Gordon Atlantic bridge

=
see alt rt EURthis will be general category for attempts to export RWI  trump Alt Rt to Europe: ironic b/c fisher built CTTseveral phases? newest evangelical? // alt rt?started with Tory?alt rightbannon main mission? went on tour 2/18 after fired from BB and WHdesmog<p align="left" class="yiv3292272524article-title" style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 24px; color: rgb(18, 18, 17); font-weight: bold; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 18px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none !important;">may 26, 2023 - UK Edition<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" align="right" style="color: rgb(29, 34, 40); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none !important;"><tbody style="outline: none !important;"><tr style="outline: none !important; border-collapse: collapse;"><td width="15" class="yiv3292272524w30" style="word-break: normal; border-collapse: collapse; outline: none !important;" /><td style="word-break: normal; border-collapse: collapse; outline: none !important;"><img width="300" border="0" src="https://ecp.yusercontent.com/mail?url=http%3A%2F%2Fi2.cmail20.com%2Fei%2Ft%2F6A%2F838%2F727%2Fcsimport%2Ffarage2.152939.jpg&t=1685227978&ymreqid=5b97f7b6-4cda-3c8f-1c96-a9000701c200&sig=WIyxejjjqsrJfq.vFl9GZg--_D" height="300" style="text-indent: -9999px; outline: none; display: block;" /></td></tr><tr style="outline: none !important; border-collapse: collapse;"><td width="15" height="5" class="yiv3292272524w30" style="word-break: normal; border-collapse: collapse; outline: none !important;" /><td style="word-break: normal; border-collapse: collapse; outline: none !important;" /></tr></tbody></table><div align="left" class="yiv3292272524article-content" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 18px; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none !important;">In Democracy for Sale, Peter Geoghegan talks of an “Atlantic bridge” that ferries ideas and tactics from populist forces in the US to the UK.</div>=textifire 2017?...WEREN’T THE FIRST TEA PARTIERS ANGRY AT THE BRITS..?<div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Bannon became interested in United Kingdom politics in the early 2010s, seeing it as fertile ground for ideological manipulation. He began making friends with far right bloggers and politicians, particularly those tied in with Nigel Farage’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). A hard right party commonly disparaged as fascist, UKIP sought to restore what it saw as true conservatism. Bannon was greatly invested in the USA Tea Party ‘movement’ at the time, as evidenced by his movie productions and speaking engagements, so he viewed UKIP as a natural comrade in arms.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">UKIP had been stagnating as a political force while known as a single platform party, focused almost entirely on immigration crackdown and demand for UK’s exit from the European Union. Co-founder Farage had returned to lead the party for a 2nd time in November 2010 — later in the same week as the first Tea Party Republicans were elected in the US midterms — after failing in his bid to become House of Commons Speaker earlier that year, and began to incorporate a wider variety of populist messaging with a focus on local elections to increase growth.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Soon after Bannon took over Breitbart in the summer of 2012, he brought Farage to the USA for a grand tour of New York and Washington, D.C. During this trip, Bannon introduced Farage to a number of movers & shakers, including the staff of Jeff Sessions, the then-senator from Alabama who is now US Attorney General. This was certainly not the first connection between UK eurosceptics and US nativists, however.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Throughout the previous year, a UK political activist ‘pressure group’ called Atlantic Bridge was garnering a lot of press for all the wrong reasons. Fronted by then-Defence Secretary Liam Fox, after being founded in 1997 by Fox and Reagan BFF/ex-UK-PM Margaret Thatcher, its stated goal was to protect the 80's holdover concept of the US & UK’s military and cultural ‘special relationship’ from “the European integrationists who would like to pull Britain away from its relationship with the United States.”</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Louise Mensch (#TrumpRussia false idol, Tory ex-MP, and current News Corp employee) defending Liam Fox and a Brexit]</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Atlantic Bridge fell into the sea in late 2011, after extensive investigations found Fox had been implementing a “shadow foreign policy” by internationally courting a variety of corporate lobbyists and military contractors via the dark money donated to Bridge as a falsely-labeled charity. Fox then resigned his Cabinet position, taking a few others down with him.