How Conservatives Admire Corrupt Dictators and Authoritarians – Trump and Putin

Article from Michel in TNR The New Republic on the right’s obsession with, respect and desire for authoritarians and dictators, even if corrupt and nativist including Trump and Putin.

While ‘free market’ think tanks, especially US fossil fuel Atlas or Koch Network promote right wing policies for the 1%, and related white nativist Tanton Network entities promote eugenics and the great replacement.

Further, two other central elements include media and ageing citizens; hollowed out legacy media including ‘news deserts’ and now social media being colonised or flooded with far right nativist agitprop to increasing numbers of ageing and/or disadvantaged voters who are less urban, less diverse, less educated and less informed.

Right wing parties, nativists and populists are being used to support both eugenics and corporate friendly policies for the 1% versus 99%, even if against the latter’s interests; see Brexit, Trump and Putin.

From TNR The New Republic:

How the American Right Fell in Love With Dictators, Over and Over Again Trump and Putin are nothing new.

By Casey Michel

For years, an imperialistic, hard-right European dictator unleashing bloodshed across the Continent cultivated supporters across the U.S. This despot claimed he was leading a “unique, anti-Western culture,” and, in so doing, cultivated allies and fellow travelers among conservatives across America, all of whom were disgusted by “corrupt Western liberal values” and who “scorned Western liberalism as a bankrupt ideology.” Nor was this appeal just rhetorical; as investigators later discovered, this right-wing revanchist bankrolled both propaganda efforts and agents on the ground, successfully turning Americans, especially on the right, to his cause.

To modern readers, the story is a familiar one — not least as it pertains to Donald Trump’s affections for Vladimir Putin, to say nothing of how Russian forces have cultivated conservative Americans from Tucker Carlson to the National Rifle Association and beyond. But the aforementioned case has nothing to do with Putin or with Trump. Instead, it took place a century ago, when conservatives across the U.S. flocked to the cause of Germany’s militarist tyrant, Kaiser Wilhelm II.

In so doing, as Jacob Heilbrunn successfully argues in his new book, America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance With Foreign Dictators, they created a blueprint for how foreign dictators even decades later could cultivate conservative communities to their cause — and could, by the early 21st century, help propel one as far as the presidency. The story of the Americans who worshipped Wilhelm is just one of a range of pro-dictatorship efforts that Heilbrunn excavates, threading a century-long conservative infatuation with right-wing dictators. It’s not only a corrective to the voluminous (if also accurate) investigations on how communist tyrannies fostered leftist supporters in the U.S., but also an able — and wildly timely — effort to stitch together nominally disparate views, from different epochs and eras. 

It all adds up to a convincing conclusion: that Trump, in “lavishing praise on Putin and other dictators … wasn’t creating a new style of right-wing politics,” Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest and author of a previously acclaimed book on the history of neoconservatives, writes. “Instead, he was building on a long-standing tradition.”

It’s a tradition that has seen surprisingly little scrutiny, allowing Trump’s treacly fealty to Putin to seem like an aberration. To be sure, there are elements unique to Trump’s personal predilections — not least his history as a luxury real-estate developer, an industry that profited arguably more than any other from the illicit, kleptocratic flows linked to foreign dictators, laundering untold millions of dollars (and potentially more) in the process. Never before could foreign despots so easily, and so effectively, patronize the company of a sitting American president.

But in other far more conspicuous ways, Trump is simply building on a legacy long predating his rise. There were, for instance, the early devotions to the Ur-Fascist himself, Benito Mussolini. Il Duce presented himself not only as a guarantor of order and stability — and a bastion against left-wing forces in Italy and beyond — but as someone who posed “as a defender of whites,” Heilbrunn notes, who prioritized “family values” and who, “in stark contrast to hedonistic America, cherished manliness.” (He also cherished Wall Street with JP Morgan organizing a loan for the Fascist government worth nearly $2 billion in modern currency.) Conservatives in America lapped it up, fêting not only Mussolini but salivating for a similar leader in the U.S. One conservative writer, Irving Babbitt, bleated that circumstances “may arrive when we may esteem ourselves fortunate if we get the American equivalent of a Mussolini; he may be needed to save us from the American equivalent of a Lenin.”

So, too, did plenty of conservative Americans view the rise of Mussolini’s younger brother, ideologically, in Berlin. While the organization of pro-Nazi sympathizers in America has seen more detailed treatments elsewhere, Heilbrunn ropes in other conservatives who freely platformed Adolf Hitler. Germany’s dictator was freely supported by conservatives such as William Randolph Hearst, who “not only admired the Fuhrer, but commissioned him and Mussolini to write for his newspapers for handsome fees.” Later investigations revealed that Hitler’s regime picked up on the kaiser’s previous model, not only covertly funding agents in the U.S. but even slipping pro-Nazi propaganda into official congressional mailings, recruiting some of the U.S.’s most conservative representatives of the time.

The postwar smothering of fascism didn’t seem to slow conservatives’ lust for right-wing strongmen. By the 1960s, the primary home for such reverence was found not necessarily in Washington but in the pages of National Review, where founder William F. Buckley and his claque of writers apparently never found a hard-right despot they couldn’t support. There was Spain’s Francisco Franco, whom Buckley dubbed an “authentic national hero,” Heilbrunn writes. There was Portugal’s Antonio Salazar, who wrote in the magazine that he was “fighting for Western civilization and Christian values.” There was Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, whom Buckley viewed as a “bona fide leader who knew how to exercise power.” (After Pinochet used a car bomb to assassinate a political opponent in Washington, D.C., Chilean officials turned directly to Buckley for advice on how to “sanitize Pinochet’s reputation,” for which Buckley happily obliged.)

Soon, though, such sentiments swelled back into the White House. By the Reagan era, American affections for right-wing despots during the late Cold War blossomed into official policy. The architect for such fondness was Reagan’s foreign-policy adviser, Jeane Kirkpatrick, who served as an “unabashed defender” of right-wing regimes throughout her tenure. Nor was she picky about the form. Militarists in Argentina, those running death squads in El Salvador, the authors of apartheid in South Africa: Kirkpatrick, with Reagan in tow, succored them all.

But then, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and a few years later, the Soviet Union shattered. America — and liberalism — stood triumphant. Supporting such regimes was suddenly gauche, out of step with this American moment. And the patterns and preferences that propped up American backing of right-wing dictators slunk back into the shadows.

But it never disappeared entirely. As with so much of the paleoconservative architecture of Trumpism — the nativism and the racism, the suspicion of the federal government and the amorality undergirding it all — Heilbrunn identified Pat Buchanan as the figure who kept the flames of such fawning for right-wing dictators alive. Not only did Buchanan refer to leaders like Hitler as “an individual of great courage,” but Buchanan whipped up opposition to American intervention in the Balkans, calling time and again to let Serbian tyrant Slobodan Milosevic have his way and commit genocide.

