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.

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

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.

‘Putin’s Plot Against ‘Great’ Britain – And How He Got Away With It

Peter Jukes tracks Vladimir Putin’s long war against the West and the allies he has found in the pro-Brexit establishment in the plot to derail Britain

Peter Jukes 8 March 2022

The outline of Vladimir Putin’s long war against the West has been brought into stark, almost apocalyptic relief by his brutal invasion of Ukraine, and his mass bombardment of Ukrainian civilians. The Kremlin’s plan to recreate a new Russian Empire has been noted for years in various think tanks and publications, though very few believed it.

Thanks to Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr we know this is partly due to a ‘Great Information War’, using the fifth battlespace of propaganda and non-linear lies to deceive and distract. But after FBI investigations, congressional intelligence reports and dozens of journalistic investigations, we have confirmation from the US Army itself that Brexit was the first step in Putin’s ‘information blitzkrieg’. 

But why has it taken so long to realise we were under attack? Why was there so little preparation for the biggest war in Europe in 77 years? And why did Britain do so little to counter it? The failure to do so will be seen as a bigger intelligence failure than 9/11. But was there more than wilful blindness in our (in)ability to see and predict the plans of the Kremlin? 

For an answer to that, we have to go back to 2017, and the revelations of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was tasked to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election. But before we do so, it’s worth sketching out, in brief, Putin’s now obvious ambition to remove Britain from the EU and derail the transatlantic alliance at the heart of NATO. 

The Plot to Derail Britain

Auseful starting point for Putin’s attack on the weak spots of British democracy is the appointment of Alexander Yakovenko to the role of Ambassador to the United Kingdom in January 2011. Three years earlier, Putin had stepped down to allow Dmytry Medvedev to replace him as President of Russia – an apparently smooth democratic succession based on a promise of modernisation and anti-corruption….

….In the summer of 2012, Sergey Nalobin, a senior diplomat, whose father was an FSB general and whose brother also worked for the Russian intelligence agency, hosted a party at the Russian Embassy establishing the Conservative Friends of Russia. For three years, as donations from Russian oligarchs increased, he befriended senior Conservatives and their contacts, and particularly those associated with what would become the official Vote Leave campaign to exit the EU, including Boris Johnson, John Whittingdale and Matthew Elliott. 

It was Ambassador Yakovenko himself who first made overtures to the burgeoning UK Independence Party. The Ambassador was photographed meeting Nigel Farage in the Russian Embassy 2013, after which Farage was regularly featured on state-sponsored RT (formerly Russia Today) not only as a studio guest, but also in the news segments that covered Farage’s speeches in the European Parliament. 

Two events soon spurred the Russian influence operation into combat mode. In 2014, the bloody Maidan revolution, ousting Viktor Yanukovych as Ukrainian President and derailing Putin’s plans to create a Eurasian Union to match the EU, marked the real beginning of the war in Ukraine.

Putin was now wedded to any strategy that would weaken both the transatlantic alliance and the European Union which opposed his land grab. He began funding Eurosceptic and far-right parties across Europe, in France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The Internet Research Agency, run by the oligarch who also funded Putin’s mercenary Wagner group army, began to spend $50 million a year supporting Donald Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton. 

Meanwhile, David Cameron’s promise to allow a referendum on EU membership during his successful 2015 election campaign presented an opportunity against the US’s major ally. Brexit would become a strategic blow against the EU, separating one of its most powerful economies from the rest of Europe. 

Another Russian Embassy official in London, Counsellor Alexander Udod, a familiar presence at British army and university functions celebrating wartime alliances with the Soviet Union, was tasked with infiltrating the other key Brexit player, UKIP. 

Udod approached two linchpins of the movement, Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore, at the 2015 UKIP conference in Doncaster, when they were planning their Leave.EU campaign. For the next year, from November 2015 through to the election of Donald Trump in 2016, there were multiple meetings with Leave.EU officials and Russian embassy staff, in which preferential access to state monopolies in Russian gold and diamond deals were discussed….

……Given this clear campaign of espionage and infiltration, designed to cause destruction to Britain’s prestige and international effectiveness, why did the security services or the UK Government fail to counter it? And what was the role of Brexit and its senior figures in enabling the country’s self-sabotage? 

Johnson and the Oligarchs

The role of rich UK-based oligarchs, either out of fear or favour, acting on behalf of Putin as a proxy or backchannel, has become a major focus since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. London and the UK was the favoured hub for a rich Russian diaspora, with Soviet-born oligarchs such as Dmytro Firtash, Alexander Lebedev, Oleg Deripaska, Roman Abramovich, and Boris Berezovsky becoming key parts of the commercial, political and cultural scene, and the City of London a major investment and trading hub for Russian companies.

We now know more about the extensive funding of the Conservative Party by Russian oligarchs and their high-level access to politicians. Other senior business figures, who have funded either the Leave campaigns or Brexit think tanks, made their millions in Russia or have major investments there. But, to many, this didn’t seem abnormal. As the influential left-wing commentator Owen Jones once told me: Russian oligarchs had no more impact on Brexit than the non-domiciled media moguls who dominate our newspaper industry

Good point. Except, the owners of the Evening Standard and the Independent are both Russian oligarchs and media moguls, and they have influenced Johnson’s political career.

The London daily, owned by Alexander Lebedev – a former KGB agent in Britain – and his son Evgeny, had an important role to play in promoting Boris Johnson during his time as Mayor. Johnson valued their contribution so highly that he elevated Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords as Baron of Hampton and Siberia (requiring Putin’s permission for the title), against security advice.

