Lobbyists and Media – Push Politicians to Right – But Not Voters?

Interesting article from The Conversation ‘Politicians believe voters to be more conservative than they really are’ analysing the mismatch between media and politicians versus the electorate and society at large in Europe, US and Australia, why?

‘on a majority of issues, politicians consistently overestimate the share of citizens who hold right-wing views.  Importantly, politicians’ overestimation of how many citizens hold right-wing views is consistent across the ideological spectrum. Politicians hold a conservative bias regardless of whether they represent left- or right-wing parties’

According to the researchers, they suggest much has to do with right wing voters, even though a minority, are more active and have a higher profile, in addition to the impact of lobbyists and one would suggest, oligarch funded right wing ‘libertarian’ think tanks, especially refined architecture of influence in the US. 

The Anglosphere of US, UK and Australia, have become stark in how right wing or ultra conservative and nativism infected politics, economics and society, targeting and developing above median age right wing voters. This has been achieved by supposed free market think tanks and the fossil fueled Koch Network including CNP Council for National Policy, Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute and ‘bill mill’ ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council. 

Further, this is supported by white nativism masquerading as environmental solutions of the Tanton Network, which shares Koch Donors Network, funded by but deflecting from fossil fuels, highlighting ‘immigrants’ and ‘population growth’ as environmental issues, then Murdoch led media ecosystem spreads, repeats and reinforces the negative talking points, informed by GOP pollsters and lobbyists. 

In the UK the same elements exist with both Tanton and Koch Network NGO or charities sharing Tufton St., while Murdoch et al. are central in media to do the communications; ditto Australia.

From The Conversation:

‘Politicians believe voters to be more conservative than they really are

In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a district council election for the first time on Monday. Robert Sesselmann’s victory as district administrator – the equivalent of a mayor – in the Eastern town of Sonneberg comes only a day after Greece’s conservatives clinched an outright majority in the country’s parliamentary polls, topping left-wing parties Syriza and Pasok. Meanwhile, the Spanish left is also bracing for an early general election on 23 July, after losing to the Spanish conservative Partido Popular (PP) and far-right Vox parties in May.

Such developments might send a signal to European politicians to lean further to the right in a scramble to save votes. Yet our latest research, published this month, shows that politicians’ perceptions may not actually reflect voters’ true interests and opinions. Worse still: it appears to be an error that many other politicians have already made.

866 officials surveyed

In an influential 2018 study, David Broockman and Christopher Skovron showed that US politicians overestimated the share of citizens who held conservative views. On questions related to state intervention in the economy, gun control, immigration, or abortion, the majority of both Republicans and Democratic representatives surveyed believed that a greater share of citizens supported right-wing policies than what public-opinion data revealed.

Our findings are clear and straightforward. In all four countries, and on a majority of issues, politicians consistently overestimate the share of citizens who hold right-wing views.  Importantly, politicians’ overestimation of how many citizens hold right-wing views is consistent across the ideological spectrum. Politicians hold a conservative bias regardless of whether they represent left- or right-wing parties.

The result of lobbying?

The big question is why politicians perceive public opinion to be more right-wing than it truly is. One explanation provided by Broockman and Skovron for the United States was that right-wing activists are more visible and tend to contact their politicians more often, skewing representatives’ information environment to the right. We tested this explanation in our studied countries, but could not find evidence to support it. The right-wing citizens in our sample are not more politically active, and therefore visible, than their left-wing counterparts. Yet the idea that politicians’ information environment might be skewed to the right can find support in other work.

Earlier research has shown that politicians tend to receive disproportionally right-skewed information from business interest groups. Social media, which politicians use more and more, also tends to be dominated by conservative views, and as politicians spend more time online, and their news media diet is growingly filtered through social media feeds that create interactions and feedback skewed to the right, their views may be accordingly distorted. It has also been shown that politicians tend to pay more attention to the policy preferences of more affluent and educated citizens, and those citizens vote more often and hold more often right-wing views, at least on economic issues.

A threat to representative democracy

Irrespective of the sources of the conservative bias, the fact that it is persistently present in a variety of different democratic systems has major implications for the well-functioning of representative democracy. Representative democracy builds upon the idea that elected politicians are responsive to citizens, meaning that they by and large attempt to promote policy initiatives that are in line with people’s preferences. If politicians’ ideas of what the public thinks – let alone their own party’s voters – are systematically biased toward one ideological side, then the political representation chain is weakened. Politicians may erroneously pursue right-wing policies that do not in fact have the popular support, and may refrain from working to advance (incorrectly perceived) progressive goals. 

But if citizens are less conservative than what politicians perceive them to be, the supply side of policy is at risk of being consistently suboptimal and may have broader, system-wide implications such as growing disaffection with democracy and democratic institutions.The recent social unrest in France regarding raising legal pension age might be an example of a policy debate in which governments perceive public opinion leaning more to the right than it actually is.

The situation is not without hope, however, and access to accurate information seems to play an important role. A 2020 study in Switzerland has shown that a sustained use of direct democracy might help politicians better understand public opinion. In the same logic, a recent study of US elected officials show that they tend to misperceive support for politically motivated violence among their supporters. But when exposed to reliable and accurate information, they update and correct their (mis) perceptions. Building on such studies, we believe that more work needs to be done both to understand the sources and prevalence of conservative bias, and to identify additional ways of offsetting it.

For more related blogs on Ageing Democracy, Australian Politics, Conservative, Demography, EU European Union, Immigration, Koch Network, Media, Political Strategy, Populist Politics, Tanton Network and Younger Generations:

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

The Anglosphere Faux or Fake Left and Centre Heading to the Populist Right?

