European Farmer Rallies – Far Right Parties – Murdoch – Right Wing Media – Atlas Koch Network – Think Tanks – Putin versus EU – Taxes – Regulation

Interesting article on farmers’ rallies and how Hungarian PM Orban is supporting in their opposition to EU, environmental laws, CAP, competition and taxes, including on fossil fuels, while like others in Poland etc. there’s a whiff of Putin and Russia in the background.

Much of this is confected, in some cases farmers complaining of outsiders taking over and being used for media content, to nudge against the EU, taxes, fossil fuels, environmental laws, science and regulation.

No coincidence that it reflects techniques used in the global anti-Covid lock down and mandate rallies promoted by Atlas Koch Network, also behind Brexit vs. EU; in Australia clear links between Koch think tanks and Murdoch media targeting centrist government e.g. Victorian State Labor government was constantly attacked and dog whistled.

Confected and faux populism of the right to denigrate supranational bodies, liberal democracy, empower youth or working age, science, education, regulation and taxes; see Tea Party movement in the US. 

According to Politico, Orban’s now has plans to influence the EU from the inside, as a majority of EU citizens, including Hungarians, support the EU; developing a Trojan horse to attack the EU from within, on behalf of external agents who also supported Brexit.

‘Orbán-backed Think Tank Courts Farmers Linked to Far Right Ahead of EU Poll

Hardline groups planning June protests accused the EU of “deliberately exterminating its own farmers” at the MCC Brussels event.

By Marta Kasztelan, Clare Carlile and Joey Grostern on May 2, 2024 @ 06:02 PDT

An oil-funded think tank backed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is involved in organising widespread farmer protests in the run-up to the EU elections, DeSmog can reveal.

Hardline farming groups pledged to “sweep away” EU decision-makers at a “lunch and discussion” event, which was hosted by MCC Brussels on April 9.

The think tank is an offshoot of Mathias Corvinus Collegium – an educational institution that in 2020 received more than $1.3 billion in Hungarian state funding. It convened a number of far-right linked farming groups from 10 EU countries in the Belgian capital.

Speakers at the meeting included the hardline Dutch organisation Farmers’ Defence Force (FDF), which hit out at EU environmental and trade policy.

Spokesperson Sieta van Keimpema accused the EU Commission of “deliberately exterminating its own farmers and its own food production”.

She told the audience at the “eco-friendly” Thon Hotel EU that their movement would “take a broom and sweep them away from their Brussels homes, sweep them away from the 6th to the 9th [of June]”.

The group hopes to rally 100,000 people to attend protests on June 4, in what it sees as a critical moment to influence voters. The demonstration would be the culmination of a wave of Europe-wide protests by farmers, which have triggered an unprecedented rollback of environmental measures.

The protest is backed by organisations from Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Spain, according to FDF’s press release.

MCC, which also hosted the controversial “hard-right” NatCon conference in April, has ramped up its hostility to EU-led green farming reforms over the past six months. It is a newcomer to the farming debate, first publicly declaring support for the cause last summer, months before widespread protests that saw tractors block roads in countries across the continent earlier this year.

A report from the Financial Times in February suggested that the think tank had organised farmers demonstrations in January, though it did not name the group directly. An event on the MCC Brussels website appears to corroborate this, inviting farmers to attend a protest on January 24 against “the EU’s overzealous green policies” followed by networking drinks.

Cas Mudde, a professor specialising in the populist radical right at University of Georgia, says MCC Brussels’ support of protests fits with the eurosceptic agenda of Orbán, whose political director chairs the think tank’s parent group.

“The far-right in general, and Orbán in particular, has a strategic reason for supporting the radical farmers in Brussels,” Mudde told DeSmog. “They create the public image of chaos and dissatisfaction with the EU, which helps their anti-EU message for the European election campaign.”

MCC, the parent organisation for MCC Brussels, was contacted for comment prior to publication. MCC Brussels was contacted immediately after publication of the article but has yet to offer a comment.

‘Much More Radical’

Farmers have clashed with police and lit fires outside EU buildings in Brussels in a spate of demonstrations in the past four months. While farmers have protested against an anticipated surge in bureaucracy from proposed green laws, complaints also focused on low prices at the farm gate and lack of protection against increasingly extreme weather. 

The protests have led to the weakening of proposed environmental reforms that were aimed at reducing climate impacts from agriculture, which is responsible for 11 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU.

