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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Much More Radical’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Far-Right Attendance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘War on Farming’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editing by Phoebe Cooke and Hazel Healy

Update

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

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

Ageing Democracy, Nativism and Populism

Posted on January 18, 2019

Liberal democracies in western world need to make sure they do not become populist gerontocracies with changing demographics creating elderly ‘Gerrymandering’ where influence and numbers of older voters (with short term horizons) increasing proportionally over younger generations with longer term interests but less voice and influence.

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

Posted on November 5, 2021

Plato noted more than 2000 years ago, one of the greatest dangers for democracy is that ordinary people are all too easily swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious politicians. We have observed the Anglosphere including the U.K., Australia and U.S., becoming more nativist, conservative, libertarian, extreme and conspiracy minded.  This is not organic.

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

Posted on March 5, 2024

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

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

Heritage Foundation – Danube Institute – Trump – Hungarian PM Orban – Atlas – Koch Network – Conservatives

Posted on March 18, 2024

The Heritage Foundation has attracted attention of writer Michel in a The New Republic article below for Trump’s admiration of Hungarian PM Orban and how it has become more far right and extreme e.g. anti-Ukraine sentiments.

Additionally, the linked Danube Institute in Hungary is led by former Thatcher aide John O’Sullivan and European contributor for Australian conservative journal Quadrant.

Radical Libertarian Disinformation Machine – Koch Network by Nancy MacLean

Posted on October 19, 2022

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

However, where does this disinformation come from?

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

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Posted on August 24, 2020

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

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

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

Posted on July 26, 2023

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

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

Geo Political PR for Russia – Anglo Right Wing Media – US Propaganda Infrastructure

Article on Putin’s Russian attempt to influence US elections after the Brexit EU Referendum and the use of PR public relations agencies.

Relating to Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays who saw PR as in the same ecosystem as propaganda, but brings in the issue of ‘agents’ and foreign agent registers e.g. the US FARA Foreign Agents Registration Act. 

We have seen the outcomes of Brexit, Trump, Russian invasion of Ukraine and in Australia The indigenous Voice referendum promoted via right wing or conservative media, influencers and social media.

Further, it has had the desired effect on many of the faux anti-imperialist left who both accuse Ukraine via NATO of being an aggressor versus Russia, then many of the same support Palestine, but avert their gaze from Hamas?

Many, including the right, criticise right wing media cartels like Murdochs’ Fox News, influencers and ‘left’ media of following Kremlin talking points on Ukraine; see Fox News, GOP Republicans including the Koch Network’s ‘Freedom Caucus’, influencers like Farage and Bannon, hard right authoritarian leaders like Orban, Netanyahu etc.

It would appear that Putin’s people have been successful in adopting US Murdoch led right wing media e.g. Fox News, fossil fuel Koch Network think tanks and nativist Tanton Network agitprop, via PR agencies and ‘agents’, to negatively message against Ukraine including anti-semitism directed at Zelensky while describing Ukraine as Nazi?

Fast Company:

‘How Western PR Firms Quietly Push Putin’s Agenda

Another front in Russia’s effort to shape the hearts and minds of Americans has received little attention in mainstream U.S. media since the election.

BY SUE CURRY JANSEN

The Russian attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, using what intelligence agencies call “active measures,” has dominated U.S. headlines.

There is, however, a second front in Russia’s effort to shape the hearts and minds of U.S. citizens, and it’s received almost no attention in mainstream U.S. media outlets since the election.

As someone who studies the growth of global public relations, I’ve researched the roles PR firms play in shaping public perceptions of international affairs. For years, Russia has been involved in public relations campaigns that have been developed and deployed by prominent, U.S.-based, global PR firms–campaigns intended to influence U.S. public opinion and policy in ways that advance Russia’s strategic interests.

LEGAL PROPAGANDA?

Public relations is an industry that seeks to cultivate favorable impressions of corporations, products, individuals, or causes. A company or public figure might hire a firm to increase visibility, advance marketing agendas, promote strategic initiatives, or manage a crisis.

But things can get tricky when foreign governments get involved. When they hire PR firms to influence public opinion in other countries, they could undermine the domestic values and goals of the targeted nations.

