Anglosphere Antipathy To Refugees, Immigrants and Sovereign Nations – White Nativism, Autocracy and Eugenics

Late news is that the former Labour MP, then Conservative MP and now Reform, Lee Anderson, has quite xenophobic views on both foreigners and fellow citizens, the new normal that is being actively promoted?

Repost from ByLine Times of AC Grayling article on Anglo, western and other nations negative attitudes that lack empathy, shared experience or understanding of refugees, asylum seekers and immigration history.

Nowadays with above median age voter dominated by less educated, less diverse, low info and more often regional voter, they are targeted by right wing nativist or white nationalist talking points for suboptimal outcomes e.g. Brexit, Trump, The Voice and those demanding no support for Ukraine vs. Russia’s invasion or ‘special operation’.

‘In Fighting for the Cause of Refugees and Migrants, We Fight For Ourselves’

AC Grayling reflects on what immigration really means, how right-wing politicians are twisting that meaning to exploit xenophobia, and what can be done to counteract their rhetoric

AC Grayling 12 December 2023

If Trump wins next year’s US Presidential Election, as Robert Kagan in The Washington Post both terrifiedly and terrifyingly says is now inevitable, will there be a flow of intellectuals and scientists out of the United States in a reverse of the flow of intellectuals and scientists from Europe into the US in the 1930s?

A flow of US refugees – genuine refugees, fleeing the collapse of their country into an illiberal, mean-spirited, even perhaps dangerous place for anyone not of the MAGA persuasion – is not inconceivable. Who with a sense of decency could stomach a situation of Donald Trump’s making?

The triumph of the US began in economic power before the Second World War and was sustained and enhanced after it by those refugees from European fascism. What will the world be like with wealth-powerful bullying states overshadowing it and bridling against each other – a Trumpian US; an irredentist, expansionist China; a world dominated by dictators?

This speculation invites analysis, given that the likelihood is that this is our future. But for present purposes let us focus on the word ‘refugees’ just used in this unexpected connection: ‘refugees from the US’. And let us consider that the refugee crises of recent years are as nothing – are as mere Sunday picnics – in comparison to the vast displacements of populations soon to be precipitated by climate change: a catastrophe of hundreds of millions of refugees, not mere millions, into regions unprepared and unwilling.

We have grown used to refugees from the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, but the future’s refugees will be different, from different places, and far more numerous, than those we see today.

In the far-right rhetoric of Victor Orbán, Geert Wilders and Suella Braverman, ‘immigrants’ are lumped together – whether they are refugees or migrants – in one unwelcome mass of moving populations seeking (in the case of refugees) safety or (in the case of migrants) opportunity. But as this distinction illustrates, refugees and migrants are not the same.

Many refugees are anxious to return home when peace is restored; migrants are in quest of a new home. Does this distinction show up in the numbers on ‘immigration’, in the provisions made for them, in the way they are dealt with? No. They are all lumped into the category ‘immigration’ because would-be immigrants, when their numbers reach a critical mass, trouble native populations, which – everywhere in the world, when left to unreflective tribalist instincts – are naturally xenophobic if not downright racist.

The resurgence in recent years of far-right politics in Europe and the US is based on the exploitation of xenophobia as the tool of choice for gaining power. Once got, that power is used to roll-back democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law, aimed at reducing the state from a structure of governance on behalf of the people to a structure for wielding coercive power over the people. It is a familiar story to anyone who bothers to read history.

In the UK today, a desperate Conservative Party is flogging the immigration horse as hard as it can to try to save its skin – because it sees how the right elsewhere is gaining ground by means of the anti-immigration agenda. It has not yet finished delivering the state into private pockets and completing its agenda of creating a subject population unable to protest, strike, or expect decent public services. It wants to finish the job of asset-stripping the country for themselves and the masters behind them in the media and tax-havens and board rooms.

That the citizenry of the UK is not pouring onto the streets in protest at the screaming hypocrisy of a UK government stuffed out with the offspring of immigrants is testament to the dazement induced by the anti-immigrant rhetoric of these immigrant children. But what is worse is that the rhetoric is so effective in switching off thought on the part of so many.

For if they did pause to consider, just for a moment, what the individual units of ‘immigration’ actually are – ie: human beings; men, women, fathers, mothers, children – how could they persist in accepting the bemusement of their faculties? Readers of these words won’t need reminding, but here is the distinction between a refugee and a migrant, and what each is.