Led by the right-wing European People’s Party, the EU’s largest political grouping, MEPs last week voted to weaken the majority of sustainability requirements for farmers in return for EU CAP subsidies. 

In some cases, far-right groups have hijacked protests, with authorities in Germany warning that groups there could even be using farmers to trigger an “overthrow” of the government. 

Far-right parties are expected to make major wins at the upcoming EU ballot, riding on rural discontent. 

Speakers at the April 9 event included Thomas Fazi, an author and researcher for MCC Brussels who has criticised the “great net zero lie” and spread conspiracy theories about the World Economic Forum attempting to control the food system through environmental laws. In his address, Fazi praised the farmers protests and warned against the EU’s “decades-long attack on Europe’s small-farming model”, urging farmers to be “much more radical in their analysis and demands”.

Fazi did not respond to DeSmog’s requests for comment. 

Far-Right Attendance

The Brussels discussion was followed by an invitation to a separate meeting held by farmers and a reception in the EU Parliament.

Although a full list of attendees was not made public, YouTube video footage and images posted on social media show that a number of key far-right figureheads participated in the MCC event.

Alongside Fazi, speakers included van Keimpema from Farmers’ Defence Force, who ran as a candidate for the Netherlands’ fringe far-right party Belang van Nederland last year. She told the event: “They are killing farmers and food production, slowly but surely, through land grabbing.” 

In 2019, van Keimpema warned of a “civil war” between farmers and the Dutch government over environmental measures. In a post on X in February, she dismissed climate warnings as “hysterical disaster and fear-mongering”. 

Farmers Defence Force, which was formed in 2019 to oppose animal rights activists, played a key role in protesting the country’s plans to buy out cattle farms in order to address the Netherland’s nitrogen pollution crisis. Its members have been criticised for aggressive tactics such as harassing journalists and intimidating environmental activists. 

The group described the MCC Brussels gathering as “a hopeful day”. In a press release issued after the meeting, it called on the “warriors” to “defend companies and families against the EU Commission’s demolition policy. Together. On June 4.”

Speaking on behalf of FDF, Van Keimpema told DeSmog that the group was not involved in organising any “media meetings” but had been invited as a speaker to the MCC event.

“We accepted, just as we accept invitations to speak at government meetings, TV programmes, papers, universities, schools, political and scientific events and in parliaments, from left to right politically,” she said. 

Van Keimpema added that their quotes had been “taken out of context”.

Another attendee, dairy farmer Bart Dickens from the Belgian Farmers Defence Force, told the Brussels meeting that the only way to win the EU’s “war on farming” was for farmers across Europe to “fight together”. The group, which was formed in 2023, claims to be independent but previously received funding from its Dutch counterpart.

A number of other far-right linked farmers groups were also present at the Brussels meeting.

A member of France’s Coordination Rurale, which has strong links to the country’s National Front party, was photographed outside the hotel in the group’s signature yellow beret. Also present were members of Germany’s hardline farming group Land Schafft Verbindung (LSV). At least one LSV member has had past ties to the neo-Nazi group NDP, now called Die Heimat.

Spain’s Plataforma 6-F, which was set up by a former affiliate of populist party Vox, are also reported to be taking part in the June 4 protests (although their presence at the MCC event is unknown).

“European farmers have made their voices heard and rattled, potentially even panicked, the institutions of the European Union,” MCC Brussels said on its webpage for the event.

DeSmog identified other far-right politicians in attendance. Front-row seats were held by Patricia Chagnon-Clevers, member of the European Parliament from France’s National Rally (formerly National Front) party, who posted on X that she was “delighted to participate”, and Hermann Kelly, leader of the Irish Freedom Party, which campaigns for Ireland to leave the EU.

The Farmers Defence Force has so far raised over €11,000 euros of a €50,000 euro target for the June protests. The group told news website Euractiv that it hoped the demonstrations would “make people aware of the possibility to vote for a different future” at the EU elections. 

‘War on Farming’

MCC Brussels is widely understood as part of Orbán’s plan to reshape the politics of the continent. The autocrat Orbán – who is in his fifth term as Hungry’s leader – is a major critic of the European Union, and recently declared plans to “occupy” Brussels and put a far-right stamp on policies around migration, climate and gender.

In 2020, the Hungarian government gifted the parent of the think tank, Mathias Corvinus Collegium, 10 percent stakes in the oil and gas giant MOL and in the pharmaceutical firm Gedeon Richter – two of the country’s three most valuable companies. It also provided more than $460 million in cash and $9 million in property. 