In the 1930s, the PR firm of Ivy Lee–who, along with Edward Bernays, is regarded as a “founding father” of the public relations industry–was accused of circulating Nazi propaganda in the U.S. In response, Congress enacted the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in 1938, which required foreign propagandists operating in the U.S. to register with the government. In 1966, FARA was amended to cover people promoting the economic and political interests of their foreign clients.

In what has become an infamous example of political PR, Kuwait hired numerous U.S. and U.K. firms to drum up support for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. As part of that effort, PR giant Hill & Knowlton audaciously created a front group to hold hearings, led by two U.S. Congressmen, on Iraq’s human rights violations. Called the “Human Rights Caucus,” the group wasn’t actually an official congressional caucus.

More routinely, foreign nations hire PR firms to attract foreign investments and promote tourism and trade. Such efforts are completely legal, and business as usual for corporate PR firms and lobbyists. All they have to do is register under FARA.

While foreign government-funded advocacy campaigns are legal, they can be far from transparent. PR strategies are generally designed to hide the persuasive effort because, as the industry saying goes, “the best PR is invisible PR.”

BURNISHING RUSSIA’S IMAGE

Russia’s domestic PR business has grown rapidly since the end of the Cold War, but Russian authorities prefer to use Western firms when targeting Western audiences. Since the U.S. is both a dominant force in PR–15 of the 20 largest global firms are American–and a prime target of Russian influence efforts, it’s not surprising that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s forces would turn to U.S. firms for PR services.

Industry publication PRWeek reports that Russia has spent $115 million on Western PR firms since 2000, with most going to the U.S. firm Ketchum, a division of Omnicom. (To put that in context: According to the Center for Public Integrity, the 50 countries with the worst human rights violation records have spent $168 million on American lobbyists and PR specialists since 2010.)

From 2006 to 2014, Ketchum had ongoing contracts with the Russian government and its state-owned energy company Gazprom.

Charged with improving Putin’s and Russia’s image abroad, Ketchum facilitated op-eds by Russian officials in publications around the world, including Putin’s 2013 New York Times article warning the U.S. on Syria.

According to ProPublica, Ketchum also placed what appeared to be independent opinion pieces praising Russia in the Huffington Post, on CNBC’s website (where links to those stories are no longer active), and in other publications without acknowledging their sources. 

The firm lobbied Time magazine to name Putin “Person of the Year,” which it did in 2007.

That same year, according to Reuters, Ketchum tried to convince the U.S. State Department to soften its assessment of Russia’s human rights abuses. The firm also contacted reporters who cover Russian human rights abuses and urged them to tone down their criticism.

Faced with intense criticism after Russia seized Crimea in 2014, Ketchum formally ended its contract with Russia in March 2015, tersely announcing that it “no longer represents the Russian Federation in the U.S. or Europe with the exception of our office in Moscow.” However, one of its partners, GPlus, continued the relationship under similar terms.

EXPLOITING THE LOOPHOLES

Late last year, Russia’s Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov announced that the Kremlin would be seeking new contracts with Western PR firms this summer to improve its global image, with the intent of spending between $30 and $50 million a year, and possibly more. He indicated that Russia is seeking smaller, less expensive, and perhaps less visible firms than Ketchum.

PRWeek quoted a leading Russian political analyst, Stanislav Belkovsky, who told the publication, “There are a number of schemes that can be used to avoid U.S. accounting rules on lobbying and PR.” In other words, he was pointing out that there are ways to avoid registering with FARA, and thereby concealing the sources of the pro-Russian messaging.

Indeed, the Project on Government Oversight, an independent nonpartisan watchdog group, cites loopholes in FARA that make it difficult to police violations. Even when violations are discovered, prosecution is rare. Instead, lapses are usually remediated by late filing. This is what happened in the recent cases of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who represented pro-Putin forces in Ukraine, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who represented Turkey. Though they had both been working as foreign lobbyists for an extended period of time, they only recently filed with FARA as foreign agents.

And because the U.S. regulates lobbying, and not PR, another common legal loophole involves contracting with firms that have both public relations and lobbying arms. Clients will then channel as much of their business as possible through the PR arm.