‘Asylum seeker’, ‘refugee’. What is such a person? A human being fleeing persecution, danger, death, struggle, terror, horror. A human being fleeing guns and bombs, prisons, torture, cruelty, murder. A human being traumatised, shaking with fear, desperate. A human being who has heard, who has emitted, screams and cries of pain and grief, who has run away from a nightmare. A human being in dire need of safety.

‘Migrant’ What is such a person? A human being quitting places of hunger, futurelessness, who wants a chance to make a life, for himself or herself and his and her children, who wants stability, opportunity, who wants a new life, who wants a job, a home, security, a chance to grow into something they feel they can be.

People leave places because they are pushed and because they are pulled. The refugees are pushed by danger, the migrant by sterility of opportunity. Both are pulled by places that are better, safer, far more promising. Their situation in either case is so bad where they are that they risk much, often everything, to reach better places. However unfamiliar the new place, the strange language, the uncertainty of their reception, it is better by far than the place they leave.

Their action takes immense courage, resolve and effort. They do what human beings have always done, from the moment that homo sapiens trekked out of Africa 60,000 years ago – indeed, from the moment that homo erectus trekked out of Africa two million years ago – to find better places to be.

And here is the clincher: immigrants add, they do not take away. Look at the US in the years 1880-1939 and ask whether the huge waves of immigration in those decades was a bad thing for it. Well, was it?

In today’s UK there are 165,000 vacancies in the care industry – yet the politicians, to pander to ignorance and prejudice, bring down the shutters. Our NHS, our universities, our small business sector (99% of British businesses are small to medium-sized enterprises or SMEs), profit hugely from ‘incomers’. Germany and Australia need net immigration lest their economies stall; whereas the saner political parties in the former understand the problem, politicians in the latter play the same tattered card on both sides of the aisle. It is madness.

Among the solutions to the ‘problem’ of immigration are these: (a) educate the home population on the facts: immigrants add value; (b) invest in the countries that drive migrants outward because of the economic insufficiencies there, so that talent remains there and the impulse to leave is lessened.

And as to refugees and asylum seekers: chief among the solutions to this different problem are: (c) work to bring peace and stability to the regions that drive their terrified populations out; (d) be humane, be kind, welcome them when they stagger onto our shores, succour them.

Note always: migrants are those who explicitly seek to be immigrants. Not all refugees, indeed, perhaps not many of them, wish to be immigrants. Do not discriminate against either of them; discriminate between them and treat them accordingly – which with regard to both means decently.

It is essential to recognise, and not be fooled by, the use of the ‘immigration’ canard to blind us to the real agenda of the far-right. The far-right stir up hostility to an easily demonised ‘other’ as a mask for the rest of their wider and equally bad agenda. They are at present winning this nasty game. We must not let them. In fighting for the cause of refugees and migrants, we fight for ourselves.

AC Grayling is a philosopher, Master of the New College of the Humanities, and Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College at Oxford University’

For more related blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Australian Immigration News, Conservative, Demography, Eugenics, Immigration, Media, Nativism, Political Strategy, Populist Politics, Radical Right Libertarian, Tanton Network & White Nationalism click through

Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch – Fox News and Ultra Conservative Grifters – Putin, Brexit, Trump, GOP and Orban

Posted on March 7, 2024

Repost of article about Rupert Murdoch in Australia by Sean Kelly in Mother Jones January 2024.

‘AUSTRALIA VS. RUPERT MURDOCH 

WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF THE AGING MOGUL’S GLOBAL EMPIRE? LOOK TO THE PLACE WHERE IT ALL BEGAN.

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.

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

Smoking Gun Memo – Warning to US GOP Republicans on Eugenics Masquerading as Conservative Immigration and Environmental Policies

Posted on January 31, 2023

Almost a decade ago in 2013 the ‘Cafe con leche Republicans’ circulated a memo below to warn the GOP of the danger of being misled by ‘Tanton Network’, but it disappeared? Below outlines some of the lobbying for immigration restrictions, while in the background Tanton Network has a history of faux environmentalism, population control, fossil fuels oligarch support e.g. ZPG Zero Population Growth, white nationalism and right wing astroturfing.

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.

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

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’.

