Divide and Conquer: The Corporate Coup d’Etat

Thanks to Canadian filmmakers Mark Archbarand and Jennifer Abbott’s 2003 doc The Corporation (which was subsequently turned into the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by the film’s writer, University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan) I’ve long been aware that corporations have been granted personhood in the eyes of our law. (And been dismayed that though corporations are people, too, they rarely suffer serious consequences for breaking the law.)

So I was surprised by how utterly unnerved I felt during this year’s IDFA, when I caught the premiere of another Canadian doc, The Corporate Coup d’Etat. Emmy Award-winner Fred Peabody (All Government’s Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone) tackles the same topic as his countrymen’s earlier film, while updating it for the current worldwide mess we find ourselves in. Frighteningly, Peabody makes the compelling case that today’s rising authoritarianism and declining democracy can be traced right back to these faceless, if not nameless, “individuals.” And unlike catastrophes like climate change, stopping corporations is on nearly no nation’s global agenda.

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.