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.

Nativist Conservative MPs for Fossil Fuels versus Science, Education, Research, Analysis & Society

Interesting article from a science journalist at The Guardian on comments made about ‘woke’ science by the Tories in the UK at the Conservative Conference in  ‘Science hasn’t gone ‘woke’ – the only people meddling with it are the Tories’ by Philip Ball.

However, this is neither unique to the UK Conservatives nor dissimilar elsewhere, but it is a long game strategy against grounded science, research and analysis, like Trojan horses to disrupt curricula and universities, why? 

It’s both protection for fossil fuels and avoiding climate science (Covid too) while denigrating centre right through left moderate attitudes and policies as e.g. ‘woke’, to energise older right (and too many left) voters including Brexit, Trump and now in Australia ‘The Voice’ Referendum on Aboriginal recognition.

The fulcrum globally is Koch Network think tanks found at Tufton St. London, of course the US, Australia and other parts including links via Atlas Network and in Hungary, Heritage Foundation partnered with Danubius Institute, sharing anti-EU and pro fossil fuels sentiments, shared with Putin’s Russia and fossil fuels oligarchs, also includes the EU’s regulation for environment and financial transparency.

Overall, like Covid and climate science denial, denigration of experts, analysis and universities, with the nativist Tanton Network that shares donors with Koch in the US, is used to deflect from climate science by highlighting immigrants and population growth as environmental hygiene issues.

The end game is more alarming with their and e.g. Murdoch media support for corrupt nativist authoritarian leaders and governments who deny climate science and humanity?

‘Science hasn’t gone ‘woke’ – the only people meddling with it are the Tories

Michelle Donelan’s plan to “depoliticise” science with new guidelines on sex and gender research is a chilling move

The science secretary, Michelle Donelan, told the Conservative party conference this week that the Tories are “depoliticising science”. Or as a Conservative party announcement later put it, in case you didn’t get the culture-war reference, they are “kicking woke ideology out of science”, thereby “safeguarding scientific research from the denial of biology and the steady creep of political correctness”.

Scientists do not seem too delighted to be defended in this manner. “As a scientist, I really don’t know what this means,” tweeted Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. “This is totally shocking and is something I never thought I would see in the UK,” said Buzz Baum, a molecular cell biologist for the Medical Research Council.

What exactly does Donelan think science needs protecting from? What is this woke threat? At the conference, she expanded on that. “Scientists are told by university bureaucrats that they cannot ask legitimate research questions about biological sex,” she claimed, adding that Keir Starmer thinks the “legitimate concerns of the scientific community” on these issues of sex and gender “don’t matter”. She said she will launch a review of the use of gender and sex questions in scientific research, apparently to be led by Alice Sullivan, a professor of sociology at University College London, which will be used to formulate guidance.

You would need to have been hiding under a rock not to appreciate that questions of sex and gender have become controversial, bordering on incendiary, in some areas of academia. As a recent exchange by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and professor of humanities Jacqueline Rose in the New Statesman revealed, academics are often talking at cross-purposes: Dawkins defended the binary nature of human sexes from an evolutionary angle, Rose the socially constructed aspects of gender identity. On top of that, there are the complications of developmental and cognitive biology, which, among other things, can produce intersex individuals and conditions where, say, people with a Y chromosome can be anatomically female.

But one doesn’t need to take a strong stand about rights or wrongs in these debates to recognise that they are difficult and subtle – and to acknowledge it is proper that they be rigorously discussed. Arguably, this is an area where science can’t supply definitive answers to all the germane societal questions.

This is not a case of academic research being trammelled by an imposed ideology, but rather, of a range of differing views among academics themselves. Besides, rather than await clarification, Donelan has evidently formed her opinion already: she called guidance that data on sex should only be collected in exceptional circumstances “utter nonsense” and a “denial of biology”. What is the point of a review if you have decided already what it must say?

