Hairy Hippies and Bloody Butchers

The Greenpeace Anti-Whaling Campaign in Norway

Juliane Riese

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781785335297
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Teoría social

In the popular imagination, no issue has been more closely linked with the environmental group Greenpeace than whaling. Opposition to commercial whaling has inspired many of the organization's most dramatic and high-profile "direct actions"—as well as some of its most notable failures. This book provides an inside look at one such instance: Greenpeace's decades-long campaign against the Norwegian whaling industry. Combining historical narrative with systems-theory analysis, author Juliane Riese shows how the organization's self-presentation as a David pitted against whale-butchering Goliaths was turned on its head. She recounts how opponents successfully discredited the campaign while Greenpeace struggled with internal disagreements and other organizational challenges, providing valuable lessons for other protest movements.

Chapter 1

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Antecedents

Greenpeace, Norway and Whales before the Greenpeace Whale Campaign in Norway

The reasons for the ‘whale wars’ between Greenpeace and Norwegians and for Greenpeace’s lack of success in Norway can only be understood if one knows at least a little about Greenpeace’s and Norwegians’ history. This chapter therefore accounts for the antecedents of the Greenpeace whale campaign in Norway.¹

Greenpeace: Origins

At its inception, Greenpeace was not a professional, hierarchical, environmental nonprofit organization, but a protest campaign rooted in the international peace and environmental movements. Starting in 1965, the U.S. military conducted a series of underground nuclear tests on the island of Amchitka, which belongs to the Aleutians, a U.S.-American island chain situated between Alaska and northeast Russia. The second of these tests, in 1969, provoked outrage and protest in Canada and particularly in Vancouver, the closest major Canadian city to the test site. Many feared that the bomb might trigger an earthquake which in turn might cause a tsunami that would hit Canada’s west coast. At this point, some Vancouver-based protesters formed an independent group to mount a campaign against the next Amchitka test, which was scheduled for October 1971. This new protest group was called the Don’t Make a Wave Committee (DMWC) (Zelko 2013: 65ff.; Bohlen 2001: Ch. 1; Hunter 2011).

The DMWC decided to sail a boat to the edge of Amchitka’s twelve-mile limit, the area under U.S. jurisdiction, daring the U.S. to either abandon the test plans or tow the boat out of the test area, an action that would effectively constitute an act of piracy. The DMWC would work to draw as much international media attention as possible to the boat’s voyage. Famously, the protesters were struggling to come up with a name for the boat, until one of them called Irving Stowe, when leaving a meeting in 1970, flashed his usual V sign and said ‘Peace,’ to which another called Bill Darnell replied, ‘Make it a green peace!’ (Zelko 2013: 68f.; Bohlen 2001: Ch. 1–2; Hunter 2011).

The Greenpeace never made it to Amchitka in 1971, but its voyage did attract considerable media attention and certainly contributed to raising public awareness of the issues it was highlighting (Bohlen 2001: Ch. 2–3; Zelko 2013: 106ff.; Hunter 2011). It also led to the establishment of the new Greenpeace Foundation in 1972 (Zelko 2013: 106ff.). The Greenpeace’s crew members represented the ideas and traditions that would influence the Greenpeace organization: ‘Quakerism, the radical pacifism of the American peace movement, the New Left and the counterculture, Marshall McLuhan’s theories of mass communication, and various strands of environmentalism, all united by a commitment to nonviolent direct action and a shared belief in the revolutionary potential of holistic ecology’ (ibid.: 77).

According to Zelko (2013), the U.S. peace movement owes much to Quakers. Quakers were pacifists and committed to nonviolent protest, because they believed that every person had direct access to God and so was a potential channel of truth. Violence against people, therefore, would only suppress love, truth and freedom (p. 13; see also Bigelow 1959: Ch. 3). A Quaker form of protest is ‘bearing witness’, expressing one’s disapproval of an activity and putting moral pressure on the perpetrators simply through one’s presence at the scene (Zelko 2013: 13). A group of Quakers started the Committee for Nonviolent Action Against Nuclear Weapons (CNVA) which in 1958 organized a yacht called the Golden Rule to sail into a U.S. nuclear test zone. The yacht’s crew was stopped in Hawaii and the action never managed to attract much media attention, but it became legendary among Quakers and pacifists nationwide and inspired similar actions in the years to come, one of which, of course, was the Greenpeace action (Zelko 2013: 16ff.; Bigelow 1959; Bohlen 2001: 28; Hunter 2011: 25; on the Quaker influence on Greenpeace, see also Carmin and Balser 2002).