The Collegium – which models itself as an educational institute – made $65 million in dividends from the oil company in 2022.

MCC Brussels claims to be a long-term supporter of farmers, who it says have been targeted by “left-wing” green reforms. However, it only began publicly posting about the issue last year.

In a report issued in November titled “The Silent War on Farming: How EU policies are destroying our agriculture”, MCC claimed that the EU was “at war with its own farmers” and accused the bloc of “an environmentalist crusade”.

On an event page for a farmer demonstration and networking event hosted by MCC Brussels in January, the think tank stated: “the fortunes of farmers across Europe suffer from a common problem: the EU’s overzealous green policies and disinterest in, if not disdain for, farmers and ordinary people living in rural communities.”

In the last five years the EU has attempted to curb the polluting impacts of the agriculture industry, which has contributed to sharp decline in bird and bee populations across the bloc. The last Commission tabled a package of farming measures including cuts to pesticide use and steps to protect ecosystems on farmland – proposals which more than 6,000 scientists dubbed “cornerstones of food security and human health” in an open letter last year.

Orbán has embraced the farmers’ protests. In January 2024, his official X account posted a video of him at the demonstrations, accompanied by the words, “We will stand up for the voice of the people! Even if the bureaucrats in Brussels blackmail us.” The following month, his ruling Fidesz party posted a video on Facebook which also used the farmers’ protests to promote opposition to the EU.

“Orbán has carefully crafted his profile as a defender of large scale agriculture,” Balša Lubarda from DAMAR Research Institute, an expert in the far right and sustainability, told DeSmog. 

“The farmers’ protests seem to be an easy opportunity for Orbán to entrench his populist position as ‘the defender of the people against the climate elites’, which will most certainly bring votes.”

The organisations referenced in the article were approached for comment and had not responded prior to publication.

Additional research and reporting by Laura Villadiego, Coen Ramaer, Katharina Wecker and Rachel Sherrington

Editing by Phoebe Cooke and Hazel Healy

Update

Friday 3 May at 2:45pm. We updated the article to clarify that MCC Brussels were contacted immediately after the article was published. Its parent company MCC was contacted prior to publication.’

For more blogs and articles Ageing Democracy, Climate Change, Environment, EU European Union, Fossil Fuel Pollution, Koch Network, Political Strategy, Populist Politics, Russia and White Nationalism click through

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.

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.

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.

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.

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

Posted on October 19, 2022

Many nations, at least in the Anglosphere, have experienced disinformation whether related to climate science or fossil fuels, Covid science, education or democracy, and of late witnessed ‘Trussonomics’ in the UK, another version of Buchanan’s ‘Kochonomics’ or ‘radical right libertarian’ ideology.

However, where does this disinformation come from?

According to historian Nancy Maclean it’s a ‘deny and delay’ strategy of Koch Bros. or Koch Network which includes astroturfing, ‘Dark Money’, creating research, gerrymandering, SLAPPs, universities, Christians and conservatives.

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Posted on August 24, 2020

Some would not be surprised with the doubts and confusion being created round the COVID-19 crisis, especially by those wanting all economic activity to continue and ignore the human costs. 

However, much of this agitprop, astro-turfing and junk science used by non experts has much in common with the information, media and political techniques used by radical right libertarian think tanks funded by the fossil fuel sector and related media, to influence society on climate science to avoid constraints and preserve income streams, with some eugenics in the background.

Russia and Anglosphere – Conservatives and Oligarchs – War vs EU and Future

Posted on July 26, 2023

Very good insight into and overview of Putin’s Russia and the ‘west’ including the Anglosphere from Alexander Etkin (CEU Wien) in Russia’s War Against Modernity.

Following are significant excerpts from Etkind’s analysis from reviewer at Inside Story (Australia) Jon Richardson, on how it endeavours to explain Russia, and one would add many other nations too, mirroring the radical right or corrupt nativist authoritarians with support from fossil fuels & industry oligarchs, consolidated right wing media, think tanks and leveraging ageing electorates.

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

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.

In Australia the tactics were transparent, promoting a German anti-Covid ‘freedom rally’ website via a climate science denier Jo Nova on an Atlas or Koch Network think tank blog (AIP Australian Institute of Progress) and in at least one rally a senior Murdoch News Corp ‘journalist’ Peta Credlin (former PM’s Chief of Staff of now Fox Board’s Tony Abbott) participated with ‘cosplay’ workers attacking media and the centrist Victorian government in Melbourne.