As Heilbrunn writes, Buchanan — who would later turn his affections toward figures like Putin, even before Trump entered the White House — “longed for a kind of internationalism rooted in those small towns and conservative values and in whiteness, whether in the U.S. or in Serbia or Russia or South Africa or elsewhere.” For years, Buchanan “seemed like a Cassandra,” but as Heilbrunn added, “One prospective candidate for the presidency who picked up on … Buchanan’s unusual history lessons was a loudmouthed Manhattan real estate mogul” — a figure who gave Buchanan’s views the biggest platform yet, carving an entire political movement out of a conservative tradition few Americans had any idea existed.

Thanks to Heilbrunn’s book, however, that confusion is no more. And while the book’s actual writing verges on the overwrought — words like oneiric and pursuivant belong in spelling bees, not mainstream political analysis — Heilbrunn correctly identifies the core of this conservative strain. Trumpists, and those who came before, “are advocating ethno-nationalism in the guise of a set of principles.” Just as the white supremacist Redeemers before them claimed they were simply advocating a restoration of democracy, so, too, do the Herrenvolk reactionaries of the MAGA world claim they’re simply restoring supposed American greatness — and that right-wing despots abroad should be allies in the fight.

If there’s a fault in Heilbrunn’s writing, it’s that there might be too much emphasis on such ideological affinity. After all, dictatorships’ abilities to inflame and inflate American conservative support can’t operate without a latticework of supporters. And as we’ve learned in recent years, those operatives — the lobbyists and the PR specialists, the law firms and the consultancies, the former congressional officials who leave office and immediately transform into mouthpieces for foreign regimes — don’t require any ideological overlap with their despotic clients. All they need is to get paid, and they’ll be happy to transform into foot-soldiers for tyranny.

Just look, for instance, at the network that serviced Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian thug who ruled Ukraine until Kyiv’s democratic revolution a decade ago. There was Paul Manafort, who later became Trump’s 2016 campaign manager. But there was also Tony Podesta, who until the mid-2010s oversaw arguably the leading Democratic lobbying shop in Washington. There was even Tad Devine, who helped Yanukovych grab power in 2010 — and who then steered Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. It was an ideological potpourri, all working at the behest of an autocrat who tried to cement pro-Russian rule in Kyiv — and whose ouster lit a fuse that detonated stability in Europe and that now risks far more devastation.

But that’s all the subject for another book (mine, called Foreign Agents, will be hitting bookshelves in August). In the meantime, Heilbrunn’s analysis of this glorification of right-wing dictatorships is a warning — as if more were needed — of what a potential Trump second term could look like. Whether it’s Putin’s Russia or Orbán’s Hungary, or even the echoes of Wilhelmine Germany, the conclusion is clear: “Aggrieved … by what they perceived as their own society’s failings — its liberalism, its tolerance, its increasing secularism — conservatives have searched for a paradise abroad that can serve as a model of home.” The kaiser would be proud.

For more articles and blogs on Ageing Democracy, Conservative, Demography, Eugenics, Evangelical Christianity, Media, Political Strategy, Radical Right Libertarian, Russia and Younger Generations click through:

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy

Posted on November 5, 2021

Plato noted more than 2000 years ago, one of the greatest dangers for democracy is that ordinary people are all too easily swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious politicians. We have observed the Anglosphere including the U.K., Australia and U.S., becoming more nativist, conservative, libertarian, extreme and conspiracy minded.  This is not organic.

Narcissistic Political Leaders – NPD Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Collective Narcissism – Cognitive Dissonance – Conspiracy Theories – Populism

Posted on April 13, 2022

We have observed the rise of neo authoritarian conservative leaders using nativism and sociocultural issues with media PR support to inform the public, especially voters, suboptimally, including east and west.

However, there are pitfalls for democracy in manipulating access to information by the public or electorate, not just feeding the needs of narcissistic leaders (see article ‘Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons’), but developing societal collective narcissism for populism and electoral advantage aka Brexit, also observed in Hungary, Turkey and Russia.

Nationalist Conservative Political Parties in the Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Ideology and Populism for Votes

Posted on May 31, 2021

Interesting article from CARR reflecting conservative parties across the world dealing with demographic change, and especially the Anglosphere of the UK, US and Australia where they have been beholden to corporate supporters from the old economy i.e. fossil fuels, agriculture and industry including assembly lines and construction.  Nowadays the new economy of Big Tech, innovation, services and government with more educated and empowered citizens is problematic for the Kochs, Murdochs, DeVos, Scaife et al.

Ageing Democracy, Nativism and Populism

Posted on January 18, 2019

Liberal democracies in western world need to make sure they do not become populist gerontocracies with changing demographics creating elderly ‘Gerrymandering’ where influence and numbers of older voters (with short term horizons) increasing proportionally over younger generations with longer term interests but less voice and influence.

AC Grayling on the Need for more Educated and Informed Citizens

Posted on September 1, 2023

When people question seemingly uninformed voter choices averting their gaze from politicians of the right, right wing media and related who are desperate to keep or put right wing parties in power, by attacking the centre and sensible legislation, why or how?

Across the Anglosphere and Europe many mostly ageing dominant voters, politicians, media and influencers, who are less educated and less diverse than younger generations, backed up by ‘collective narcissism’ and ‘pensioner populism’; see Brexit, Trump, Meloni, Orban et al.

British Young People Thrown Under a Bus for Votes in Ageing Demographics

Posted on September 21, 2023

Relevant article from John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde on how age determines divides in British politics, and not class in Conversation article ‘Age, not class, is now the biggest divide in British politics, new research confirms’.

Renewable Energy Sources vs Fossil Fuels – Solar and Wind Power Ahead in Australia

Australia’s Murdoch led NewsCorp media and Koch Network think tank promote climate science denial talking points, especially the IPA Institute of Public Affairs (founded by Murdoch’s father), with fossil fuel and mining players, have been denigrating transition to renewable sources and their reliability, for decades; now playing the need for nuclear to delay transition.

However, the reality is different, like elsewhere, the take up of renewable energy sources is accelerating (though not as fast) away from fossil fuels, while Australian governments of the centre left following climate science become electorally wedged by the same Murdoch media and think tank talking points.

Fact is, renewable sources whether solar or wind, plus EV’s or electric vehicles, work economically and effectively as has been shown elsewhere, while supporting economic growth. 

From Renew Economy Australia:

‘Renewables hit record high in Australia, as green energy transition rolls on

Renewable energy hit a record high of 72.9 per cent of total generation on Sunday, as a wave of wind and solar across Australia’s main grid sent coal output and operational demand to new lows.

