Michel Klein, the local police chief said, "The liberators have failed. The gnomes are now going to spend the rest of their lives locked up in dusty cupboard."(Philip Delves Broughton) So the gnomes being liberated are not being put to any useful purpose but are being left homeless to litter the forests and lakes and in some cases streets.

THE PROBABLE AGENDA OF GLF:

In Britian it is said that the GLF might be involved in the re-sale of the gnomes stolen by them and money is the only objective of this organization. However that is not how the objectives of GLF are perceived in the rest of Europe. There appears to be a hidden message or higher purpose behind all these gnome robberies. The Gnome Liberation Front appears to practice a form of culture jamming. Culture jamming is a form of political communication, which has emerged as rebellion against the commercial isolation of public life where people are more interested in identifying with brand names than focusing on the problems surrounding their commercial environment.

The actions of the Gnome Liberation Front are in line with the opinions of Kalle lasn according to whom "the best culture jam is one that introduces a meta-meme, a two-level message that punctures a specific commercial image, but does so in a way that challenges some larger aspect of the political culture of corporate domination. Another is "Media Carta" which calls for a serious charter to make the public airwaves truly public, and not just a corporate domain. Another is the call to rewrite the corporate "genetic code" so that corporations have fewer licenses to become social and environmental predators, and more responsibility to contribute to the well being of society."(Culture Jamming)

In short if you want to get your message across you need to say it in the most bizarre way possible. When people read articles about the commercialization of our culture, they remember it only for a short period of time before getting back to their usual routine of watching TV and hanging out in McDonalds...

"This is how the spell is broken" says Lasn, "This is how the revolution begins." (Lasn, 421) However, when garden gnomes get stolen from exhibitions and end up hanging from bridges, people remember it. The mission of liberating gnomes of GLF is very similar to the Situationists who denounced the consumer culture and were only interested in freedom at any cost. This is in many ways similar to the idea of a fight club we saw in the movie, Fight Club. Though in the beginning, it is just a club with some radical ideas, with the passage of time, they start spreading anti-consumerist views and a fight against corporate America ensues.
CONCLUSION: The GLF aims at mocking the consumer culture. It tries to make people realize that they are not victims of gnome thefts but of a society that convinced them that they were in need of gnomes. The members of GLF in my view actually seek to inform people about the true nature of our culture and open their eyes to what the modern life has been reduced to and for doing this they chose a method they were sure would catch the public's attention.

References

1) Anonymous-Title: Culture jamming. Available at http://depts.washington.edu/ccce/polcommcampaigns/CultureJamming.htm[Accessed on: 31/10/05]

2) Caroline Wyatt-Title: French Garden Gnomes Need Homes. Posted on: 29/12/03.Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3353841.stm[Accessed on: 31/10/05]

3) Rob Irving-Title: The Gnome Liberation Front. Posted on: may-02. Available at http://www.nthposition.com/gnomeliberation.php[Accessed on: 31/10/05]

4) Anonymous-Title: Garden Gnome Liberation Front strikes Paris show. Posted on: 13/4/2000.Available at http://archives.cnn.com/2000/STYLE/arts/04/12/france.gnomes.reut/[Accessedon: 31/10/05]

5) Philip Delves Broughton-Title: Liberated gnomes are condemned to a life on the shelf. Posted on: 29/10/03. Available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/29/wgnome29.xml[Accessedon: 31/10/05]