From Truth Dig:

‘Those EU Farmer Protests Aren’t What They Seem

The “angry farmer” narrative is hiding an agribusiness alliance meant to sabotage Europe’s bold green agenda.

During the last weekend in February, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared at the annual national agricultural fair in Paris. It was his first direct encounter with French farmers since they began blocking roads and driving tractors into city centers in January, and it did not go well. When he tried to speak, he was drowned out by a chorus of boos and whistles that delayed the event’s opening by several hours. Two days after the fair, on Feb. 26, a meeting of European agriculture ministers in Brussels was met by nearly 1,000 tractors in the streets, with farmers lighting tire-and-straw bonfires and shooting fireworks at the police, three of whom were injured. The police responded with tear gas.

Since the beginning of the European farmer protests in January, most media coverage has stuck to a simple story summed up as “the Anger of the Farmers.” In reality, however, much of the anger has been manufactured by industrial agriculture concerns who feel threatened by the European Union’s Green agenda. In France, as in Italy, Germany and elsewhere, the tractor convoys are organized by rich unions with close links to Big Ag, including major landowners, pesticide makers and the finance structures that serve them. The small and independent farmers who are most threatened by EU policy changes seem less “angry” than depressed about being treated as economically irrelevant and politically powerless. 

Since most French people live in cities and only see farmers on television, they have accepted this picture of the generically angry and broadly sympathetic family farmer. Two hundred years ago, France was mainly an agricultural country, and farming is still seen as essential French heritage. The agricultural areas are called “Deep France” (la France profonde) and decades of agricultural policy have firmly established the idea that the farmers need assistance and protection to survive the threats created by modernization and urbanization. Though farming only represents 2% of France’s GDP, its farmers have retained a sterling image…. 

……This wave of faux-populist protest has caught everyone by surprise, but so far it is Marine Le Pen, leader of the Trumpish nationalist movement, the National Rally, who has managed to turn things in her direction. Visiting the national agricultural fair on Feb. 28, she was all smiles and warmly welcomed by the farmers. 

Here in East-Central France, a region called Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, the first signs of trouble appeared on actual signs: The road signs at the entrances to towns and villages were being mysteriously turned upside down. Orchestrated by the agricultural trade unions, the clever PR move started in the Tarn area and quickly spread across rural France. The message was clear: French agricultural policy is turning the world upside down.

Understanding why they might think this requires a detour through the history of European Union farming subsidies. Along with national subsidies, most aid to French farmers runs through the European Union, whose Common Agricultural Policy has, from its beginning in 1962, been engineered to favor the French. In the 1980s, the CAP represented two-thirds of the EU budget, and while it has been declining, it remains a major financial instrument….. 

…..The result is that 80% of subsidies now go mostly to a small number of large, industrialized operations. The first major study on land ownership conducted in 30 years recently found that most French farmland — 16 million hectares — is rented from mostly anonymous investors, including supermarket chains and pension funds. Independent, family-based peasant farmers become tenants if they don’t give up completely, and the CAP becomes yet another mechanism to make rich people even richer. Without family capital, the traditional father-to-son pattern is broken. All that’s left is corporate power. And that power is not at all happy about EU plans to disrupt the status quo. 

Despite the name, the Green Deal is not primarily concerned with agriculture. Its aim is to turn Europe into a zero-emission continent based on renewable energy — the so-called Green Transition to carbon-neutral growth. Electric vehicles, electric ships and reduced use of aviation fuel are important elements, but national and international infrastructure projects are the big money-spinners, plus schemes to compensate heavy industry for the expense of adopting green policies. 

All farmers, large or small, hate the growing EU bureaucracy associated with the new green policies. But the real issue is not paperwork. It’s the EU’s bold plans to save the planet. Indeed, the ambitions are revolutionary. “We have proposed stronger rules on industrial emissions, ambient air, surface and groundwater pollutants, treatment of urban wastewater and soil. They will ensure a significant pollution reduction by 2030 as a step towards the long-term objective of zero pollution in 2050,” said Maroš Šefčovič, executive vice president for the European Green Deal. “The plan will strengthen the EU green leadership, whilst creating a healthier, socially fairer Europe.” 