The new peak of 72.9 per cent on the National Electricity Market (NEM), the country’s main grid, was reached for a five minute interval at 12.45pm (AEST), according to data collectors at GPE NEMLog2, beating the previous peak of 72.5 per cent set late last month (October 24).

The bulk of the renewable energy came from rooftop solar from households and businesses, which accounted for around 44 per cent of total generation. Utility scale solar and large scale wind had shares of just over 14 and 12 per cent each, while hydro played a minor role with just over 1.1 per cent.

The new peak for renewables was especially noticed in Victoria, where the share of variable renewable energy (wind and solar) hit a new record high of 95.7 per cent earlier that day (10.10am AEST), well beyond the previous peak of 88.5 per cent set on October 22.

The new peak just happens to correspond to Victoria’s renewable energy target for 2035 (95 per cent), although that will be measured on an annual average basis, rather than a single five minute dispatch period. But the trend is clearly there.

NSW has the biggest fleet of coal generators in Australia, with 8,200MW of coal fired capacity, but coal output hit a new low of just 1633 MW at 9.15am (AEST), more than 100 MW below its previous low, highlighting the assault on its business case and “baseload” assumptions.

It also reflects the fact that one third of its units were out of action for maintenance and upkeep, and the second unit at Mt Piper also wound back to zero on Saturday.  Coal power accounted for just 16.4 per cent of the state’s demand when renewables hit their peak at 12.45pm on Saturday.

Network demand also hit a new low in Victoria (1724 MW), while battery discharge hit a new high in NSW (209 MW), indicating the early but accelerating shift to different forms of dispatchable energy.

On Friday, as GPE NEMLog’s Geoff Eldridge reports, a bunch of solar output records tumbled across the grid, with the gap between solar power and coal output stretching to nearly 10 GW at one stage.

Australia’s target renewable share is 82 per cent by 2030, based around the modelling of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan.

Across the last 12 months, the NEM has average 38.7 per cent renewables, so it needs to more than double that share in the next 6-7 years.  Across the last 30 days, the average share of renewables has been a more promising 45.8 per cent.’

For more blogs or articles on Australian Politics, Climate Change, Economics, Environment, EU European Union, Fossil Fuel Pollution, Koch Network, Media, Political Strategy, Science Literacy and Vehicle Usage click through

Libertarian Nativist Lobbying Against EV Electric Vehicles in Support of Fossil Fuels

Posted on September 20, 2022

Not only is Australia out of step with the developed world, including the US, but another example of how fossil fuel, road, traffic and transport lobbies have been effective in avoiding or limiting environmental regulation and standards, using libertarian economic arguments as promoted by Koch Atlas Network think tanks e.g. the IPA Institute of Public Affairs.

What has been missed is the white nativist ecological NGO influence of the US Tanton Network linked to Sustainable Population Australia, with the latter based on and replicating the US fossil fueled ZPG Zero Population Growth, promoted by media and politicians of both left and right, blaming humanity i.e. immigrants and population for environmental issues, to deflect from fossil fuels and climate science.

French Farmers, Truckers and Covid Freedom Rallies Astroturfing vs. Science, Environment and EU European Union?

Posted on March 5, 2024

Farmers protesting in France and probably elsewhere are more about astroturfing by Big Ag to oppose the EU European’s Union Green Agenda, threats to CAP Common Agricultural Policy, pesticides and fossil fuels; does not seem to be a genuine issue of small farmers especially with indirect support of Le Pen?

Further, not only have similar protests occurred on the border of Poland and Ukraine, and other points, with allegations of Russian influence, there seems to be resonance with the US fossil fuel Koch Network ‘freedom rallies’ globally against Covid science, vaccinations and health mandates vs. centrist governments.

Degrowth Economics – Greenwashing Fossil Fuels and Nativism for Authoritarian Autarky?

Posted on March 13, 2024

Is ‘degrowth’ genuine economics theory or astroturfing for greenwashing the status quo i.e. by demanding degrowth that leaves already wealthy or <1% with existing economic and social mobility or status, but precludes upward mobility for 99%> of future generations?

Why? Creates confusion and delay for the economic, industrial and fossil fuel status quo of over a century to transition away from carbon to renewable sources.

Although not cited by either The Conversation or Grist below, the degrowth, steady state and autarkist constructs are not new, see 1930s Italy and Germany, then fast forward to the Club of Rome which promoted the construct ‘limits to growth’; good things like technology grow linearly vs. bad things like emissions and people grow exponentially. 

COP28 Climate Science Denial – Avoiding Transition to Renewable Energy Sources

Posted on December 10, 2023

There were recent comments by the COP28 President in UAE denying climate science around fossil fuels, hence, no need to transition from the same; but no credible support for his claims?

These talking points are very common across right wing media for ageing and less educated voters to support fossil fuel right wing policies, often with ‘Koch Network’ in the background, but simply promoting deflection and conspiracies?

Financial Times: Opinion Data Points. Economics may take us to net zero all on its own The plummeting cost of low-carbon energy has already allowed many countries to decouple economic growth from emissions.

Australian Bureau of Statistics – UNPD NOM Net Overseas Migration Formula – Inflating Immigration and Population Growth

One has written previously on the wilful confusion around immigration and population data used for demographic analysis in the Anglosphere, also to dog whistle refugees, immigrants and population growth.

However, requires the misrepresenting of data and research using climate science denial techniques used by entities linked to both Tanton Network and Koch Network, deflecting from carbon or fossil fuels and promoting eugenics; in Australia and US using proxies to replicate previous race based immigration restrictions.

Following is an addition to a previous post ‘NOM Net Overseas Migration – Immigration – Population Growth’ endeavouring to explain the data that is misrepresented in the mainstream by nativist influencers and NGOs, right wing media and political parties, informing above median age and low info voters; see Brexit, Trump and indigenous Voice Referendum in Australia.

The following analysis was done by the Quixotic Quant who disagreed with related analysis presented by a right wing finance blog, partly inspired by Zero Hedge, that did more to confuse subscribers than inform them.  

Strategy to dog whistle proxy white Australia policy, put a psychological floor on house values and FOMO ‘fear of missing out’; without any insight, research or data into housing types used by international students, and their housing behaviour, but let’s blame them anyway?

From The Quixotic Quant:

The Missing Million: Is Australia’s migration rate actually high?

It’s time that someone took a proper tilt at Australia’s high migration rate. No, I don’t mean like Dick Smith, splashing millions on an advertising campaign arguing that such a high rate is unsustainable and that we should return down to previous levels. I mean taking a few hours with the data source to figure out whether Australia’s migration rate actually is any higher than it was at previous levels.

