporate executives. Rob Bilott who worked as a corporate lawyer accidentally became involved in a class action against Dupont, when visiting his mother when her neighbour a local farmer called Wilbur Tennant phoned to complain that his cows were being poisoned.⁷¹ On requesting legal discovery of relevant papers from Dupont, Bilott was swamped with a veritable torrent of documentation. He nonetheless persevered and began to discover mentions of a substance involved in the production of Teflon called PFOA, (perfluorooctanoic acid) which he came to learn is a highly damaging “forever chemical”.

One of the most bizarre and complex cases was that involving Steven Donziger who had recently graduated in law from Harvard when he took up the cause of indigenous people, whose land had been polluted by Texaco (Later Chevron), filing a 30,000 person class-action lawsuit for polluting the Amazon.⁷² On leaving the Oriente region of Ecuador in 1992, Texaco had left behind hundreds of open pits containing toxic sludge, some of them the size of swimming pools, with the result that the population has suffered from direct exposure to oil and from eating contaminated animals and fish.⁷³ The saga that unfolded has featured in hundreds of articles and commentaries in addition to a documentary and a book.⁷⁴

The suit taken by Donziger against Texaco, was initially brought in New York, to seek compensation for damage to the environment and to human health. However, Texaco asked the US court for permission to have the case moved to Ecuador as according to some, it was favoured by the ruling military elite. The US court ruled that Ecuador had jurisdiction and dismissed the case on condition that Chevron accepted the decision of the Ecuadorian court. In 1994, Texaco paid the state-owned Petroecuador $40 million to remediate the damage caused to the land in Oriente. Donziger and his team then decided not to pursue Petroecuador in the case but to focus their fire on Texaco.

It was not until 2003, ten years after the initial presentation to the New York court that the case came before an Ecuadorian court. In the meantime, Texaco had merged with Chevron, so the suit by Donziger was now against Chevron-Texaco Corporation. The move in 1994 by Texaco to move jurisdiction from the USA to Ecuador seemed to backfire when the military government of Ecuador was displaced following the election of a left-wing president in 2007, the implication being that the corporation could no longer rely on the levers of the state to side with its case. In 2011, the Ecuadorian court awarded $18 billion to the plaintiffs represented by Donziger. Chevron-Texaco appealed its conviction in 2012, submitted 50,000 pages of evidence in support, following which the appeal court reduced the sum awarded to $8.65 billion.⁷⁵ Chevron refused to pay and subsequently the $8.65 billion was set aside by an international tribunal.⁷⁶

Having first moved from the USA to have the initial case heard in Ecuador, Chevron’s then decided to move its action once more to the USA, filing a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) suit against Donziger in New York. Chevron’s case which relied partially on outtakes from Crude, a film act made by supporters of Donziger, alleged that the report, which had been submitted to the Ecuadorian court as written by an independent expert, had actually been ghostwritten by others.⁷⁷ Ghostwriting is similar to plagiarism as it involves concealing authorship, but is also its opposite, in that authors “sever all relationships to their written work, forfeiting ownership and control, while on the other hand (Kirsch, 2022, 336). In 2014 Judge Kaplan dismissed the ruling of the Ecuadorian court on the ground that it had been obtained through bribery, and racketeering and ordered Donziger to pay $800,000 in costs and to surrender all of his electronic equipment for analysis. He refused to pay or to comply with the demands of the court and was then fined a further $666,476.34 and a $2,000 fine set to double for each day it was not received. Shortly afterwards, Judge Kaplan ruled that Donziger pay Chevron $3.4 million in legal costs, the highest possible sentence.

When Donziger cited attorney-client privilege in refusing to pay or to hand over his cellphone and computer, judge Kaplan then charged him with criminal contempt. Donziger was debarred from practicing law in 2019, and from August of that year was confined to home custody for six hundred days. In 2020 he served legal papers to review his disbarment. In November, the criminal trial against Donziger was postponed until January 2021. So unusual was it that this action was brought by a private not a public prosecutor, that when it was eventually heard, seven legal experts formed a committee to monitor the criminal action involving Chevron and Donziger as it unfolded in New York..

Summarising the above, Donziger spent many years of his life on this case and was eventually himself accused of extortion and sued by Chevron for $60 million (Chevron has funds of $228 billion), his bank accounts were frozen, a lien was made on his apartment and he spent over 600 days under house arrest.⁷⁸ Compared to Donziger’s small team Chevron’s legal representation consisted of hundreds of lawyers from dozens of firms. In an interview in 2022, Donziger was reported to have said, “I’d like to think the United States is not one of those countries that locks up its human rights lawyers or its environmental justice lawyers. My case proves that at least for now that’s not true anymore.”⁷⁹ While Donziger is no longer in prison, lawyers have expressed disquiet concerning the highly unusual decision made by Justice Kaplan to allow the case to be prosecuted by private individuals rather than by the state. At the time of writing the US Supreme Court had still not made a decision as to whether or not the prosecution of Donziger had been constitutional.⁸⁰

The intricacy, complexity, cost and sheer duration of cases such as the above are daunting, as most of all is the dogged persistence required if one is to confront the staggering collective force and facelessness of corporate power that has literally life-consuming effects for those individuals and groups who dare to contest it. For corporations that is precisely the point! The people whom Donziger and other nameless individuals represented who live in the Oriente rainforest and whose livelihoods were blighted by decades of widespread oil contamination are still prevented by the RICO suit from collecting the billions of dollars awarded to them and against Chevron in the Ecuadorian courts (Kirsch, 2022).

Co-opt Politicians

Politicians are prime targets for co-option by business interests because they control massive flows of money through their power to, tax, regulate, grant subsidies and issue fines and mandates. From the perspective of an industry whose activities result in public harm, the primary aim is to prevent or to stall regulation, in the achievement of which several industries have been extraordinarily successful. The key decision relating to whether or not to ban the addition of tetraethyl lead to petrol was made in 1926, when a Congressional Committee ruled in favour of the additive. This outcome did not surprise insiders who knew that the membership of the Committee was dominated by industry, who accepted the (false) argument that there was no alternative. From then until 1965, the presumption was that airborne lead is harmless. During all that time, the Kettering Laboratory of Cincinnati, established by General Motors, was the main source of data on the effects of lead (Needleman, 2000). Concerns were raised by independent scientists from 1959 and evidence then slowly accrued of the damage caused by lead. It was not until 1970 that politicians legislated to pass the Clean Air Act, which mandated a 90 percent reduction in emissions of hydrocarbons. However, by 1985, almost sixty years after the decision to allow its use, tetraethyl lead was still used in 40 percent of all petrol sold (Kovarick, 2005).