The EU reforms seemed to be moving smoothly forward until the protests. On Feb. 1, the day European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced new restrictions on pesticides and other climate-related targets, more than a thousand tractors blocked the streets of Brussels. After the protests swept through Europe, the EU backed down. Before the end of the week, von der Leyen had declared that the Union was dropping the goal of halving pesticide use by 2030. 

It is often said that the EU has no reverse gear, and von der Leyen’s announcement was the first time that an organized agricultural lobby has attempted — and succeeded — to force Brussels to perform such a humiliating U-turn. 

The loss to the environment was significant. The next phase of the Green Deal and Farm to Fork was supposed to include a number of other impressive targets for 2030, including a 50% reduction of “nutrient losses” (meaning slurry pollution of groundwater); a reduction of chemical fertilizers by at least 20%; a 50% reduction in antibiotics for farmed animals and fish; and an increase of organic farming to 25% of agricultural land.

But the defeat on the pesticides target was a major blow to the entire project. The European branch of the Pesticide Action Network called the decision a victory for “for an appalling opposition led by the agro-chemical industry, against a more healthy, future-proof agriculture for the EU.”

My corner of la France profonde is full of farms, so when the protests started, I thought it would be easy to find some of the farmer anger that everyone was talking about. However, what I mostly discovered talking to local farmers was indifference. “Oh no, I’m too old for that.” “Who cares?” “I don’t have time.” I approached the mayor of the next village, Serge Boitard, to see if he could suggest someone involved in the resistance. He tried to put it diplomatically. “They all have work to do. They can’t just stop everything to go and build barricades.” When I pointed out that there were about 100 trucks backed up by a blockade of tractors just 10 miles down the road, Boitard shrugged. “We don’t know who they are,” he said. 

Many of the machines blocking local traffic were hugely expensive new models from John Deere, Fendt, Claas and other international manufacturers. These are a far cry from the 40- or 50-year-old tractors driven by most small farmers in my area. The ones leading the current protests are mostly luxury-class, with comfortable, air-conditioned cabs and state-of-the-art computerized engines. The biggest and most powerful models — such as the Fendt 933 that led a protest convoy in Italy — cost more than a new Lamborghini, often reaching upwards of a quarter-million dollars. The next generation of fully autonomous AI robot tractors cost twice as much….

……“The FNSEA are interested in protecting an agricultural system that is set up and maintained by [themselves] and the agro-industrial lobby,” said Maurice from the Peasant Confederation. “This system creates privileged people, as we clearly saw during the demonstrations: Grain growers. Pig farmers. Anything on an industrial, international scale.”

But there are signs of greener and more authentic grassroots resistance in the Europe-wide protests. According to France’s leading progressive newspaper, Libération, the FNSEA union is struggling to maintain control and undisputed leadership of the nation’s farmers, some of whom support the thrust of EU policy. Macron and his ministers are talking to the Peasant Confederation and other smaller regional organizations who want to challenge the FNSEA stranglehold. 

The FNSEA naturally sees things differently. In their telling, they are the true voice of French agriculture. The regional head for this département, Jacques de Loisy, 51, explained by telephone that the influence of the “ecologist ideology and its lobby” is to “lower production and revenues with no sufficient scientific basis. There has never been any health scandal or crisis associated with cereal farming in France, but now we are their number one target.” 

He singles out the Farm to Fork project in Brussels, but his real anger is directed at the French government and its policies. 

“There are thousands of regulatory texts now, and it’s not just the paperwork. It’s the content and the implementation,” de Loisy told me. “In Belgium, cleaning out ditches is compulsory. If we want to do it, we have to apply for a certificate, and the bureaucratic process takes several months. We’re not allowed to keep forest roads clear for our tractors. It’s all just designed to punish us. One thing that makes my members really angry is the OFB [French Biodiversity Office]. They send inspectors round and they carry guns. We’re not bandits!”

Ecologists see the OFB as an emergency police force, necessary to protect what’s left of Europe’s biodiversity. The new breed of small farmers, educated and idealistic younger people, agree. But the older generation, still real peasants, don’t engage in any of this. Our next-door neighbor, Marie-Françoise, at 75 years old, keeps chickens and rabbits and milks her cow by hand every day to make cream cheese for the village. Her life is not so different from that of her ancestors 500 years ago. When she dies, her little farm will probably be absorbed into the same global food industry that is paying for the fancy tractors blocking traffic and burning tires on the nearest highway.’