Those who were active in the peace movement were influenced by the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust and by the fear of nuclear war. Beginning in the 1950s, these fears became entwined with concerns about environmental contamination, due to events such as the discovery of traces of radioactive substance in mother’s milk throughout North America (Zelko 2013: 29ff.; Bohlen 2001: Ch. 1). During the 1960s, an increasing number of people both in the U.S. and Canada came to adopt a holistic, ecological, biocentric rather than anthropocentric worldview, and became active in groups such as the Sierra Club (Zelko 2013: 33ff.; Bohlen 2001: Ch. 1; see also Zelko 2007). (Initially, it was thought that the protest against the 1971 nuclear test on Amchitka could be organized by the Sierra Club, until this idea turned out to be impractical; Zelko 2013: 67f.; Bohlen 2001: 27–28.) A holistic ecological perspective also came to be an important part of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, which some individuals who would be influential in the Greenpeace organization represented (Zelko 2013: 44ff.; see also Hunter 1971).

Different individuals who became involved in Greenpeace subscribed to various perspectives and cultural traditions, ranging from Zen Buddhism and the New Left to Gestalt therapy (Zelko 2013: Ch. 1–3; Bohlen 2001: Ch. 1). All of these perspectives called into question the values of mainstream Western society, its ‘notions of progress, [economic] growth, and security’ guaranteed by the military-industrial complex (Zelko 2013: 52; see also Carmin and Balser 2002). They thus had important aspects in common. However, internal dissension and conflict have been characteristic of Greenpeace from the very beginning (Dale 1996; see also Zelko 2013; Hunter 2011).

One disagreement among the 1971 Greenpeace crew was about how to campaign for the necessary change in society most effectively. One faction proceeded from the belief that ecology was the basis of a new form of consciousness, one that implied a ‘transformation of the entire working relationship with the natural world’ (Hunter 1971: 123). It was necessary to adopt this new form of consciousness in order to avoid environmental catastrophe (ibid.: 121). This notion became connected with the ideas of communication and media theorist Marshall McLuhan (Dale 1996; Zelko 2013), whom Bob Hunter, a Greenpeace crew member who would be influential in Greenpeace during the 1970s, called ‘our greatest prophet’ (Hunter 1971: 221). McLuhan argued that thanks to modern technology and communication media, humans now lived in ‘a global village’ (McLuhan and Fiore 2001: 63) where distance in terms of time and space between them had lost relevance.² People everywhere knew about each other, were involved with and responsible for each other (p. 24). Politics was therefore changing; the mass media audience could be used as a creative, participating force (p. 22).

Greenpeacers like Hunter thought that the new, holistic, ecological consciousness that was expressed by and through the environmental movement (Hunter 1971: 119) could use the system of mass communication, TV, radio and so on, as a ‘delivery system’ for ‘mindbombs’. The objective of firing such ‘mindbomb’ messages or impressions was ‘to change the consciousness of the “enemy”, meaning those still in the grip of the old suicidal modes of consciousness’ (Hunter 1971: 216f.). Hunter believed that this revolutionary strategy (p. 221) was incredibly powerful: ‘Not even a hydrogen bomb can affect so many people at once [as television]’ (p. 218). Would-be ecorevolutionaries had to acquire media savvy: ‘Most environmental groups are so busy beating their chests in righteous indignation that they don’t take the time to find out what makes the media tick. [… But] You’ve got to prove your case [in the media]’ (Hunter in 1977 in an article in The Province, quoted in Weyler 2004: 452).

Hunter wanted to create ‘a mythology for the environmental movement … that would resonate with millions of people and help bring about [a] change in mass consciousness’ (Zelko 2013: 79; see also Weyler 2004: 228). Other founding members of Greenpeace thought that this was somewhat impractical (Zelko 2013: 51). They agreed that media attention was important for the 1971 anti-nuclear action, but wanted to run ‘a sober campaign that would garner the respect of elite groups, such as scientists, politicians, and high-level bureaucrats’ (ibid.: 79). About this and other issues, the Greenpeace crew fought constantly (Dale 1996: 15; see also Hunter 2011).

Their disputes were but a harbinger of things to come. Dale (1996) quotes a former Greenpeacer as saying that ‘Greenpeace has always been … crisis-ridden and perhaps crisis dependent … But I think that’s a healthy thing, because the organization is trying to internalize various standpoints’ (p. 74). Another former Greenpeacer says that Greenpeace is in ‘turmoil on an ongoing basis’ because it attracts those in the environmental movement who want something done quickly and effectively, and are not the most patient of people (ibid.). Dale concludes that, given the considerable differences of opinion between different Greenpeacers, what is amazing is not that the history of Greenpeace is full of conflict but that the organization has lasted as long as it has (p. 75). As we will see, all of this is as true for Greenpeace in Norway as it is for the rest of Greenpeace history.