As Taylor (1984) describes it, politicians in the USA and UK had good reasons to hesitate to regulate the sale of tobacco. One thing they shared in common that essentially made them personally part of the “Smoke Ring” was that many were themselves smokers. Taylor argues that given the billions the industry raised in tax revenues, government needed tobacco almost as much as tobacco interests needed government. He describes this dependence on tobacco money as an addiction leading to complicity and a failure to act despite the accumulation of overwhelming evidence of the lethal damage done by tobacco to human health.

While a degree of complicity between the legislature and tobacco interests is perhaps understandable, why some politicians continue to deny that human activities are causing climate change is a more complex multifaceted issue. According to one source, close to one-third of the US Senate and one-fifth of members of Congress continue to refuse to acknowledge this. Given the weight of evidence, it is scarcely credible that they believe in what they say in public. As noted by McAdam (2017), most obviously, politicians elected in districts where large numbers of voters are employed in the fossil fuel industry and those who receive campaign funds from the industry may be motivated by their sense of realpolitik as opposed to reality.⁸¹ Another compelling reason is as the result of direct pressure from “grassroots” groups such as the Tea Party and American Prosperity (Bland & Journal, 2015) combined to enflame the MAGA “base” with the notion that climate change is a hoax.⁸² American Prosperity was launched and is partly funded by Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch Industries whose business is intricately bound up with fossil fuels.

“Crony capitalism “ was first used as a label by George Taber to describe the kleptocratic Marcos regime that held sway in the Philippines, where the elite grew immensely rich on the back of the poor.⁸³ One study found that fraudulent companies have spent more money on lobbying and that companies that have hired lobbyists have been much less likely to be detected for fraud by regulators.⁸⁴. Crony capitalism is the term used to describe how US politicians have managed to accrue considerable wealth, despite their relatively modest earnings. Peter Schweizer (2011) argues that their access to inside information that can dramatically affect the economy and financial markets, has enabled them to profit hugely from lucrative property and share deals. This now seems tame as crony capitalism has at least temporarily entered a new era under the regime of Trump-47 where blatant bribery and corruption occur in plain sight, as governments curry favour and craven CEOs rush to pay obeisance to the would-be tsar.⁸⁵

Co-opt Academics

Co-option of academics is essential if one is to control the narrative. It can be difficult to separate co-option from coercion, as the former can shade almost imperceptibly into the other. In a related context lecturers in UK universities have told me how they are now co-opted to disbelieve in their own standards because of the mantra “the student is always right”, so that hey must be a bad teacher and will be hauled up before the Dean, if they rashly decide to fail a student.

Co-option involves a level of symbolic violence to the academic researcher by limiting their freedom to choose their topic of interest, the scope of their research programme or how they write up and report their results. Ideally, from the perspective of the corporation, the scope of the research will be narrowed and confined to subjects that are innocuous to, or which produce results that dispute findings that are critical of it’s interests; euphemisms will be chosen to replace “contentious” statements which will otherwise be omitted, and academics may be “offered” the “guidance” of corporate PR departments to help “communicate their findings” to the outside world. The potential stick is that of the expression of corporate displeasure to the research unit, department, Head of School, or university Principal, perhaps accompanied by a veiled threat over funding.

Tobacco

The co-option of academics by business interests has a long provenance, dating at least from that of Harvard professor Joseph Aub, whose study omitted to consider the effects of lead on children (Markowitz and Rosner 2002). Although the practice is longstanding, Owen and Braeutigam (1978: 7) first mentioned the need for regulated industries to co-opt experts “especially academics” to advocate their cause to forestall state intervention and regulation. While this is of course entirely legitimate, numerous industries threatened by regulation have since co-opted scientists in government and the academy to act in their commercial interest. The tobacco industry, under Operation Whitecoat, funded a worldwide network of scientists to act as spokespeople and convince the public that the harms of cigarettes remained unproven (U.S. v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 2006).

Once it has established an umbrella organisation, the easiest way for an industry to control the narrative is to establish and fund its own research initiative in order to control the research agenda (Bowden, Foster & Walsh, 2007). In 1953 once executives had themselves become convinced of the facts about smoking and cancer the US Tobacco Industry established the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), with the ostensible aim to investigate that very same link. In December. CEOs meet to devise a joint strategy, culminating in publication of a two-page advertisement in 448 newspapers in January 1954 entitled “A Frank Statement”, which denied any claimed link between smoking and cancer. Over the next forty years the TIRC, renamed the Council for Tobacco Research in 1964, funded over $300 million of research, almost none of which focused on the link between smoking and cancer.⁸⁶

Those who did find a link between smoking and cancer, did not fare well. One prominent scientist reported to BBC Panorama that when his research team discovered a link between smoking and cancer he was advised not to use the word “cancer” to describe his findings; the press conference arranged to publicize his findings was mysteriously cancelled and he was told that his funding was in jeopardy of not being renewed.⁸⁷ In 1958, the American Cancer Society argued that the aim of the TIRC was: “to deny repeatedly’’ and ‘”mislead’” and ‘’to convince the trusting tobacco-consuming public of the industry’s ‘lasting interest in people’s health.”⁸⁸ Later it was asserted that the chief role of the CTR was to sell cigarettes.⁸⁹ In a 1998 law suit ‘’United States Vs Philip Morris’’ Judge Gladys Kessler stated that the TIRC/CTR was: ‘a sophisticated public relations vehicle based on the premise of conducting independent scientific research – to deny the harms of smoking and reassure the public.’⁹⁰

Jumping forward to today, at a time when state funding of research has been declining for decades and is actively being withdrawn in the USA, universities must increasingly rely on funding from charities and foundational trusts. The “Foundation for a Smoke Free World” (FSFW) describes itself as a non-profit organisation that operates “free from the control or influence of any third party” to fund research that will reduce world-wide demand for tobacco. One might argue, “So far so good!” However, at time of writing FSFW was solely funded by Philip Morris International, leading one to wonder what silent pressures might be exerted on institutions that took up the offer of funding.⁹¹