For related blogs and articles on Climate Change, Consumer Behaviour, Economics, Environment, EU European Union, Fossil Fuel Pollution, Koch Network, Media, Political Strategy & Populist Politics click through:

Covid-19 Climate Science Vaccination Misinformation PR and Astro Turfing

Posted on May 6, 2020

In recent months there has been an increase in confusion, misrepresentation and misunderstanding in news and social media round Covid-19 using same techniques as in tobacco, climate science denialism and anti-vaccination movements that seem to benefit US radical right libertarians’ preferred ideology and politics.

Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories and Radical Right Libertarians

Posted on August 13, 2020

Covid-19 restrictions have seen a rise in those viewing any measures e.g. wearing face masks, lock downs etc. as unnecessary, not supported by science and constraining their democratic rights.  However, while many of those who support this view have no expertise in medical science nor data, they seem to be inadvertently masking a deep seated radical right libertarian movement, masquerading as ‘common sense’ or scepticism that favours the economy over humanity.  

Whether they are anti-maskers, sovereign citizens, conspiracy theorists, climate science denialists, QAnon or white nationalist alt right, the common underlying denominator and outcome is both promotion of libertarian views or actions, disrupting the status quo (sensible centre consensus giving way to radical right ideas), denigration of both science and education, and dismissal of duty of care, especially of vulnerable people

Covid Misinformation – Gut Instinct & Beliefs vs. Science & Critical Thinking

Posted on October 6, 2021

Underlying narrative round Covid is something deeper, simpler and somewhat disturbing, the promotion and preservation of personal beliefs and ‘freedom’ over rational analysis, science and societal well-being i.e. business and political elites disregarding the social contract; pre-enlightenment values?

Why are Vaccinated GOP Republicans and Fox Media Killing their Constituents through Covid Denial?

Posted on December 28, 2021

Like the UK and Australia, Fox or NewsCorp is influential amongst media and politics of the right in promoting forms of eugenics and aggressive radical right libertarian socioeconomics, as conservative voter friendly issues.  

Themselves, with neither an ethical nor moral compass to guide them?  

Why is the self appointed Anglosphere of the US, UK and Australia so frivolous with life when many of the same conservatives claim, often hypocritically, that they are conservative Christian guardians of life, by controlling women’s bodies; now with Covid there should be no constraints.

Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories and Radical Right Libertarians

Covid-19 restrictions have seen a rise in those viewing any measures e.g. wearing face masks, lock downs etc. as unnecessary, not supported by their view of ‘science’ and constraining their democratic rights.  However, while many of those who support this view have no expertise in medical science, nor data, they seem to be inadvertently suggesting a deep seated radical right libertarian movement, masquerading as ‘common sense’ or scepticism that favours the business or the economy over society or humanity.  

 

Whether they are anti-maskers, sovereign citizens, conspiracy theorists, climate science denialists, QAnon or white nationalist alt right, the common underlying denominator and outcome is both promotion of libertarian views or actions, disrupting the status quo (upturning the sensible centre consensus giving way to radical right ideas aka Brexit and Trump), denigration of both science and education, and dismissal of duty of care, especially of vulnerable people.

 

In the Anglo world, parts of Europe, Asia and the Americas there seems to have been a quiet push to benefit radical right libertarians and their conservative political partners (or PR sock puppets) to not just promote religion or white nationalism for citizens to worship or follow, but now conspiracy theories to confuse issues and disrupt any logical policy making e.g. climate change.

 

The threads that don’t connect: Covid gives Australian conspiracy theorists a common home

 

‘Sovereign citizens’, anti-vaxxers, mask refuseniks and far-right extremists see all their wildly disparate beliefs confirmed by coronavirus restrictions

 

Michael McGowan  Sat 1 Aug 2020 21.00 BST

 

In the remote border town of Texas, Queensland last month, a police officer pulled over a truck driver after he allegedly crossed into the state without providing identification.

 

In footage posted online, the 33-year-old can be heard asking the officer whether he worked “for the corporation known as the Queensland police in all capital letters?”

 

He then asks: “Am I a man?”

 

The officer’s deadpan response – “It’s 2020 mate. What do you identify as?” – got him his own thread on Reddit, but the bizarre interaction is not unique.

 

Viral footage of people defying restrictions on borders, large gatherings and, in Victoria, the use of face masks, have increasingly peppered Australian news as the Covid-19 pandemic stretches into its eighth month.