But did they have any impact on his decision to back Putin’s Brexit plot?

As reported by Catherine Belton, another Soviet-born oligarch and major Conservative donor, Alexander Temerko, claimed that Johnson was finally persuaded to back Brexit by a group of ‘eastern European businessmen’. Temerko refused to elaborate when questioned further by Belton, and there are numerous candidates who could be part of that group. But it certainly looks like the Lebedevs were involved.

According to the wife of Johnson’s fellow campaign figurehead, Michael Gove, Johnson made the final momentous decision to join the Leave campaign at a dinner with Evgeny Lebedev. And though the shock 2016 result did not lead to his assumption of the leadership of the Conservative Party, Johnson did – according to Temerko – spend much of his time as Foreign Secretary drinking wine with him and plotting to replace the new Prime Minister, Theresa May….. 

…..Therefore, the huge public interest question is: how did then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson react to early revelations of Putin’s great information war?

All the evidence suggests that he engaged in a systematic cover-up.  

Suppressing the Russia Story

I first became personally involved in this story in November 2017. The first Mueller indictment had landed, prosecuting Trump foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos for lying about meeting a purported ‘Russian agent’ in London who had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton and her emails during the presidential campaign of 2016 – the supposed agent being a Maltese professor called Joseph Mifsud. Mifsud claimed to have connections with the Russian Ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko. 

A few weeks later, a source revealed to me that Mifsud had been planning to meet Boris Johnson for a dinner and to talk about Brexit. After protracted discussions with a Foreign Office spokesperson about whether the dinner had actually happened and whether the then Foreign Secretary had met with a person the FBI alleged was a Russian spy, I co-published the revelation with Carole Cadwalladr at the Observer on 4 November 2017. A week later, a picture emerged of Boris Johnson and Joseph Mifsud at a Conservative event in Reading.

Although information from MI6 and intelligence from GCHQ about Russian interference had already been passed on to US authorities at this point – and both those agencies nominally reported to the Foreign Secretary – Johnson told Labour MP Chris Bryant during a select committee hearing in early November 2017, a few weeks after meeting Mifsud, that he’d seen “not a sausage” of Russian interference in British politics. 

And here begins another more damning twist in the cover-up saga. On the day after Johnson’s “not a sausage” remark at the select committee, former Chief Whip Gavin Williamson was appointed Defence Secretary to replace Michael Fallon. In evidence heard in the Royal Courts of Justice in the libel trial of Arron Banks versus Carole Cadwalladr earlier this year, the new Defence Secretary was very well aware of Russian interference in UK elections.

According to Cadwalladr’s sworn testimony, it was Williamson who contacted Richard Tice, the co-chair of the Leave.EU campaign, in November 2017 with warnings about the connections between Russia and his former co-chair Arron Banks…..

The Great Brexit Kompromat

Putin has been in a violent kinetic war with Ukraine since 2014, and launched a more subtle but just as effective hybrid war with the UK, US and Europe since at least then, using online operations, subversion, character assassination and sometimes murder.

All the historic documents show that many in the intelligence community knew this. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport produced a report, ‘Disinformation and Fake News’, which confirmed those suspicions in 2019. Despite the Prime Minister’s attempts to suppress its publication for many months, the ‘Russia Report’ by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee also confirmed it. And still nobody did anything about it. 

The Russia Report also noted, starkly, that none of Britain’s intelligence agencies had been tasked to look at, let alone protect us from, Putin’s Information Blitzkrieg. Any National Crime Agency and Metropolitan Police investigations have been granted limited remits. Meanwhile, the current Government is planning to remove the autonomy and powers of the Electoral Commission.

At the very time when our defences should have been raised, they have been deliberately dropped. Why?

From their current positions in firm support of Ukraine, it’s clear that most of the current Conservative Government is not pro-Putin, no matter how many roubles he has placed in their campaign coffers through proxies. Some no doubt are compromised personally and financially by the prospect of embarrassing revelations from the Russian security services. But as the sad story above makes clear: Brexit was the great kompromat. 

So many in the political-media class put Britain’s hard exit from the EU above all else, that they were willing to ignore another enemy advancing in their waters. They wanted to own Brexit for themselves, disregarding foreign interference and, like shipwrecked mariners, were still clinging to the rocks that wrecked them. They had created their ultimate villain – the European Union – and Putin’s form of strong-man authoritarianism, replete with ‘anti-woke’ values of family, macho masculinity, and hints of white racial superiority, may have chimed more closely with their own political predilections. 

Meanwhile, for at least five years, Vladimir Putin has been given a free hand to launch a war in Europe with little opposition, amid signals from the British establishment that he could only have taken as compliance and surrender. We waved a white flag. And though we are currently arming the Ukrainians with anti-tank missiles, and promising strong sanctions (which are always behind the rest), we effectively abandoned them during their eight-year-long struggle to hold back the dark Putinist tide of state terror and violence. And now they are paying the price for our appeasement.’

For more blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Conservative, EU European Union, Media, Political Strategy and Russia click through:

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.

Russia Report – Anglo Conservatives Compromised by Russian Interference on EU and Brexit

Return to questions over the U.K. Russia Report, former PM Johnson, Brexit, Conservative government, Russian oligarchs and influence on elections including the EU referendum..