Fossil Fuels

In relation to climate change, as described above, it is now known that ExxonMobil had full knowledge of global warming as long as forty years ago but suppressed the findings and then engaged in a policy of denial and delay. Economic consultants who were presented to the media and public as independent were in fact funded by the fossil fuel industry. These consultants developed models that inflated the predicted costs of dealing with global warming and ignored the benefits of taking immediate action. Franta (2011) argues that these supposedly independent consultants played a key role in undermining major climate initiatives over decades, such as carbon pricing and participation in international climate agreements. The fossil fuel industry actively denigrated scientific findings, misled regulators and engaged in a massive campaign to hide their destruction of habitats and the threat of continued use of fossil fuels to life on earth under a veneer of greenwash (Oreskes & Conway, 2010). Moreover frequent assertions made by U.S. policy-markers and the media that climate science on global warming was highly uncertain were entirely false (Oreskes, 2004).

In the early noughties the fossil fuel industry began to turn exploit huge oil and gas reserves stored in shale deposits in the USA and Canada. Anthony Ingraffea was amongst the scientists who developed the commercial process called fracking. To begin with Ingraffea subscribed to the almost universally shared view that shale gas is an alternative to oil and gas as it produces much less carbon dioxide. What he had not factored was that the process of fracking, distribution and consumption of gas also leads to emissions of methane, which has a proportionately much more damaging effect on climate than coal and oil. To put this into perspective if emissions of methane are more than 3 percent of the total from fracking, then “natural” gas production will contribute more to global warming than oil or coal. Ingraffea moved to Cornell University where he co-authored a paper with a colleague warning of the dangers of methane leakage (Howarth et al. 2011). The paper which was leaked before publication and drew furious criticism from some academic colleagues and from industry.⁹² Until recently, a Google search for this paper would have brought up a highly critical response from the Natural Gas Alliance which represents the fracking industry. Strangely, when I tried to access the paper which had two thousand citations just now,I drew a blank response from the Springer Link website. Following publication of the paper Howarth and others were followed, their activities filmed, details of their homes were released to the public and their mail was stolen.⁹³ Howarth and Ingraffea have continued to reiterate their concern in relation to the use of fracking for “natural” gas, that this will not act as a bridge from coal and oil to “clean” energy but will exacerbate global heating by adding methane to the atmosphere.⁹⁴

Chemicals

Big Oil is not the only industry to use consultants to further its cause. Chemical companies routinely hire scientific consulting firms such as Exponent, ChemRisk, Ramboll, and Gradient to produce studies disputing the hazards of products for lawmaking and litigation (Michaels, 2020). A systematic review of the influence of industry sponsorship of university research found that this narrowed the agenda to support policies with commercial applications and to ignore other pressing public health concerns (Fabbri et al. 2018).

Medicine

The number of authors who have raised concern about the increasing penetration of academic medical research by the pharmaceutical industry had reached epidemic proportions (forgive the pun) long before Covid struck (Healy & Cattell, 2003; Crespo & Dridi, 2007, Chan & Fisher, 2008; Cohen, 2008; Krimsky, 2008; Fanelli, 2009; Grant, 2009; Angell, 2010; Goldacre, 2010, Gutstein, 2009; Healy, 2012; Brownlee, 2015). As mentioned earlier Angell (2010) stepped down as editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, but not before writing an editorial entitled “Is Academic Medicine for Sale.’ She described how until the 1980s, drug companies simply funded research and waited until this was published. However, since then academia has become more dependent on industry and consequently academics are now little more than ‘hired hands who supply human subjects and collect data according to instructions from their corporate paymasters.’ Medical centres increasingly act as if their main objective is to meet the needs of industry.

According to one study, the majority of articles on lucrative pharmaceutical drugs in leading medical journals are likely to be wholly or partially ghostwritten (Healy and Cattell, 2003). “Ghost management” refers to the control of the entire research process by corporate interests. For those conversant with the cosy accommodation between the pharmaceutical industry and the academy in the USA, when the scandal broke over the marketing of Oxycontin, the reaction was not one of horror, but of why it took so long for something like this to happen. Given this, it is concerning that three big pharmaceutical companies formed partnerships with major universities in the UK in 2016.

The corporatization of higher education has led to a number of articles claiming systematic research bias that has compromised the values that have historically defined scientific research. Academics in finance have also been criticised for having bought into neoliberal rhetoric about efficient markets and by failing to spot the signs of the catastrophic 2008 global financial crash.⁹⁵ Colander et al (2007) argued the crisis was not foreseen because of a systematic failure by academic economists to construct models which omit the key factors which determine events in the real world. Brownlee (2015) ventured further to argue that the ideals of education have been degraded by corporatisation where academics are no longer free agents who are able to research their personal interests buthave been reduced to employees whose role is to meet the targets laid down for them by their ‘line’ managers.

Engage in Information Warfare

Information warfare involves utilising the full gamut of communication techniques from lobbying, public relations and corporate image advertising through to covert social media campaigns such as that involving Cambridge Analytica in the US election of 2015.

Astroturf marketing

Astroturfing can be a potent means to convince the general public that there is widespread support for a particular viewpoint that is actually lacking which is congenial to the interests of corporations. While its roots probably go back long before this event, it is most prominently associated with the ingenious and infamous staging of the “torches of freedom march” by PR guru Edward Bernays. The aim was to increase the US market for cigarettes by removing the taboo over women smoking in public. To achieve this, Bernays hitched the feminist demand for freedom to smoke to the call for women’s suffrage, which was the burning issue of the day.⁹⁶

In response to the circulation of An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, which summoned attention to the perils of climate change, a twenty-nine-year-old from Beverley Hills produced the spoof “Al Gore’s Penguin Army.⁹⁷ On investigation, it turned out that the spoof had actually been produced by the DCI lobbying and PR group employed by Exxon Mobil. California Drivers Alliance and Washington Consumers for Sound Fuel Policy sprang up rather suddenly in the western United States. On investigation in 2014, it was found that these were amongst fifteen advocacy groups set up by the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), which included ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Occidental. WSSPA used these fake groups as the basis for its claim for grassroots support against legislation on fossil fuel emissions.⁹⁸