Growth of Conservative Hard Right Wing or Nativist Authoritarian Regimes

Strange Conservative Political Links – The Anglosphere, Hungary and Russia

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network

Anglosphere Nativism and Eugenics in Political Media – Language and Social Discourse

Public language, linguistics, discourse and vocabulary are important factors of influence in the public sphere and politics through narratives of think tanks, NGOs, media, politics and society, both positive and negative, in reinforcing perceptions and attitudes of society.

ByLine Times has a timely article of Dan Clayton ‘Swamping’ ‘Cockroaches’ ‘Invasion’ How Language Shapes our View of Migration, describing and explaining language used in politics and media; this week The Sun and Jeremy Clarkson have been highlighted on the language used towards Meghan Markle.

In recent decades the language of eugenics has been used politically for nativist messaging and dog whistling a la ‘dead cat on the table’ strategy of Lynton Crosby et al. to deflect from substantive issues, and reinforce eugenics of race and class by far right wing conservatives (in Australian context, a older generations informed by ‘white Australia policy’ which ended same time as US migration restrictions, in 1960s).

The EU referendum naively called by former Tory PM Cameron was a US radical right libertarian coup via Tufton Street Koch Network think tanks, to avoid EU constraints on fossil fuels, finance, labour standards, mobility etc.; described in Orwellian terms as ‘taking back control’ for ‘sovereignty’.

However, although prevailing on economic issues, the vote swung away from Remain to Leave due white nationalist arguments on ‘sovereignty’ versus Europe, refugees, immigrants etc.. These were produced by a Tanton Network NGO, also at Tufton Street, informing Dominic Cummings, UKIP Farage et al., both tabloid and serious media; replicated in the US by the Trump campaign and Steve Bannon.

‘‘Swamping’ ‘Cockroaches’ ‘Invasion’ How Language Shapes our View of Migration

Dan Clayton – 16 December 2022

Dan Clayton looks at a rising tide of martial, dehumanising and manipulative metaphors over asylum seekers and migrants in the UK

When, back in those halcyon days of January 2016, David Cameron stood up at Prime Minister’s Questions and accused Jeremy Corbyn of hanging around with a “bunch of migrants” in Calais, and supposedly telling them that “they could all come to Britain”, there was some discomfort about this apparent coarsening of discourse around immigration.

There was clearly something off about the use of the phrase “a bunch of…” that many people couldn’t quite articulate. It sounded vaguely derogatory but then using it to describe some flowers, bananas or grapes was hardly problematic. So, what was it about the phrase that set teeth on edge and activated many people’s offence sensors? 

Perhaps it’s the company that the expression keeps and how we, as language users, are primed to expect what follows.

Straight after Cameron’s words hit the headlines, I checked the British National Corpus (a huge digital database of language in use) to see if I could put my finger on why the expression felt wrong. For every reference to fruit, there was another reference to troublemakers; for every bunch of lads, friends or junior doctors, there was a bunch of morons, thieves or maniacs.

These collocates (literally, words that exist next to other words, that co-locate) are a clear sign that some expressions feel bad because they keep bad company. And as the old saying has it, go to bed with dogs and wake up with fleas.  

Fast forward another six years and we don’t really have to head off to a corpus to investigate the nuances of the language being used by Conservative frontbenchers to describe immigration.

In October 2022, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman described the small boats crossing the Channel as “an invasion on our southern coast”: a metaphor so crass and bellicose that it went far enough beyond a dog whistle as to become a foghorn. You don’t need a very sensitive offence sensor to pick that message up…

And if you’re feeling particularly strong-stomached, just venture online and have a look at the replies to almost any news story about small boat crossings, tweets from the RNLI about their work, or proposed changes to asylum policy and you’ll see how vicious and dehumanising much of the language is.

As Sian Norris highlighted in Byline Times, some of the language previously associated with the far-right has become normalised, in Parliament as well as beyond, and Savan Qadir noted the escalation of rhetoric used by Braverman and its potential impact. 

Mobile Metaphors

Like so much language, context plays a huge part in how meanings are constructed and the timing of Braverman’s comments was extremely significant. Just a day before Braverman’s speech, a man had driven to a “migrant-processing facility” (a phrase worthy of some analysis in itself) near Dover, attacked it with firebombs and then apparently taken his own life.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that when leading politicians are using the language of war to talk about the movement of groups of people, some impressionable members of the public take them at their word and adopt a war footing, taking the supposed battle into their own hands and to the “invaders”. In a world where discourses of “replacement” have moved from the neo-nazi fringe to centre stage, it’s a dangerous rhetorical game to play and one that some have likened to a form of stochastic terrorism. 

But consider too the wider context of the times we’ve been living through where war metaphors (of which “invasion” is one) have been successfully used by leading politicians during the Covid-19 pandemic to mobilise the public against a deadly threat.  It’s a metaphor that works and leads to action in the real world. And that’s dangerous. 

Metaphors like this are not new and there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with metaphors themselves in the context of political discourse: they are often a very effective way of helping people conceptualise complex ideas in a way that makes sense.

We often see what linguists call a “target domain” – such as life (or even just a brief run of appearances on Strictly or X-Factor) – being described using a “source domain” such as a journey.  But the choice of metaphor is hugely important, not just because it reveals a great deal about the political stance and outlook of the person using it but because of the impact it can have on the listener and the ways in which it fits into the wider jigsaw of the culture wars being waged around us. 