This also suggests the impact of demography i.e. ageing populations living longer, with above median age voters being targeted by not just parties and policies, but consolidated right wing media and US Koch Network linked think tanks at Tufton on broad social economic policies including Brexit, immigration, pensions and health care.

‘Age, not class, is now the biggest divide in British politics, new research confirms

21st September 2023

John Curtice

Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Social Research, and Professor of Politics, University of Strathclyde

“Class is the basis of British politics; all else is embellishment and detail.” So wrote Peter Pulzer, the former Gladstone professor of politics at the University of Oxford in the 1960s. Nowadays, however, it is age, not social class, that is the biggest demographic division in Britain’s electoral politics.

According to the British Election Study, at the 2019 general election, the Conservatives won the support of 56% of those aged 55 and over, but only 24% of those under 35. Conversely, Labour was backed by 54% of those under-35s who cast a vote, but by just 22% of those aged 55 and over.

In contrast, support for Britain’s two main parties among those in working class occupations was little different from that among those in professional and managerial jobs.

But what underpins this age divide? We typically think of Labour as a party that is more “left wing”, more concerned than the Conservatives about inequality and more supportive of “big government”. So does young people’s greater willingness to support Labour mean they are more left wing than their older counterparts?

Are they more concerned about inequality and more inclined to believe that government should be acting to reduce it? And are they more inclined than older voters to want the government to spend and tax more?

These questions are addressed in a chapter in the latest British Social Attitudes report, published by the National Centre for Social Research. Based on the 40 years of data the annual BSA survey has collected since it began in 1983, the chapter reveals that while younger people have become more concerned about inequality in recent years, this is not accompanied by greater enthusiasm for more tax and spend.

Since 1986, nearly every BSA survey has regularly presented its respondents with a set of propositions designed to measure how “left” or “right wing” they are on the issue of inequality. People are, for example, asked whether they agree or disagree that “there is one law for the rich and one for the poor”, and “government should redistribute income from the better-off to those who are less well-off”.

Their answers to these and similar statements can be summarised into a scale measure that runs from 0 to 100, where 0 means that someone is very left wing and 100 indicates that they are very right wing.

Young people shift left

When the scale was first administered in 1986, there was no difference between the average score of those aged under 35 and those aged 55 or over. Both had a score of 37.

Equally, 30 years later, in 2016, younger people’s average score of 38 was little different from that of 37 among older people. The growth in Labour’s support among younger people that was already in evidence by then was not underpinned by a more left-wing point of view.

However, a gap has emerged during the last three or four years. In the latest BSA survey, conducted towards the end of 2022, young people scored 28 – ten points below the equivalent figure in 2016. In contrast, at 36, the outlook of older people has barely changed at all.

Yet this does not mean that younger people want more taxation and spending. Every year since 1983 BSA has asked people what the government should do if it has to choose between increased taxation and spending on “health, education and social benefits”, reduced taxation and spending, or keeping things as they are.

In the 1980s, younger people were typically more likely than older people to say that taxation and spending should be increased. In 1984, for example, 42% of those aged under 35 expressed that view, compared with just 33% of those over 55.

But since the mid-90s the opposite has been the case. By 2015, 41% of younger people wanted more taxation and spending compared with 49% of older people.

Meanwhile, the gap has since widened further. Whereas support for increased taxation and spending has risen to 67% among older people – the highest it has been in the last 40 years – among younger people it is still no more than 43%.

Lost faith

So why might have younger people become more concerned about inequality, yet at the same time less supportive of more spending? The answer may well lie in the distinctive economic position in which those in today’s youngest generation find themselves.

The ageing of Britain’s population means that a larger proportion of government spending goes on health and social care from which older people primarily benefit. Meanwhile, while older people are in receipt of relatively generous pensions that have been protected by the triple lock, younger people who have been to university find themselves in effect paying a higher level of “income tax” in order to pay off their student loans.

Meanwhile, although the pandemic posed a greater threat to the health of older people, it was younger people who were more likely to find their educational and economic lives disrupted, and to have found themselves having to endure lockdown in lower quality accommodation. At the same time, home ownership has become more difficult, not least because so many are spending a significant proportion of their income on rent.

There is, then, good reason why younger people have become more concerned about inequality but seem at the same time to doubt that increased taxation and spending would help them.