More far reaching was the campaign launched by Koch Industries, one of the largest private companies in the USA which owns thousands of miles of oil and gas pipeline. This was prompted when Charles and David Koch learned about the Obama government ‘Cap and Trade’ Bill, that sought to curb US carbon emissions. Koch had earlier formed Americans for Prosperity in 2004, which it then mobilised with the aim to ill the legislation through the dual strategy of a grassroots campaign and by targeting members of Congress. AFP, which now claims 2.3 million members, describes itself as engaging in “broad-based grassroots outreach to advocate for long-term solutions to the country’s biggest problems that prevent people from realizing their incredible potential”.⁹⁹ From its actions, the main “problems” it has identified include labour unions, healthcare reform and above all, legislation to prevent global heating. In 2008, AFP embarked on the “Hot Air Tour”, using a hot air balloon to travel nationwide to promote the slogan, “Global Warming Alarmism: Lost Jobs, Higher Taxes, Less Freedom.’

Corporate image advertising

When I worked briefly for an agency linked to Market and Opinion Research International (MORI) it was ruled over by Bob Worcester. Bob, who was trained at Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), enthusiastically promoted the formula “familiarity = favourability” to corporations such as Hoechst, Ciba-Geigy and ICI, that often maintain a “low-profile”. The gist of his spiel was that if the name of your corporation seems familiar to the average Joe, then they are more likely to think favourably of it in the unlikely case of a leakage from one of your production plants or God forbid, if a plant were to explode! Conversely, if they know nothing about you, they will look for blood. Bob’s aim was of course to persuade executives in these behemoths to invest in an expensive advertising campaign to promote their corporate image, and to monitor this regularly. You are probably familiar with bland statements taken out as one page advertisements by corporations you know little about that inform you of how much good they are doing in the world. In this context I was surprised to hear the announcement from British Petroleum, which had extensively employed corporate image advertising, that it was withdrawing its, Possibilities Everywhere campaign. It was difficult to understand the reason why; was it because the corporation was now ‘high-profile’ and well-known for all the wrong reasons? In a follow-up to the announcement Geoff Morrell, executive vice chair of communications and advocacy at BP wrote that this did not mean that they would stop all advertising, but rather would advocate their “net zero” ambition to, “actively advocate for progressive climate policies, including through advertising”.¹⁰⁰

Combative advertising

In several papers Supran and Oreskes illustrate how the fossil fuel industry successfully deployed combative advertising over four decades to undermine the consensus reached by IPCC scientists (International Panel for Climate Change) by creating uncertainty.¹⁰¹ Together with other tools of information warfare such as greenwashing, this aimed to defuse the stark warning from the IPCC, that the only way for humanity to avoid catastrophe is to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. The authors mention how, when summoned before the US Congress in 2021 to apologize for their egregious campaign of misinformation, the CEOs of the six big oil corporations lied under oath. Survey evidence suggests that the industry campaign has been effective, as even in 2020, while 72 percent of the American public acknowledged that the climate is changing, just 57 percent agreed that this is caused by human activity (Marlon et al., 2020).

The Mobilization of Bias

The fundamental principles of conditioned power were laid down by J.B. Watson and B.F. Skinner whom Zuboff (2019) credits for the development of instrumentation power. Although Watson was apparently not a stellar adman when he worked for J Walter Thompson, his theory of classical conditioning explains the widespread use of deficit-solution advertising based on fear and anxiety “appeals”. As pointed out by Pasi Falk(1994), if consumption was just about the satisfaction of needs then advertising would simply inform people of where they can obtain what they require to satisfy those needs. Mainly aimed towards women advertisers first identify or invent a deficit (foul breath, smelly armpits), prior to offering the commodity as the solution towards an imagined perfect self, (‘halitosis? – buy Listerine!’/ ‘BO? Buy Lifebuoy!’). Sometimes the product itself is designed to induce anxiety in this who do not possess it, as for instance when the driver of a small compact observes the rapidly looming form of an SUV approaching in the rear-view mirror.¹⁰²

Operant conditioning has a much wider range of application than its classical cousin by linking primary to secondary stimuli into the chains that form habitual routines.¹⁰³ The rules of the ’drive-thru’, once a novelty in Britain are now taken for granted and we similarly been trained to follow the chains of secondary and primary reinforcers to check our goods at the supermarket and to pre-print our boarding pass and weigh and load our luggage at the airport. The organization of physical and online retail spaces relies on constant surveillance of who visits the store/site in terms of their demographic and lifestyle profile, at what time, and for how long, the nature of their search process, the assortment they select and purchase and how this compares to previous visits, their price elasticity, responsiveness to promotions, return rates, and so forth. Added to this physical and virtual retailers seek to understand the meaning of time pressure (the difference between real and perceived time) on the individual. Dataveillance is used to monitor employees, for instance, sales agents in insurance and real estate with high levels of emotional intelligence are better revenue generators (Kidwell et al., 2011). Aware that customers can find surveillance “intrusive and creepy” Ruckenstein and Granroth (2019) developed the concept of “intimacy of surveillance” to argue for a nuanced idea that this can also involve care and what users want.

Probably the most widely referenced forms of operant conditioning today are the reinforcement schedules built into social media algorithms that drive consumer behaviour to produce valuable data exhaust (Zuboff, 2019). Zuboff likens the dynamic of surveillance capitalism to the game Pokemon Go, where the real intent to monetize granular information from individual preferences is disguised as ‘free’ and ‘fun’. Can this behaviour by FAANG be described as a conspiracy against unwitting users of Facebook, X, Instagram or Tiktok? While there has been a lot of public disquiet about the effects of social media use on the mental health of children, the general question of surveillance has not aroused much public discussion. Naomi Klein (2023) mentions a guide by the European Commission, which defines a conspiracy theory as, ‘the belief that certain events or situations are secretly manipulated behind the scenes by powerful forces with negative intent.’ Klein makes a good point in noting that the definition omits the most important aspect of a conspiracy theory, which is whether or not the theory is false or unproven. Her point is that there is ample evidence that many of the actions and events that have steered our lives in the past and which continue to do so today have indeed been subject to covert manipulation by “powerful forces” with negative and sometimes devastating effects for people and for the environment.