The Population Ponzi story tells us that sometime in the mid-2000s the Howard government kicked the gate-open to mass migration to feed the mining boom, then an un-holy alliance between big retailers, property developers, and budget-stressed politicians allowed the gate to stay open ever-after. The sustained influx of immigrants post-boom can then explain most things weird and worrying about our economy, including per-capita real income falling, low wage growth, and high house prices.

The alternative story is that sometime in the mid-2000s the Australian Bureau of Statistics changed the definition of an official statistic called “Net Overseas Migration”. The arbitrary definition they had at the time was malfunctioning, and the next arbitrary one they changed to has been malfunctioning even worse. A blithely ignorant press didn’t even notice the change, let alone query the disfunction that inspired it, so the entire country has been putting their faith soaring population figure that has the integrity of custard. The harder alternative figure shows that our migration rate is actually flat. The confusion probably explains even more weird things, like low nominal GDP growth, low tax revenues, not to mention wage growth and per-capita everything. House prices are worrying, but not weird. Something else simple explains them, but that’s a tilt for another day.

Read this post if you’re not sure which to believe.

Why the NOM graph matters more than most

As far as graphs go, Net Overseas Migration, (NOM) would have to be one of the rising-stars in Australian economic policy debates. The significance of NOM to housing (hence banking, hence sharemarket) is pretty obvious. It also makes a crucial contribution to ‘Estimated Resident Population’, perhaps one of the most important statistics that’s relied on for imputing, scaling and basing a host of other crucial statistics.

But this particular graph’s influence has also risen the tide of confusion swamping the world’s economists, who are floundering to explain the new low-inflation, low-growth new-normal paradigm that has beset the Western World. Everyone’s casting around for a theory. With a slightly selective date-range (say from around 1991 onwards), this graph gives some Australian pundits and commentators exactly what they want: some substantial level-shift that occurs somewhere around the GFC, and hasn’t returned to old normal levels. (Use the zoom/selector tool to cut out the pre-1991 part to soak in the less-than-full picture.)

(Notice the spike pre 2010 that signifies new and 2006 expanded NOM starting to take effect)

You can see why people are arguing that someone kicked the gate open. Apparently in the 2000s Australia suddenly started letting over 200,000 people in every year, when previously we took about half that amount.

Overseas there is plenty of credible economic commentary, particularly in the US and Europe arguing that more migration would be a very good thing for their economies. It’s fair to say that social issues dominate the case against migration, which would probably be economically beneficial if it was legitimised, and very much so if you could select well-educated foreigners who weren’t refugees. Land-borders make that a non-trivial issue in the US and Europe.

Two things set us apart. Sea-borders are one, which means we take control of migration for granted. You don’t have to sound bombastic by proposing to build a wall when you’ve already got a moat. The second is this graph, which appears to show a such a dramatic level shift to a higher level than most other Western Countries. The shift appears so clear that it has sparked something of a dalliance between some respectable economic thinkers, and the ‘Population Ponzi’ theory, which makes out that Australia’s rapid population growth could be masking, or worse even causing, some real economic problems.

The devil’s in the detail. Or maybe just the definition.

I mightn’t have ever noticed the definition shift if I hadn’t attempted to reproduce two columns in an ABS Demographics spreadsheet called ‘Arrivals’ and ‘Departures’ from numbers in two other spreadsheets called ‘Arrivals’ and ‘Departures’. That’s right, the ABS keeps these series in separate places, with different catalogue numbers (310101, 340101 & 340102), with different date ranges, and different frequencies of data entries. One would think they’re keen fend off amateur analysts attempting to check their numbers.

I couldn’t get any of the series to add up together, even after creating a little package of code in R to manage the necessary wrangling to compare the periods. I wanted to assume that some simple addition of the Permanent and Long Term Arrivals would produce the 3101 Arrivals, and same with Departures, and the net of those would produce (or at least closely follow) the hallowed NOM. Please enjoy chuckling at my naivety. In fact the net Permanent and Long Term movements give a trend that’s far higher than Net Overseas Migration. The Net Short Term movements, on the other hand, used to be trivial, but had in recent decades had become quite large and negative.

This demanded the question: how did the ABS decide just how many of those net movements that were classified in one series as ‘short-term’ to blend in with the ‘long-term’ ones to conclude what constituted ‘migration’? I expected somewhere deep inside the explanatory notes that I’d find some arbitrary rule that had to be followed. The explanatory notes had two, with the switch between them occurring just before the ‘level shift’. Here are the direct quotes:

‘22 The ABS developed and introduced an improved method, called the ‘12/16 month rule’ methodology, for estimating NOM. It has been used in calculating Australia’s official ERP since September quarter 2006. The ‘12/16 month rule’ methodology is a result of reviewing the treatment of temporary migrants (both long-term and short-term) who are away from or resident in Australia for a period of 12 months or more.

23 Estimates of NOM based on the previous methods and those based on the ‘12/16 month rule’ methodology are not comparable. The key change is the introduction of the ‘12/16 month rule’ for measuring a person’s residency in Australia, replacing the previous ‘12/12 month rule’.’

“Not comparable” is the correct (one would hope unavoidable) conclusion about such a substantial change in method. But overall I think my gratitude for the ABS spelling out the obvious is overwhelmed by my dismay at their burying this insight in paragraph 23 of the ‘Explanatory Notes’ tab, where only the most determined and tireless of data consumers are likely to encounter it.

Not the slightest mention, flag, warning, column change, name change, or label can be seen anywhere near the actual spreadsheets available for download. So with almost no exceptions users tend to string it together on one axis, in sequence, in one line, in one colour, blithely ignorant of the fact that they’re plotting two different bits of data which are “not comparable” according to the producer of the data.

It’s hard to overstate how bad that really is. It’s the kind of slop which hung-over first-year uni students cobble together on the bus on the way to a tutorial which requires attendance but doesn’t grade exercises. If they do it in assignments, they fail. Yet all of Australia’s leading economists are doing it relentlessly, if accidentally.

How one should, or should not present “not comparable” data

Let’s be geeky and consider how to properly present the data. (Feel free to borrow my code if you’ve been unwittingly guilty of the misdemeanor and would like to produce some better plots.)’

Post continues click through…..

For more related blogs and articles on Australian Politics, Demography, Immigration, International Student, Media, NOM Net Overseas Migration, Population Growth and Statistical Analysis click through:

NOM Net Overseas Migration – Immigration – Population Growth

Posted on February 26, 2018

Interesting article on immigration and NOM net overseas migration by former Australian Department of Immigration Deputy Secretary Abul Rizvi endeavouring to insert some understanding and clarity round the ‘immigration’ debate when most misunderstand, misinterpret or misrepresent immigration and population data.