The challenge to the parties at the forthcoming election could well be to convince these voters that the next government will offer them a brighter future, rather than add to their woes. But to do that they may well need to be willing to think outside the traditional mindsets associated with the terms “left” and the “right”.’

John Curtice, Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Social Research, and Professor of Politics, University of Strathclyde

For related blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Conservative, Demography, Government Budgets, Media, Pensions, Political Strategy, Populist Politics and Younger Generations click through:

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

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

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

Ageing Democracy, Nativism and Populism

Growth of Conservative Hard Right Wing or Nativist Authoritarian Regimes

BBC: 55 Tufton Street London – Libertarian Think Tanks – Koch Network

The BBC has, finally, woken up to the influence of 55 Tufton Street think tanks, promoting ‘radical right libertarian’ socioeconomic policies, although presented in a purely domestic and native context (apart from a mention of Brexit) e.g. PM Truss’s ‘Trussonomics’ is also known as ‘Kochonomics’.

55 Tufton includes PR and lobbying organisations masquerading as (oxymoronic) ‘think tanks’ which are overpopulated by right wing pseudo-experts promoting old beliefs as economic theory, socio-economic policy, report topics and talking points for media and the government, preferably a Conservative one.

Further, although these anti-EU and Brexit supporting think tanks are nominally native or organic to the UK, most are in and influenced by Atlas Network (founded by IEA’s Fisher) and more generically known in the US as the libertarian #KochNetwork; there is also a migration NGO which can be linked to the US nativist #TantonNetwork. 

Below is a full article from the BBC which also has a podcast accompanying.

‘55 Tufton Street: The other black door shaping British politics

By Jack Fenwick

BBC Politics

On a rainy afternoon earlier this month, Liz Truss walked through the famous black door of No 10 Downing Street for the first time as prime minister.

But under a mile away, there’s another black door that’s had a lasting effect on the previous decade in British politics – and looks like being influential under this administration too – No 55 Tufton Street.

The building houses organisations including the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the Global Warming Policy Foundation – and is the former home of many others, such as Vote Leave and Brexit Central.

Just hours after Liz Truss made her first speech on the steps of Downing Street, she announced that her new economics adviser would be Matthew Sinclair, a former chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

And a couple of weeks later, the new chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, delivered the most consequential financial statement for a generation, ripping up decades of economic orthodoxy.

He was pictured celebrating with Mr Sinclair – a man who made his name working behind that other black door.

The influence of TaxPayers’ Alliance began in 2008, when the financial crash led to bank collapse around the world.

“If you didn’t want that to happen in the UK, you had to get growth higher,” says Andrew Lilico, chairman of Europe Economics and Matthew Sinclair’s former boss.

“One way you could get growth high was just to get spending down and it might not be a very pleasant way of getting growth higher, but needs must in these kinds of circumstances.

“There was a TaxPayers’ Alliance report called How to Save £50 billion, which to some extent breached the dike on where things were going. And very shortly after that, others all chimed in. So quite quickly there were proposals for cutting spending by £150bn and £200bn.”

In 2010, David Cameron became prime minister and ushered in a new age of austerity.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance was no longer a fringe group frustrated with the Conservatives’ approach to the economy. Instead, they became a key public backer of the government’s approach to the economy.

“The newspapers or the broadcast media would have a spokesperson from an organisation, it could be the TaxPayers’ Alliance, it could be another think tank,” says Nicky Morgan, a Treasury minister in the coalition government.

“As a minister, if you’re going to advance a difficult or a controversial idea, it’s no surprise that before you announce such a thing, what you try to aim for is that phrase ‘rolling the pitch’. You’ve got people outside saying, ‘this is what we need’. So when you announce it, one hopes that it’s going to be well received.”

Think tank donor anonymity

But the organisations at No 55 had started to attract controversy too.

Many of them have a long-standing policy of protecting the anonymity of their donors, something the Lib Dems wanted to change.

The coalition government did change the rules on lobbying. But the BBC understands the Lib Dems wanted those changes to go further – and to include think tanks, which do not come under lobbying rules.

Few would suggest that David Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne were Tufton Street’s natural allies – one senior member of Osborne’s Treasury team describes the TaxPayers’ Alliance as “a bit of a joke”. But they were useful in helping sell those austerity policies to the public.

After the 2015 election, David Cameron pledged to hold a referendum on EU membership – and that’s when the relationship changed.