Given the flood of reports over the years of industry cabals constituting ‘Big X’ or ‘Big Y’ meeting behind the scenes to ensure the continuation of business as usual, deploying versions of the ‘playbook” by spreading blatant lies, gladhanding politicians, cajoling or threatening experts who threaten their narrative, deploying their legal muscle by issuing SLAPPs to hound investigative reporters and citizen critics, and so on, is it any surprise that today we are awash in a sea of conspiracy theories where the blatant truth must constantly be denied? Given its antics over the years in seeking to manipulate research in its interests is it any wonder that so many people were highly sceptical of the claims made by the pharmaceutical industry during the Covid pandemic? Additionally, the co-option of academics has done a lot to destroy the reputation of the academic as a neutral observer who stands about the corporate fray. On a more optimistic note it is argued that exposure of the influence of corporate interests on the reporting of science today will educate the citizens and consumers of tomorrow to be more wary of misinformation and disinformation campaigns that appear to be based on scientific logic (Waymer & Hill, 2023).

Corporate misinformation is just one element of a mediascape that has for some time undermined truth through what Giddens calls institutional reflexivity, or constant churn as to what it is that constitutes the good life. Some make the rather obvious point that conspiracy theorists are less likely to engage in politics than others or to reduce their carbon footprint (Jolley & Douglas, 2014). Others contend that personality characteristics such as narcissism play a role in those drawn to conspiracy theories (Cichoka et al 2022). That some see conspiracies everywhere also serves the interests of power, that are so close to our noses that we cannot see them although they are so pungent we should surely detect something malodorous. In my experience most of us get more than a whiff of this but choose to ignore it because to do so would defeat our perceived self-interest. For instance, when I mentioned the scurrilous surveillance of Facebook in gathering and monetising her “data exhaust” to my sister she rolled her eyes in response, as in her view Facebook was welcome to gather what to her is a mountain of trivia, so long as it this is “free”. While some might argue that she obviously didn’t get a grip on the “Big Picture” and its consequences, how many of those who supposedly know better stay clear of such engagement? Of course another argument is that given her extensive use of this platform for family and social engagements, between Facebook and ?, there is no choice.

Today, critics such as Naomi Klein themselves brands, although she has sufficient insight to recognize this and confront it. When discussing the differences between her position and that of her doppelganger Naomi Wolf, Klein thinks that the most telling is that Wolf, who is a liberal, sees the handiwork of conspiratorial cabals everywhere, whereas she, Klein, sees nothing more than the everyday operation of capitalism. Wolf became famous for arguing in The Beauty Myth that the beauty industry was a conspiracy by men to keep women in their place.¹⁰⁴ Klein quotes a passage from Wolf which goes, ‘Somehow, somewhere, someone must have figured out that [women] will buy more things if they are kept in the self-hating, ever-failing, hungry, and sexually insecure state of being aspiring ‘beauties’”.¹⁰⁵ However, where Wolf explains the use of anxiety appeals by marketers as a male plot to keep women in their place, Klein sees it instead as simply, “just an example of plain old capitalism doing its thing, finding new and novel ways to commodify every aspect of life.”¹⁰⁶

From the above we are presented with two arguments In relation to conditioned power, one based on patriarchal exploitation and the other on capitalism. The evidence seems to have tilted in favour of Klein in the years since Wolf wrote The Beauty Myth because today it is young men who are under pressure as never before to have a toned, slim but muscled body, teeth that are whiter than white, and coiffed hair.¹⁰⁷ Klein perhaps puts her finger on the essential difference between reformist and radical thought. The mobilization of bias is in many respects similar to the concept of ideology as formulated by Althusser. Given this, a person may actually come to believe in what is against their interest as Wolf suggests, in relation to women who succumb to the beauty myth. Radical explanations reject the idea that such myths are dreamt up and perpetuated by a male cabal but are rather systemic and woven into the fabric of capitalism.

Conclusion

Consideration of the second dimension of power is important as it focuses attention on the construction of barriers against the inclusion or participation of consumers or their representative groups concerning matters that are important to their wellbeing. In the above I have focused narrowly on the role played by corporations and entire industries that have sought to prevent the truth about the harm caused by their products from being made public ,and have particularly highlighted the role played by the mobilization of bias in serving the interests of corporations to the detriment of citizens and consumers.

A lot more is now known about the mechanisms employed in the operation of the second dimension of power. From cases involving industries that produce lead, tobacco, alcohol, food, medicines, chemicals and fossil fuels amongst others, it is not that grievances are entirely excluded from discussion but rather that decisions are deferred. Advertising is employed to ensure quiescence amongst consumers and the general public, for instance, by promoting smoking as just one risk amongst many that is also pleasurable and enjoyable; or that in the face of the climate crisis, technology will come to the rescue; or by arguing that beer is a ‘social lubricant’ in seeking to forestall legislation for alcoholic beverages to carry cancer warning labels..[2]  Secondly, whatever the problem, it is individualised by laying it at the door of the consumer. Here consumer ‘freedom of choice’ is accorded sacral status and solutions, so that for instance, the response to rising levels of obesity and Type-2 diabetes, is to argue over what kind warning labels or ‘traffic light’ system will best inform the consumers of potential harm.  Third, individuals and organisations brave enough action against a corporation or an industry whose product or a process that has been found to cause harm to consumers or to third parties will be met with a formidable corporate response that will include a raft of measures.  Fourth, politicians will be co-opted to join the industry side and attempts will be made to co-opt scientists and academics, to ensure that reported findings are favourable, or at least innocuous, to the interests of industry. Finally, in the face of this seemingly overwhelming power of corporations, some individuals will simply anticipate defeat and give up.

While a lot is indeed known about the strategy and tactics of non-decisionmaking, the problem is that the cases we know about happened some time ago. Reading these accounts I was struck by the pervasive feeling I was in the dust-cloud formed by a herd of buffalo that were out of control and rampaging somewhere up ahead, documenting the resultant chaos and carnage caused in their wake, but never catching up. A current instance of the operation of a mechanism that aims to prevent issues from entering the decision-making process by changing the “rules of the game”, is the gerrymandering of electoral districts in Texas at the prompting of Donald Trump[1].