More to the point, why is the government getting involved in the first place? What chills Baum is the idea of “politicians telling scientists about the nature of biology”. Some scientists can’t help thinking of previous instances where governments imposed their views on the subject: the spurious “race science” of the Nazis and the anti-Darwinian denialism of Stalin’s regime. While that might sound a slightly hyperbolic response to a transparently desperate ploy to stoke culture-wars division, the principle is the same: a government deciding an approved position on science and demanding that academics toe the line.

Much as Donelan tries to position herself as a champion of the objectivity and freedom of science, this intervention supplies more evidence of the government’s distrust of academics in general and scientists in particular – it’s of a piece with Rishi Sunak’s assertion that scientists were given too much power during the pandemic. Witness the disturbing way this policy direction is framed. However contested and emotive this particular issue, it is hardly relevant to the large-scale practice of science – yet Donelan is seeking to leverage it to imply that all of science somehow stands at risk from “woke ideology”, as if the integrity of truth itself were at stake.

That is perhaps the most ominous aspect of this announcement. The creation of a fictitious, ubiquitous enemy to scare the population is indeed straight out of the fascist playbook. It was thoughtful of the Conservatives to drive this point home with the spectacle of party member Andrew Boff, chair of the London Assembly, being escorted from the conference hall by police on Tuesday when he voiced protest at Suella Braverman’s criticism of the term “gender ideology”.

The notion that science can be “depoliticised” at all, let alone by an agenda-driven political party, is understood to be nonsensical by those who study the interactions of science and society. Of course political agendas should never dictate research results. But the questions asked, priorities decided and societal implications of advances made absolutely make science inextricably tangled with the political landscape – not least in a controversial area like sex and gender. That entanglement can get messy, but no true democracy tries to control the narrative.’

• Philip Ball is a science writer and the author of the forthcoming book, How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology

For more related blogs and articles on Climate Change, Conservatives, Environment, EU European Union, Fossil Fuels, Koch Network, Media, Science Literacy, Tanton Network and University Teaching Skills click through

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Anglosphere Oligarchs – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

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

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

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

Koch Industries: How to Influence Politics, Avoid Fossil Fuel Emission Control and Environmental Protections

Climate Change Science Attitudes Australia and Koch in USA

Trojan Horses – Ultra Conservatives Disrupting Education Curricula to Influence Youth

Critical Thinking or Analysis: Importance for Education, Media and Empowered Citizens

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

Repost of article by Lucy Hamilton about the IDU International Democratic Union, Australian conservatives and their global counterparts who liaise round think tanks and conferences including Danubius Institute in Budapest, Tufton Street London (Koch & Tanton), CPAC, Fox, GB News etc., all underpinned by sharing ideas and tactics based on radical right libertarian socio-economic ideology of Koch Network, the nativism of Tanton Network informing ‘the great replacement’, ‘western civilisation’, ‘Soros conspiracy’ and Evangelical Christians.

From Pearls & Irritations:

Morrison joins hard right IDU’s embrace of Viktor Orban

By Lucy Hamilton Sep 23, 2022

Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison has joined the advisory board of the International Democrat Union. It is an organisation that is much more radical than its self-declared defence of the “centre right” spin suggests.

The alliance that marked the transition to the hard right is the IDU’s embrace of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian leader now standing for “illiberal democracy” around the west.

This echoes Tony Abbott’s post-leadership embrace of the Orban right. In 2015, he was appointed director of the Ramsay Institute for Western Civilisation, a body that created years of controversy.

“Defending western civilisation” is Orban’s code for Great Replacement theory terrors: the ugliest version says that Jewish elites are importing immigrants to replace the white, Christian population; the polite version asserts that the “woke” left undervalues the western tradition and in its carelessness (or malignancy) is inviting in hordes of non-western immigrants to overwhelm their western superiors. Abbott too is on the IDU’s honorary advisory board alongside John Howard and Morrison.