Vote Leave, which would go on to become the official leave campaign, was originally based at No 55 as well. Andrew Lilico, who was Vote Leave’s chief economist in the latter days of the campaign, says the think tanks there were natural Brexiteers.

“I think that they are people who are quite optimistic about what the market can achieve. And they’re quite pessimistic about grand state projects.

“So the European Union, as a supranational, multinational body would be an iconic example of something that they would be sceptical about.

“Matthew Elliott, in particular, who’s the chief executive of Vote Leave, comes directly out of that that setting. He was the chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance.”

After the Leave campaign won the referendum, the fight shifted again. The battle over how exactly to define Brexit had begun.

“People thought that the referendum would be the end of it, and of course in many respects it was just the beginning of the argument,” says David Jones, minister for exiting the EU from 2016.

“Vote Leave wound itself up so there was nobody there. A number of other organisations did spring up to fill that vacuum.

“And Brexit Central was a very important one.”

Headed up by Jonathan Isaby, another former chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, Brexit Central also ended up being based at 55 Tufton Street.

“So it became almost required reading for those who were on the pro-Brexit side of the argument,” says Mr Jones. “Every day you’d check in at Brexit Central and see what they were reporting.”

Think tanks going mainstream

Boris Johnson’s victory in 2019 – and his pledge to take the UK out of the EU’s single market and customs union – was another huge moment for Tufton Street.

After the financial crash, once-fringe views on public spending had become mainstream – and now the same happened with Brexit.

The apparent influence made the argument around who funds these groups rear its head again.

But while privately critical of where the money comes from, the Labour Party hasn’t made it a public priority to reform the rules governing this area of politics. Until now.

“55 Tufton Street shouldn’t have any more influence than any other street in the UK,” says Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader.

“That street seems to dominate particular policy and what’s happening in government and legislation and it’s not transparent enough.

“Labour would consult on the wider definition of what lobby groups are – so that would include what is currently known as think tanks because we don’t believe that the definition is wide enough, but also around transparency around where their funding comes from as well.”

The BBC did ask representatives from the organisations mentioned for an interview, but no-one came forward.

Labour may want to change the rules – but for now, that’s not in their gift.

Instead, last week’s financial statement seemed to confirm that Liz Truss is more aligned with the ideas floating around No 55 than any of the previous recent occupants of No 10.

So what sort of new policies might the government start to enact?

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has had a long-running campaign to crack down on paid time off for trade union officials, including when Mr Sinclair was chief executive.

The new Business Secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg, met the TPA in March.  The BBC has used a freedom of information request to discover that the meeting was called to discuss paid time off for trade union officials – something Liz Truss has now pledged to crack down on.

Still, no one can be sure exactly what will take place behind the famous black door of No 10 over the next few years.

But perhaps by paying closer attention to what’s happening behind the other black door, we might get a good idea.’

For more related blog and articles about Conservative Britain, Economics, EU European Union, Global Trade, Government Budgets, Libertarian Economics, Media, Political Strategy, Populist Politics, Radical Right Libertarian and Russia click through:

55 Tufton Street London: US Koch & Tanton Networks’ Think Tanks – Radical Right Libertarians and Nativists

IDU Global Networking of Conservatives, Nativists, Libertarians and Christian Leaders

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network

Rishi Sunak and US Radical Right Libertarians in UK – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

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

Koch Industries – Putin – Russia – Ukraine – Koch Network – Think Tanks

Putin’s Russia – Dugin – Alt Right – White Christian Nationalism – the Anglosphere and Europe

The Beast Reawakens 1997 – Review – Radical Right Populism in Europe and the Anglosphere

Australia might be saving our democracy. Can the UK and US?

Russian Dark Money – Influencing British Politics, the Conservative Party, the GOP and European Right

A recent Open Democracy UK article by Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on foreign affairs ‘If the UK wants to push back against Russia, it should follow the money’, warning of what is well known in the UK and elsewhere, City of London especially, and Britain (of course lack of clarity round the Trump campaign and Russian influence). 

They have become magnets for hot or dark money of oligarchs including Russian, Ukrainian, African, Asian etc. to be laundered by British enablers and/or donate in support of more imported radical right libertarian policies of the Tories including climate denial or delays on substantive action.