Linguists have been looking closely at metaphor for a long time and many people beyond the field will no doubt have come across the ideas in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s seminal Metaphors We Live By, if not the 1980 book itself.  But some of the most recent work on metaphors for Covid (waves, spikes, tsunamis) and measures to use against Covid (including ways to describe the vaccination programme – roll-out, firefighting metaphors) carried out by Professor Elena Semino at Lancaster University suggests that they can be powerful tools for shaping public opinion.

As Semino observes, war metaphors can be excellent ways of mobilising collective public action in the face of a common enemy, and “increase people’s perceptions of problems as serious and urgent, and their willingness to modify their behaviours accordingly” but might lose their appeal later as the “war” drags on and combat fatigue sets in, even fostering resentment that “wartime” powers are being imposed for too long.

Equally, in work done by Semino and many others on the power of metaphor in discussing cancer and its treatment, the war metaphor has mixed reactions. On the one hand, it can lead some patients to feel that they haven’t fought hard enough – or can’t, in the face of such a cruel opponent – while on the other, it might lead some to feel energised about facing down an enemy. 

Language Matters

When we start to look at the language used to describe migration, we can see the war metaphor front and centre among the ways that migrants are “othered”.

Words like horde, enemy and invasion (that one again) occur repeatedly. Dr Charlotte Taylor at the University of Sussex has used several corpora, including material from parliamentary debates and newspaper text, to explore this in her 2021 paper “Metaphors of Migration Over Time”, noting that many of the metaphors are “historically rooted and conventionalised”. In fact, some of the references she examines go as far back as 1820.  

It will probably come as no surprise that the mainstream (ie largely right-wing) press in the UK has hardly covered itself in glory over the last hundred years – take The Daily Mail’s 1938 headline “German Jews Pouring into This Country” as a case in point – but the patterns that Taylor observes do suggest some degree of variation over time. 

The “immigrants as water” framing that we see with words like pouring, wave and swamping (thank you to both Margaret Thatcher in 1978 and David Blunkett in 2002) suggests some form of inundation taking place and the movement of people being out of control.

Another key migration metaphor is that of animals, so nouns like swarm and flock (and the verbs associated with them) appear time and time again, adding a sense of agency, if not humanity, to the movement of people. It’s the same frame that Katie Hopkins infamously used when she described refugees as “cockroaches”. It’s still perhaps one step short of the war metaphor we’ve already seen, where migrants are cast as an enemy force to be repelled with deadly violence but it’s still pretty repugnant. 

Taylor also notes a pattern of migrants represented as objects or commodities across the language data she has analysed, and here we can see a recurrent picture of migrants as something to be used, traded and exploited, and – central to so much of the recent government discourse around migration – people to be trafficked as part of organised crime.

In her 2022 PhD thesis, Tamsin Parnell of the University of Nottingham notes that “migrants are constructed as victims, “evil traffickers” as villains, and “Britain’s Royal Navy, National Crime Agency and Border Force” as institutional heroes. This simplicity arguably deprives migrants of agency and obscures the multiple, complex reasons why a person might choose to travel to a European country through non-conventional routes.” 

But how does any of this matter? Surely getting hung up about a few words and phrases is not really going to do anyone any good when it’s political action that gets things done?

Well, language matters. We aren’t – as one particularly cynical commentator claimed – getting obsessed with “hurty words” but trying to unpick the values of the language that we use and that has been used before, and to find ways to describe the world around us.

Healthy, democratic societies need to be able to discuss migration: it’s been an everyday fact of life for millions of people for thousands of years and is likely to increase as parts of the world become uninhabitable due to climate collapse. But behind this language are people – both those on the move and those welcoming or rejecting them – and the conversations we need to have can’t be constructive until we think more carefully about the language we’re using and how it both represents and shapes the world around us.’

For more related blogs and article on Ageing Democracy, Australian Immigration News, Conservative, Demography, Economics, EU European Union, Eugenics, Global Trade, Immigration, Koch Network, Libertarian Economics, Media, Populist Politics, Radical Right Libertarian, Tanton Network & White Nationalism click through:

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

Mainstreaming Extremism – How Public Figures and Media Incite Nativist Beliefs Leading to Violence

Anglosphere Nativist Libertarian Social Economic Policies or Return of Eugenics?

James Buchanan – Economist – Koch Influencer – Radical Right Libertarian – Anglo Conservatives

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

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network

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

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

Mainstreaming Extremism – How Public Figures and Media Incite Nativist Beliefs Leading to Violence

Eugenics and racism have been apparent for centuries, but nowadays we are not surprised at extremist events in the Anglosphere, especially shootings in the US, mostly from the white nativist right, with incitement from media, or those accessing media. 

Below is an article repost from Bryn Nelson in Scientific American: ‘How Stochastic Terrorism Uses Disgust to Incite Violence. Pundits are weaponizing disgust to fuel violence, and it’s affecting our humanity.’ describing how people are encouraged to view what should be neutral sociocultural issues with ‘disgust’. 

Rewind, the Brexit campaign in the UK followed years of Tufton Street think tank informed media dog whistling of immigrants and/or European Union, exemplified by remarks made by then Prime Minister Cameron, using the language of entomology for insects to describe human beings i.e. eugenics:

‘spoke of “a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain”.’ egregiously ignoring causes of migration, such as Iraq then Syrian wars.

This was then followed by the right wing extremist murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, but initially described by disbelieving media as an unfortunate incident while again ignoring causes. The US based SPLC on the murder of Jo Cox, knew more about the incident and perpetrator within 24 hours, identifying him as a neo Nazi, than UK media, MPs and security services?

