Twelve Characters in Search of an Apocalypse
[originally published in: Dark Mountain Issue 11 (Spring 2017)] TWELVE CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN APOCALYPSE I did the math I did the math. But I wish I hadn’t. It was right after Hurricane Sandy. Over a week-long binge I read everything I could find. I work downtown, you see. And they’d lost power, but uptown...
Don’t Wait for the Revolution—Live It
[originally published in: Yes Magazine, Issue 66, Summer 2013] We can’t create a better world if we haven’t yet imagined it. How much better then, if we are able to touch such a world, experience it directly, even live in it—if only to a partial degree and for a brief moment. This is the idea...
TRUTH IS A VIRUS: Meme Warfare and the Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)
TRUTH IS A VIRUS: Meme Warfare and the Billionaires for Bush (or Gore) Andrew Boyd [first published in: Cultural Resistance, Ed. Steven Duncombe, Verso, April 2002] “Truth is a Virus.” When I first saw this phrase, defiantly spray-painted on the walls of a suburban high-school, it thrilled me. So what if it was only a...
Why I love and hate Adbusters!
Why I love and hate Adbusters! I love Adbusters! I hate Adbusters! I love Adbusters! I hate Adbusters! Turning the pages of the glossy Vancouver quarterly, I’m like an obsessed teenager pulling petals out of a flower. I love Adbusters! I hate Adbusters! I love how they take the sly, slick, seductive genius of Madison...
THE MANUFACTURE OF DISSENT: What the Left Can Learn from Las Vegas
THE MANUFACTURE OF DISSENT: What the Left Can Learn from Las Vegas by Andrew Boyd and Stephen Duncombe Originally published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest – Volume 1, Issue 3, which later became the basis for Steve’s (excellent) book, Dream. Scholars take note: the concept of an “Ethical Spectacle” was thunked up by both...
Save Western Civilization now! Ask me how.
Not long ago, Western Civilization was at an impasse, so I wrote a book to move us forward. I didn't want to write it but I couldn't help myself. Let me explain...
The Web Rewires the Movement
[Originally appeared as the cover article in the August 4, 2003 edition of The Nation.] From MoveOn to meetup.com, the net is facilitating a new citizen insurgency The Battle in Seattle brought to the world’s attention a new global resistance movement that was not only made possible by the Internet but, as Naomi Klein has...