THE BLURRY LINE BETWEEN PR AND NEWS

PR as a subject is rarely covered by the mainstream media in the U.S., but nonprofits like ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity, the Sunlight Foundation, and NPR fill some of the void.

It’s in contrast to the U.K., where publications like the Guardian extensively cover the nexus of public relations, politics, and policy. During Prime Minister Tony Blair’s tenure, PR grew rapidly in Britain as politicians and businesses adopted U.S.-style electioneering and promotional techniques. Perhaps for this reason, British media outlets are more attuned to the ramifications of public relations.

The Trump administration’s attack on mainstream media as purveyors of “fake news” and its promotion of “alternative facts” has rallied journalism to a vigorous defense of the First Amendment, and has led to calls for critical media literacy.

Yet research indicates that as much as 75% of U.S. news begins as public relations. For transparency advocates, this is a problem. By definition, PR is a biased, monetized form of communication that seeks to advance the vested interests of clients. Even some public relations industry figures have recently acknowledged their field’s role in the dissemination of “fake news.”

During the past two decades, the newspaper industry has contracted, with advertisers and readers migrating to the internet. Conversely, the PR industry has experienced growth in both employment opportunities and salaries. In the U.S., there are now nearly five PR people for every reporter. Americans are now being exposed to more public relations than ever before.

While some PR serves worthy causes–promoting health, education, charity, and disaster relief–I believe all PR deserves closer scrutiny because it bypasses the norms of democratic processes: transparency, accountability, and the right of all interested parties to have a voice in civic debates.

To Bernays, the terms “public relations” and “propaganda” were interchangeable. We should think of PR the same way, scrutinizing it with as much critical rigor as we view propaganda.

---

Sue Curry Jansen is ‌‌‌professor of media and communication at Muhlenberg College. This essay originally appeared at the Conversation.’

For more blogs and articles on Conservatives, Cultural Dimensions of Marketing Communications, EU European Union, Evangelical Christianity, Koch Network, Marketing Strategy, Media, Political Strategy, Populist Politics and Russia click through:

Putin Owns Trump’s GOP Republicans & UK Conservatives?

Posted on April 19, 2024

Observed over the past several years confusion and surprise around the success of Trump, GOP etc. and UK Conservatives’ mutual admiration for authoritarian Christian nationalists, including the likes of Vladimir Putin and Russia?

Firsts signs emerged around Brexit promoted by Murdoch led media inc BBC, along with Barclays, Legatum (now behind GB News), Atlas Koch Network think tanks at Tufton Street and nativist right wing influencers including Nigel Farage, Boris Johson etc. and leveraging ageing, low info and regional voters.

Media Misinformation and Distrust – Fox News – Rupert Murdoch – Roger Ailes – Vladimir Putin

Posted on April 16, 2024

Relevant article from the past on methods of media communication, misinformation and shared techniques between Putin’s Russia e.g. IRA Internet Research Agency troll farm, Fox News and related media outlets.

While Roger Ailes was apparently not well liked by Lachlan or James Murdoch, he was left to his own devices at Fox News by Rupert Murdoch to assist in creating narratives and talking points for the right and profits, especially amongst the GOP Republicans, developing mistrust amongst voters.

Russian Influence and Propaganda in Anglosphere – GOP Republicans, UK Conservatives, Media and Think Tanks

Posted on April 12, 2024

Analysis via Rolling Stone article on GOP Representatives being informed by and using Russian talking points e.g. to denigrate Ukraine, EU European Union, the west and liberal democracy.

However, this assumes that the same GOP representatives have always been informed well, while avoiding media, influencers, Christian groups and think tanks?

One would argue that no man or woman is an island, let alone purely objective and original as most of our knowledge is gained from media, especially in US and Anglosphere, that is informed by Atlas – Koch Network think tanks, Murdoch led right wing media e.g. Fox News and influencers, while many Christian groups have had long term links with Russia from Soviet times (and influence operations?).

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.

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

Posted on April 20, 2022

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine many commentators, journalists, academic and political activists, of both left and right, who have seem to have acted in the interests of Putin’s Russia, why?

