Yes Men, The (United States)

The Yes Men are a group of activists who engage in what they call “identity correction,” an activity where they represent an organization or corporation in a particular way in order to spur public critique of them. Since 2000, The Yes Men have “represented” several entities, both public (e.g., the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) and private (e.g., Dow Chemical) in different venues, such as lectures at trade conferences, on television, and on the World Wide Web. In these spaces, The Yes Men craft presentations intended to shock their audience.

Although they do not work alone, the most visible members of The Yes Men are Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno. In 1999, they created their first action, a website mocking Republican presidential nominee G. W. Bush. The website, http://gwbush.com, was an exact replica of the official website of the Bush Campaign except that it contained information very critical of the nominee. The Bush campaign filed an injunction to force The Yes Men's ISP to take the website offline. When this failed, Bush famously remarked, “There ought to be limits to freedom.”

Websites such as this are how The Yes Men got many of their identity correction opportunities. In 2000, for instance, Bichlbaum and Bonanno created the website http://gatt.org, a site very similar to the official World Trade Organization (WTO) website, yet containing information critical of globalization policy. The website proved such an effective copy that The Yes Men began receiving invitations for then WTO director-general Mike Moore to speak at various events. The Yes Men would then send a “representative,” that person always being Bichlbaum.

Bichlbaum has also appeared on CNBC as a WTO representative and as a Dow Chemical spokesman on BBC World. The latter opportunity came when The Yes Men were contacted through their fake Dow Chemical site (http://dowethics.com). Dow had bought Union Carbide (international) in 2001 and had refused any financial responsibility for India's 1984 Bhopal factory toxic leak disaster, when thousands died immediately and 200,000 were injured, with many more thousands dying prematurely over the years that followed, and with serious ongoing environmental destruction. Union Carbide had settled claims, but it was too little, too late for The Yes Men. Taking the opportunity in 2004 to speak for Dow on the 20th anniversary, they told the world Dow was selling Union Carbide and donating the resulting $12 billion to victims. The hoax was revealed about an hour later, but not until Dow stock briefly lost $2 billion in value.

The Yes Men rely to a large degree on media coverage to reach a larger audience. Critics argue that this is risky because there is no guarantee mainstream media will cover their activity in a favorable light, or at all. In this regard, The Yes Men's own media become extremely important as they help ensure that their message about the reasons for their actions are plainly expressed. Among The Yes Men's own media are two documentaries, [Page 552]The Yes Men (released with a companion book in 2003) and The Yes Men Fix the World (2009), as well as a website with pages detailing their numerous actions and the reasons for them.

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