Immigration Population Growth Decline NOM Net Overseas Migration

Posted on February 1, 2019

For the past 10+ years Australia, the Anglo and western worlds have been obsessing in the mainstream about ‘immigration’ and ‘population growth’ as negative factors for the environment, economy, quality of life, infrastructure, traffic congestion, ‘carrying capacity’ etc. based upon misrepresentation and/or misunderstanding of data, analysis and facts.

However, in Australia as opposed to most nations, pension reform, introduction of superannuation, skilled permanent immigration and net financial contributions from temporary resident ‘churn over’ should maintain a balance between social responsibilities of the government and financial management.

Australian Migration Review 2023 – For Immigrants and Nation or a Nativist Trap?

Posted on May 10, 2023

The Australian Migration Review Report has been published, based on narratives and submissions, but little meaningful grass roots feedback or data to support any grounded analysis for good future reforms?

This post will focus on NOM Net Overseas Migration and major source or factor i.e. international education and students, but for now, not the other main factors including WHV Working Holiday Visas (2nd year) and temporary workers.

Expert Analysis of Australia’s Populist Immigration and Population Growth Obsessions

Posted on July 9, 2021

Interesting article ‘Australia’s facile immigration policy debate’ by former former Immigration Department senior official Abul Rizvi in John Menadue’s Pearls and Swine, parsing through and commenting on Australia’s immigration policies, media and societal narratives that are not well supported by the literature nor demographic research. 

These positions are distilled into either for cliched ‘Big Australia’ on the side of the corporate sector or anti-immigrant through proxy issues such as ZPG like ‘population growth’ leading to environmental degradation.  However,  these are both corporate positions or tactics supported by the same and neither explain why Australia has modest permanent immigration and the more significant temporary churn over via the NOM Net Overseas Migration.

Meanwhile mainstream media and niche outlets obsess about (undefined) post 1970s ‘immigration’ always presenting as negative with few if any positives; although Australia promotes itself as an ‘immigration’ nation and the ‘world’s most successful multicultural society’.

Immigration Immigrants and Public Misconceptions

Posted on February 4, 2020

Harvard University study recently found that people in Western countries, including America, have succumbed to many restrictionist myths…… About 3 percent of the world’s population lived outside its birth country in 1900. And 3 percent does so now. By any objective metric, the modern age has experienced no historic flood of immigration.

Global Population Decline and Rebalance

Posted on January 17, 2024

The Anglosphere, especially right wing media and influencers, obsess about supposed immigrant-led population growth in the developed world, while claiming high fertility and exponential growth; not true it’s a reflection of better human health and increasing longevity.

However, these dynamics are still misrepresented or ignored in media, politics and public narratives based on the eugenics based ideology of Bob Malthus, Francis Galton, Madison Grant and John Tanton; the latter via ZPG Zero Population Growth supported by Rockefeller Bros. Fund.

There is an increasing body of research, knowledge and awareness of population and demography in nations and globally thanks to Jack Caldwell, Fred Pearce, Wolfgang Lutz, Hans Rosling, Sanjeev Sanyal, then recent years Bricker & Ibbitson (‘Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline’); outside of the UNPD, right wing and faux centrist media, think tanks, politics and influencers.

Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin’s Israel – Palestine Project

The relationship between allies Donald Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, with family members too, including Jared Kushner & Netanyahu’s son Yair, is multi dimensional.

Both have some distasteful local and international allies including Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Saudi’s MBS, far right and religious fundamentalists, while attacking democracy to have institutions including the courts or legal system, media, military, older citizens etc., be subordinate and support them and their interests.

Further, the supposed global left or faux anti-imperialists who support Palestine versus Israel, but coy about Hamas and Gaza, while Netanyahu’s own extremists settlers create problems for any peace agreements and future of younger generations, are being used to belittle centrists including Biden – Democrats, Australia’s Labor government and UK’s Labour’s Keir Starmer, who is not even in government?

More transnational attacks on the centre by the right to prevail in elections, corruption, authoritarianism and power?

From Politico:

‘Opinion | The Trump-Netanyahu Strategy Is Revealed

Israel’s democratic crisis could become America’s.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have been allies, but also, intriguingly, mirror one another.

That’s not only because both see “strength” as their go-to asset, or at least the con that the political base seems most likely to buy. Each claims to be his nation’s singular guardian against catastrophe. Each turns shamelessness into charisma. Each grew up coddled but plays up resentments for elites. Each cultivates, in effect, dictators like Vladimir Putin and Victor Orban and scoffs at Western Europe. Each will tolerate only loyalists, and has a string of former appointees, especially high-ranking security professionals, who look back on their service in disgust. Each brags promiscuously, condemns “fake news” and has a sycophantic, tweeting son.

Now, Trump, already running for president, is under indictment, a half-year after Netanyahu, already on trial, was reelected prime minister. Trump will deny learning from anyone; but if Israel, at times, seems like America in microcosm, then Netanyahu’s playbook might well provide some coaching. The crisis confronting Israel’s democracy, prompted by Netanyahu’s assault on the judiciary, is cautionary for the United States, moreover. One hopes that the mass response to that assault is instructive, too.

I hasten to add the obvious, that comparing Israel with the United States takes imagination. Israel is four-fifths the size of Massachusetts, with a population something less than Greater Chicago’s — and that’s before we get to history, religion, resources and culture.

But Israeli and American politicians often seem caught up in the same game. Israel, like America, suffers tensions between people on the peripheries of cities and those on the urban coast, between the less well-educated, who are often religiously dogmatic, and those more cosmopolitan and scientifically inclined; between those leaning to the right and those to the left. A broad middle also exists, with people who may be religiously sentimental, or reasonably tolerant, or just can’t be bothered; over 40 percent of Israelis are secular, about 30 percent of Americans. Israel’s inequalities are generated by a globalized, technological and entrepreneurial economy. When Israelis say “elites,” they mean pretty much what Americans do.

Israel, like America, moreover, is a nation of immigrants whose patchy ethnic origins torture collective identity; and though Israelis and Americans assume a powerful (arguably unrivaled) military, national unity is most effectively mobilized by, well, the threat of catastrophe. Finally, Israel, like America, has a checkered constitutional history, where high ideals espoused in a Declaration of Independence were not exactly enacted; it’s a reality largely owing to bigotries against a large minority who, for good reason, did not suppose themselves welcomed into their country’s founding — bigotries that can be invigorated by demagogues.

Which brings us back to Trump and Netanyahu.

For both, regaining or holding on to power means, among other things, subordinating judicial institutions that define and enforce the rule of law. That’s because both have hanging over them grave allegations of high crimes against the state. They cannot risk responsible legal professionals grinding away at their jobs. Netanyahu’s assault on Israel’s judiciary is his preemptive strike. Trump knows something about debasing constitutional norms, but his own assault on prosecutors and courts may just be gearing up.