This has been doubled down on by CEE & Russia security & energy expert Edward Lucas, and it also contradicts the messaging of the Tories and Brexit. They were claiming that Brexit was for ‘sovereignty’, but whose sovereignty? Certainly not about ‘sovereignty’ of British institutions, and neither Russian nor Ukrainian citizens who are law abiding? 

Seems more like the acceptance by the Anglosphere and globally of authoritarianism, dictatorship, fossil fuels/mining, climate science denial, few if any robust environmental policies, libertarian socioeconomics, white exceptionalism, kleptocracy and freedom for the 0.1%, but the majority of citizens are not empowered and need to be quiet?

The Open Democracy article follows:  

‘If the UK wants to push back against Russia, it should follow the money

Britain’s lax approach to dirty money makes it a target for Russian interference, but the government has done nothing about it. Now is the time to take action.

Layla Moran

26 January 2022, 1.01pm

The severity of the crisis currently playing out on the borders of Ukraine cannot be underestimated. This is the closest Europe has come to war in almost three decades.

At this moment of danger, it is vital that Britain plays its part and shows Putin that aggression comes at a high price – one not worth paying. But I am hugely concerned that, while our rhetoric might be tough, our actions are febrile.

It is not just worrying diplomatic missteps, like the foreign secretary’s decision to chase the sun in Australia rather than attend a vital meeting regarding the crisis in Berlin. The UK government has signalled time and again that it does not take Russian meddling in the UK seriously. If we do not take action to stop Putin from interfering in our country, how on earth are we meant to convince anyone that we will act robustly when he violates the integrity and sovereignty of other nations?

Successive reports from the foreign affairs and intelligence committees have warned of interference in the UK by Putin’s cronies. Successive Conservative governments have ignored them.

The 2018 Foreign Affairs Committee report, ‘Moscow’s Gold’, warned: “Turning a blind eye to London’s role in hiding the proceeds of Kremlin-connected corruption risks signalling that the UK is not serious about confronting the full spectrum of President Putin’s offensive measures”.

Until ministers take action on this front, our response to Russian aggression towards Ukraine will be toothless. Yet what has the government done in response? Absolutely nothing.

Similarly, the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia Report, published in 2020, warns that there are “lots of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene”. Two years on not a single one of the recommendations made to the UK government have been implemented. Concerns about Russian interference extend into UK politics too – in particular, the well-documented close links between Russian money and the Conservative Party.

One easy way the UK government could take action to prevent Putin’s cronies meddling in our country would be to introduce legislation to ensure Kremlin-linked Russian oligarchs can’t flood dirty money into the UK property market. Buying a property in the UK is, as it turns out, an incredibly easy way to launder money. You don’t need to declare who the ultimate, or beneficial, owner of that property is. So if it’s one of Putin’s corrupt cronies, all they would need to do is set up a holding company, often in a tax haven, and appoint someone else as director. It has been estimated that more than £1bn of suspicious Russian wealth rests in UK property.

The UK government does – in theory – admit this is not a sensible way to run things. Back in 2016, David Cameron promised to take action so that the ultimate owner of a property would have to declare who they were. But more than five years on, no such law exists. It hasn’t been introduced to Parliament. In 2018, the government took a draft version of this bill through the advance scrutiny stages that often take place before legislation is formally passed through Parliament. But these efforts went no further. The draft bill remains on the shelf, gathering dust. The UK government could sort this out in a matter of weeks, if not days, if it wanted to.

The government won’t take action to stop Russian interference in the UK. So I did. Last week, I introduced a bill to Parliament that would bring that transparency and help stamp out Russian corruption in the UK property market, using the text of the draft bill that the government shelved. It would send a signal to Putin that we will tackle him head on. And it had wide cross-party support – because this isn’t about party politics. It’s about national security.

The measures the UK government can and should take do not stop there. We must go further: making our democracy a national security priority and implementing the remainder of the Russia Report recommendations are two obvious next steps.

Click through the following for more blogs related to Ageing Democracy, Demography, Media, Political Strategy, Populist Politics & Younger Generations.

The Bell Curve – Eugenics – IQ – Libertarian Levelling Up of Minorities and Society?

The Anglosphere of the US, UK and Australia has harboured a return to eugenics under various guises or proxies, but in fact it has never gone away.  