In Australia there are echoes of old ‘white Australia policy’ of immigration restrictions in media and politics dominated by Anglo Irish cohorts (influence is in decline, now only 54% identify), Murdoch media, Koch Network think tanks and Tanton Network nativism for same media content i.e. dog whistling refugees, international students, immigrants and population growth, as an environmental issue to deflect from fossil fuels and attract above median age voters.

Interestingly, Murdoch outlets like Fox News, Sky News After Dark (in Australia), TalkTV, print and radio media share common nativist messaging, repeatedly, to reinforce the Tanton tactic of voters making negative associations with ‘immigrants’; then picked up by other media in lock step.  After the appalling Christchurch shooting of Muslim worshippers by an Australian extremist Brenton Tarrant who follows the ‘great replacement’, right wing media and politicians quickly deflected and took no responsibility for creating the public ecosystem where his ideas were acceptable.

The Scientific American article follows:

By Bryn Nelson on November 5, 2022

‘How Stochastic Terrorism Uses Disgust to Incite Violence.  Pundits are weaponizing disgust to fuel violence, and it’s affecting our humanity.

A week and a half before the midterm elections, a man broke into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s house, screaming “Where’s Nancy?” and attacked her husband with a hammer. David DePape, charged in the attack, had posted a slew of rants that included references to a sprawling conspiracy theory known as QAnon, which claims that Democratic, Satan worshipping pedophiles are trying to control the world’s politics and media.

Several hours before, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson interviewed right-wing activist Christopher Rufo, who claimed drag queens participating in book readings were trying to “sexualize children.” The people who support these events, he said, want to create “a sexual connection between adult and child, which has of course long been the kind of final taboo of the sexual revolution.”

With the support of former President Donald Trump, the pedophile conspiracy theory has contributed to a widening spiral of threats and violence, including the deadly January 6 Capitol insurrection. A revival of the “groomer” smear against the LGBTQ community (a reference to a pedophile) has ramped up the aggression. Right-wing media personalities and activists have created or amplified conspiracy theories about Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and others.

Dehumanizing and vilifying a person or group of people can provoke what scholars and law enforcement officials call stochastic terrorism, in which ideologically driven hate speech increases the likelihood that people will violently and unpredictably attack the targets of vicious claims.

At its core, stochastic terrorism exploits one of our strongest and most complicated emotions: disgust.

In my new book Flush, I describe how psychologists have come to view disgust as a kind of behavioral immune system that helps us avoid harm. Whether in response to feces or rats, disgust triggers an aversion to things that can make us physically sick. The emotion has a darker side, however: in excess, it can be weaponized against people.

Propagandists have fomented disgust to dehumanize Jewish people as vermin; Black people as subhuman apes; Indigenous people as “savages”; immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection; and members of the LGBTQ community as sexual deviants and “predators” who prey upon children.

That horrifying history is now repeating itself, as political extremists create dangerous new strains of contempt and hatred. During the COVID pandemic, there has been a surge of racism and xenophobia, as well as violence against foreigners who are baselessly blamed for importing disease and crime. 

Even when disgust doesn’t incite outright violence, it can still cause harm. Clinical psychologist Steven Taylor, author of The Psychology of Pandemics, told me that the ongoing monkeypox outbreak has further amplified bigotry. The disease’s mode of transmission through close physical contact and its symptoms of pus-filled sores, he says, make it a perfect vehicle for eliciting disgust. Its name and origins in Africa have stoked racist misinformation about how it spreads, and its link to men who have sex with men has fueled stigma and homophobia as well.

People who are trying to outlaw gender-affirming care for transgender kids and purge pro gay books from library shelves have stirred up disgust by invoking the specter of sexual “grooming”; others have made the same accusations against those speaking out against such legislative efforts, and some have used the idea to fuel disinformation about the cause of scattered pediatric monkeypox cases. The manufactured grooming mythology has spurred another round of moral disgust and outrage.

In response to Rufo’s diatribe, Carlson—who has an average of over three million viewers— explicitly linked drag queens to pedophiles: “Why would any parent allow their child to be sexualized by an adult man with a fetish for kids?” Rufo then suggested that parents should push back and “arm themselves with the literature” supposedly laying out the child sexualization agenda. Carlson replied, “Yeah, people should definitely arm themselves.”

Some people have. Researchers have estimated that transgender people are more than fourfold more likely to be the victims of violent crime than their cisgender counterparts, and while not a direct link to violence, other scientists have linked disgust sensitivity and authoritarianism to a higher opposition to transgender rights. Over the past few months, assailants repeating the groomer slur have threatened to kill drag queens and LGBTQ people, as well as educators, school officials, librarians, parents and lawmakers who have come to their defense.

In the lead-up to the midterm elections, a blitz of far-right radio ads targeting Black and Hispanic stations in swing states has repeated falsehoods about transgender people and a QAnon warning that the Biden administration will make it easier for children “to remove breasts and genitals”—an attempt to evoke disgust. Other ads aimed at white audiences claim minorities are the true aggressors and destroyers of social norms. One decries “anti-white bigotry.” Another warns ominously, “Stop the woke war on our children.”

The cynical appeal to protecting children by attacking minorities has exposed a bitter irony: disgust is an emotion that evolved to keep us out of danger, but people have long misused it to inflict cruelty and catastrophic harm.

No single intervention is likely to reduce the boil of this toxic stew. But a better understanding of how disgust works and how we can be manipulated by our sense of revulsion may help us turn down the heat. Just as we can overcome our fears, Taylor said, we can break free of disgust. Desensitization and habituation can lessen its potency. Other research suggests that interventions based on compassion, empathy and trust-building can help weaken its contribution to prejudice. Awareness and education can uncover unconscious biases and expose the tactics of those who weaponize it, like those inciting the current wave of ugly antisemitism.