Trump, famously, is under investigation for his role in fomenting the bloody Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which sought to thwart the transfer of power. Less well-known is Netanyahu’s jeopardy.

A year ago, before he returned to the premiership, Israel’s government — its “change coalition” — voted to empower an independent state commission to investigate Netanyahu’s role in the defense ministry’s 2016 procurement of submarines and other vessels from the German company, Thyssenkrupp — a deal in which he overrode the objections of his defense minister and the I.D.F.’s general staff. Close associates, and arguably, Netanyahu himself, profited; billions of defense ministry dollars were involved, not to mention millions in commissions and enhanced stock values. This was corruption with real national security implications. With Netanyahu back in power, that commission is, for the time being, dead.

But the parallel, alas, does not end there. For both Trump and Netanyahu are also charged with lesser corruptions that are comparatively difficult to prove, or at least easier for supporters to overlook: Trump’s alleged hush money to Stormy Daniels; Netanyahu’s payments — allegedly bribes — from foreign associates, and his alleged use of regulatory power to bend the news for his political benefit. In a way, moreover, both men have been lucky to be charged with these lesser crimes first. Netanyahu has already proven how an indictment of this kind can be useful in rallying the base, along with blocking potential challenges from feckless leaders of one’s own party.

His playbook is pretty much self-evident. You prompt condemnation of the less egregious charges as amounting to a witch hunt enabled by a “weaponized judiciary.” You discredit prosecutors and judges before they can convict you, and you justify your reelection, in part, by promising to tame them. The larger crime is thus submerged in “politics-as-usual” sparring — catnip for reporters and pundits who like the sport.

A “weaponized judiciary,” in other words, is your sly complaint when seeking power and your first priority when exercising power.

Netanyahu’s judicial “reform,” accordingly, is meant to make prosecutors and judges subservient to his cabinet. And, simultaneously, Netanyahu has made an alliance with ultra-Orthodox theocrats and pro-settlement zealots who feared that judicial enforcement of civil rights and the rule of law would undermine their privileges: a free hand in the West Bank, say, or control over marriage, or exemptions from the army for male yeshiva students. Netanyahu appointed the Kahanist bigot and provocateur Itamar Ben-Gvir to head the ministry overseeing the state police, which would be like Trump appointing Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, to run the FBI.

These moves may have no direct analogue in America. But Trump’s embrace of the anti-abortion movement is nothing if not submission to religious activists — including, ironically, reactionary Supreme Court justices, whom Netanyahu can only envy. And executive power carries other privileges. If Republicans win back the Senate next year, and Trump regains the White House, one can imagine whom he might install as attorney general. Jim Jordan is already chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Trump may be far from locking up the nomination, but he can take heart from Netanyahu’s brazenness. Trump’s enablers in the Republican Party (Fox News, and so forth) jumped to condemn his indictment as just another gambit by the liberal elite and “woke” Deep State. Trump is already promising presidential pardons for (and essentially singing along with) extremists who stormed the Capitol…..’

For more blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Conservatives, Demography, Evangelical Christianity, Political Strategy, Populist Politics, Radical Right Libertarian & Russia.

Putin’s Russian Led Corruption of Anglosphere and European Radical Right, Conservatives and Christians

Posted on March 4, 2024

Some years ago Putin and Russia attracted much attention and sympathy from Anglo and European ultra conservative Christians, radical right and free market libertarians for Russia’s corrupt nativist authoritarianism with antipathy towards liberal democracy, the EU and open society.

These phenomena can be observed through visitors and liaisons, but more so by shared talking points and values.  These include family values, pro-life, Christianity, patriarchy, misogyny, white supremacy, traditionalism, dominionism, Evangelicals, anti-LGBT, anti-woke,  anti-elite, anti-gay marriage, traditional wives etc. and corruption, promoted by right wing parties, media, ultra conservative influencers, think tanks and NGOs

Growth of Conservative Hard Right Wing or Nativist Authoritarian Regimes

Posted on December 18, 2022

Good article from Lucy Hamilton in Melbourne ‘The fight against paranoid nostalgia’ and one could suggest further common factors, actors and their reasons; underpinned by corruption and precluding few if any ‘off ramps’, these types are in so deep.  In addition to Putin, Orban, Trump et al there is also Erdogan, Netanyahu, Vucic in Serbia, Dodik in Bosnia Serbia, Kaczynski in Poland et al. and of course the UK Tory governments….. whiff of influence and corruption.

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy

Posted on November 5, 2021

Plato noted more than 2000 years ago, one of the greatest dangers for democracy is that ordinary people are all too easily swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious politicians. We have observed the Anglosphere including the U.K., Australia and U.S., becoming more nativist, conservative, libertarian, extreme and conspiracy minded.  This is not organic.

Fake Anti-Imperialists of the Anglo Left and Right on Ukraine and Russia

Posted on February 28, 2023

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 2014 we have observed many Anglo left and centrists echoing Kremlin talking points that justify the invasion, shared with the far right, but not by the European left nor right?

However, if one observes many of the US along with some British, Australian etc. geopolitical analysts, media types and politicians promoted in Anglo right wing media, not only do they present sketchy analysis, but seem linked to US oligarchs, Putin allies and/or far right, or at best cold war agitprop?

Some posit that many on the left are not just playing out ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, but the Red-Green-Brown Alliance…

Radical Right Takeover of Conservatives

Good article on Conservative far right by Claire Jones in the West England ByLine Times; ByLine Times is worth subscribing to.

The ‘new Conservative far right’ may not be ‘new’ when one recognises the themes, talking points, media dynamics and ideology hiding behind; nor is it unique to the U.K., but transnational, even if the roots were centuries ago in the U.K..

Underpinning the right’s strategy and tactics are ageing demographics whereby above median age vote, more likely to be conservative, especially in regions, and dominates the above median age, but often low info or not educated, angry or narcissistic, and less diverse than urban centres as demographic change rolls on. 

Firstly several US fossil fueled Atlas Koch Network think tanks or outlets at Tufton Street, behind media and Tory used in lobbying and PR on preferred policies, are cited especially ‘climate science denial’, low taxes and small government; also behind Brexit and in the US the GOP, FoxNews etc., Donald Trump, and also Argentina, Australia, New Zealand etc..

Further, U.K. media landscape, has been complicated like elsewhere by digital and social media, which was preceded by hollowing out and dilution of regulatory constraints by Murdoch led media, leading to now pro-Brexit and pro-Putin Legatum’s GB News adding to curation of content and promotion of talking points for a more substantive or dominant right wing media landscape.

