Post-election détournement: USA TODAY gets punk'd by anarchist designers.

In what appears to be a coordinated event across major (and minor) cities across the country, people walking by their USA TODAY box on the morning of November 5th saw some rather unexpected headlines: "Capitalism Wins at the Polls," "Anarchy Brewing in the Streets," and "2.3 Million Doing Time, GOP and Dems Agree: It's Not News," among others.

After a bit of digging, I found a post on infoshop.org about the plan:

The newly formed Unconventional Action Journalism Department is proud to announce the printing of a special edition election coverage broadsheet for release on November 5th, 2008. This double-sided newspaper-size publication, designed to serve as the front page of any corporate newspaper, will present dramatic post-election day coverage about the results of the presidential race. It will also include timely reporting from an anarchist perspective on the economic bailout and grassroots responses to the financial crisis, media consolidation, the prison industrial complex, and updates from the UAP newswire.

Thousands of these broadsheets will be printed and made available to corporate newspapers around the country, which will have the option of providing more “fair and balanced” coverage with this alternative front page. As of our press deadline, Unconventional Action media representatives in over a dozen cities have confirmed their participation in this effort to broaden post-election day coverage, with many more requests pouring in. Of course, the UA Journalism Department is aware that we cannot ensure that all requests for these papers come from corporate media outlets, but in the interest of providing the American public with thorough news coverage, we are willing to take this risk.

People all over the country have been noting their appearance.

This is a great example of détournement: taking well-known images, messages, and symbols and rearranging them in ways that convey a different (usually opposing) meaning. It's executed best when a cursory glance tells the viewer that everything is normal, but reveals some outrageous or unexpected elements upon closer inspection. From a design perspective, it's important to note that if this had been shoddily done, in MS Word or in cruddy black and white, the full effect would have been lost. The goal was for people to - for a split second at least - think that this was actually the USA TODAY cover, and it was actually telling us that capitalism won at the polls. While the term détournement originally comes from the Situationists, the idea is probably better known among the younger activist circles through "Culture Jamming," such as Adbusters' subversively-tweaked ads.

The Situationists argued that jarring cultural/social encounters were a key part in breaking the spell that modern consumer capitalism had over people, and that such jarring moments held the seeds of political and social possibility: they required people to examine the situation at hand without the preconditioned responses that society provides us.

For activists and organizers, this kind of sharp-edged satire is a useful tool, alongside more sincere propaganda. Often times all it takes is to make the implicit explicit. In this case, it's "capitalism wins at the polls": everyone knows that, but people react to the fact differently when it's spelled out in front of them - especially in as unexpected a place as a major newspaper. It provides an opening for people to start conversations that they would not otherwise have.

Now that ostensibly liberal politicians have gained control of both the legislative and executive branches of government, now is the perfect time to start promoting more radical solutions to the problems we all face. Bravo to those anonymous bands of activists who have fired this opening salvo.

So, folks: have you seen these covers in your city? I'd love to know just how far their reach was.