A day after the attack on Paul Pelosi, Hillary Clinton reacted to the suspect’s apparent far right influences by tweeting, “The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly

spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow.” In response, new Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted a hateful conspiracy theory by a notoriously misleading news site that blamed Pelosi’s attack on the LGBTQ community; Musk later deleted the tweet, but then joked about it.

What can stop stochastic terrorism and break the cycle of disgust-fueled vilification, threats and violence? 

Turning off the source of fuel is a start. Programs to counter violent extremism, particularly those that emphasize early intervention and deradicalization, have yielded some successes in at-risk communities. Other programs disrupt the ideological ecosystem that creates radical conspiracies through counseling, education and other community interventions. Beyond understanding how our emotions can be exploited to demonize others, we can refuse to buy into “both-sides” false equivalence and the normalization of dangerous rhetoric and extremism. We can do better at enforcing laws against hate speech and incitement to violence. And ultimately, we can disengage with media platforms that make money by keeping us disgusted, fearful and forgetful of our own decency—and shared humanity.’

For more related blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Australian Immigration News, Australian Politics, Conservative, Demography, Environment, EU European Union, Eugenics, Media, Nationalism, Political Strategy, Population Growth, Populist Politics & White Nationalism click through:

Anglosphere Legacy Media: White Nativist and Libertarian Propaganda for Ageing Conservative Voters – Australia, Brexit & Trump

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

Afghan and Islamic Refugees – ADL – The Great Replacement Theory – Nativist Conservative Media, Politics and Public Discourse

Research of Social Media – Fake News – Conspiracy Theories – Junk Science

Monopoly Media Bias in Australia

White Nationalist Extremism – Mainstreamed by Politicians and Media

Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Socioeconomics and Authoritarianism

Another article from Lucy Hamilton on John Menadue’s ‘Pearls & Irritations’ titled ‘Think tanks’ call for ‘freedom’ really promises authoritarianism’ (13 Nov. ‘21); backgrounded by media narratives round Covid19 with demands for, using the Americanism, (Kochian) ‘freedom & liberty’ from regulation and government, with much authoritarianism.

Very complex ecosystem of relationships and dynamics, hence, understanding almost requires an ever evolving 3D helix to show the dynamics, interwoven relationships, ideology, etc. over time, as it’s a long game that transcends politics, parties and electoral cycles, especially the Anglosphere of Australia, UK and US, plus less developed democracies.

‘Ideological think tanks campaigning for ‘freedom’ are really pushing us further into a competitive authoritarianism regime.’ and ‘public choice theory’….

Demographic influence of social-Darwinism or eugenics of Galton and concerns about humanity of Malthus, equates with authoritarianism,  while  ‘freedom’ fits with Adam ‘invisible hand’ (of God) Smith, later Hayek, Friedman et al. morphing into Chicago School of Buchanan’s ‘public choice theory’ i.e. racial Kochonomics*; survival of the fittest, protecting themselves from (disruption by) the lower orders, presented as freedom of choice but needing authoritarianism to ensure the right choices are made.

*According to Bethany Moreton in a review of Nancy MacLean’s ‘Democracy in Chains’, titled ‘Kochonomics: The Racist Roots of Public Choice Theory:

‘Virginia’s nationally prominent stand against desegregation and voting rights was the inescapable context of public choice theory.’

A disturbing example was Chile, post ‘70s coup and during the Pinochet regime, had the required military backed autocracy, domestic security services and social class division for their Chicago School experiment.  However, this experiment suggests that radical right libertarian economics requires autocracy, without constraints i.e. no society, no community, no unions, no free press, control by security services, no empowered middle class, low regulation, low taxes and small government, to function?

Soft authoritarianism, ageing electorates, eugenics, environment and ‘Big Oil’ 

Galton’s eugenics and Malthusian Population control movement reemerged after the embarrassment of pre and WWII experiments with eugenics and the Nazis; strategic in making population and immigration an environmental ‘hygiene issue’ to both deflect from fossil fuels and use as a dog whistle (to channel eugenics sentiments).

Key people in ZPG Zero Population Growth were falsely described as ‘progressive’ i.e. Tanton and Ehrlich (plus Watson of SeaShepherd fame); all had visited Australia from the early ‘90s, or before, to develop an Australian version of ZPG, post white Australia.  This was well before population was spiked by the (2006 UNPD defined) NOM Net Overseas Migration temporary churn over inflation (with below replacement fertility in the permanent population), climate science pointing to carbon emissions’ negative impact on the environment and post PM Howard, carbon mitigation policies being denigrated and voted down. 

How does nativism fit into authoritarian yet supposedly libertarain socioeconomic practice? 

ZPG in Australia morphed into SPA Sustainable Population Australia.  In addition to deflecting from mooted fossil fuels and carbon regulations or constraints by accessing naive or complicit media in platforming immigration, NOM and population growth as environmental issues of our time….. 

‘The fight against the masses …. allowing the worker the freedom to associate was dangerous.’

Again a feature of the eugenics movement informing radical right libertarian socio-economic policies to oppose an equitable electoral franchise, unions, workers’ rights, welfare, higher education and empower citizens; achieved by clever agitprop under various guises in legacy media by influencers and commentators using memes, ‘sciency’ PR, local vs. immigrant workers, and general disruption of social narratives.

We have observed often in Australia, with declining union membership, the ongoing demands for constraints on unions, including proxies such as union or industry superannuation funds.