Written by Peter Jukes and originally published January 2023 by ByLine Times, asking questions that are not only unresolved, but actively avoided by the Tories, media and supporters for the advantage of Putin’s Russia and oligarchs, both east and west?

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

Posted on March 4, 2024

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

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

Alexander Downer – Donald Trump aide George Papadopoulos – Russian Influence?

Posted on March 3, 2024

Alexander Downer, former Australian Foreign Minister in Conservative LNP coalition, Australia’s UK High Commissioner till 2018, visitor to Koch Network Heritage Foundation linked Hungarian Danube Institute (with former PM, now GWPF, UK Trade Advisor and Murdochs’ new Fox Board member Tony Abbott), and source for claims by Trump related people of DNC emails stolen by Russians i.e. George Papadopoulos.

‘Just a diplomat doing his job? A new book puts the spotlight back on Australia, Russia and interference in the US election.’

Historical Influence and Links Between Russia and the US Christian Right

Posted on November 6, 2023

We observe in the Anglosphere resurgence in conservative Christian nationalism of the right, becoming a central issue in ageing electorates, more in the US, Russia and Central Europe; both an electoral and policy strategy, plus supporting beliefs.

Some of the Anglo links are former Australian PM and now UK Trade Advisor Tony Abbott with the ADF Alliance Defending Freedom, Donald Trump gaining support of Evangelical and ‘pro-life’ Christians, the fossil fueled Atlas or Koch Network and their influence on the conservative Christian CNP Council for National Policy, Koch influenced Federalist Society promoting ‘pro-life’ choices for SCOTUS on Roe vs. Wade, then sharing similar values with Orban et al. in Central Europe, and Putin in Russia too?

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

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.

Overarching have been the Atlas or Koch Network of ‘free market’ think tanks found at Tufton Street London behind Brexit, via IPA, CIS etc. in Australia and led by the Heritage Foundation ‘mothership’ informing the GOP by lobbying and the public by Murdoch led, and Russian influenced, right wing media ‘talking points’ and platforming to mainstream radicalism.

Further, the racism, bigotry or nativism of the Tanton Network is promoted alongside as environmental science when it’s deep seated eugenics masquerading as demography influenced by Malthus, Galton and Grant.

Covid-19 was an opportunity for Koch Network and Murdoch related media, like climate science, to promote denialism, avoidance of science process, health mandates, sensible regulation and centrist liberal democratic governance.

‘From Politico Digital Bridge

‘How the West was radicalized

BY MARK SCOTT

FEBRUARY 1, 2024 

For the last three years, I’ve been tracking a global online movement, borne from the Covid-19 pandemic, that has radicalized millions. It has led to repeated offline violence supported by widespread conspiracy theories, growing distrust of Western democracy and a failure from politicians and officials to respond. I’m not going to lie; it’s become a weird fascination for me.

This is my effort to unpack what’s going on:

— A loosely affiliated network of increasingly radicalized online users has created sophisticated global connections via social media that have repeatedly spilled into the real world.

— The Covid-19 pandemic was the perfect crucible to jumpstart ties between disaffected people eager to find a greater meaning for how the world was changing around them.

— National security agencies across the West have struggled to respond, fearful of overstepping their mandate, unsure of how best to track online radicalization, and limited in what resources they have available.

WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER

PRAISE FOR FARMERS’ PROTESTS IN FRANCE. Claims the Israel-Hamas conflict is an attempt by global elites to start World War III. Graphic attacks on Taylor Swift for her alleged role in keeping Donald Trump from regaining the White House. Three different events, three different countries. But behind each one lies a loose network of Covid-19 conspiracy theorists, hundreds of thousands of disgruntled social media users, and a smattering of ultra-violent extremist groups who have joined forces to create a global movement with one clear goal: to overturn the established order.

“It’s like a nuclear bomb,” Imran Ahmed, chief executive at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit organization that tracks such online activity and who has consulted with Western governments about how to combat violence resulting from online conspiracy theories, told me. “This is the creation of unlimited amounts of communication and the potential for it to go super viral and reach billions of people for zero cost. We have a limited window for getting people aware of the problem.”

I first came across this movement in the early days of Covid-19 (more on that below). At first, the groups — spread across Telegram, Facebook, TikTok, Discord and Reddit — felt different. They spoke multiple languages. They focused on domestic grievances. They included QAnon followers, far-right political operatives, and everyday social media users. Yet as the months turned into years, strange connections began to pop up. So-called Proud Boy American white nationalists started to talk about local Swedish politics. French left-leaning Yellow Vests activists quickly became experts in the American so-called deep state conspiracy against Trump.

What happened, based on Digital Bridge’s tracking of millions of social media posts across seven social networks primarily in North America, Europe, Australia and Latin America over the last three years, was the epitome of what the internet does best: bring people together. Often isolated online users found like-minded people who shared a similar worldview. One where Bill Gates is a worldwide enemy seeking to use the global public health crisis to enrich himself. One where “elites” want to suppress the little man (and it’s almost always a man). One where Vladimir Putin is heralded for his fight against Pizzagate-style “pedophiles” in Ukraine.

Not everyone involved in this bottom-up digital movement holds radicalized views. But extremist groups — the so-called Proud Boys white nationalist group in the United States, the Querdenken anti-lockdown brigade in Germany, and the English Defense League, an Islamophobic political group, in the United Kingdom — have embedded themselves into Telegram channels, Facebook groups and Discord online messaging communities to recruit would-be followers to their cause. Picture an online atmosphere like the “Star Wars” Mos Eisley cantina, where white nationalists routinely rub shoulders with “red-pilled” soccer moms who believe Covid-19 is an attempt to sterilize children.