Following are excerpts from an article providing an overview, by Nafeez Ahmed at The ByLine Times ‘For Whom the Bell Curves – Advisor to Johnson’s Levelling Up Ally Host Race Science Extremist’.

There are allegations that some Tories, like the GOP in the US and the LNP Liberal National Coalition, are channeling deep seated eugenics masquerading as ‘science’ but was deemed to be pseudoscience, while many reputable organisations, still, take IQ testing of intakes (too) seriously in the context of the ‘bell curve’ i.e. normal statistical distribution of any population sample and focusing upon the top 1-5%.

Further, it can be related to other proxies such as ‘freedom of speech’ on campus that opens the door to eugenics based movement by platforming external influencers who lack any academic or science skills and integrity but promote the ‘bell curve’.

According to SPLC:

‘According to the Washington DC-based Southern Poverty Law Centre – the leading civil rights law firm that tracks extremist groups in America – Charles Murray is a white nationalist extremist who uses “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor”..

From Byline Times:

For Whom the Bell Curves – Advisor to Johnson’s Levelling Up Ally Host Race Science Extremist

Nafeez Ahmed – 26 November 2021

Ministry of Justice appointee – who advises a ‘close ally’ of the Prime Minister behind the Government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda – has hosted one of the world’s foremost pioneers of scientific racism at an event organised by a charity which works with the Government.

The event, involving a white nationalist extremist who has amplified research funded by a notorious Nazi eugenics foundation, was also supported by a former senior Conservative Party MP and Cabinet Minister. 

It was organised by Dr James Orr, a Cambridge University academic and advisor to Toby Young’s Free Speech Union. 

The event was hosted by Trinity Forum Europe – a self-described Christian charity that runs events at Oxbridge universities, as well as at Whitehall for Government civil servants. 

It thus raises urgent concerns about the UK Government and the ideological views of those being given Government appointments.

The Bell Curve

The event organised by Dr James Orr featured white nationalist academic Charles Murray – the author of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.

This was a hugely influential book among white supremacist circles, published in 1994, which claimed that black people tend to have lower IQs – not just due to environmental factors, but to genetics.

The bulk of the claims made in the book came from pseudoscientific research funded by the Pioneer Fund – a Nazi eugenics foundation with links to the notorious Nazi SS officer Josef Mengele. Murray has praised Pioneer Fund researchers and directors including antisemites.

The online event took place on 12 November, as part of a series of talks by the Trinity Forum Europe – a registered charity that hosts events at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and St Andrews. The online event programme – led by Dr Orr – attempts “to unite the different university campuses” on a weekly basis, according to the charity’s website, and the charity has also “branched out to host events at Whitehall for Christians within the senior Civil Service.”

Murray was in conversation at the event with Rob Henderson, a PhD candidate at Cambridge University. He did not respond to Byline Times‘ request for comment.

Trinity Forum Europe has close ties to the Conservative Party. Its executive director is Jonathan Aitken – a former Cabinet Minister and Conservative MP for 23 years. His political career ended when he pleaded guilty to charges of perjury and perverting the course of justice, and he served 18 months in prison, during which he rediscovered his Christian faith. He went on to become ordained in the Church of England….. 

‘The Academic KKK’

The Trinity Forum Europe event listing for Charles Murray’s talk described him as “one of the most accomplished social scientists alive today” and “the author of numerous important and penetrating diagnoses of contemporary America” – including mentioning The Bell Curve, which Murray co-authored with Richard Herrnstein. 

According to an academic at Cambridge University who spoke to Byline Times on condition of anonymity, Trinity Forum Europe events are regularly advertised to staff and students at the university. 

“Charles Murray is basically the academic KKK,” said the scholar.

According to the Washington DC-based Southern Poverty Law Centre – the leading civil rights law firm that tracks extremist groups in America – Charles Murray is a white nationalist extremist who uses “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor”.

His book The Bell Curve was widely critiqued by geneticists, biologists and other experts for being “scientifically flawed” at the time of its publication and ever since. 

In May 2020, The Bell Curve was noticed in photographs of Michael Gove’s bookshelf released by his wife Sarah Vine. Just three months earlier, Boris Johnson aide Andrew Sabisky had resigned over revelations that he was a vocal supporter of scientific racism after his past statements about race and IQ came under public scrutiny.

Gove, who is currently Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, refused to comment at the time, and did not respond to questions from this newspaper about whether he agrees or disagrees with Charles Murray’s claims.

