Dumbing Down and Gaming of Anglosphere Media, Science, Society and Democracy

Relevant and interesting article from Menadue’s ‘Pearls and Swines’ in Australia from Lucy Hamilton on how Anglosphere conservative and nativist libertarians have joined forces to impede science, education, female and minority rights and progress, on behalf of powerful interests, endeavouring to preserve their power, status and influence; even if a minority.

Key topics within the excerpts have been underlined to emphasise some key points which have become apparent, in not just the Anglosphere of US, UK and Australia, but similarly in ‘illiberal states’ like Hungary, Poland and Russia; what are we becoming?

Firstly it is about halting progress through attacking science, education, empowerment etc. with confected attacks on academia and curricula, then the same is supported by media and think tanks, then further, weaponised through digital or social media to access younger generations in e.g. far or alt right.

Many of the Republicans promoting these strategies are known more directly as ‘segregationists’ hiding behind ‘state rights’ to delay or stop minority voters from expressing their democratic will through the ballot box, using a variety of voter suppression tactics that stymies the Democrats.

Although conservative think tanks are cited in the article one would describe them now, as Jane Mayer has in her work ‘Dark Money’, as ‘radical right libertarian’ channeling Luther, Calvin and Adam Smith, but keeping the most unpalatable aspects i.e. Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan’s more radical socio economic views, away from public scrutiny, according to Nancy Maclean in ‘Democracy in Chains’, for electoral reasons.

Many of the same libertarian think tanks are now networked in what is known as the Koch global Atlas Network which also includes several in Australia and the U.K. With the Tea Party in direct reaction to Obama’s election had the Koch Brothers in a supporting role seeding the Tea Party as an authentic but astroturfing grass roots movement which was confected to oppose Democrat policies and create street protest for supposed credibility (and media content).

Also related was Brexit and in many ways (frustratingly) transparent in its objective of avoiding EU treaty constraints on environment, finance, labour standards and mobility, but using nativist issues of xenophobia towards Europe, refugees, immigrants, foreign workers and population growth; the latter issues got Brexit across the line with much help from legacy media and the present opportunities for gaming of ageing electorates.

Further, it was not just a ‘back of the cigarette pack’ plan by Farage et al. but was predicated upon decades of anti-European and anti-immigrant sentiment in British media; simply needed to be triggered. The latter, like many Tory MPs, were informed by think tanks or NGOs e.g. Population Matters and Migration Watch (like Sustainable Population Australia) that can be linked back across the Atlantic to white nationalist John Tanton; also an admirer of the white Australia policy.

Tanton, with Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich at ZPG Zero Population Growth (supported by Rockefeller Bros./Exxon, Ford and Carnegie Foundations) from late ‘70s (when scientists were aware of global warming) had environmental health as not a fossil fuel or carbon emissions issue, but high immigration and high population growth (under the pseudoscientific guise of ‘limits to growth’), hence, need only restrict immigration to lower population and improve the environment…… the ‘Cafe con leche Republicans’ were aware and warned their colleagues nearly ten years ago of Tanton and what they described as eugenics, but to no avail….

‘Australia has proved fertile ground for US anti-intellectual propaganda

By Lucy Hamilton Oct 7, 2021

Cynical conservative strategies in US politics have well and truly made their way into Australian discourse — just look at the demands of the rioters in Melbourne for Ivermectin.

Seeing Trump flags flying at the riots on Melbourne’s streets last week was a reminder that “culture war” battles are no longer national — they are as global as the COVID-19 pandemic.

These violent scenes are also partly a result of a conscious tool in the right’s efforts to corrode democracy.

When strategists encourage a voter identity based on resentment and fear, not to mention a disdain for experts, they cannot always foresee the paranoias that will emerge in the circles targeted, or the violence that might result.

……. Our democracies may not survive the radical conservative bloc’s utter rejection of consensus reality.

Some of the climate projections suggest that civilisation itself may not survive the challenges in its path.

Since the Civil Rights era in America, a small number of Republican strategists in the anglosphere have considered how the white and wealthy might continue to dominate elections despite their numerical and policy goal marginality. With goals of lowest tax, smallest government, and least regulation, the richest would need to hide their plans behind marketing campaigns…..

…..Conservative think tanks, which mainly worked in the interests wealthy whites, fostered the spread of these strategies internationally through conservative circles and political networks. The internet has enabled the resultant culture war to permeate the world, augmenting the identity fractures that already pervade diverse cultures…..

The most dangerous aspects of this conservative identity are its opposition to the scientific method and expertise…..

In the US, Republican figures who embraced the cynical Tea Party backlash to Barack Obama’s electoral victory did not imagine a party where a huckster like Donald Trump dictated their every word. Any Republican who annoys him faces the wrath of his base, upon which the party now depends.

It was their cynical strategies that led to the armed attack on the Capitol in January.

In the UK, when Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson activated nostalgic jingoism and racism to campaign for Brexit, they did not care about the surge of race-based attacks around the country……

Sectors that consider themselves more important than any one nation’s government shape our fate. Fossil fuels and the tech industry benefit from this strategy to harness a mass conservative identity to protect the freedoms of the powerful……

……The social media companies showed how rapidly they could act when they chose to shut down ISIS’s ability to recruit on their platforms. On current matters, however, they have chosen barely to intervene.

…… This conservative strategy was a Cold War phenomenon: it is hardly surprising that libertarian strategists should have felt threatened by totalitarian regimes. This bled over into frustration with interventionist governments that devised Depression era systems to keep the public from revolting. The New Deal in the US and the Welfare State in the UK struck these libertarians as only steps away from life behind the Iron Curtain.

The atheism of the totalitarian bloc was deeply disturbing to Americans too. Christian-identity Republicans were the first to produce strategists that imagined this loyal voter bloc forged from the poor.

In the late 1970s, a conference call between a collection of Republican figures including Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich, the man behind the Heritage Foundation, took place. They debated topics around which a Christian Right identity could be galvanised. Prayer in schools was one of the topics abandoned. Abortion, drawing on Phyllis Schlafly’s powerful anti women’s lib movement, was the issue selected in the end. The Evangelical sects would be galvanised into the heart of the new Moral Majority.

The success of this long game is astounding. Now even the Democrats are afraid to campaign on access to abortions, despite majority support. Republican politicians tweet Bible verses. Texas has offered bounties for informing on women seeking abortions and those who help them; other states are following.

The degree to which these ploys are now international is illustrated by Australian Deputy Minister for Women Amanda Stoker and Nationals backbencher George Christensen adopting the anti-choice fight in Australia. Stoker headlined a pro-life rally in May and Christiansen introduced a “born alive” bill to Parliament last month.

Evangelical Christianity has become entangled with the conspiracy theories of QAnon. The Evangelical churches of America tend towards rejecting the secular world. Rejecting consensus reality primes people for the QAnon’s ad hoc compilations of conspiracies.

We saw the bizarre mix of QAnon’s MAGA version of conservative identity on the streets of Melbourne: militant bigots and misogynistic incels, anti-science anti-vaxxers and Evangelicals. It is an extraordinary international movement.

It might seem a spontaneous phenomenon. It is the result, however, of strategies devised by a network of conservative forces aiming to achieve minority rule.’