I wondered whether the case of Sammy discussed in chapter five might pass muster as an example of conditioned power? Sammy truly believes that he is free to choose, even though the choices he ends up making are ill-informed, capricious and wasteful and he relies absolutely on others to serve the most basic of his needs. But then aren’t we all convinced that we are free to choose and aren’t most of us also to some extent complicit with industry in knowingly ignoring the messages promoted by public health campaigns?¹⁰⁸ For instance, while the tobacco industry acted egregiously by advertising smoking as just another risk and that we should enjoy our lives now, government agencies warned at the same time of the dangers of smoking, through gruesomely illustrative health campaigns.¹⁰⁹ While as consumers, we are directly implicated in being tied to that which we find pleasurable and dangerous, which we paradoxically convince ourselves is the very thing that makes life worth living, requires consideration of human psychology, and the attraction for many of jouissance over health.

Returning to the case of Sammy, Steven Lukes, whose case for three dimensional power is discussed next, argues that Bachrach and Baratz assumes that B’s interests are what B takes them to be. For Lukes this is inadequate, as A can also exercise power over B, “by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants”.’Luke’s page 23. This is discussed next.

References and Further Reading

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Alistair B A Boxall1, Caroline Swan1, John Wilkinson1, Nicole McGimpsey, Hannah Evans2, Megan Kirton2, Rowan Stanforth2, Catherine Gunby2 Lydia Niemi3, Mark Taggart3, Charlotte Robison-Smith4, Eve Tarring4Michelle Bloor5, Caroline Gauchotte-Lindsay5 (2025). Concentrations of Trifluoroacetic Acid (TFA) in UK Surface Waters: Fidra, University of York.

¹ Bacrach & Baratz, (1962: 949).

² Bachrach & Baratz, (1962: 950).

³ Quotation attributed to Professor Schattschneider, (Bachrach & Baratz, 949). Italics in original.

⁴ Bachrach & Baratz, (1962: 949).

⁵ This has particular significance today as I write this in early August 2024 when, spurred on by false propaganda, thousands of the disaffected in Britain and Northern Ireland rampaged through the streets burning the homes and businesses of immigrants, Muslims and others the mob considered “unpatriotic”…. As I re-write this in June 2025, another mob in Ballymena burns out immigrants whilst the drug barons who stirred up this sentiment looked on contented. Re-visiting this for a third time in August, English and Scottish nationalists have taken to copying the Northern Irish by hoisting their national flag on every available lamppost.

⁶ Paulson, K. (2025). What you need to know about Trump’s settlement with Paramount. Free Speech Center, Middle Tennessee State University, 2nd July.

⁷ Quotes are from Grimes, C. (2025). Paramount’s $8bn. sale to Skydance after his ousting raises concerns about politics in US media. Financial Times, 26th/27th July, 11. The relevant Stephen Colbert show may still be available to view on Youtube.

⁸ Youngs, I. & K. Razzall (2025), US TV hosts back Kimmel as Trump threatens networks. BBC News, 19th September.

⁹ Bachrach & Baratz, (1975, 901).

¹⁰ “Antifa” is not an organisation but is the label used to describe a dispersed social movement that consists of a number of heterogeneous groupings.

¹¹ Shearer, E., K. Eddy, M. Lipka, & K.E. Matsa,(2025). The Political Gap in Americans’ News Sources, Exploring use of and trust in 30 sources across U.S. political lines. Pew Research Center, 10th June. The White House, (2025). Designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, 22nd September.

¹² Bachrach & Baratz, (1975, 904).

¹³ McKinsey, (2023). Consumers care about sustainability - and back it up with their wallets, 6th Feb. One wonders about the situation today in 2025.

¹⁴ Azjen, (1991).

¹⁵ Chatzidakis et al. (2007).

¹⁶ See Dawson (2005, 14) Quote from from Veblen, T. (1964 [1923]) Absentee ownership and business enterprise in recent times: the case of America, Augustus M. Kelley,, 309-310)

¹⁷ Some today are turning back to Mills to argue that in today’s climate elites have hollowed out social institutions in the drive for profit-making opportunities and in doing so have shredded rules and programmes that once offered basic protections for all citizens (Gautney, 2023).

¹⁸ Source: Galbraith, 1967: 85/86.

¹⁹ Mills (1956, 3-4, in Lukes, (2021, 6).

²⁰ This argument has resonances to Althusser’s explanation of the transmission of ideology through Ideological State Apparatuses such as the church, the school and the family.

²¹ Source: Galbraith, (1984: 113)

²² Source: Galbraith, (1967): based on chapters 15-19, 34 & 35.

²³ There is similar to arguments leading to the formation of of the shareholder rights movement which are discussed in chapter six.

²⁴ Source: Galbraith, (1967: 210).

²⁵ Gans (2017).mentions that these were AT&T, General Motors, Standard Oil, IBM, Texaco, DuPont, Sears, General Electric, Gulf Oil, and Kodak. Gans, J. (2017. 50 Years Ago an Economist Worried About Unchecked Corporate Power. Here’s What His Theory Got Wrong. Harvard Business Review, 22nd August.

²⁶ See Baudrillard, (1988) and Leiss, (1978). I discuss these briefly in chapter three of Consuming Behaviour, (Desmond, 2003) and on Consuming Needs and Values. Additionally, Trentmann, (2017) provides a good discussion of various faults in Galbraith’s argument.

²⁷ Bachrach & Baratz, (1975, 904).

²⁸ Bachrach & Baratz, 1962: 952).

²⁹ See also Greer, (1974).

³⁰ Vulliamy, E. (2011). How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gang. The Observer, 3rd. April. What is particularly striking is that as is often the case whistleblowers were punished.

³¹ Foreign Policy Centre (2023). Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, an open source news agency. https://fpc.org.uk/eliot-higgins-founder-of-bellingcat-an-open-source-news-agency/

³² Lukes, (2021: 27-28)

³³ Fitzpatrick, S. (2025) Diary, London Review of Books, 25th September, 44.

