Greenpeace’s Hachette Job

Montreal-based Resolute Forest Products has distinguished itself in the corporate community by being prepared to take on the lies and intimidation tactics of radical environmental juggernaut Greenpeace, but the price is having to suffer repeated low blows and threats to its business.

The latest came when Greenpeace pressured Arnaud Nourry, the head of Paris-based publishing giant Hachette, a major Resolute customer, to write a letter that appeared to threaten Hachette’s business with Resolute.

Greenpeace has for years been fundraising by harassing Resolute as a “Forest Destroyer.” Four years ago, Resolute CEO Richard Garneau threw away the usual playbook of corporate appeasement and sued Greenpeace for malicious defamation. Last year he upped the ante by bringing suit against Greenpeace in the U.S. under RICO racketeering laws.

Greenpeace has writhed to avoid its day(s) in court, mainly by turning up the heat on Resolute’s customers, but it has also tried to claim that the case is really all about free speech, which has allowed it to apply particular pressure to publishers. As part of this campaign, the environmental NGO has recently recruited lefty literary celebrities — such as Margaret Atwood and Naomi Klein — to sign a “pledge” for free speech. It also published newspaper ads indicating support from 90 Usual Suspect organizations — from the Broadbent Institute through the Pembina Institute to 350.org — for the notion that Resolute was “trying to sue Greenpeace & Stand.earth (formerly ForestEthics) out of existence. This is all about trying to silence anyone who disagrees with Resolute. It’s an attack on public discourse, free speech and the very heart of our democratic society.”

Hooey. Resolute just wants these shakedown merchants to stop destroying value, jobs and northern communities by telling lies. Canadian forests are the best protected in the world. Resolute has won numerous awards for its stewardship.

Greenpeace’s greatest recent coup is that letter from Hachette’s Nourry to Resolute’s Garneau, even though Nourry explicitly acknowledges in the letter that he doesn’t understand what the case is about. He writes “I have no intention of getting involved in the dispute, for as publishers, we have neither the expertise nor the resources to forge an educated opinion as to who is right and who is wrong in what seems to be a complex set of highly technical issues.”

To call this disingenuous is to give it far too much credit. By writing this letter, Nourry became involved front and centre. As he well knew, his pathetic disclaimer would be ignored and the letter would be trumpeted by Greenpeace as evidence of support.

Nourry goes on to tie himself further in knots by writing “The other point I would like to make, not as a customer but as a publisher and a citizen, is that the vigour of your legal response to Greenpeace under RICO statutes strikes me as excessive.”

But how can Nourry make any comments about the appropriate level of Resolute’s response if he admits that the case is too complex for him to understand?

Perhaps his most disgraceful claim/threat is that “an escalation of the legal dispute could cause some authors to decline having their books printed on Resolute’s paper, further complicating the situation.”

Bizarrely, Nourry also brings in the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris accord on climate, thus allegedly rendering the role of “independent NGOs such as Greenpeace” more important. One’s head spins at the non sequitur: Because the U.S. is abandoning Paris, Greenpeace can ride roughshod over truth and jobs, and Resolute must not defend its reputation in court?

Nourry’s reward for his collaboration was to be instantly both hailed and misrepresented by Greenpeace, who suggested that he had called on Resolute “to do better for the forest in the strongest possible terms.”

Meanwhile there is indeed an issue of free speech here, but it is Greenpeace who is trying to crush it. What are the chances that any of Hachette’s imprints are now going to publish books exposing, or even criticizing, Greenpeace, whose campaigns against chlorine and genetically modified foods have cost not just jobs, but lives?

This is not the first time that the corporate media has been cowed and co-opted by Greenpeace. The current legal farrago originated in the rancid 2010 Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA), which Canada’s leading forest companies signed under duress after being subjected to misinformation-filled do-not-buy campaigns.

That agreement was “overseen” by the so-called Boreal Business Forum, which consisted of some of the world’s leading media companies, including The Globe and Mail, who thus effectively put a seal of approval on ENGO intimidation tactics.

That agreement has now dropped like a rotten fruit, and the Boreal Business Forum has slunk into the undergrowth, but corporations remained scared, vulnerable and reluctant to take on Greenpeace.

If Greenpeace believes its tactics against Resolute are legally defensible, why is it so frantically pursuing this huge extra-legal campaign to get Resolute to drop the cases? Perhaps because, as part of its defence, it has already admitted that its claims about Resolute are “nonverifiable statements of subjective opinion and at most … rhetorical hyperbole ... not intended to be taken literally.”

In other words, Greenpeace is trying to trash Resolute, but don’t take their accusations “literally.”

Then again, if Resolute’s case is so good, why aren’t its corporate fellows lining up to support it? The simple answer is that they are too scared. Free speech requires that Greenpeace be brought to justice.