This isn’t just an online phenomenon. As the ties between these disparate groups became stronger — fueled by multilingual influencers and auto-translation plug-ins for social media — they have used the digital movement to organize offline protests. That includes jumping on global political events like last year’s political violence in Brazil or skyrocketing energy prices in Germany to mount like-minded protests elsewhere. This is directed, primarily, by Telegram channels, where more active members of the radicalized movement share viral memes to galvanize support, suggest how to frame potential protests, and promote similar offline activities in other countries to demonstrate that people’s concerns are widespread.

Tragically, this can also end in violence. Repeated shootings — in Germany, the U.S., New Zealand and Slovakia — have all shown signs of the assailants having become radicalized, in part because of their involvement in this global movement. Many posted online manifestos — still readily accessible within this digital community and reviewed by Digital Bridge — that are riddled with references to the so-called Great Replacement Theory, a popularly held racist belief the West is being overrun by migrants; antisemitic tirades also prevalent within this movement; and calls-to-arms for others to follow their example. Sadly, these shooters are viewed by many as heroes for the cause.

THE ROLE OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

JAKUB, A 23-YEAR-OLD STUDENT FROM COLOGNE, did not have a good pandemic. Stuck at home with little to do, the German, whose last name Digital Bridge is withholding to protect his identity, turned to social media for comfort. Within months, Jakub, who has now left the movement, was engrossed in a conspiracy-laden online world where falsehoods like the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” project — aimed at reinventing the global economy for a post-Covid world — was, in fact, a ruse by global elites to use vaccines to enslave the wider population.  “It was addictive,” he told me. “The way people talked with each other, it felt like a community that spoke directly to me.” 

As countries scrambled to counter a staggering public health crisis, existing conspiracy groups — some, like those associated with the anti-vaccine movement, dated back to the early days of the internet — seized on Covid-19 as a means to recruit new converts. White nationalists quickly blamed immigrants for spreading the disease and accused governments of prolonging the crisis for their own gain. Right-wing politicians, including France’s Marine Le Pen and former U.S. President Donald Trump, accused Muslims and other minority groups of profiting from the pandemic. 

“The impact the Covid pandemic had on global extremist mobilization, I really do think, was a total game changer,” said Milo Comerford, head of counter-extremism policy and research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank. “It provided people with a compelling and elaborate worldview that made it clear who the enemy was, that gave a clear focus for whom to blame and, at its most extreme, provided justification for violence and attacks on minorities and harassment of officials and public health workers.”

While Covid-19 has, thankfully, regressed in people’s minds, its effects in fast-tracking connections between once-separate online communities cannot be overstated. It represented a perfect storm for mass digital mobilization. Almost all of us were stuck at home, and often — like Jakub — turned to social media for meaning. The once-in-a-lifetime moment fostered simmering discontent about government overreach and the perception of those in power seeking to control people’s lives. Faced with such global uncertainty, many became isolated, depressed and eager for simple answers — prime territory for potential radicalization.

Into this void, social media offered a solution. In Germany, online influencers like Oliver Janich and Evan Herman garnered audiences in the hundreds of thousands via Telegram after repeatedly sharing Covid-19 conspiracy theories that the country’s politicians were to blame for the pandemic. In the U.S., gun-toting protesters descended on local school board meetings in opposition to mask mandates, and then uploaded these videos onto TikTok. In the U.K., the so-called White Rose anti-Covid group — named after a similar movement created in opposition to Nazi Germany — became intertwined with the country’s far right, routinely sharing conspiracy theories including, for example, Covid-19 vaccines harming children.

“It is a war. And it is war on our children. So Fight!!” said a British Telegram user within a White Rose group after sharing a video of an anti-lockdown protest organized by Tommy Robinson, a local far-right activist. These messages no longer stay local. German Telegram users regularly cheer American acts of resistance against alleged government control. 

British far-right extremists on Facebook spread obscure anti-vax theories from Australia. French-speaking Canadian Twitter users translate anti-lockdown propaganda from America and repost it widely with counterparts in France.

What the pandemic did more than anything was cement ties between like-minded people across the West — bonds that have continued despite the waning of the pandemic. It built a coherent worldview for those seeking to explain the unexplainable. It also cemented well-defined communication channels that, on a dime, can jump on world events to flood the zone with conspiracy-laden material. That’s what happened in 2022, when an obscure Covid-related truckers’ protest in Canada garnered global attention. Within days, social media users, in multiple languages, had banded together in support of this protest, using coordinated messaging developed via online platforms, to rally global backing, including similar offline protests in other major Western capitals. That pattern has repeated ever since.

NATIONAL SECURITY (LACK OF) RESPONSE

NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIALS KNOW THIS IS A PROBLEM. My discussions with many of these Western policymakers, who were granted anonymity to describe governments’ responses, have tracked the rise of this bottom-up online community since the Covid-19 pandemic. There is a realization that many aren’t truly radicalized — but that, buried within this movement, there are lone-wolf actors or coordinated groups that do represent a direct threat to public safety.