³⁴ Other prominent whistleblowers are Erin Bronkovitch, who discovered that Pacific Gas & Electric had been poisoning the small town of Hinkley’s Water for over thirty years; Mark Whitacre, who exposed his company’s role in price-fixing; Jeffrey Wigand, who publicly stated that the tobacco industry had long been aware of the addictive properties of nicotine; Howard Wilkinson, who in 2018, reported on the $238 billion laundering of oligarch assets by Danske Bank; Sharon Watkins, who exposed the Enron fraud in 2001/2; Cynthia Cooper, who exposed WorldCom; Antoine Deltour, who passed information on how Amazon and Dyson avoid tax liability; Osita Mba, who in 2011 exposed the ‘sweetheart’ deal between the UK tax authority and Goldman Sachs, and Michael Woodford, who exposed the $1 billion fraud at Olympus. It is noteworthy that other forms of denunciation are controversial, as in Daniel Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and Washington Post in 1971, and Erick Snowden’s leak in 2013 to Wikileaks. Yet other are frowned upon as closer to ‘snitching’ especially when family are involved, as in the case of the Unabomber Ted Kacynski who was informed on by his brother.

³⁵ MH17 The Open Source Evidence A bell¿ngcat Investigation. https://www.bellingcat.com/app/uploads/2015/10/MH17-The-Open-Source-Evidence-EN.pdf

³⁶ He mentions Baumgartner et al., (2009, 257-258 ) In arguing that a disconnect exists between the remit of lobbyists funded by the wealthy and the concerns of the citizenry.

³⁷ According to these sources most funding for the Climate Change Counter Movement (CCCM). came from “Donors’ Trust” which conceals its funding. Donors Trust and Scaife, Bradley and Koch family foundations. are “Donor Advised Funds” which channel and anonymise donations to CCCM although the grants they make and received can be tracked.

³⁸ Brulle et al., (2021, 17).

³⁹ Ibid., 17.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 16.

⁴¹ McAdam, (2017, 199).

⁴² Kovarik, (2005).

⁴³ The effects of lead poisoning were known from at least the seventh century AD.

⁴⁴ Drasch, 1982).

⁴⁵ Kovarick, B. (1994). Charles F. Kettering and the discovery of tetraethyl lead. Presented to the Society of Automotive Engineers, Fuels & Lubricants Division conference, Baltimore. See section on Early warnings on lead poisoning.

⁴⁶ Markowitz, G. & D. Rosner (2000: 42).

⁴⁷ Markowitz, G. & D. Rosner (2000: 44).

⁴⁸ PUBLIC LAW 91-695-JAN. 13, (1971). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-84/pdf/STATUTE-84-Pg2078.pdf

⁴⁹ Reyes, (2007).

⁵⁰ See Nevin, (2000) and Higney, et al., Hanley, (2020) for a meta-analysis which claims that the reduction in lead pollution may be responsible for the reduction of between 7 percent and 28 percent of homicide in the USA. In Lucifer Curves, Rick Nevin (2007) argues that preschool lead poisoning fuelled crime waves over the centuries. 1941-1975 gasoline lead use explained 90 percent of the 1964-1998 variation in the USA violent crime rate, and paint lead trends from 1879-1938 explained a 10-fold rise and subsequent fall in the USA murder rate from 1900-1959.

⁵¹ This last sentence is more or less verbatim from Gottesfeld, (2022) as is the statistic about 16 percent.

⁵² White, T. (2022). Bad Dust. London Review of Books, 21st July: 43.

⁵³ See for example, Mauney, M. (W. Pacheco ed.), 2017, Johnson and Johnson facing asbestos talcum powder lawsuits. asbestos.com

⁵⁴ McCrumm, D. (2022). Money men: A hot startup, a billion dollar fraud, a fight for the truth. Bantam.

⁵⁵ Lanchester, Johm (2022). Fraudpocalypse. London Review of Books, 4th August: 3. I also bought a diesel car at the time!

⁵⁶ See Mauderly, (2001) and California Air Resources Board, Summary, Diesel Particulate Matter Health Impacts, for a timeline. https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/summary-diesel-particulate-matter-health-impacts

⁵⁷ Ewing, Jack (2018). 10 monkeys and a Beetle: Inside VW’s campaign for “clean diesel”. The New York Times, Jan. 25th. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/world/europe/volkswagen-diesel-emissions-monkeys.html

⁵⁸ Lanchester, (2022: 7).

⁵⁹ “Playbook” is now common currency to describe such actions. This section was written long before publication of The Playbook by Janet Jacquet (2020). See also, Union of Concerned Scientists, (2018). The Disinformation Playbook How Business Interests Deceive, Misinform, and Buy Influence at the Expense of Public Health and Safety, 18th May. https://www.ucs.org/resources/disinformation-playbook

⁶⁰ Bachrach & Baratz, (1975).

⁶¹ See theTobacco Masters Settlement Agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement

⁶² Michaels, (2008, 2020).

⁶³ O’Connor, A. (2015). Coca Cola funds effort to alter obesity battle.: emphasis on exercise. The New York Times, Aug. 10th. https://wallacehouse.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/OConnor.pdf

⁶⁴ NPR (2015). Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Downplay Diet's Role In Obesity. https://www.npr.org/2015/08/10/431343137/coca-cola-funds-scientists-who-downplay-diets-role-in-obesity?t=1660050973380

⁶⁵ Chevron and ExxonMobil were much less keen on renewables than their European counterparts (Pickl, 2019).

⁶⁶ Supran & Oreskes,( 2023).  Additionally, Supran and Oreskes (2021), found that, compared with Mobil advertorials, which promoted debate about climate science, and ExxonMobil Corp advertorials, which did the same or ignored it, Exxon's internal conversations focused on it.

⁶⁷ Murray, S. (2022). Former BP Head Reflects on His Call for Climate Action 25 Years Ago. Stanford Business, 5th July.

⁶⁸ Browne, John (2010). Beyond business: an inspirational memoir from a visionary leader. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, Orion Publishing.

⁶⁹ Landman, A. (2010). BP’s Beyond Petroleum campaign losing its sheen. The centre for media and democracy’s PR Watch.

⁷⁰ Jack, S. & F. Masud, (2025). BP shuns renewables in return to oil and gas. BBC News, 26th Feb.

⁷¹ See Billott, (2019). Also Rich, N. (2016). The lawyer who became Dupont’s worst nightmare. The New York Times, Jan. 6th. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html

⁷² A timeline and more detailed explanation of this case may be found at the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, USA (2020), Environmental lawyer who fought Chevron for oil pollution in Ecuador disbarred; legal experts form committee to monitor criminal contempt trial (https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/usa-environmental-lawyer-who-fought-chevron-for-oil-pollution-in-ecuador-disbarred-legal-experts-allege-judicial-misconduct/

⁷³ Kirsch, (2022, 338).