Many within or influenced by the US radical right libertarian Koch Network of think tanks and related organisations e.g. Fox News, which have promoted views that seem to support Putin e.g. claims of fake news on Ukraine civilian deaths, blaming NATO, appeasing Putin and demanding no economic sanctions.

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

Posted on July 26, 2023

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

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

Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories and Radical Right Libertarians

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Michael McGowan  Sat 1 Aug 2020 21.00 BST

 

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

 

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

 

He then asks: “Am I a man?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

When fringe beliefs become destructive

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

For more articles and blogs about Australian politics, climate change, Covid-19, critical thinking, digital literacy, environment, fossil fuel pollution, libertarian economics, marketing strategy, media, political strategy, populist politics, science literacy, statistical analysis and white nationalism.

Anglosphere Libertarianism in US, Australia and UK Tories with Dominic Cummings

We have observed Anglospehere conservative politics being taken over by radical right libertarianism in the US, UK and Australia, entwined with eugenics or xenophobia manifested by white nationalists and neo liberal policies; the Conservative Party in the UK suffers the same presently with Dominic Cummings in the limelight.

 

Facilitated by key individuals such as Dominic Cummings, Steve Bannon, et al. via media, PR and strategists including or via Murdoch’s NewsCorp, Crosby Textor, Cambridge Analytica et al., informed by libertarian think tanks like Koch Atlas Network influenced by Nobel Prize winning economist James Buchanan, behind the Austrian and Chicago Schools (along with Hayek, Friedman, Rand et al.).

 

For example there are Atlas links between ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council, IPA Institute of Public Affairs (Australia) and IEA Institute of Economic Affairs (UK) promoting strong neo-liberal ideas including smaller government and lower taxes.

 

This is in parallel with promotion of immigration restrictions linked to ideas and tactics of the late John Tanton e.g. ZPG Zero Population Growth, TSCP The Social Contract Press, FAIR Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, Sustainable Australia, Population Matters and Migration Watch UK; maybe coincidence but only one or no degree of separation between them (privately or publicly)?

 

Brexit may have been about antipathy towards Europe, immigrants and nostalgia for a greater Britain but for many, mostly in the background, it was radical right libertarianism avoiding trade and other regulations, helped along by the Leave campaign:

 

The real reason we should fear the work of Dominic Cummings

 

Carole Cadwalladr
Downing Street’s controversial top adviser faces new accusations of poisoning politics, but his true nature was clear during Vote Leave’s Brexit triumph.

 

On 2 March 2017, shortly after my first major article on Cambridge Analytica was published, a furious tweeter appeared in my timeline: “1/ big @Guardian by @carolecadwalla on Mercer/Cambridge Analytica = full of errors & itself spreads disinformation.”

 

It marked the moment that Dominic Cummings entered my life – though at the time I had no idea who he was. At that time few people did. Cummings was the dark horse, known to just a few Westminster insiders, who had stealthily steered Vote Leave to victory in June 2016 while the rest of us were looking the other way.

 

But that is no longer the case. In the past two weeks, he has emerged from the shadows and burned himself on to the nation’s consciousness. As Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, he’s helped mastermind some of the most audacious – and outrageous – moves ever committed by a British prime minister: an attempt to suspend parliament, and the expulsion of 21 moderate MPs from the Conservative party. Moves that led the mild man of British politics, the former prime minister John Major, to call him a “political anarchist” who was “poisoning politics”.

 

From Politico

 

British PM’s special adviser inspires greater loyalty among many key officials than Johnson does.

 

By CHARLIE COOPER AND EMILIO CASALICCHIO 5/26/20, 9:45 PM CET Updated 5/31/20, 1:04 AM CET

 

LONDON — Never mind whether Boris Johnson should get rid of Dominic Cummings, the real question is whether he can.

 

To the U.K. prime minister, his top aide — whose lockdown journey from London to Durham has dominated headlines for days — is more than just an effective political adviser. He is the lynchpin of the Downing Street operation; someone who — according to several people who have worked with the two men in and out of government — gives Johnson policy direction and operational grip, while commanding more loyalty among a number of key officials and ministers than the prime minister does himself.