But how to find that needle in a haystack? Officials acknowledge it’s a difficult balance between legitimately tracking extremist groups and overreaching on surveilling citizens who, while often sharing distasteful views, have done nothing illegal. Many national security agencies have limited ability to monitor domestic groups, and therefore have turned to tracking those outside their borders. Germany has gone the furthest with its domestic surveillance of would-be extremists, though that’s an outlier because of that country’s own history of radicalization.

For now, the Western national security apparatus is not set up to keep tabs on this cross-border movement in ways that don’t undermine people’s fundamental rights of free speech and privacy. So far, there’s a reliance on platforms to do the heavy lifting. Yet over the past two years, that has become harder than ever, since many in this radicalized movement have left more mainstream platforms like Facebook and YouTube for fringe alternatives like Telegram and Rumble with little, if any, content-moderation oversight.

WONK OF THE WEEK

THE PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNING FOR THIS MOVEMENT, in large part, comes from French far-right thinker Renaud Camus and his so-called Great Replacement theory, a belief that Western “white” civilization is slowly being replaced by “non-white” populations.

His treaty — in French known as Grand Replacement — was published in 2011, and focuses on the deconstruction of primarily French culture and civilization predominantly by Muslims living in the country. His racist beliefs subsequently have become the calling card for those within this online movement who attack outsiders — almost exclusively migrants — for allegedly denigrating Western society.

“The destruction of Europe’s Europeans and their civilization is the crime against humanity of the 21st Century,” he wrote on X this week.

THEY SAID WHAT, NOW?

“The pandemic created a set of conditions that seems almost tailor-made for violent extremists seeking to advance their work,” Nicholas Rasmussen, former head of Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, told U.S. lawmakers. “Between health restrictions, economic impacts, social isolation, and increased political polarization, it is clear that the pandemic has exacerbated existing cleavages and anxieties across society.“

For more related blogs and article on Ageing Democracy, Climate Change, COVID-19, Environment, EU European Union, Eugenics, Fossil Fuel Pollution, Koch Network, Libertarian Economics, Media, Populist Politics and Tanton Network click through:

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

Posted on March 5, 2024

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

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

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Posted on August 24, 2020

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

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

Anglosphere Oligarchs – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

Posted on March 27, 2023

We have heard much of supposed ‘libertarian’ think tanks or PR outfits in the Anglosphere influencing policy, especially of the right, via media and lobbying, euphemistically known as ‘Koch Network’ or the ‘Kochtopus’ with a fondness for fossil fuels and climate science denial.

New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer investigated several years ago for her book ‘Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right’ (2017) which included insight into oligarch donors Mellon-Scaife, Olin, Bradley, DeVos and Coors.

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

Posted on October 19, 2022

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

However, where does this disinformation come from?

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

Monbiot – Radical Right Libertarians – Fossil Fuel Think Tanks – Koch & Tanton Networks

Posted on January 14, 2024

Good overview via Argentina by George Monbiot in The Guardian ‘What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies’ and concerning dynamics around national politics, media, think tanks and governance.

The ‘junk tanks’ he talks of, observed in Anglosphere and globally are Atlas – Koch Network and another that shares donors in the US, Tanton Network. The former does low tax, low regulation and small government while the latter is faux environmental via demographics, population and migration ‘research’.

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network

Posted on September 1, 2022

Below are 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.

Eugenics, Border Wars & Population Control: The Tanton Network

By Brooke Binkowski, Contributor  August 22, 2022

Nearly everything Americans hear about the U.S.-Mexico border is wrong, and it’s very likely because of one relatively small but extremely well-funded and influential group of American racists.

On July 5, 2022, a group of officials in Texas held a curious press conference. It consisted of a handful of politicians from across the state praying and insisting, using openly white supremacist rhetoric about immigrant “hordes” and “invasions”, making terrifying claims, without a shred of evidence, that the United States was living through a disastrous attack on its very integrity at the hands of refugees and asylum seekers attempting to cross into the country.

Misleading statements about the security of the border have been escalating for years.

Madison Grant – Eugenics, Heredity, Class, Immigration, Great Replacement, Conservation and Nazis

Posted on May 3, 2022

In recent years we have observed the rise of white nationalism, alt &/or far right, nativism, eugenics, neo-Nazis etc. in the Anglosphere and Europe, often underpinned by divisive dog whistle politics through legacy media. For one to understand modern Anglo &/or European nativism, the past of eugenics and conservation in the US especially, the history of Madison Grant starting over a century ago, needs to be scrutinised. Following is a brief but incomplete overview from relevant literature, including Grant’s own writings.

Monbiot – Radical Right Libertarians – Fossil Fuel Think Tanks – Koch & Tanton Networks

Good overview via Argentina by George Monbiot in The Guardian ‘What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies’ and concerning dynamics around national politics, media, think tanks and governance.

The ‘junk tanks’ he talks of, observed in Anglosphere and globally are Atlas – Koch Network and another that shares donors in the US, Tanton Network. The former does low tax, low regulation and small government while the latter is faux environmental via demographics, population and migration ‘research’.

However, both and often jointly, have direct access to right wing media, influencers and policy makers to slow or stymie any progress especially on Brexit, with allegations of Russian help, to avoid EU regulation on minimum labour, environmental, financial, consumer and other areas; backgrounded by nativist noise or dog whistling of EU, Europe, refugees, immigration and population growth.

In fact both networks, policies and proxies mask the influencers in the background i.e. Koch’s muse James Buchanan who promoted radical right economics, known in some circles as ‘segregation’ or ‘deep south planter’ economics, also behind the Chile experiment of Pinochet.  

