If you thought the war on capitalism died with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, you’d be wrong. Agitators are still hard at work at bringing down capitalism, but now they have a new weapon, the Apple iPod.

When a little girl in Maryland recently opened her Christmas presents, she thought she’d received exactly what she’d been hoping for, an iPod. Unfortunately, when she actually opened the box, instead of an iPod, she received a very strange note instead (pictured):

RECLAIM YOUR MIND FROM THE MEDIA SHACKLES. READ A BOOK AND RESURRECT YOURSELF.

TO CLAIM YOUR CAPITALISTIC GARBAGE GO TO YOUR NEAREST APPLE STORE.

The girl’s father, Joe Ellis, returned the box and note to the Walmart store where he had originally purchased it. According to Fox 5, he was not the only customer to have had his iPod switched for anti-capitalist propaganda.

It’s not known whether the little girl actually got her iPod in the end. No doubt Walmart had to ensure that Joe wasn’t simply trying to pull the old “all I got was anti-capitalist propaganda in my iPod box” trick to get a free iPod.

However, we have no reason to doubt Joe’s integrity, and on that basis, there are a number of interesting issues in this story:

First, since the iPod was selected as the vehicle for this massive attack on capitalism, agitators obviously view the iPod as highly symbolic in the ongoing class struggle. Somewhere along the line, at least in some people’s minds, Apple has slipped from being progressive and cool, to oppressing the masses.

Second, since when did switching a product with a note become revolutionary?

And third, how dare these agitators call the iPod “garbage”?

My greatest fear of course is that this just the beginning of a campaign to destabilise the free world.

What next? Notes in our breakfast cereal imploring us to take up the struggle against our capitalist oppressors? Notes left discreetly in Star Bucks abusing us for participating in the evil capitalist system?

If my fears are correct, and I am often right about these things, we may face years of random notes appearing in our lives slowly, but surely, undermining capitalism (and of course, I hasten to add, the free world).

If I was a capitalist overlord, I’d be very, very scared right now.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 4:42 pm under Apple.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.
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