Abbott is not the only Australian to join in with Orban’s fear mongering about immigration and “family values” (code for intolerance of anything not strictly enforcing marriage between man and woman). There is a posse, including Alexander Downer and Kevin Andrews, that joins the talking circuit spreading Orbanist intolerance.

The ugliness of adopting the Orban worldview is perhaps encapsulated in his most assiduous acolyte – Florida’s Governor. Ron DeSantis is described as inventing American Orbanism. DeSantis’s most recent stunt was to fly plane loads of immigrants to affluent and liberal Martha’s Vineyard where he abandoned them. Sky News’s James Morrow has described the dehumanising gambit as a “genius”move that “beat the left.” The fact that Martha’s Vineyard residents poured out to aid the victims of the gimmick is not mentioned in propagandist coverage.

Back when the IDU was founded in 1983, it declared as a founding principle that it was “committed to advancing the social and political values on which democratic societies are founded, including the basic personal freedoms and human rights, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; in particular, the right of free speech, organisation, assembly and non-violent dissent; the right to free elections and the freedom to organise effective parliamentary opposition to government; the right to a free and independent media; the right to religious belief; equality before the law; and individual opportunity and prosperity…”

Like so many figures and organisations on the ever more radicalised right, this is no longer the case. The decay of former conservatives’ belief in freedom (at least for the affluent) has become a solidifying certainty that societies must have “conservative” values enforced upon them.

Based in Munich, the IDU is currently helmed by former Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. In 2018 Harper tweeted the IDU’s support of Orban and in 2019, Harper showed how far his politics had hardened by spending Hungary’s national day celebrating with Orban and other IDU leaders. Harper intervened in Canadian politics this year to reassure his older centre right voters that the conspiracy-friendly leadership contender for the Conservative party was a safe bet. Pierre Poilievre is now “toying with paranoid populism.”

The IDU’s Deputy Chairman is Brian Loughnane, husband of News Corp voice, Peta Credlin. Loughnane has been also on the international advisory board of Orban’s primary “think tank” aiming to funnel his ideas to the west, the Danube Institute. He remains listed as an “Expert” to the affiliated Hudson Institute.

The IDU’s Honorary Chairman Michael (Lord) Ashcroft is a figure in several Tory controversies over the decades. He reportedly paid half a million pounds to have Isabel Oakeshott co-write an unauthorised biography about David Cameron airing lascivious gossip, to help undermine the faction of the party that would negotiate solutions. It is not only his impact on the media that has damaged the Tories. His large donations, made possible by his offshore domicile in Belize that enabled him to avoid taxes in Britain, are counted as a factor in driving Britain’s Conservative party further right. It now resembles a toxic clown car of figures that ought to be unelectable in any functioning democracy.

The Republican Party representative on the large leadership group is Mike Roman. He is notable as the man Trump employed to manage “election protection” in his 2016 campaign. Roman’s main role in American politics has been to foment propaganda to discredit the fairness of American elections, a key ploy in its democratic decay.

Ever more overtly, right wing organisations that embrace Orbanism while still spruiking freedom promote a particularly Christian Libertarian form of freedom. There should be freedom from taxation and regulation for the people considered entrepreneurial. Any tax burden to fund unavoidable infrastructure must fall upon the working and middle classes. There should be no freedom to protest. There should be no freedom to be feminist or LGBTQI or to promote multiculturalism.

Anne Applebaum wrote of the conservatives with whom she spent the New Year’s Eve that marked the transition into the new millennium in her work, Twilight of Democracy. In her account of what has since changed in her friends of that moment she sees two trends. One is a cynicism that capitalises on the riches available to the talking heads of the radical right. 

The other is a nihilism that despairs of the liberal democracy like America as a “dark nightmarish place, where God only speaks to a tiny number of people; where idealism is dead; where civil war and violence are approaching; where the ‘elite’ is wallowing in decadence, disarray, death.” This right dreads the colourful chaos of modern democracy, so unlike the version these former conservatives imagined themselves to support during the Cold War. Some desire to break it all; others want, somehow, to reverse change.