 

From The New Yorker

 

New Evidence Emerges of Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica’s Role in Brexit

 

By Jane Mayer

 

The possibility that Brexit and the Trump campaign relied on some of the same advisers to further far-right nationalist campaigns has set off alarm bells on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

For two years, observers have speculated that the June, 2016, Brexit campaign in the U.K. served as a petri dish for Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign in the United States. Now there is new evidence that it did. Newly surfaced e-mails show that the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and Cambridge Analytica, the Big Data company that he worked for at the time, were simultaneously incubating both nationalist political movements in 2015……

 

There are direct links between the political movements behind Brexit and Trump. We’ve got to recognise the bigger picture here. This is being coordinated across national borders by very wealthy people in a way we haven’t seen before.”

 

Bannon has been strongly influenced by Jean Raspail’s dystopian novel ‘Camp of the Saints’, from The Huffington Post:

 

‘This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains The World.

 

“The Camp of the Saints” tells a grotesque tale about a migrant invasion to destroy Western civilization.

 

The same author Raspail had been interviewed by Australian academic Dr. Katherine Betts (collaborator with Dr. Robert Birrell deemed ‘Australia’s best demographer’ by Sustainable Population Australia patron Dick Smith and cited frequently by mainstream media in Australia as an expert on immigration) in John Tanton’s TSCP:

‘A Conversation With Jean Raspail‘ reprint from original 1994-95

Not only is Tanton intimately linked with founding TSCP but had also crossed paths with others of note at the Koch’s ‘bill mill’ ALEC including Heritage Foundation’s Weyrich, Falwell of the Christian Nationalist right and the deep pocketed Mercers, along with others,’wheels within wheels’?

 

‘Three right-wing organizations founded nearly forty years ago by conservative activist Paul Weyrich are rediscovering their shared origins. The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of 169 right-wing Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, is establishing a partnership with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the controversial “corporate bill mill” for state legislators

 

‘ALEC & SLLI – “Bipartisan” Bigotry. There appears to be a dirty little secret lurking in the halls and cocktail parties of the of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meetings – overt racism…..The John Tanton Network and the Anti-Immigrant Movement in America.
One man is at the heart of the most influential network of anti-immigrant groups in the country. This man, John H. Tanton, has created an empire of organizations populated by lobbyists, lawyers, legislators, and “experts” that have permeated the very depths of America’s social and political debate on immigration.

 

What appears to the public as myriad separate voices all advocating for one cause, i.e. severe immigration enforcement, is nothing more than a facade, a collection of craftily constructed front groups, faux-”coalitions,” and spin-offs that are collectively unified in their goal to overwhelm any reasonable debate on immigration with their branded worldview of bigotry.

 

This collective is known as the John Tanton Network.’

 

‘The Alt-Right and the 1%.  When President Trump equated white supremacists with anti-racism protesters, he was sending a message to the thugs in the streets and to some in executive suites…. ….Mercer, the co-CEO of the $50 billion Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, is also one of three owners of Breitbart News, the outlet Trump strategist (and former Breitbart editor) Steve Bannon has described as a “platform for the alt-right.”

 

With Mercer’s financial support, Breitbart has become a significant media force. While readership is down from its peak during the election campaign, the site attracted 11 million unique visitors in May of this year.

 

‘Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled White Nationalism Into The Mainstream. A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals the truth about Steve Bannon’s alt-right “killing machine.” In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that “there’s no room in American society” for neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and the KKK.

 

But an explosive cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News proves that there was plenty of room for those voices on his website.’

 

One Man Created a Bunch of Hate Groups. Now, Those Hate Groups Are Dug in With the Trump Administration….Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President, was the CEO of Breitbart, which frequently reports on the Tanton network’s “research” and gives column space to Tanton allies. Bannon’s favorite book, a racist French novel, was published in English by another of Tanton’s organizations.

 

The deep connections that Tanton’s anti-immigrant network has in the Trump Administration is concerning in its own right; but the immediate and long term effects of its influence on policy will continue to be devastating for the lives of countless immigrants. Under the Trump Administration, CIS, FAIR, NumbersUSA, and the rest of the Tanton network have more power than ever — and they’re using it to reshape American immigration policy, possible for decades to come.’