On Tanton, he was at fossil fueled Rockefeller Bros. Fund seeded ZPG Zero Population Growth with Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich and was called out by the ‘Cafe con leche Republicans’ as a supporter of eugenics; exemplified by Nigel Farage in the UK and Steve Bannon in the U.S.

With ageing demographics and democracy being gamed to vote for retro policies of the 19th century to support elites or the 1% corrupt and nativist authoritarianism?

The Guardian article follows:

‘What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies

George Monbiot

There are elements of fascism, elements borrowed from the Chinese state and elements that reflect Argentina’s history of dictatorship. But most of the programme for government announced by Javier Milei, the demagogic new Argentinian president, feels eerily familiar, here in the northern hemisphere.

A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell?

Milei is attempting, with a vast “emergency” decree and a monster “reform bill”, what the Conservatives have done in the UK over 45 years. The crash programme bears striking similarities to Liz Truss’s “mini” (maxi) budget, which trashed the prospects of many poor and middle-class people and exacerbated the turmoil that now dominates public life.

Coincidence? Not at all. Milei’s programme was heavily influenced by Argentinian neoliberal think tanks belonging to something called the Atlas Network, a global coordinating body that promotes broadly the same political and economic package everywhere it operates. It was founded in 1981 by a UK citizen, Antony Fisher. Fisher was also the founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), one of the first members of the Atlas Network.

The IEA created, to a remarkable degree, Liz Truss’s political platform. In a video conversation on the day of her “mini” budget with another member of the institute, its then director general, Mark Littlewood, observed: “We’re on the hook for it now. If it doesn’t work it’s your fault and mine.” It didn’t work – in fact, it crashed spectacularly, at great cost to us all – but, thanks to the UK’s media, the BBC included, which continue to treat these fanatical corporate lobbyists as purveyors of holy writ, they’re off the hook.

Last year, the IEA was platformed on British media an average of 14 times a day: even more often than before the disaster it helped inflict on the UK. Scarcely ever was it challenged about who funds it or whom it represents. The three peers nominated by Truss in her resignation honours list have all worked for or with organisations belonging to the Atlas Network (Matthew Elliott, TaxPayers’ Alliance; Ruth Porter, IEA and Policy Exchange; Jon Moynihan, IEA). Now, like US supreme court justices, they have been granted lifelong powers to shape our lives, without democratic consent. Truss also put forward Littlewood, but his reward for wrecking people’s lives was blocked by the House of Lords appointments commission.

Nothing has been learned: these corporate lobby groups still mould our politics. Policy Exchange, which, as Rishi Sunak has admitted, “helped us draft” the UK’s vicious new anti-protest laws, is also a member of the Atlas Network. We might describe certain policies as being Milei’s or Bolsonaro’s, or Truss’s or Johnson’s or Sunak’s, but they’re all variations on the same themes, hatched and honed by junktanks belonging to the same network. Those presidents and prime ministers are just the faces the programme wears.

And who, in turn, are the junk tanks? Many refuse to divulge who funds them, but as information has trickled out we have discovered that the Atlas Network itself and many of its members have taken money from funding networks set up by the Koch brothers and other rightwing billionaires, and from oil, coal and tobacco companies and other life-defying interests. 

The junk tanks are merely the intermediaries. They go into battle on behalf of their donors, in the class war waged by the rich against the poor. When a government responds to the demands of the network, it responds, in reality, to the money that funds it.

The dark-money junk tanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these policies and tactics around the world. This is how nominal democracies become new aristocracies.

They also seem to be adept at shaping public opinion. For example, around the world, neoliberal junktanks have not only lobbied for extreme anti-protest measures, but have successfully demonised environmental protesters as “extremists” and “terrorists”. This might help to explain why peaceful environmental campaigners blocking a road are routinely punched, kicked and spat upon, and in some places run over or threatened with guns, by other citizens, while farmers or truckers blocking a road are not. It might also explain why there is scarcely a murmur of media coverage or public concern when extreme penalties are imposed: such as the six-month prison sentence handed in December to the climate campaigner Stephen Gingell for slow-marching along a London street.

But the worst is yet to come. Donald Trump has never developed a coherent platform of his own. He doesn’t have to. His policies have been written for him, in a 900-page Mandate for Leadership produced by a group of think tanks led by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is – you got there before me – a member of the Atlas Network. Many of the proposals in the “mandate” are, frankly, terrifying. They have nothing to do with public demands and everything to do with the demands of capital.

When Friedrich Hayek and others first formulated the principles of neoliberalism, they believed it would defend the world from tyranny. But as the big money poured in, and an international network of neoliberal thinktanks was created to develop and articulate its demands, the programme that was supposed to liberate us became a new source of oppression.

In Argentina, where Milei has stepped into the vacuum left by the gross misrule of his predecessors and is able to impose, in true shock doctrine fashion, policies that would otherwise be fiercely resisted, the poor and middle classes are about to pay a terrible price. How do we know? Because very similar programmes have been dumped on other countries, beginning with Argentina’s neighbour Chile, after Augusto Pinochet’s coup in 1973.

These junk tanks are like the spike proteins on a virus. They are the means by which plutocratic power invades the cells of public life and takes over. It’s time we developed an immune system.’