Turning to the authoritarian Orban signifies the despair of a former conservative. All the diversity of the modern world must be tidied away and the new voices silenced once again. Media polyphony is intolerable. If the uppity beneficiaries of the Civil Rights era won’t be humble, they must be forced back into their subordinate invisibility. There is no scope for human rights in this frightening world.

History too must be tamed to define the “conservative” present. Thus the Ramsay Centre disdains a lecturer “who is coming in with a long liturgy [did he mean litany] of what terrible damage Western civ had done to the world.” (Nick Riemer’s question about the verb used is illustrative.) Throughout the anglophone right, there is a violent antagonism towards the fact that history has warp and weft. No single story carries the truth, whatever the “history wars,” “war on woke” and Critical Race Theory campaigns would assert.

Christianity joins conservatism at the heart of the IDU’s mission, strongly allied to the Christian Democrat tradition. In the Orban model that not only excludes other faiths, including Judaism (despite disingenuous Budapest denials). It also excludes “non-traditional” ways of life.

The New Daily’s coverage of the radicalisation of the IDU, and Scott Morrison’s membership of its board, did Australians a service. It is important that we recognise what our “conservative” politicians represent and be wary.’

For related articles & blogs on Ageing Democracy, Australian Politics, Conservatives, Evangelical Christianity, Libertarian Economics, Political Strategy and White Nationalism click through and below:

Scott Morrison signs on with global political network home to ‘intolerant far right’.

Why Australia’s conservatives are finding friends in Hungary.

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

GOP Republicans’ Future – Democracy or Autocracy?

Conservative commentator David Brooks attended the recent National Conservatism Conference in the US and in the following article excerpts, parses through what he thinks is wrong with the GOP or the Republicans.

He cites from observations of participants, the paranoia and the obsession with social issues, universities, elites, culture wars, ‘cultural Marxism’ (popular with the Nazis too), while ‘their public posture is dominated by the psychology of threat and menace’ and imposition of minority Christian ‘values’.

One would suggest that it makes the GOP appear or sound Orwellian, i.e. claims of freedom or democracy, freedom of speech etc., while demanding any real or perceived public dissent, threat or difference is neutered.  

However, by claiming the GOP are victims of liberal BigTech type oligarchs etc., ignores the fact that other oligarchs e.g. in fossil fuels etc. have been supporting, via Koch Network think tanks, radical right libertarain socio-economic policies grounded in eugenics that are not good for many GOP conservatives’ nor society’s futures.  

This is not just in the US but via Atlas Network think tanks influencing the Anglosphere of the UK and Australia, plus elsewhere., while former President Bush is warning the GOP of adopting an ‘Anglo Saxon’ identity precluding and/or ignoring changing demographics?

Question would be, backgrounded by shenanigans round Trump’s defeat, ungrounded claims of voting fraud, calls for restrictions like Voter ID, gerrymandering etc.; how can the GOP gain and maintain power if they are fast becoming an electoral minority?

From The Atlantic:

The Terrifying Future of the American Right – What I saw at the National Conservatism Conference (18 Nov 2021)

By David Brooks

One of the ideas she’s absorbed is that the conservatives who came before her were insufferably naive. They thought liberals and conservatives both want what’s best for America, disagreeing only on how to get there. But that’s not true, she believes. “Woke elites—increasingly the mainstream left of this country—do not want what we want,” she told the National Conservatism Conference, which was held earlier this month in a bland hotel alongside theme parks in Orlando. “What they want is to destroy us,” she said. “Not only will they use every power at their disposal to achieve their goal,” but they’ve already been doing it for years “by dominating every cultural, intellectual, and political institution.”

The atmosphere is electric. She’s giving the best synopsis of national conservatism I’ve heard at the conference we’re attending—and with flair! Progressives pretend to be the oppressed ones, she tells the crowd, “but in reality, it’s just an old boys’ club, another frat house for entitled rich kids contrived to perpetuate their unearned privilege. It’s Skull and Bones for gender-studies majors!” She finishes to a rousing ovation. People leap to their feet.