 

‘Britain’s Steve Bannon Is Tearing Boris Johnson’s Tories Apart…….Just six weeks later, Cummings is in the limelight as the new hate figure in British politics and the man many Conservatives blame for wrecking their party and pushing the country into chaos all in the name of delivering Brexit.’

 

Conservatives in the USA, UK and Australian politics should be concerned as their respective parties are being torn apart by radical right libertarian driven white nationalism and populist politics.

Anglo Radical Right Libertarianism and Economics

The Anglo world especially including the US, UK and Australia, and elsewhere, have been subjected to neo classical economics, monetarist etc. theories exemplified by demands for small government, low taxation, cuts to state services, low regulation etc., with unwitting support from conservative and other voters.

 

Nancy MacLean in ‘Democracy in Chains’ stumbled across odd bedfellows and links to discover this movement promoting nineteenth century economic ideology and eugenics.

 

‘Radical Right Libertarians – MacLean

Misinforming the Majority: A Deliberate Strategy of Right-Wing Libertarians
BY
Mark Karlin, Truthout
PUBLISHED
July 9, 2017

When and how were the seeds sown for the modern far-right’s takeover of American politics? Nancy MacLean reveals the deep and troubling roots of this secretive political establishment — and its decades-long plan to change the rules of democratic governance — in her new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Get your copy by making a donation to Truthout now!

 

Many individuals who follow politics and journalists think that the right-wing playbook began with the Koch brothers. However, in her groundbreaking book, Nancy MacLean traces their political strategy to a Southern economist who created the foundation for today’s libertarian oligarchy in the 1950s.

 

Mark Karlin: Can you summarize the importance of James McGill Buchanan to the development of the modern extreme right wing in the United States?

 

Nancy MacLean: The modern extreme right wing I’m talking about, just to be clear, is the libertarian movement that now sails under the Republican flag, particularly but not only the Freedom Caucus, yet goes back to the 1950s in both parties. President Eisenhower called them “stupid” and fashioned his approach — calling it modern Republicanism — as an antidote to them. Goldwater was their first presidential candidate. He bombed. Reagan, they believed, was going to enact their agenda. He didn’t. But beginning in the early 2000s, they became a force to be reckoned with. What had changed? The discovery by their chief funder, Charles Koch, of the approach developed by James McGill Buchanan for how to take apart the liberal state.

 

Buchanan studied economics at the University of Chicago and belonged to the same milieu as F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises, but he used his training to analyze public life. And he supplied what no one else had: an operational strategy to vanquish the model of government they had been criticizing for decades — and prevent it from being recreated. It was Buchanan who taught Koch that for capitalism to thrive, democracy must be enchained.

 

Buchanan was a very smart man, the only winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics from the US South, in fact. But his life’s work was forever shaped by the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. He arrived in Virginia in 1956, just as the state’s leaders were goading the white South to fight the court’s ruling, a ruling he saw not through the lens of equal protection of the law for all citizens but rather as another wave in a rising tide of unwarranted and illegitimate federal interference in the affairs of the states that began with the New Deal. For him what was at stake was the sanctity of private property rights, with northern liberals telling southern owners how to spend their money and behave correctly. Given an institute to run on the campus of the University of Virginia, he promised to devote his academic career to understanding how the other side became so powerful and, ultimately, to figuring out an effective line of attack to break down what they had created and return to what he and the Virginia elite viewed as appropriate for America. In a nutshell, he studied the workings of the political process to figure out what was needed to deny ordinary people — white and Black — the ability to make claims on government at the expense of private property rights and the wishes of capitalists. And then he identified how to rejigger that political process not only to reverse the gains but also to prevent the system from ever reverting back.

 

Why, until your book, has his importance to the right wing been largely overlooked?

 

There are a few reasons Buchanan has been overlooked. One is that the Koch cause does not advertise his work, preferring to tout the sunnier primers of Hayek, Friedman and even Ayn Rand when recruiting. Buchanan is the advanced course, as it were, for the already committed. Another is that Buchanan did not seek the limelight like Friedman, so few on the left have even heard of him. I myself learned of him only by serendipity, in a footnote about the Virginia schools fight.