⁷⁴ The documentary was entitled Crude (Berlinger et al. 2009). See also, Goldhaber, M.D. (2014) Crude awakening, Rosetta Books. While the former were sympathetic to the cause of Rozinger, Paul Barrett was rather unsparing in his criticism, often referring to his personal idiosyncracies. See Barrett, P. (2014), Law of the Jungle: the $19 billion Legal Battle Over Oil in the Rain Forest and the Lawyer Who’d Stop at Nothing to Win.: Crown Publishers. Donziger sent a “Notice of Defamation” letter to Barrett and the publishers, alleging that the book contained “improperly sourced and possibly plagiarized material, is replete with factual inaccuracies, describes events that did not occur, and in other ways promoted information known by Barrett to be false and defamatory.”- Source, Harrison – see next footnote.

⁷⁵ Harrison, M. (2014) Book review, law of the jungle. Earth Rights, 6th October.

⁷⁶ International Tribunal rules in favour of Chevron in Ecuador case. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chevron-ecuador/international-tribunal-rules-in-favor-of-chevron-in-ecuador-case-idUSKCN1LN1WS

⁷⁷ These showed members of Donziger’s team discussing their contribution to the supposedly independent technical report (Kirsch, 2022, 344-345).

⁷⁸ Bronkovich, Erin (2022) This lawyer should be world-famous for his battle with Chevron – but he’s in jail. The Guardian, 8th Feb. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/08/chevron-amazon-ecuador-steven-donziger-erin-brockovich

⁷⁹ Woods, C (2025), Chevron’s pursuit of US lawyer Steven Donziger, LSJ Online. 5th Feb.

⁸⁰ O’Brien, (2024).

⁸¹ Open Secrets (2022). https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=E01

⁸² Greenpeace. Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Accessed August 2022. See also, Center for American Progress (2021). Climate deniers in the 117th Congress, March 30th. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/climate-deniers-117th-congress

⁸³ Taber, G. (1980). A case of crony capitalism. Time, April 21at.

⁸⁴ Yu & Yu, (2011).

⁸⁵Luscombe, R. (2025). Trump’s acceptance of Qatar jet gift is ‘definition of corruption’, senator says. The Guardian, 18th May. In August 2025, Adams, C. (2025). Billionaire Apple CEO Tim Cook Sucks Up to Trump With Tacky Gold Gift, Daily Beast, 7th August. Perhaps an all-time low was struck when Tom Baker of GMI presented Trump solid gold bust costing a reputed $55 million of his (Baker’s head), with mouth agape, quoting, “we are ready to get down and dirty”. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4HtLn0ieNbE

⁸⁶ Tobacco Tactics (2020). Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC). University of Bath. https://tobaccotactics.org/wiki/tobacco-industry-research-committee/#ttref-note-6

⁸⁷ Mangold, Tom, (1993). Pack of Lies, BBC Panorama, 10th May. IMDB.

⁸⁸ American Cancer Society, CA – Bulletin of Cancer Progress, March-April 1958: 71.

⁸⁹ Warner K.E. (1991) Tobacco industry scientific advisors: Serving society or selling cigarettes? Am J Public Health. Vol.81:839 842.

⁹⁰ United States District Court: Civil Action Number 99-2496 (GK) 1998.

⁹¹ See Enserink, (2018) and also Tobacco Tactics, (2024). Foundation for a smoke-free world. University of Bath, August.

⁹² For instance, Catles et al., (2012) argued that the findings were seriously flawed.

⁹³ Oza, A. (2020). Two Professors Faced Years of Harassment for Defying the Fossil Fuel Industry. Now, They Are Reframing the Discussion Around Fracking. The Cornell Daily, Nov. 16th.

⁹⁴ Howarth et al, (2015).

⁹⁵ Ferguson, Charles (2012) Heist of the century: university corruption and the financial crisis. Guardian, Monday, 21st May. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/may/21/heist-century-university-corruption. Accessed October 2012.

⁹⁶ Digital History. Torches of freedom campaign, University of Ottawa.

⁹⁷ Goldschein, S. (2011). 10 fake grassroots movements started by corporations to sway your opinion. Insider, September 30th. https://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movements-2011-9?r=US&IR=T

⁹⁸ Union of Concerned Scientists, (2017). How fossil fuel lobbyists used “astroturf” front groups to confuse the public. 17th October.

⁹⁹ https://americansforprosperity.org/join/

¹⁰⁰ Morrell, G. (2020). Didn’t bp say no more advertising?’ BP. 1st October.

¹⁰¹ See Supran, G. & N. Oreskes (2017a, 2017b, 2021) see also Supran & Oreskes, (2021). The Big Oil ads that told us climate change was nothing. The Guardian, Nov. 18th. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/the-forgotten-oil-ads-that-told-us-climate-change-was-nothing. This is also illustrated in a PBS Broadcast

¹⁰² Peretti, J. (2014). SUVs handwash and FOMO: how the advertising industry embraced fear. The Guardian, 6th July.

¹⁰³ Gordon Foxall and his colleagues at Cardiff University are the ‘go-to’ people for discussion of operant conditioning in marketing contexts ranging from habitual shopping to addiction. Foxall (2008) signalled a change in orientation by permitting a role for intention in his explanation.

¹⁰⁴ A variant of this was that the high fashion industry was dominated by gay men who sought to dress women so ludicrously that straight men would lose interest!

¹⁰⁵ Klein, (2024: 229).

¹⁰⁶ Klein, (2024: 229).

¹⁰⁷ Hobza et al., (2007); Murray & Lewis, (2014).

¹⁰⁸ Nordstrom J, L. Thunstrom, K Van ‘T Veld J.F. Shorgren & M. Ehmke, (2023).Strategic ignorance of health risk: its causes and policy consequences. Behavioural Public Policy. Vol. 7(1):83-114. doi:10.1017/bpp.2019.52

¹⁰⁹ Ainslie (1975) discusses the role played by temporal discounting which explains why messages such as ‘enjoy now, tomorrow is another day’ prove to be so alluring for addicts.