I have the sinking sensation that the thunderous sound I’m hearing is the future of the Republican Party.

The information age is transforming the American right. Conservatives have always inveighed against the cultural elite—the media, the universities, Hollywood. But in the Information Age, the purveyors of culture are now corporate titans. In this economy, the dominant means of economic production are cultural production. Corporate behemoths are cultural behemoths. The national conservatives thus describe a world in which the corporate elite, the media elite, the political elite, and the academic elite have all coagulated into one axis of evil, dominating every institution and controlling the channels of thought.

The idea that the left controls absolutely everything—from your smartphone to the money supply to your third grader’s curriculum—explains the apocalyptic tone that was the dominating emotional register of this conference. The politicians’ speeches were like entries in the catastrophism Olympics:

“The left’s ambition is to create a world beyond belonging,” said Hawley. “Their grand ambition is to deconstruct the United States of America.”

“The left’s attack is on America. The left hates America,” said Cruz. “It is the left that is trying to use culture as a tool to destroy America.”

The first great project of the national conservatives is to man the barricades in the culture war. These people have certainly done their homework when it comes to cultural Marxism—how the left has learned to dominate culture and how the right now needs to copy their techniques. If I’d had to drink a shot every time some speaker cited Herbert Marcuse or Antonio Gramsci, I’d be dead of alcohol poisoning.

But others argued that this sort of liberalism is a luxury we cannot afford. The country is under assault from a Marxist oligarchy that wants to impose its own pseudo-religious doctrine. If you try to repulse that with pallid liberalism, with weak calls for free speech and tolerance, you’ll end up getting run over by those who possess fanatical zeal, economic power, and cultural might.

Another interesting debate among the NatCons is political and economic. Conservatives have lately become expert culture warriors—the whole Tucker Carlson schtick. This schtick demands that you ignore the actual suffering of the world—the transgender kid alone in some suburban high school, the anxiety of a guy who can’t afford health care for his brother, the struggle of a Black man trying to be seen and recognized as a full human being. It’s a cynical game that treats all of life as a play for ratings, a battle for clicks, and this demands constant outrage, white-identity signaling, and the kind of absurd generalizations that Rachel Bovard used to get that room so excited.

Conservatives have got the culture-war act down. Trump was a culture-war president with almost no policy arm attached. The question conservatives at the conference were asking was how to move beyond owning the libs to effecting actual change.

Christopher Rufo, the architect of this year’s school-board-meeting protests against critical race theory, argued that conservatives had erred when they tried to slowly gain power in elite cultural institutions. Conservatives were never going to make headway in the Ivy League or the corporate media. Instead, Rufo argued, they should rally the masses to get state legislatures to pass laws embracing their values. That’s essentially what’s now happening across red America.

The NatCons are wrong to think there is a unified thing called “the left” that hates America. This is just the apocalyptic menace many of them had to invent in order to justify their decision to vote for Donald Trump.

They are wrong, too, to think there is a wokeist Anschluss taking over all the institutions of American life. For people who spend so much time railing about the evils of social media, they sure seem to spend an awful lot of their lives on Twitter. Ninety percent of their discourse is about the discourse. Anecdotalism was also rampant at the conference—generalizing from three anecdotes about people who got canceled to conclude that all of American life is a woke hellscape. They need to get out more.

Furthermore, if Hazony thinks America is about to return to Christian dominance, he’s living in 1956. Evangelical Christianity has lost many millions of believers across recent decades. Secularism is surging, and white Christianity is shrinking into a rump presence in American life. America is becoming more religiously diverse every day. Christians are in no position to impose their values—regarding same-sex marriage or anything else—on the public square. Self-aware Christians know this.

Finally, there is something extremely off-putting about the NatCon public pose. In person, as I say, I find many of them charming, warm, and friendly. But their public posture is dominated by the psychology of threat and menace. If there was one expression of sympathy, kindness, or grace uttered from the podium in Orlando, I did not hear it. But I did hear callousness, invocations of combat, and whiffs of brutality.