Bob Hunter and other representatives of the faction of ‘mystics’ (Zelko 2013: 211) within Greenpeace went on to make the protection of whales an important part of their campaigning to achieve a ‘consciousness revolution’. In 1973, after several years of anti-nuclear campaigning, these people felt that the Greenpeace Foundation, the successor of the Don’t Make a Wave Committee, ‘was focusing too heavily on the “peace” half of its name and not enough on the “green”’ (ibid.: 159; see also Hunter 2011). For them, protecting whales from exploitation by humans constituted a perfect symbol of environmental survival. Instead of using people’s fear of nuclear death as a trigger for consciousness revolution, they wanted to appeal to people’s reverence for life (Zelko 2013: 161).

The fact that whales and dolphins were the species which these Greenpeacers felt were representative of their values and philosophy can be interpreted as a result of broader cultural developments. These developments involved controversial research on whales and dolphins,³ films such as Flipper, books, aquariums, etc. (Zelko 2013: Ch. 7–8). They led to the creation and widespread acceptance of the notion of what Zelko calls the ‘metaphysical whale’: ‘a sublime, mystical, ecologically harmonious and super-intelligent aquatic being representing a supreme form of power and intelligence rooted in a oneness with nature, a state that humans, in their dangerous and pathetic struggles to conquer the natural world, could never achieve’ (Zelko 2012: 104f.; see also Zelko 2013: Ch. 7–8; Kalland 2012: Ch. 1–2). Whales thus symbolized both the ‘green’ and the ‘peace’ in Greenpeace. My interviews of 2005 and 2006 showed that Greenpeacers still subscribed to this interpretation thirty years later.

Alex: In a way whales are a symbol for how we treat the planet. If we can’t even save the whales, how the fuck are we gonna save the small bugs. You know, it is something that has such a great emotional appeal to people, to everyone, really, except the Norwegians, the Japanese and Icelanders. If the capitalist economics takes over even that, then it’s hopeless (laughs)…

The other side of it is, if you’ve ever been in an inflatable next to a whale, it is an incredible feeling. It is like the presence of life. You know, it’s just amazing. And so it’s also a personalization of this thing that we’re all trying to save. And they’re also beautiful, supreme and peaceful, … they are a Greenpeace thing.

Greenpeacers developed strong emotions about whales and whaling (see also Hunter 2011). Meanwhile, as Zelko (2013: Ch. 8; 197; 228ff.; 294) makes clear, Greenpeace’s whale campaign was burdened with certain philosophical inconsistencies from the beginning. The case for the 1971 anti-nuclear protest voyage to Amchitka had been very clear-cut, the disagreements among those involved with regard to strategy and tactics notwithstanding. In contrast, Greenpeace used arguments against whaling which partly (by no means completely) contradicted each other.

On the one hand, Greenpeace subscribed to a perspective of holistic ecology. From such a perspective, whaling is the wrong thing to do if it critically diminishes whale populations, thereby disturbing the balance of the greater ecosystem. That this has historically been the case with global industrial whaling is not in dispute (Zangl 1999: 160ff.). However, from a holistic ecology perspective, whaling should be considered as acceptable as long as it is sustainable and not disruptive to the ecosystem as a whole. It is here that this perspective has always clashed with Greenpeace’s other arguments against whaling, based on the notion of the ‘metaphysical whale’: that whales should not be hunted by humans at all, because they are highly intelligent, ‘exemplars of ecological virtue and holistic consciousness’ (Zelko 2013: 193), and because each whale is an individual worth saving (see Kalland 2012: Ch. 1), etc. Such a notion of whales could only lead to an abolitionist stance, which Greenpeace has indeed taken over the past decades.

According to Zelko, some early Greenpeacers were aware of the inconsistencies in their argumentations. But the point was that they were working to achieve a ‘consciousness revolution’ to save the natural environment. Animals such as whales and seals could be ‘gateway species’: because of their appeal to many people, campaigns for their protection might lead to people developing a deeper appreciation for wildlife generally, and so make it easier to save other, less ‘extraordinary’ species (Zelko 2013: 244, 247). For someone who seeks to attract media attention in order to lob mindbombs at people with the goal of fundamentally changing their perceptions of reality and bringing about a shift in society towards deep ecology, the described inconsistencies might seem relatively unimportant. And using a variety of arguments, ranging from the overexploitation of whale stocks to the intelligence of whales, might enable such a ‘consciousness revolutionary’ to persuade a greater number of people of his case. Moreover, it is of course easier for someone engaging in detached academic analysis decades after the fact to point out inconsistencies in an argumentation, than it is for the person developing the argumentation in the context of a new, unfolding and quite risky campaign (ibid.: 238f.; 247).