Products of PR Meme factories, repackaging old theories, tropes and agitprop

It’s been alleged that in Delaware there exists a meme factory that is an assembly line of memes designed for traction in both legacy and social media. If not to help the libertarian radical right libertarians, but used by fringe media, far right, white nativists and conspiracists to oppose progress and importantly, disrupt joined up narratives.

The following memes to be opposed would be familiar to all in the Anglosphere i.e.  PC political correctness, empowerment, CRT critical race theory, BLM black lives matter, women, minorities, LGBT, curricula, education, learning, assessments, science and research, especially universities and higher education.

Autocracy and censorship in the public sphere round media, informing, secrecy and communicating

Australia has witnessed many of its ‘top people’ in an egalitarian society use their power for self protection whether LNP Ministers, MPs, business or even some journalists, to shut down or nobble reporting, discussion and analysis.  

The popular tools to threaten investigative journalists, civilians, whistleblowers, lawyers, innocent bystanders etc. are: claiming freedom of speech to denigrate, spiking articles, journalists losing jobs, removing article comment functions, but more recently, wanton use of authoritarian power via defamation laws for vexatious suits i.e. SLAPPs, according to The Conversation in ‘Slapps: the rise of lawsuits targeting investigative journalists’

(October 27, 2021):

‘A type of legal action is increasingly being used by powerful people to shut down criticism from activists, academics, whistleblowers, and journalists. This is known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or Slapp’

Electoral campaigning, astroturfing, imported tactics and ideology

The US Koch related State Policy Network is another web of think tanks including the ‘bill mill’ ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council which externally lobbies mostly GOP Reps who are insiders, to vote for or oppose specific bills e.g. oppose environmental regulation of fossil fuels. 

However, one would argue that the now nominally agrarian based National Party in the Australian LNP Liberal National Party coalition government, acts like ALEC, but from inside the coalition.  This is to oppose Liberal and National moderates following climate science and demanding more done for achieving Net Zero; seemingly informed by think tanks.

More recently ALEC’s and the Atlas Network’s influence emerged to promote Voter ID under the guise of solving a non-existent problem, but in fact to suppress votes.  This was introduced by news media into both UK and Australian political narratives, simultaneously; unlikely to have any short term impact, but likely to be mooted again.  At minimum it acts as a distraction to solve a non-existent electoral issue, but one day may come to fruition and follow the US GOP tactic of voter suppression; threatened by emerging younger working age demographics, more diversity, plus voters more educated and empowered, hence, unlikely to vote conservative.

White Australia policy, refugees, immigration, NOM, population and borders as a security issue for autocratic solutions or a ‘Trumpian but ‘virtual wall’

Something achieved in post white Australia is having rhetoric or PR aka the GOP, policies and proxies to deliver similar agitprop, satisfy sentiments of many ageing Anglo-Celtic, European heritage Australians, dog whistling and appear to be ‘not racist’.  Accordingly, we had fossil fuel supported ZPG imported from the US, with liaison of deceased racist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton with Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich, later becoming SPA Sustainable Population Australia.  It’s role has been to focus upon the ‘virtual wall’ aka incoming NOM then conflating with permanent migration, then spruiking alarm about population growth as an environmental ‘hygiene’ issue.  

The eugenics based focus upon humanity avoids scrutiny of fossil fuels and needs for environmental etc. regulation, by using (non science/data literate) media to inform social narratives or word of mouth; the latter is the most powerful form of messaging and reinforcement because it’s trusted (like organic search engine results vs. paid ads).

SPA access media under the guise of ‘environment’ and patrons too, who include former NSW Labor Premier & Federal Senator Bob Carr, Tim Flannery and Dr. Katherin Betts who has collaborated with ‘Australia’s best demographer’ Dr. Bob Birrell at APRI Australian Population Research Institute. Both of the latter contributed to John Tanton’s journal TSCP The Social Contract Press which is part of what is known as the Tanton Network, described by SPLC Southern Poverty Law Center in John Tanton’s Network as:

‘The organized anti-immigration “movement” is almost entirely the handiwork of one man, Michigan activist John H. Tanton.’

Not only have there been allegations of the Tanton Network sharing donors and networks with the Koch’s SPN, related to Tanton Network and SPA, former Australian Labor MHR Kelvin Thomson attended an event in the US by PFIR Progressive for Immigration Reform.  PFIR is part of the Tanton Network.  Described by ADL Anti-Defamation League in 2012 in ‘Progressives for Immigration Reform Conference Attracts Major Anti-Immigrant Figures’:

‘Despite claims by Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR) to be a “progressive” and “environmental” organization, the appearance of several anti-immigrant activists at PFIR’s third annual conference in Washington, DC, earlier this month, further confirms that the group is firmly entrenched in the anti-immigrant movement.’

Thomson’s participation is cited here in 2011 on Philip Cafaro’s website, who is also a key member of Tanton’s Network and presented:

‘Progressives for Immigration Reform panel discussion with Vernon Briggs, Ben Zuckerman and Kelvin Thomson on US Population and the National Environmental Protection Act. October 4, 2011.’

One hopes Thomson realises that PFIR is more about astroturfing and white ‘patriots for immigration restrictions’, i.e. not a progressive environmental organisation, nor is the Tanton Network, which nobbles the centre and left to support the far or alt right.

Australia has become embarrassing with its obstructive policies and behaviour, recently highlighted with COP26 and few concrete measures for the LNP government’s ‘Net Zero’ policies; too easy for ‘owned’ governments in catering to donors and radical right libertarain ideology.

