Kalle Lasn last summer launched the call to occupy Wall Street, spawning the global movement that has since spread to places as far apart as Amsterdam, Santiago de Chile and Seoul. Keen though the 69-year-old Canadian is to stay in the background, Radio Netherlands Worldwide correspondent Margot Minjon managed to interview the author and activist for our end of the year series “My Little Revolution”.

“Those who are using force against the Occupy movement are making the same mistake made by Tunisia’s former President Ben Ali or President Assad in Syria. This is a decisive moment: the Occupy movement is entering a more militant phase.” As the movement’s initiator, it’s easy to see why Lasn is furious at the way Occupy camps are being dismantled around the world.

Lasn is the co-founder of AdBusters Magazine and the Adbusters Media Foundation in Vancouver, which he describes as “an organisation that wants to throw a spanner in the wheels of contemporary culture.” Through its website, Adbusters.org, over 100,000 activists around the world stay in touch with each other.

Fiery
The call to occupy Wall Street appeared in the magazine on 13 July 2011: “We were very excited by the things that had happened in Tunisa and Egypt, and said: ‘Why can’t this happen everywhere?’” Fiery speaker that he is, it’s not hard to imagine him blandishing a banner and rousing a crowd to worldwide revolution.

Given their egalitarian ideals, AdBusters and the Occupy movement oppose naming leaders or spokespeople. Lasn, consequently, keeps a low profile, and usually refuses to meet journalists, only answering questions by phone or skype (without video). “All of us had more or less the same idea”, he keeps emphasising.

Paris
Nearly 70, Lasn nonetheless says: “We, the young people of the world, are wondering if this is the economic system we want.” He laughs. “When I was a student, in 1968, being leftwing was the coolest thing in the world. Who could have thought that a small disturbance in Paris’s Quartier Latin would appeal to the imagination of people around the world? The protest exploded, really ex-plo-ded, on hundreds of campuses, in hundreds of cities.”

He has been studying revolutionary movements and theories for the past forty years. During the first twenty years he made documentaries, and then helped found AdBusters. “I’m a revolutionary. I think you could say that, yes.”

Vietnam war
Born in Estonia, Lasn moved to the United States in 1968, where he joined the protests against the war in Vietnam. He was deeply impressed. “I’m struck by the similarities with 2011. Who would have thought that the occupation of a small park in New York would mark the beginning of similar actions all over the world?”
He was also surprised that things moved so fast. “We called for the occupation of Wall Street without knowing what would happen. But right after launching our call on our website, with the hashtag #Occupy Wall Street and tactical instructions, we could feel huge excitement. Super sexy! When it immediately spread from New York to Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Canada and the rest of the world, I thought: ‘Hallelujah! This isn’t just a little riot in New York! This is a global Tahrir movement! This is the real thing!’”

Robin Hood tax
What steps is the movement going to take next? AdBusters.org lists tactical instructions for further actions around the world. “This spring we’ll present crystal-clear demands. One of them is a Robin Hood tax. Financial transactions around the world involve 1.3 trillion dollars every day. We’re demanding a one percent tax—that’s billions of dollars every day that can be well spent.”

Some people are proposing a tax rate of ten percent. “You know, one percent is so reasonable that no one can be against it. Even the Pope has said he supports such a tax.” He laughs. “Once the one percent is accepted, and people realise concessions are being made, the door is wide open for more. Just wait and see.”

(cl/rk)

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