 

This past week a woman who refused to wear a face mask in a Bunnings hardware store in Melbourne became the latest fodder for the news cycle after she described herself as “a living woman” to a bemused employee. A few days earlier, footage of a woman reading from a script as she asked an officer “have I disturbed the peace today?” while refusing to answer questions at a border stop in Victoria also made headlines.

 

Footage of these encounters and others like them share a similar characteristic: in them, the people challenging police appear to be reading from the same script, a pdf file that has been shared widely across various Facebook groups loosely affiliated with the so-called “sovereign citizen” conspiracy movement.

 

Described by the Southern Poverty Law Centre in the US as an extremist group, the sovereign citizen movement is a haphazard collection of pseudo-legal beliefs broadly coalesced around the notion that modern government is illegitimate.

 

“Sovereign citizens believe that they get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don’t think they should have to pay taxes,” the SPLC says.

 

In extreme cases, sovereign citizens in the US have been linked to violence. In 2010 a father and son linked to the movement shot to death two police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas, who had pulled them over in a routine traffic stop. The two men were later killed in a shootout with police.

 

The movement is rooted in racism and antisemitism, though, as the SPLC acknowledges, many followers are unaware of its origins. Acts of deadly violence have usually directed against government officials.

 

The Australian wing of the bizarre movement, transplanted here with a few tweaks, is not new. One of its most well-known proponents, a Western Australian, Wayne Glew, had his property and assets seized in 2018 after refusing to pay $300,000 in council rates and legal fees because of a belief local government was unconstitutional.

 

But in the time of Covid-19 its adherents have found themselves a niche. As governments impose unprecedented restrictions on civil liberties in an effort to control the spread of the virus, sovereign citizens appear to be attempting to take advantage of broad community uncertainty to push their confused agenda.

 

They are far from alone. Experts say the pandemic has offered an umbrella under which a bevy of fringe conspiracy groups and far-right actors have found common cause. Cam Smith, an independent researcher who focuses on conspiracy theorists and the far right, says links between previously discrete groups including the sovereign citizens, anti-vaxxers, QAnon and anti-5G groups have increasingly blurred during the pandemic.

 

“It’s a weird moment where all of these groups who usually have their own thing have come together with Covid,” he says. “It doesn’t even really seem to matter if they don’t necessarily meld – they find ways to smooth it over.”

 

…..Prof Axel Bruns, a leading internet researcher from the Queensland University of Technology, has been researching misinformation related to the planned 5G network during the Covid-19 pandemic. He agrees that under the umbrella of the pandemic, the borders between different corners of internet conspiracy have begun to vanish……

 

….For the most part these online groupings have negligible impact on the real word. But the new outbreak of a pushback against Covid-19 restrictions poses a new challenge for authorities grappling with the consequences of people indifferent to the potency of the virus……

 

….The public health academic Prof Julie Leask from the University of Sydney is one of Australia’s leading experts on vaccination uptake. She says she has lost count of the number of interviews she’s done on the anti-vaxx movement, and is frustrated by what she see’s as the media’s outsized focus on its hardcore proponents.

 

“Even the fact you’re doing this story is part of the game,” she says. “It feels like society is obsessed with conspiracy theorists and I still haven’t figured out why. I almost wonder if we’re all attracted to these neat attributions for problems in the same way conspiracy theorists are. If you have a conspiracy theorist who doesn’t want to lock down or wear a mask, you don’t have to acknowledge more complex problems like gaps in our healthcare system.”……

 

When fringe beliefs become destructive

 

The challenge for media organisation lies somewhere in the tipping point: that is, when fringe beliefs and their proponents begin to slip into the mainstream. In the US, opposition to face masks has found its way into mainstream discourse as an issue of individual freedom in some cases peddled by Republican figures including Donald Trump.

 

In Australia that rhetoric has so far been confined to the fringes of the debate, with some notable exceptions: when Victoria mandated face masks in public, the Herald Sun columnist, Sky News host and rightwing pundit Andrew Bolt labelled it “virus hysteria”…..

 

…..While it’s hard to know the extent to which anti-mask sentiment has crept into Australia, Leask said the danger was when an issue became divided along “ideological gradients”.

 

“In the same way that climate change in the 1970s and 80s started to become an issue of, not just do we believe in global warming but ‘by the way this is a lefty idea so if you’re conservative you’re not going to agree with it’,” she said.

 

“You start to see those leading commentators influencing a larger group of people. If part of belonging to whichever tribe is to also believe ‘it is my right to not wear a mask’ then you might see a greater amount of non-compliance”.

 

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