Further Reading:

Lucy Hamilton’s article follows, as do related blogs posts:

Think tanks’ call for ‘freedom’ really promises authoritarianism

Climate Confusion, Astroturfing, Pseudo-Science, Population Movement and Radical Right Libertarians

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

Eco-System of Libertarian Think Tanks and White Nativism in the Anglosphere

Anglosphere Triangle – Immigration – Environment – Population Growth – Radical Right Libertarians

Lobby Groups, Policy, Government and Influence

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

Radical Right Libertarain Economics or Social Populism?

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

Population, Environment and White Nationalists in Australia – US Links

Article titled ‘Green Anti-Immigration Arguments Are A Cover For Right Wing Populism’ summarises ZPG Zero Population Growth in Australia, US white nationalist links, citing Paul Ehrlich and John Tanton. A symptom of US based radical right libertarianism and eugenics, presented as liberal, environmental and science based, but in fact supported by oligarchs.

 

The clearest signals emerged in the US in the ’70s when simultaneously fossil fuel companies became aware of global warming due to carbon emissions (and threatened by Nixon’s EPA), ZPG was established with Ehrlich, Tanton et al., supported by Rockefeller Bros. (Standard Oil then Exxon), Ford and Carnegie Foundations (according to the Washington Post), Club of Rome promoting Limits to Growth PR construct (including carrying capacity, Herman Daly’s steady-state economy suggesting protectionism to preclude global competition etc.) hosted on Rockefeller estate, sponsored by VW and Fiat, while James Buchanan and later Koch’s et al. started promoting libertarian economics (also Friedman, Hayek, Rand and Chicago School), nativism and developing think tanks for influence in politics, academia and media (according to MacLean’s ‘Democracy in Chains’ and Mayer’s ‘Dark Money’), including ALEC, Heritage Foundation etc..

 

‘Green Anti-Immigration Arguments Are A Cover For Right Wing Populism

 

Tony Goodfellow | 22nd February, 2019

 

With the backdrop of dramatic decrease in migration to Australia in 2018 to a 10 year low, the population debate has reared its ugly head. In recent months Dick Smith has run an advertising blitz with the title ‘overpopulation will destroy Australia’ that compares population growth to cancer and recently took stage at Dark + Dangerous Thoughts at Mona arguing “no” for the proposition “Do We Let Them In?”. Dick Smith’s intervention comes as members of the far right continue to focus on immigration as a major issue. For example, the newly minted Katter’s Australian Party senator, Fraser Anning, praised the White Australia Policy in his inaugural speech and echoed Nazi rhetoric saying “the final solution to the immigration problem of course is a popular vote”. The Prime Minister Scott Morrison has also recently spoken about reducing Australia’s immigration intake.

 

The two views, although, coming from different perspectives, one nominally in the name of “sustainability” and the other a throwback to colonialism steeped in racism and xenophobia, arrive at the same destination, a hermetical view of the world projecting fear onto an outsider. In Dick Smith’s view the outsider is coming to destroy the environment and it Anning’s version they threaten the “European-Christian” ethno-white state.

 

The environmental rhetoric of the population debate might be alluring to progressives. Who would argue against clean air and clean water? Who wouldn’t agree that the current paradigm of growth is unsustainable? The problem is that an analysis based solely in population is superficial, creating solutions that end up marrying with the worst parts of Australian politics – far-right populism. If unchecked environmentalists focused solely on population threaten to be co-opted and driving a wedge in the environmental movement – because on the surface the arguments sound appealing.
Debate about population within the environment movement has played out many times, with many of the arguments not being new. Dick Smith’s manifesto proclaims “The prime reason for the decline in living standards for many Australian workers is our population growth.”

 

However, whose environment is he trying to protect?

 

Background to the environmental population debate

 

In the late 1960’s and onward a debate raged in environmental groups that threatened to tear them apart. The hotly debated issue was about population, spurned on by the publication of the neo-Malthusian The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich.

 

The Population Bomb is an easy-to-read polemic written for a popular audience and a guide for organising. In Ehrlich’s view over-population is leading to societal and environmental collapse and the issue needs immediate policy action. It thus begun with the famous lines, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” and the pace continues:

 

“Overpopulation is now the dominant problem.

 

Overpopulation occurs when numbers threaten values.

 

…regardless of changes in technology or resource consumption and distribution, current rates of population growth guarantee an environmental crisis which will persist until the final collapse.

 

There are some professional optimists around who like to greet every sign of dropping birth rates with wild pronouncements about the end of the population explosion.

 

Many of these countries, some of which are the poorest, most undernourished, and most overpopulated in the world, are prime candidates for a death-rate solution to the Population explosion

 

Our position requires that we take immediate action at home and promote effective action worldwide. We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.”

 

He argues that population is a geometrical ratio:

 

“If growth continued at that rate for about 900 years, there would be some 60,000,000,000,000,000 people on the face of the earth…Unfortunately, even 900 years is much too far in the future for those of us concerned with the population explosion. As you will· see, the next nine years will probably tell the story.”

 

He graphically compares population growth to cancer, just like Dick Smith:

 

“We can no longer afford merely to treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out.”

 

In “Chapter 1 The Problem” Ehrlich writes that “I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time. I came to understand it emotionally one stinking hot night in Delhi a few years ago.”

 

It would be hard not to be terror-stricken after reading The Population Bomb and it inspired many to action – perhaps prematurely. One argument, coming from a milieu of a white middle-class that some scholars have called an “apartheid ecology”, could be characterised as the “Green anti-immigrant” position. This position argued that there needed to be a national population policy in the United States that centred on radically reducing immigration.