Many of the nativist, Brexit and anti-immigrant talking points are also imported, though originated with Malthus and Galton, from the network of dec. white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton of ZPG Zero Population Growth and groups lobbying previous GOP leaders, up to advising on Donald Trump’s immigration and border policies.

Although Tanton’s network flies under the radar, their talking points do not, and are personified by Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson, UKIP now Reform, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Marie Le Pen, Hungarian PM Orban, UK Trade Advisor Tony Abbott, Migration Watch etc.

From West England ByLine Times:

Mad, bad and dangerous – the new Conservative far-right

A post-election far-right power grab is looming. In 2024 we have a unique, possibly last, opportunity to prevent it

By Claire Jones 28 February 2024

With a Labour win now allegedly ‘baked in’, it’s fashionable to mock the Conservative Right (or ‘far-right’). But should we?  

The Conservative Right is a loose alliance that includes the Institute for Economic Affairs, (IEA) European Research Group ,  Popular Conservativism, (PopCon), The New Conservatives, The Common Sense Group and National Conservativism.

Notable members are Liz Truss, Jacob Rees Mogg, Suella Braverman, Lee Anderson, Andrea Jenkyns, Miriam Cates and Robert Jenrick. Common alliance themes are euroscepticism, climate scepticism, cultural conservativism, anti-immigration and economic neo-liberalism.

Some use these themes selectively, strategically even, to woo voters. But many, like Jenrick, eraser of children’s murals, are ‘full believers’, wholeheartedly committed to the entire box of ideological tricks.

‘Putting nanny to bed’

Two broad principles underpinning the alliance are libertarianism and  suppression. High on the ideological bucket list for the IEA and PopCon is economic libertarianism: financial deregulation and low taxation in free markets operating unfettered by the ‘nanny state’. 

Undeterred by her cataclysmic experiment with this idea during her brief tenure as PM, Truss recently returned, without shame, to re-present it at PopCon’s inaugural conference.

PopCon and other groups extend libertarianism to individual freedoms. We must be free to make our own choices, unconstrained by the state, they say. Measures to reduce air pollution and increase road safety are deemed an affront to driver freedom. Paying green levies, driving petrol cars, vaping, and overdosing on sugar, etc should all be matters of individual choice. Some regard the Covid lockdowns as a particularly invidious example of state control. Freedom from the nanny state apparently equates with freedom to kill oneself, others and the planet. But libertarians are seemingly untroubled by the ‘death wis’

 accompanying their vision.

Jiggery wokery

While individual liberty is celebrated, wokery requires suppression. ‘Woke’ is an elastic term applied to a diversity of groups:  “left-wing extremists”, “environmentalists”, lawyers (for criticising the Rwanda scheme), civil servants (for ignoring “the peoples’ bidding”), the RNLI (for providing ‘migrant taxis’), the Premier League (for ‘taking a knee’), and the National Trust (for giving imperialism a bad name by providing honest histories of their artefacts). In line with Georgia Meloni, Truss and others also include “supporters of LGBT people”.

But there’s a tension here between libertarianism and repression. Isn’t there a flagrant double-standard in saying we should be free to e.g. pollute the environment, but not to protest about it? That we should unshackle ourselves from the European Court of Human Rights, but tighten government control over our own supreme court?

Truss ‘fixes’ this conundrum by explaining that citizens are made to feel prohibited from speaking out. Militant, purist wokerati are trying to “drown us out” and must therefore be silenced. This ‘solution’ is buttressed by appeal to ‘the will of the people’, a fantasy consensus, concocted to justify populist policies (such as the Rwanda plan). Wokery must be suppressed because it obstructs the freedoms of ‘the majority’.

Getting bolder

The UK Conservative Right echoes the far-right thinking stealing across Europe (the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Greece, Sweden and elsewhere). Opposition to immigration is a shared theme and was the hand, dressed in racist rhetoric, that guided Brexit.

Our mainstream press is traditionally coy about describing Conservative factions as ‘far-right’. But last week, Lee Anderson claimed that “Islamists have got control of Kahn and London”. Oliver Dowden, deputy prime minister, failed to condemn this bald-faced Islamophobia. Instead, he insisted an apology would be sufficient to avoid a penalty, thus neatly priming the political airspace for further racism. Here Anderson and Dowden displayed a striking new boldness that crashed straight past our media barriers, laying bare the Right’s true colours.

With equal verve, Truss, the US far-right’s latest useful idiot, gave a presentation last week at CPAC in which the mask of Conservative moderation vapourised in the heat of MAGA enthusiasm. With cult-grade paranoia, she railed against “agents of the left”, including trans activists, whom she accused of infiltrating the civil service. On she ploughed, attacking the deep state “wokeonomics” that had thwarted her premiership, and calling for anti-woke Conservatives to unite globally.

And this is happening. The UK Conservative Right is strengthening its links with global far-right networks via mediators such as Truss, Farage and Steve Bannon, via the party’s numerous other Trump apologists, who deploy tactics straight from the Trump playbook, and via an increase in new far-right press and media channels. GB news founder, Sir Paul Marshall, a ‘liker’ of tweets supporting the ‘great replacement theory’ and expulsions of “fake refugee invaders”, is now a prospective purchaser of the Daily Telegraph. Our centre-ground commentariat expresses its revulsion but the network-building continues.

Mad as a box of frogs?

The Conservative Party is in for a hammering at the next election, with many of its right-wing MPs poised to lose their seats. So, why worry? Can’t we just sit back and enjoy the spectacle of a bunch of crackpot cultists shouting into the wind? Labour is coming, so ‘what’s to fear’?

But the question is: how good would we actually be at defending ourselves from the extremist ideologies menacing Europe?

The Conservative centre-ground is losing influence just as the party is trying to re-absorb ReformUK interest. So, in line with Europe, as the party re-assembles during Labour’s difficult first term, it is likely to morph rightwards on immigration, anti-woke cultural conservativism, the suppression of judicial independence, and our right to protest. If Trump is re-elected this will give further succour to fledgling UK ideological variants. And if these new iterations decide that it’s expedient to pose as ‘centre-ground’, voters (and Ofcom) may be slow to notice.

Labour travail

The good news is that the UK has a progressive majority, concealed by first-past-the-post (FPTP), but clearly there in attitude surveys. Our progressive values ought to protect us from a far-right incursion.

The less good news is that we thought the same, until recently, of parts of Europe. Wilders’ Freedom Party seeded in a famously egalitarian, socially innovative, ‘high trust’ society with “low corruption, press freedom and moderation”. But he ramped up anti-immigration rhetoric whilst tapping into feelings of economic and cultural neglect and, like Meloni, attracted strong youth support.