For more related blog and articles on Economics, Environment, Eugenics, Evangelical Christianity, Immigration, Koch Network, Libertarian Economics,  Populist Politics, Tanton Network and white nationalism click through

Anglosphere Oligarchs – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

We have heard much of supposed ‘libertarian’ think tanks or PR outfits in the Anglosphere influencing policy, especially of the right, via media and lobbying, euphemistically known as ‘Koch Network’ or the ‘Kochtopus’ with a fondness for fossil fuels and climate science denial.

New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer investigated several years ago for her book ‘Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right’ (2017) which included insight into oligarch donors Mellon-Scaife, Olin, Bradley, DeVos and Coors.

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

Wheels within wheels, following is an excerpt from Guardian article on Rishi Sunak’s links to the radical right, also found via Tufton Street think tanks, which have influenced many on Brexit and Tory MPs including Liz Truss, who has presented at Koch’s Heritage Foundation in the US. 

The euphemistically described ‘Kochtopus’ has strong presence in the Anglosphere and globally through Atlas Network promoting radical right libertarian ‘public choice theory’ or ‘segregation’ economics of James Buchanan, climate science denialism, with white nativism of Tanton Network NGOs promoting restrictions of refugees and immigrants due to population growth i.e. eugenics.

Australia – Indigenous Voice Referendum – Atlas – Koch Network – CIS – IPA – Murdoch

Australia has had its Brexit or Trump moment on the indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, being usurped by a proxy election campaign, with outcomes being divided society, communities and no real solutions.

Further, the ‘architecture of influence’ and modus operandi are the same as Brexit and Trump including Koch Network think tanks at Tufton St. London and Washington, Tanton Network’s NGOs promoting former ZPG Zero Population Growth nativist tropes versus the ‘other’, whether refugee, immigrant, ethnic minority including native and population growth, with Murdoch right wing led media and related social media campaigns, targeting older voters. 

Environment – Fossil Fuels – Climate Science Denial – Populationism – Anti-Immigration – Far Right – Tanton Network

Jeff Sparrow in Overland rebuts a counter critique of his book ‘Crimes Against Nature’ by a faux expert Edward Smith who appears to be au faire with faux environmental and anti-immigrant arguments promoted by the US Tanton Network linked NGO Sustainable Population Australia.

One would not bother using high level analysis to rebut low level faux science nativist agitprop inspired by former ZPG Zero Population Growth types, namely deceased white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton whose colleague was Paul ‘Population Bomb’ Ehrlich, with support from the Rockefeller Bros., ‘limits to growth’ PR constructs promoted by Club of Rome and drawing on Malthus, Galton and Madison Grant.

Immigration Restriction – Population Control – Tanton Network

Below are 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.

Eugenics, Border Wars & Population Control: The Tanton Network

Politicians are Wrong on Immigration and Population Growth

Immigration, population growth and everything related has become a hot issue being used in developed nations in Anglosphere and Europe, to divide generations, society and ageing electorates to benefit far right wing white nativist political parties.

Much of the right wing or nativist agitprop, both Anglo and European origins, has a facade of science or research via the environment care, but in fact is greenwashing of both fossil fuels and racism exemplified by ‘the great replacement’ conspiracy.

This is extending on from the original eugenics of Malthus and Galton, then post WWII US fossil fuel supported ZPG Zero Population Growth, now embedded on the right, and often on the centre and left too; two networks sharing donors are central i.e. Koch Network and Tanton Network.

Following is an explanation on immigration to rebut the negative talking points of politicians from Hein de Haas in The Guardian.  Hein de Haas is professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, and the author of ‘How Migration Really Works: A Factful Guide to the Most Divisive Issue in Politics’.

The Guardian:

‘Everything politicians tell you about immigration is wrong. This is how it actually works

Escaping poverty, violence and the climate crisis are factors, but the main driver is rich societies demanding cheap labour

We seem to be living in times of unprecedented mass migration. Images of people from Africa crammed into unseaworthy boats desperately trying to cross the Mediterranean, asylum seekers crossing the Channel into Britain, and “caravans” of migrants trying to reach the Mexico-US border all seem to confirm fears that global migration is spinning out of control.

A toxic combination of poverty, inequality, violence, oppression, climate breakdown and population growth appear to be pushing growing numbers of people from Africa, Asia and Latin America to embark upon desperate journeys to reach the shores of the wealthy west.

All of this results in the popular idea of a “migration crisis” that will require drastic countermeasures to prevent massive waves of people arriving in the future, apparently exceeding the absorption capacity of western societies and economies.

Despite this, however, there is no scientific evidence to sustain the claim that global migration is accelerating. International migrants account for about 3% of the world population, and this percentage has remained remarkably stable over the past half a century.

Likewise, refugee migration is much more limited than political rhetoric and media images suggest. About 10% of all international migrants are refugees, representing 0.3% of the world population. While refugee flows fluctuate strongly with levels of conflict, there is no evidence of a long-term increasing trend. About 80-85% of refugees remain in regions of origin, and that share has also remained rather stable over the past decades. And there is no evidence that illegal migration is spinning out of control – in fact, the large majority of migrants who move from the global south to the global north continue to move legally. For instance, nine out of 10 Africans move to Europe legally, with passports and papers in hand.

The evidence also turns common understandings of the causes of migration on its head. The conventional view is that south-to-north migration is in essence the outgrowth of poverty, inequality and violence in origin countries – hence the popular idea that poverty reduction and development are the only long-term solutions to migration.