 

How would you draw a line connecting Buchanan to the Koch brothers?

 

Charles Koch supplied the money, but it was James Buchanan who supplied the ideas that made the money effective. An MIT-trained engineer, Koch in the 1960s began to read political-economic theory based on the notion that free-reign capitalism (what others might call Dickensian capitalism) would justly reward the smart and hardworking and rightly punish those who failed to take responsibility for themselves or had lesser ability. He believed then and believes now that the market is the wisest and fairest form of governance, and one that, after a bitter era of adjustment, will produce untold prosperity, even peace. But after several failures, Koch came to realize that if the majority of Americans ever truly understood the full implications of his vision of the good society and were let in on what was in store for them, they would never support it. Indeed, they would actively oppose it.

 

So, Koch went in search of an operational strategy — what he has called a “technology” — of revolution that could get around this hurdle. He hunted for 30 years until he found that technology in Buchanan’s thought. From Buchanan, Koch learned that for the agenda to succeed, it had to be put in place in incremental steps, what Koch calls “interrelated plays”: many distinct yet mutually reinforcing changes of the rules that govern our nation. Koch’s team used Buchanan’s ideas to devise a roadmap for a radical transformation that could be carried out largely below the radar of the people, yet legally. The plan was (and is) to act on so many ostensibly separate fronts at once that those outside the cause would not realize the revolution underway until it was too late to undo it. Examples include laws to destroy unions without saying that is the true purpose, suppressing the votes of those most likely to support active government, using privatization to alter power relations — and, to lock it all in, Buchanan’s ultimate recommendation: a “constitutional revolution.”

 

Today, operatives funded by the Koch donor network operate through dozens upon dozens of organizations (hundreds, if you count the state and international groups), creating the impression that they are unconnected when they are really working together — the state ones are forced to share materials as a condition of their grants. For example, here are the names of 15 of the most important Koch-funded, Buchanan-savvy organizations each with its own assignment in the division of labor: There’s Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Mercatus Center, Americans for Tax Reform, Concerned Veterans of America, the Leadership Institute, Generation Opportunity, the Institute for Justice, the Independent Institute, the Club for Growth, the Donors Trust, Freedom Partners, Judicial Watch — whoops, that’s more than 15, and it’s not counting the over 60 other organizations in the State Policy Network. This cause operates through so many ostensibly separate organizations that its architects expect the rest of us will ignore all the small but extremely significant changes that cumulatively add up to revolutionary transformation. Gesturing to this, Tyler Cowen, Buchanan’s successor at George Mason University, even titled his blog “Marginal Revolution.”

 

In what way was Buchanan connected to white oligarchical racism?

 

Buchanan came up with his approach in the crucible of the civil rights era, as the most oligarchic state elite in the South faced the loss of its accustomed power. Interestingly, he almost never wrote explicitly about racial matters, but he did identify as a proud southern “country boy” and his center gave aid to Virginia’s reactionaries on both class and race matters. His heirs at George Mason University, his last home, have noted that Buchanan’s political economy is quite like that of John C. Calhoun, the antebellum South Carolina US Senator who, until Buchanan, was America’s most original theorist of how to constrict democracy so as to safeguard the wealth and power of an elite economic minority (in Calhoun’s case, large slaveholders). Buchanan arrived in Virginia just as Calhoun’s ideas were being excavated to stop the implementation of Brown, so the kinship was more than a coincidence. His vision of the right economic constitution owes much to Calhoun, whose ideas horrified James Madison, among others……

 

…..Having said that, though, I also believe that panic is the last thing we need. There is great strength to be found in the simple truth that Buchanan and Koch came up with the kind of strategy now in play precisely because they knew that the majority, if fully informed, would never support what they seek. So, the best thing that those who support a robust, non-plutocratic society can do is focus on patiently informing and activating that majority. And reminding all Americans that democracy is not something you can just assume will survive: It has to be fought for time and again. This is one of those moments.’

 

For more blogs and articles about economics, populist politics and white nationalism click through.