Anti-corporate activism
Anti-corporate activists believe that the increasingly massive corporations are becoming equally immune to the law. These corporations, they believe, are invading people's privacy, manipulating political issues, and psychologically influencing the public at large to their own benefit. Some evidence that supports this belief includes invasive advertising (adware, spam, telemarketing, etc.), massive corporate campaign contributions in democratic elections, national news stories about corporate corruption (Martha Stewart and Enron, for example), and various anti-corporate books (most notably the science fiction novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell). They believe that since corporations structurally answer only to shareholders, all human interests never make the bottom-line and are ignored, unless the corporation can be exposed and shamed for their illegal and immoral activities.
A more recent trend, blossuming in the 1990s, involves the relatively unchecked power of multi-national corporations that cross borders to do activities that would be illegal in their home countries (child slave labor, extreme environmental abuse, sweatshops, interference with government, etc), either directly or more often through subcontracting. These corporations with a global perspective no longer serve their home countries, but movee to where ever the local country laws are most lenient to their questionable activities.
Critics of this philosophy argue governments pass plenty of laws restricting the actions of corporations and that lawbreaking companies and executives are caught and punished. Corporation leaders, the critics say, are not inherently more evil than anyone else and so are no more likely to attempt atrocities or large-scale criminal activity than the general population.
Anti-corporate activists often allie themselves with other activists, such as environmental activists or animal-rights activists in an attempt to help level the field against what they see as a much more powerful opponent.
A well-known fictional anti-corporate activist is Larry Finkelstein on the TV show Dharma & Greg.
A well-known anti-corporate organization is Green Peace.
