ATTAQUE BIG MAC

JUST LIKE THE VIDEO GAME STATE OF Emegency, there comes a time when the people reach their breaking point and are forced to break stuff. Like fast food restaurants, for instance. Ever since it replaced “Speedee” as the company tag in 1962, the McDonald’s logo has become a ubiquitous symbol of American capitalism around the world. One of the most powerful and recognizable brand identities, the golden arches have also become the locus of vandalism for disgruntled populations who have felt on the wrong end of globalization’s so-called prosperity. The flip side of being the most identifiable brand in the world is that you also become world’s easiest target.

As far as the distribution of attacks go, just about every foreign nation that has a McDonald’s franchise in its borders can boast one form of attack or another, anti-Americanism being the most prevalent cause. As Benjamin Barber and Thomas Friedman pointedly remarked in their analysis of the anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world Jihad vs. McWorld, McDonald’s has come to stand as the floating signifier for American cultural and economic imperialism. It’s not about burgers and fries anymore. It’s about nationalism and God and protecting yourself from the juggernaut of American hegemony.

Though McDonald’s revenues have been declining in the past few years, there’s no room here to pity the largest franchise in the world, a scapegoat that manages to open a new location somewhere on this planet every 17 hours.

Here’s an un-exhaustive list of some recent attacks on the Big Mac.

COLOMBIA
June 29, 1997
More anti-American activity has been reported here than anywhere else on the continent. These are the people that were cheering in the streets on Sept. 11th. Most of their hatred has to do with the war on drugs - American planes covering entire villages with toxic pesticides in an attempt to stop cocaine production, etc. Once again, McDonald’s has become the surrogate for all American foreign policy blunders, even the war on drugs. On June 29, 1997 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) bombed a McDonald’s in Medellin, injuring five people.

RUSSIA
St. Petersburg: January 16, 1998
A small homemade bomb explodes outside the front door, injuring no one and causing little damage. In the midst of many Chechen-organized acts of major terrorism during that year, this attack is small in comparison, but still an important reminder of the anti-American sentiment that defined Russia in the 90s.

BELGIUM
Antwerp: August 9, 1998
Puurs: August 29, 1998
Deinze: November 7, 1998
This was a very bad year for McDonald’s. One of the few militant eco-rights groups, the Animal Liberation Front, went ballistic in 1998. In Belgium the ALF firebombed three McDonald’s locations, causing minor injury to several patrons while inflicting heavy fire damage on a lot of shitty plastic furniture.

BRAZIL
Sao Paolo: November 30, 1998
At 9 a.m. a homemade bomb explodes in the bathroom of a McDonald’s restaurant, causing $5,000 in damages and jolting patrons using the facilities for their morning wizz. Thankfully, no one was taking a shit since the bomb was planted under the can. No group claimed responsibility.

GREECE
Athens: February 3, 1998
The Greeks deserve their own sidebar but, because their bitterness extends in so many directions, it would be pointless to single them out just on the topic of McDonald’s attacks. When you look at a distribution of anti-American incidents in the European theater they rank number one, and by quite a margin.

On February 3rd, 1998 at 3:50 AM, a homemade bomb explodes outside a restaurant in the Halandria area of Athens. Then, ten minutes later, a second improvised device explodes in the Vrilissia suburb. No one was injured seriously, though property damage was significant. The terrorist group Revolutionary Organization 17 November claimed responsibility. 17 November, whose name derives from the November 17, 1973 student uprising in Athens that was violently quelled by the military junta ruling Greece at the time, is emblematic of Greek resentment of all things un-Greek. It’s an old-school, violent, Marxist-Leninist organization whose ideology is anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and anti-United States/NATO. After the dual bombings, they offered this in a communiqué: “We decided to strike against imperialism-nationalism for all the designs it has on our country’s sovereign rights. Because it is the main culprit for the continual occupation of Cyprus, for Turkey’s claims in the Aegean, for the plans to divide the Aegean, and for placing its heavily armed Turkey as its policeman and caretaker over half of the Aegean.”