However, this assumption is undermined by evidence showing that migration rises as poor countries become richer. This is because increasing levels of income and education, alongside infrastructure improvements, raise people’s capabilities and aspirations to migrate. Instead of the stereotypical “desperate flight from misery”, in reality migration is generally an investment in the long-term wellbeing of families and requires significant resources. Poverty actually deprives people of the resources required to move over long distances, let alone to cross continents.

This is also one of the many reasons why, contrary to common assumptions, climate breakdown is unlikely to trigger mass movements of “climate refugees”. Research on the effects of droughts and flooding shows that most people will stay close to home. In fact, the most vulnerable people are most likely to get trapped, unable to move out at all.

It is no coincidence that most migrants come from middle-income countries such as India and Mexico. The paradox is that any form of development in the poorest countries of the world – such as in sub-Saharan Africa – is therefore likely to increase their future emigration potential.

Still, despite global averages remaining stable, it is difficult to deny that legal immigration to the US, Britain and western Europe has been growing over the past decades. The frequent discontent this has caused has gone along with repeated calls for less, more controlled or more selective immigration.

But border crackdowns have clearly failed to achieve these objectives or have even made problems worse because they were not based on an understanding of how migration really works. The main reason is that these policies ignored the most important root cause of migration: persistent labour demand.

The misleading assertion that poverty causes migration conceals the fact that labour demand has been the main driver of growing immigration to western countries since the 1990s. More widespread education, women’s emancipation and population ageing have led to labour shortages; these have fuelled a growing demand for migrant workers in sectors such as agriculture, construction, cleaning, hospitality, transport and food processing, as supplies of local workers willing and able to do such jobs have increasingly run dry. Without such chronic labour shortages, most migrants wouldn’t have come.

But this hasn’t been a natural process. It is instead one that has been encouraged by decades of policies geared towards economic and labour market liberalisation, which have fuelled the growth of precarious jobs that local workers won’t take. Politicians from left to right know this reality, but they don’t dare admit it out of fear of being seen as “soft on immigration”. They choose instead to talk tough and revert to acts of political showmanship that create an appearance of control, but that in effect function as a smokescreen to conceal the true nature of immigration policy. Under this current arrangement, more and more migrants are allowed in, and the employment of undocumented workers is widely tolerated as they fill in crucial labour shortages.

Politicians have turned a blind eye as proven by almost laughably low levels of workplace enforcement.

To break away from this legacy of failed policies, politicians need to gather the courage to tell an honest story about migration: that it is a phenomenon that benefits some people more than others; that it can have downsides for some, but cannot be thought or wished away; and that there are no simple solutions for complex problems.

Fundamental choices have to be made. For example, do we want to live in a society in which more and more work – transport, construction, cleaning, care of elderly people and children, food provision – is outsourced to a new class of servants made up mainly of migrant workers? Do we want a large agricultural sector that partly relies on subsidies and is dependent on migrants for the necessary labour? The present reality shows that we cannot divorce debates about immigration from broader debates about inequality, labour, social justice and, most importantly, the kind of society we want to live in.’

For more blogs and articles related to Demography, Eugenics, Immigration, Media, Political Strategy, Populist Politics and White Nationalism click through:

Mainstreaming of the Far Right. The far right did not emerge from a vacuum, but ignorance of the history of eugenics, authority, slavery, colonialism, Nazi Germany and post WWII, white nativists, especially in the US, and nowadays ageing democracies and right wing media which adopt the same.

Both Malthus and Galton are central to narratives around population control, identity and eugenics, with strong undercurrent of socio-Darwinism. By post WWI eugenics became a major area of research, not just in Germany via Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, but the US too with slavery, Madison Grant and AES American Eugenics Society.

Anglosphere Legacy Media: White Nativist and Libertarian Propaganda for Ageing Conservative Voters – Australia, Brexit & Trump. Round Anglo conservative ‘values’, identity or immigration (avoiding environment), property or FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate), sport, trivia/entertainment, culture and libertarian cost of living or need to avoid taxes;  Australian legacy media no longer informs but manipulates how voters think, or not which includes avoidance of serious issues e.g. environment.

Menadue highlights how legacy media in the Anglosphere of US, UK and Australia is being used to promote and reinforce nativist and conservative libertarian policies, against Australia’s interests, while our media and politics of the centre through right lacks diversity i.e. ‘skip’, still predominantly Anglo-Irish with some European heritage. 

Collective Narcissism, Ageing Electorates, Pensioner Populism, White Nativism and Autocracy. ‘As Plato noted more than 2000 years ago, one of the greatest dangers for democracy is that ordinary people are all too easily swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious politicians’

We have observed the Anglosphere including the U.K., Australia and U.S., becoming more nativist, conservative, libertarian, extreme and conspiracy minded.  This is not organic, but political strategists, ideologues and media have been gaming ageing electorates through platforming them and their concerns, then using PR techniques and messaging to reinforce and spread further via related negative proxy issues, for power.  

Narcissistic Political Leaders – NPD Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Collective Narcissism – Cognitive Dissonance – Conspiracy Theories – Populism.  We have observed the rise of neo authoritarian conservative leaders using nativism and sociocultural issues with media PR support to inform the public, especially voters, suboptimally, including east and west.

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

Often the target are older cohorts of voters who are less educated and diverse but dominate electoral rolls, hence, the descriptor ‘pensioner populism’ based on sociocultural issues and the same voters being praised and real or imagined threats inflated; according to Campanella see ‘Ageing Democracy, Nativism and Populism’.