In broken Britain, we share many ailments that have driven European countries into the arms of the far-right. Every aspect of our well-being has been ravaged by 14 years of Conservative decimation: our physical environment, economic prospects, health and social services, trading relationships, and cultural life. The Office For Budget Responsibility forecasts that continuing falls in average household disposable incomes will profoundly impact living standards for many years.

Truly, Labour will inherit a ‘very sick patient’. The challenge posed by the Conservative legacy is so huge and Labour’s approach so timid and so hard to distinguish from its predecessors, that it’s difficult to avoid the prospect of voters falling out of love with Labour fast.

Here’s a realistic scenario: at the next general election, the country makes a final leap of faith to Labour, only to find that (through inexperience, narrowness of vision, impossible fiscal constraints, or global events) Labour cannot repair Blighty sufficiently (or fast enough) to retain support.

The message will, at this point, be the same as elsewhere, that centre ground politics (right and left) has failed. And it’s in such desperate times that countries lean towards extreme solutions. The toxic cocktail of poor living standards, widening inequality and political cynicism creates a vacuum where extremism steps in.

Other drivers

In the UK, currently just one in five under 40s trust their MPs. Also, despite our prized progressive majority, we are increasingly polarised. Note to the complacent: polarising anti-immigration rhetoric worked its magic sufficiently to land us with Brexit.

Other potential drivers are global events: climate change will keep migration, and hence anti-immigration anxiety, alive. The Ukraine war is driving voter disenchantment with progressive government and high energy prices which hinder prosperity. If destabilising wars in the Middle East and Ukraine escalate, the UK could retreat to a Blitz mindset that’s super-receptive to the Churchillian call for strong, authoritarian leadership. Another Trump apologist, Paul Goodman, editor of Conservative Home, reassures us that Trump is “able to project strength and be prepared to wield it if necessary in a perilous world”.

Lastly, FPTP traps UK politics in a duopolistic cycle of power, endlessly relayed between the two main parties and in which the Conservative Right:

 “…will be incentivised to take back the keys fast from a disorientated Labour party … Left and Right parties conduct a dance of disappointment as, in turn, one fails to meet the challenges of a poly-crisis world, leaving the other to fill the void. But the direction of travel points to the populist Right and the triumph of strong leaders over weakening democracies.”

Lawson on Radical Pragmatism

A precious moment

Let’s hope Labour can overcome these vulnerabilities. But rather than waiting with fingers crossed, isn’t it wiser to act now to head off a future far-right power-grab?

Regardless of the size of Labour’s win, the immediate imperative is to maximize a Conservative defeat at the general election by voting tactically. Tactical voting is a crucial insurance policy. We insure things we value by rating, not just the statistical likelihood, but also the seriousness, of potential damage. We need tactical voting to cut the Conservative Right’s blood supply now because their future return could be catastrophic.  This year we have a unique (possibly last) opportunity to step in, use our progressive muscle, and seize the narrative.’

For more blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Climate Change, EU European Union, Koch Network, Nativism, Political Strategy, Populist Policies and Tanton Network, click through:

British Young People Thrown Under a Bus for Votes in Ageing Demographics

Posted on September 21, 2023

Relevant article from John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde on how age determines divides in British politics, and not class in Conversation article ‘Age, not class, is now the biggest divide in British politics, new research confirms’.

Climate Change Science Attitudes Australia and Koch in USA

Posted on July 7, 2020

Climate science or climate change denialism have been apparent for some decades since the 1970s with Koch Industries being central along with ‘big oil’ of Exxon Mobil etc. in funding through ‘Dark Money’ academia, research, think tanks, media, politicians and PR techniques to influence society.  Now we see the results including wide-spread climate denialism, avoidance of environmental protections and negative media PR campaigns; meanwhile the roots of this strategy have become more transparent with legal action following.

Brexit, Conservatives, Nativism, Libertarian Strategy, Single Market and the European Union

Posted on June 9, 2022

US or Anglo led nativism operates in a parallel universe with the, often fossil fueled, libertarian socio economic ideology promoted by The Republican or GOP, UK Conservatives or Tories and Australian LNP Liberal National Conservative Parties, along with many others in media and/or have influence e.g. climate science denial and blaming ‘immigrants’ for environmental ‘hygiene’ issues.

Radical Right in the West – Fossil Fuel Atlas Koch Network – Nativist Tanton Network – Murdoch Media – Putin’s Russia – Brexit – Trump

Posted on March 6, 2024

Radical right in Anglosphere and Europe is cited here by Scott in Politico, including the ‘great replacement’ and Renaud Camus, climate science and Covid 19 scepticism. 

Symptoms of fossil fuels, oligarchs and <1% supporting corrupt nativist authoritarianism found around (mostly) right wing parties with ageing and low info constituents, informed by talking points prompted by mainstream media, social media and influencers

CPAC Conservative Political Action Conference and the John Birch Society

Posted on March 14, 2024

CPAC US has been in the news for falling audiences and fallings out between different groups and players, while CPAC Hungary will be held 25-26th April in Budapest.  

Recently both The Atlantic and SPLC Southern Poverty Law Center have highlighted the links between CPAC and the anti-communist John Birch Society, founded by Robert Welch, with assistance from others including Fred Koch.

Fred Koch was the father of Charles Koch who in turn helped create the Atlas – Koch Network of global think tanks, along with Tanton Network nativism or eugenics from the old Rockefeller supported ZPG Zero Population Growth; underpins the threat of the ‘great replacement’ of the WASP 1% by lower orders and ‘other types’.

Heritage Foundation – Danube Institute – Trump – Hungarian PM Orban – Atlas – Koch Network – Conservatives

Posted on March 18, 2024

The Heritage Foundation has attracted attention of writer Michel in a The New Republic article below for Trump’s admiration of Hungarian PM Orban and how it has become more far right and extreme e.g. anti-Ukraine sentiments.

Additionally, the linked Danube Institute in Hungary is led by former Thatcher aide John O’Sullivan and European contributor for Australian conservative journal Quadrant. 

Brexit and UK Political Interference by Putin, Russia and Anglo Conservative Allies

Posted on March 12, 2024

Still, there is discussion and analysis of Brexit versus the EU and Trump versus Biden’s Democrat administration, with accusations and allegations being made against Conservative MPs, Ministers, some Labour, media, Anglo right wing grifters, US fossil fueled Atlas – Koch Network think tanks at Tufton, related nativist Tanton Network and Russians, including FSB, diplomats, media and oligarch types.

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network

Posted on September 1, 2022

Excerpts from an article by Brooke Binkowski in Unicorn Riot outlining the history of the population control movement of Tanton Network which informs immigration in the Anglosphere and parts of Europe.