CHINA
Nanjing: May 9, 1999
Days after the US accidentally bombed the shit out of the Chinese embassy in Kosovo, the McDonald’s in Nanjing was brutally attacked and vandalized. It was closed down the day after the attack and posters were pasted on the windows reading “Dissolve NATO!”, “Repay Blood with Blood!” and “Down with America!”

CHILE
Santiago: May 27, 1999
A recently opened restaurant was severely damaged when 15-20 university students threw Molotov cocktails and rocks through newly installed windows. They were protesting the proximity of the McDonald’s to their campus, They said it was “a form of ideological contamination based on contiguity.”

FRANCE
Millau: August 10, 1999
Dinan: April 19, 2001
Maybe the most famous figure in the anti-McDonald’s movement is 47-year-old farmer Jose Bové. In August 1999 he caught the world’s attention when he led a group of French farmers to dismantle a restaurant under construction in his hometown. Bové is upset at the genetically modified foods that corporate farm suppliers sell to McDonald’s, but his frustration spills into general anti-Americanism. When he was arraigned he told the court: “Gandhi dismantled a British installation in the cause of peaceful resistance to British rule in India. Our action was non-violent resistance by citizens… against American provocation.” Later, he led a 40,000-strong demonstration driving a tractor and holding aloft a giant wheel of Roquefort, shouting “Long live Roquefort, down with junk food.” Even the French president Chirac recently declared, “I am in complete solidarity with France’s farm-workers, and I detest McDonald’s.” Ironically, it was a group of American farmers that paid Bové’s bail. Since then he’s become an international hero for oppressed people, turning up in the last Al-Khader in the West Bank to protest Israeli occupation and marching into Mexico City with the Zapatistas.

A bomb planted at a drive-through window at a McDonald’s in the sweet little town of Dinan exploded in the early morning of April 19, killing twenty-eight- year-old employee Laurence Turbac. McDonald’s has been the target of general protests against globalization and cultural influence within France for years, but this time French authorities also suspected the Breton seperatist group Brittany Emgann of sheltering Basque separatists and the Breton Revolutionary Army (ARB).

ENGLAND
London: May 2, 2000
Anticapitalist protestors full of May Day worker’s wrath stormed a downtown McDonald’s tearing down the golden arches, giving away food for free, and spray-painting a hammer and sickle on a statue of Winston Churchill nearby. The “giving away the food for free” quickly degenerated into a giant food fight. Shaista Aziz, a marketing director based in London, had this to say to The Times: “Great! I don’t mind McDonald’s being smashed in. I hate McDonald’s. I’m a vegetarian. I think they’re evil and they corrupt children.”

USA
Tuscon, Arizona: September 8, 2001
Just before the towers were attacked in NYC a spree was sparked on the home front when militants torched a McDonald’s restaurant in Tucson, Ariz. Four of the five actions have been claimed by the ALF and one by its sister organization, the ELF — Earth Liberation Front. Spokesman for the two groups David Barbarash said Americans’ fear of more possible attacks by followers of Osama bin Laden are no reason for the ALF and the ELF to put their own campaign on hold. “I don’t think underground activists have changed the way they think about what they’re doing,” said Barbarash from his home in Vancouver, British Columbia. He went on to say that “the Sept. 11 attacks were horrific acts but we also have to remember that the atrocities against the earth continue unabated.”

SAUDI ARABIA
Mecca: September 12, 2001
In bin Laden’s Al Qaeda training video, he mentions the presence of a McDonald’s in the Holy City, but doesn’t specifically call for its destruction. Nevertheless, fundamentalist supporters in Mecca threw sticks and stones into the windows of the Mecca McDonald’s in jubilation over the downing of the Twin Towers the day before.

EDDY MORETTI

Anyone who wants an inside scoop on anti-McDonald’s activity should check out MWR, the McDonald’s Workers Resistance, based in Glasgow: www.mcspotlight.org

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