NatCons are also probably right that conservatism is going to get a lot more statist. At the conference, Ted Cruz tried to combine culture-war conservatism with free-market economic policies—free trade and low taxes. Marco Rubio countered by, in effect, arguing that you can’t rally cultural populists if you are not also going to do something for them economically. Cultural populism leads to economic populism. Rubio’s position at least has the virtue of being coherent.’

For more blogs or article related to politics and society click through  links below:

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

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

Adam Smith – Classical Liberal Economics or Conservative Calvinist Christianity or White Christian Nationalism?

Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Socioeconomics and Authoritarianism

Think tanks’ call for ‘freedom’ really promises authoritarianism

Radical Right Libertarain Economics or Social Populism?

Koch Industries: How to Influence Politics, Avoid Fossil Fuel Emission Control and Environmental Protections

Confected Attacks on Freedom of Speech on University Campuses

Universities have been under negative external scrutiny for research including science, educating women and/or minorities, student unions and politics, critical literacies and analysis, for more empowered younger generations plus related and confected issues e.g. LGBT or gender, critical race theory and freedom of speech.  This has been occurring systematically through transnational influence on tactics by ideologues in not just the USA but UK, Australia, Central Europe, Turkey and Russia; in the Anglosphere all roads lead to Koch Networks including AtlasNetwork.

However, most if not all criticism directed at research, universities and higher education is unfounded and intended to reduce their role in society versus radical right libertarian socio-economic ideology adopted by conservative political parties and promoted by mainstream media; higher education (ex. STEM and business) is viewed as a threat to the old established status quo.

In Australia pressure has been brought to bear on universities and similar institutions through provocative media stunts with focus upon China and freedom of speech by conservative activist Drew Pavlou at University of Queensland, and self described ‘men’s rights’ activist Bettina Arndt claiming freedom of speech issues.

Outcome? Both Australia and UK conservative governments promoting radical right libertarian ideology are now making legislation forcing university management to support freedom of speech from non-existent threats, to then give safe places to similar or worse, far or alt right type beliefs.

Why? US radical right libertarians revolving round Koch Networks who have taken over the GOP, view universities and higher education as an existential threat being addressed by networks of funders, advocates, media and hate groups; also extends transnationally, especially within the ‘Anglosphere’.

Media Matters for America:

The Conservative Dark-Money Groups Infiltrating Campus Politics

 Pam Vogel 29 March 2017

College campuses have long served as unique places for the free exchange of ideas — but increasingly they’ve also become playgrounds for ideologically driven, right-wing billionaires and the dark-money groups they fund. Media Matters has mapped out some of the biggest actors behind astroturf conservative campus activism, creating an echo chamber of seemingly grass-roots right-wing student media and campus groups that are actually propped up by a handful of the same conservative funders and, sometimes, even prominent hate groups.

Table Of Contents

FUNDERS

• Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation
• DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund
• F.M. Kirby Foundation 
• Charles Koch Foundation

ADVOCACY GROUPS & MEDIA OUTLETS

• American Conservative Union and Conservative Political Action Committee
• Campus Reform and The Leadership Institute
• The College Fix
• Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
• Intercollegiate Studies Institute
• Mercatus Center and Institute for Humane Studies
• Project Veritas
• Students for Liberty
• Students for Life
• Turning Point USA
• Young America’s Foundation
• Young Americans for Liberty

HATE GROUPS

• Alliance Defending Freedom
• David Horowitz Freedom Center

Freedom of Speech Crisis on University Campuses

For more articles and blogs about Academic Integrity, Ageing Democracy, Australian Politics, Climate Change, Conservative, Critical Thinking, Curriculum, Higher Education Teaching, Media, Pedagogy, Political Strategy, Populist Politics, Radical Right Libertarian, Science Literacy, University Teaching Skills and Younger Generations.