 

This debate had echoes of the 18th century where many often turned to population control to solve social ills. This movement was famously satirised by Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ or its longer title ‘A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick’. It also had echoes of Thomas Malthus who posited in An Essay on the Principle of Population that population would exceed food supply:

 

“The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race

 

Taking the population of the world at any number, a thousand millions, for instance, the human species would increase in the ratio of — 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. and subsistence as — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc. In two centuries and a quarter, the population would be to the means of subsistence as 512 to 10: in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable, though the produce in that time would have increased to an immense extent.”

 

An Essay on the Principle of Population expressed a view where empathy to certain groups, such as the poor, would spell disaster. His ideas led those in power to look at famine as good for society and that support for those not well off as creating “the poor which they maintain” . Marx famously argued against Malthus:

 

“The hatred of the English working class for Malthus—the ‘mountebank-parson,’ as Cobbett rudely called him…—was thus fully justified and the people’s instinct was correct here, in that they felt that he was no man of science, but a bought advocate of their opponents, a shameless sycophant of the ruling classes.”

 

This account was pretty accurate considering Malthus has been used to wage war on the poor. “Over the last 200 years” according to eco-socialist John Bellamy Foster “Malthusianism has thus always served the interests of those who represented the most barbaric tendencies within bourgeois society.”

 

Malthus’ view would end up marrying with Eugenics to form an ideological base for the Nazis. From early on Hitler fetishised the idea that population was the problem:

 

“The annual increase of population in Germany amounts to almost 900,000 souls. The difficulties of providing for this army of new citizens must grow from year to year and must finally lead to a catastrophe, unless ways and means are found which will forestall the danger of misery and hunger.”

 

Tragically his solution to his manufactured population problem was to violently enlarge the borders of the state, encourage higher fertility of anyone who was in Arthur de Gobineau’s ahistorical category of the true Germans or Aryan race while offsetting this by genocide of certain populations he deemed too foreign, not nationalistic enough or inferior.

 

Brief History of the rise of concern for population to be anti-immigration.

 

After The Population Bomb was released the new wave of the population debate played out in the one the largest and oldest conservation groups, the Sierra Club, leading to a decades old internecine struggle. The publication solidified for many that overpopulation was the most important issue for environmentalists. The polemic had a forward by David Brower, the executive director of the Sierra Club. He tied the Sierra Club’s mission to the call to action of the The Population Bomb, writing:

 

“The roots of the new brutality, it will become clear from The Population Bomb, are in the lack of population control. There is, we must hope and predict, a chance to exert control in time. We would like to predict that organizations which, like the Sierra Club, have been much too calm about the ultimate threat to mankind, will awaken themselves and others, and awaken them with an urgency that will be necessary to fulfillment of the prediction that mankind will survive. We must use our political power to push other countries into programs which combine agricultural development and population control.”

 

One scholar writes that the Ehrlich’s polemic “convinced many people that population expansion would eventually transcend the earth’s carrying capacity, leading to ecological disaster”. In doing so population became the pre-eminent concern for many environmentalists. It wasn’t long before environmental groups split on the issue. Population policy brought up many difficult questions that advocates could not address. On the question of scale, for example, should population be addressed globally or nationally? How do you address it nationally when the fertility rate is so low? Some proponents of addressing overpopulation decided the most politically acceptable way was to address it nationally, primarily through drastically reducing immigration. This focus on immigration somewhat overlook the arbitrary nature of both the new population goal and narrowly focusing on national population instead of consumption. There was no evidence that immigration size was related to ecological damage but the fear of population getting out of control was an overriding logic, and immigration provided a useful political tool……. continues……

 

Further reading

 

I’m an environmental journalist, but I never write about overpopulation. – Here’s why: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/9/26/16356524/the-population-question

 

Greenwash: Nativists, Environmentalism and the Hypocrisy of Hate: https://www.splcenter.org/20100630/greenwash-nativists-environmentalism-and-hypocrisy-hate

 

Life in a ‘degrowth’ economy, and why you might actually enjoy it: https://theconversation.com/life-in-a-degrowth-economy-and-why-you-might-actually-enjoy-it-32224

 

Here’s what a population policy for Australia could look like: https://theconversation.com/heres-what-a-population-policy-for-australia-could-look-like-101458

 

Other related sources:

 

Betts K, Ideology and Immigration, Volume 1, Number 4 (Summer 1991), The Social Contract Press, https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0104/article_56.shtml

 

Betts K, Population Policy Issues, Volume 8, Number 2 (Winter 1997-1998), The Social Contract Press, https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0802/article_698.shtml

 

Betts K, A Conversation With Jean Raspail*, (Reprint) Volume 15, Number 4 (Summer 2005), The Social Contract Press, https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1504/article_1340.shtml (* Steve Bannon’s favourite)

 

Birrell R, Australian Nation-State, Volume 7, Number 2 (Winter 1996-1997), The Social Contract Press, https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0702/article_615.shtml

 

Bricker D & Ibbitson J, 2019, Empty Planet, Signal Books, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37585564-empty-planet

 

Haney-Lopez I, 2014, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, Oxford University Press USA, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17847530-dog-whistle-politics

 

Jaco S, Anti-Immigration campaign has begun Washington Post May 8 1977 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/05/08/anti-immigration-campaign-begun/

 

MacLean N, 2017, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Viking, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30011020-democracy-in-chains

 

Mayer J, 2016, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Doubleday, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833494-dark-money

 

Pearce F, 2010, The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet’s Surprising Future, Beacon Press, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7788578-the-coming-population-crash

 

van Onselen L, MacroBusiness (Australia) many articles about immigration, NOM net overseas migration, international education and population growth using research of Birrell and Betts https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/author/leith/

 

For more articles and blogs about Australian politics, demography, population growth and white nationalism click through.