Show Notes

Links to Grant’s Book:

Dark PR: How Corporate Disinformation Undermines Our Health and the Environment

https://www.amazon.com/DARK-PR-Corporate-Disinformation-Environment/dp/1990263488

https://darajapress.com/publication/dark-pr-how-corporate-disinformation-harms-our-health-and-the-environment 

In this episode, I am joined by Grant Ennis, a scholar and author of the book Dark PR: How Corporate Misinformation Undermines Our Health and the Environment. Grant shares the playbook of ”Dark PR” used by corporations to create and protect profitable ”catastrophes by design,” such as unhealthy food environments, rising road fatalities, and global warming.

Grant breaks down the nine devious frames corporations use to manipulate public perception and policy, shifting blame away from systemic issues and onto individuals. He argues that concepts like the ”carbon footprint,”are tools of ”victim blaming” that dilute support for meaningful political action, such as ending the $7 trillion in annual fossil fuel subsidies. The conversation explores why individual actions are often ineffective and how a focus on personal responsibility can undermine the collective organizing necessary for real change.

Here are the articles Grant referenced:

”The Tyranny of Structurelessness” by Jo Freeman

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

”If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution” by Vincent Bevins

https://vincentbevins.com/book2/

“Fuck Nuance” by Kieran Healy

https://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/fuck-nuance.pdf

Overview of the episode:

What is ”Dark PR”? Grant defines Dark PR as malicious public relations efforts that obscure the truth and undermine public well-being.

Catastrophes by Design: Grant explains how government policies, like subsidies for sugar, driving, and fossil fuels, intentionally create societal crises like obesity, car crash fatalities, and global warming.

The Nine Devious Frames: Grant outlines the corporate playbook for maintaining these profitable catastrophes:

Denialism: There’s no problem

Post-Denialism: Claiming something bad is actually good for you (e.g., ”Guinness is good for you”).

Normalization: Making a crisis seem normal (e.g., calling global warming ”climate change” to reduce public urgency).

Silver Boomerang: Promoting solutions that can backfire (e.g., telling people to exercise more to combat obesity, which can increase overeating)

Magic: Proposing unrealistic technological fixes (e.g., carbon capture storage).

Treatment Trap: Focusing on treating problems instead of preventing them (e.g., providing more insulin rather than fixing the unhealthy food environment).

Victim Blaming: Shifting responsibility from political structures to individuals (e.g., the carbon footprint).

Knotted Web: Arguing that a problem is too complex for simple solutions, which discourages clear-cut action. 

Multifactorial: Claiming a problem has too many causes to single one out, a tactic used by the tobacco industry to downplay the role of smoking in lung cancer. 

He continued with a discussion about Citizen Activism

Aggregate vs. Collective Action: Grant distinguishes between the ineffectiveness of aggregated individual actions and the power of organized, collective action that demands systemic change.

The Enemies of Collective Action:

Electoralism: The belief that democracy is only about voting, which leads to mobilization only around elections and demobilization afterward.

Mobilizationism: The misconception that simply showing up to protests is enough, rather than engaging in sustained, strategic organizing in smaller groups.

The Tyranny of Structurelessness: Grant discusses how social movements that reject formal hierarchies often become ineffective and unable to challenge highly organized industries.

Embracing Incongruence: Grant argues against purity tests for activists, stating that people should be encouraged to organize against harmful systems even if they work within them.