In 1973, the older, sober activists in Greenpeace opposed the idea of the young organization diverting energy from the anti-nuclear cause to the ‘soft’ issue of whale protection, which might also dilute the power of the by then well-known Greenpeace brand name (ibid.: 174ff.; see also Weyler 2004: 230; Hunter 2011). But from 1974, the anti-whaling campaign became Greenpeace’s most prominent one. In Zelko’s words, this ‘put Greenpeace on a path … to a more broadly conceived form of environmental activism’ (Zelko 2013: 160).

The first Greenpeace direct actions against whaling off the North American West coast in 1975, 1976 and 1977 confronted Russian whalers who operated from fleets that included one huge factory ship and several smaller harpoon boats (Weyler 2004: 311ff.; 411ff.; 428ff.; 463ff.). The activists drove their rubber dinghies between the harpoon boats and fleeing whales, putting their own bodies in the line of fire in order to try and stop the whalers from firing their harpoons at the whales, filming and photographing their actions all the while.

The media, particularly the U.S. media, were receptive to the spectacular Greenpeace anti-whaling campaign (Zelko 2013: 225; Hunter 2011). The cultural developments mentioned above had already influenced many people’s consciousness to the effect that whales were ‘special’ animals (Zelko 2013: 222). Also, Greenpeace was confronting industrial whaling here (Weyler 2004: 314; Hunter 2011). This meant that the abovementioned contradictions in Greenpeace’s view of whaling were not as noticeable to either Greenpeace or Greenpeace’s audiences as they would become at later points in time. Industrial whaling had driven many whale species to the brink of extinction, and was therefore problematic both from the point of view of those who saw whales as ‘special’ animals and from an ecological perspective. Moreover, because whaling was of no significance to the U.S. economy, and the main whaling nations were the Soviet Union and Japan, ‘Cold War overtones’ were present in much of the U.S. reporting on the issue (Zelko 2013: 225). This must have made the issue seem even more straightforward to many U.S. citizens (and citizens of U.S. allied nations), with whalers and supporters of whaling as the ‘bad guys’ and Greenpeace and other anti-whaling protesters as the ‘good guys’. As a result of all this, the campaign was very successful as a media event and brought fame to Greenpeace and a boost to the anti-whaling movement (Zelko 2013: 222–225;⁴ see also Weyler 2004: 323; Hunter 2011). (Hunter [2011] gives an account of meeting the Dutch captain of a whaling ship in a bar in Australia in 1977. The whaler told Hunter that he loved being at sea, but did not enjoy killing whales. It was his job. The whaler said to Hunter: ‘You don’t have to remind me … that that’s what the Nazis said, too’ [p. 436].)

The successful first direct actions against Soviet whaling irreversibly made whales and the whale campaign central to Greenpeace’s self-description. Organizational self-descriptions are productions of texts or functional equivalents of texts through which and with the help of which an organization identifies itself (Luhmann 2006). They are self-simplifications. Self-descriptions provide the organization with direction for its operations and a sense of its own unity. They also serve to emphasize an organization’s uniqueness (Luhmann 2006: 438; Seidl 2003).⁵

Individuals seek to identify with organizations that possess appealing organizational self-descriptions, because such identification enhances their self-esteem and offers fulfillment and realization of self. This is true for most organizational contexts (Ashforth and Mael 1989; Diamond 1993), but maybe particularly in the context of social movement organizations like Greenpeace (Gamson 1992: 56). Organizational members are emotionally attached to organizational self-descriptions, and this emotional attachment supports the self-descriptions and maintains them over time, so that they can serve their important functions for the organization.

A Greenpeace self-description that was present from the first days of the first anti-nuclear campaign was that of ‘David against Goliath’ (Zelko 2013). Greenpeacers in a small boat confronting huge vessels could be seen as courageous warriors foiling the destructive plots of the infinitely more powerful. They were successful despite their lack of strength because they used clever strategies and tactics. The main strategy (as explained above) was to expose their opponents’ crimes (‘bearing witness’) and to change people’s consciousness via the media. It should be noted that for many Greenpeacers, their organizational self-description and their actions had little to do with heroism. Ben Metcalfe called the early Greenpeace of which he was a part ‘an absurd, pathetic little group’; Bob Hunter described the group as ‘anti-heroes rather than heroes’ (Dale 1996: 15; see also Erwood 2011: 6).

In addition to being about ‘Davids against Goliaths’, the Greenpeace self-description was one of protectors who, in a peaceful and nonviolent manner, risk their own lives to save the lives of others put in danger by a violent threat (Zelko 2013). The Greenpea...