Alt-Right Pseudoscience

The Free Speech Union and Scientific Racism

Murray’s pseudoscience argues that black people, women, the poor and Latinos are overall genetically inferior – and that the rise in their birth rate therefore explains the rise in inequality between racial groups.

One passage in the book reads: “The professional consensus is that the United States has experienced dysgenic pressures throughout either most of the century (the optimists) or all of the century (the pessimists).”

‘Dysgenics’ refers to the study of how defective or disadvantaged traits emerge in a population or species due to a changing gene pool. The book continues: “Women of all races and ethnic groups follow this pattern in similar fashion. There is some evidence that blacks and Latinos are experiencing even more severe dysgenic pressures than whites, which could lead to further divergence between whites and other groups in future generations.”

An Ideology Borne of Nazism

The Southern Poverty Law Centre points out that 13 scholars on which The Bell Curve relies to substantiate its claims received funding from the Pioneer Fund. In fact, nearly all of the research cited in the book for its central claims about race and IQ were funded by this group.

The Pioneer Fund is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which highlights how the organisation was founded by Nazi sympathisers with the purpose of promoting “racial betterment” and was originally set up to promote the “repatriation” of black Americans to Africa. 

Writing in the American Behavioural Scientist journal, Hampton University sociology professor Steven J Rosenthal described it as a “Nazi endowment specialising in production of justifications for eugenics since 1937”.

The Pioneer Fund’s relationship with Nazism is not trivial, but fundamental.

Henry Laughlin, who served as its president from its founding until 1941, opposed efforts to allow Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany entry into the US. He had testified in Congress that 83% of Jewish immigrants from eastern and southern Europe are feeble-minded and once claimed that the US and the Third Reich “shared a common understanding of… the practical application” of eugenic principles to “racial endowments and… racial health”.

Throughout the 1930s, Laughlin published articles in Eugenical News promoting Nazism and approving its antisemitic laws. In The Bell Curve, Murray praises Laughlin as “a biologist who was especially concerned about keeping up the American level of intelligence by suitable immigration policies”.

……..One of the organisations the Pioneer Fund bankrolls is the Ulster Institute for Social Research. A former founding board member of its journal – Mankind Quarterly – is Otmar von Verschuer.

During Germany’s Nazi regime, Verschuer was director of the Institute for Genetic Biology and Racial Hygiene until 1942, when he became the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. Verschuer taught and mentored Josef Mengele – the notorious Nazi SS officer known as the ‘Angel of Death’ for performing medical experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz death camps. 

Today, the Pioneer Fund’s main grantee is the white supremacist think tank, American Renaissance, which hosts neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activists.

Influencing the Government

Sources at Cambridge University confirmed that the event’s main coordinator was Dr James Orr – a lecturer in philosophy of religion at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Divinity. 

Dr Orr and Cambridge University did not respond to Byline Times‘ multiple requests for comment.

Dr Orr is the convener director of Trinity Forum Europe. He also sits on the board of advisors at the Free Speech Union – the organisation founded and directed by Toby Young. Byline Times has previously revealed how Young has publicly defended scientific racism funded by the Pioneer Fund… 

… One of the top issues for reform are racial disparities in the implementation of the Act, as black people are more than four times more likely than white people to be detained, and more than 10 times more likely to be discharged under a community treatment order requiring conditions on their lives. Critics of the Government’s proposals say that they fail to address systemic racism and therefore will simply change the forms of discrimination rather than reduce it. 

……..The hosting of a white nationalist extremist at top British universities by a charity with close ties to both the Conservative Party and the Government raises urgent questions. 

It reveals how some calls for ‘free speech’ on campus are legitimising toxic ideologies that can be traced back directly to the Nazi Holocaust and pre-war anti-black racism. It also shows how Government ‘reform’ agendas around mental health and levelling up are vulnerable to being influenced by individuals who are actively mainstreaming scientific racism. 

For more related blogs and articles click through below:

Ghosts of Galton and Eugenics Return – Society, Population and Environment in the 21st Century

Malthus on Population Growth, Economy, Environment, White Nationalism and Eugenics

Past Literature & Ideas on Roots of Radical Right, Nativism & the Great Replacement Today

Fake Freedom of Speech Crisis on University Campuses

John Tanton – Australia – The Social Contract Press