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">One of those affected was yet another powerful hedge fund manager, ex-Goldman Sachs trader, climate-change denier & funder, and longtime Tory/Conservative donor named Michael Hintze who provided the majority of those donations and lent his private jet to Fox for schmoozy jaunts to meet with D.C. defence contractors. With a strong interest in geopolitical wargames, a habit of supporting Defence Secretaries, and a predilection for hiring senior military officials at his powerful firm Convertible & Quantitative Strategies, it’s small wonder Hintze sought to establish a Western security superhighway before the Bridge collapsed.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Back in 2007, however, Atlantic Bridge was still in its prime, and it gained even more power when a giant among US political activist groups began an official partnership with it. The American Legislative Exchange Council — better known as ALEC — set up a stateside nonprofit called the Atlantic Bridge Project, in order to “foster positive relationships between conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic, so they may further the ideals exemplified by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.”</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Atlantic Bridge’s Liam Fox thanking ALEC 2008]</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">ALEC’s decades-old modus operandi is to write complete versions of new legislation, which invariably benefits only its powerful corporate members, to be passed off to complicit politicians and introduced in Congress as original products. An official ALEC newsletter from Dec 2007 bragged of the Bridge Project’s new plans to enact “a series of events aimed at conservative leaders from the field of politics, media, business, and academia — exposing them to innovative conservative thinking from the U.S. and Great Britain and helping them forge new transatlantic relationships.”</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Catherine Bray is pictured in the newsletter as the Director of International Relations for Atlantic Bridge; she had previously worked for prominent UKIP member & climate change denier Roger Helmer and subsequently worked for Tory Daniel Hannan, “the man who brought you Brexit.” In 2015, Bray married Wells Griffith, who became the battleground states director for Trump’s presidential campaign.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Managing the D.C. operations for the Project was Gordon Cohen Strategies LLC, co-founded by Lee Cohen, Atlantic Bridge’s Washington DC Director, and J.D. Gordon, a retired Pentagon spokesman and well-traveled defense lobbyist. Lee Cohen is now an ardent Trump supporter, publishing an IJR essay in November 2016 predicting Trump and new UK PM Theresa May will be the new Reagan & Thatcher.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Within a few days of Liam Fox’s 2011 resignation, J.D. Gordon took a job as communications director for Herman Cain’s 2012 presidential campaign, in which Tea Partier Cain promised to reduce corporate taxes and install the Shell Oil CEO as head of the EPA. Cain began briefly leading Obama in the polls at that time and was the most reported-on GOP candidate in 2011, but quit the race less than 2 months later after sexual misconduct charges arose.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Gordon was slightly controversial when he originally joined up as one of Cain’s foreign policy advisers, as he had recently left a fellowship position at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, a far-right think tank (or perhaps hate group) devoted to advancing founder and former Reagan official Frank Gaffney’s pet cause of extreme Islamophobia. Cain’s campaign also absorbed the staff of Gordon’s own embryonic thinktank, the Center for Security and Democracy, which included a former Heritage Foundation manager.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">J.D. Gordon is most recently known for his work as a key foreign policy adviser to Cain clone Donald Trump, who counted Herman among his early campaign rally speakers/surrogates, and about whom Gordon wrote a pro-Trump Breitbart article in April 2016. Gordon was also Jeff Sessions’ deputy, allegedly traveled to Budapest six times during the campaign, participated in the infamous July 2016 Republican National Convention meeting — hosted by the Heritage Foundation — involving co-adviser Carter Page and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, and is said to have previously recommended that Page embark on his Congressionally-investigated trip to Moscow. Gordon also claims he personally asked to water down the RNC platform with noncommittal language omitting lethal weapons support for Ukraine, and that Trump directly ordered him to do so.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">(L to R) Lee, Johnson, Toomey, DeMint, Rubio</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Atlantic Bridge’s leading light in the US Congress was South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, then frequently cited as one of the farthest-right sitting Senators. An ardent tax reformer, Family member, and anti-immigration crusader, he was on board with the Tea Party from its inception in early 2009, setting the stage with the establishment of his Senate Conservatives Fund PAC in 2008. The Fund attacked Republicans for being too ‘moderate’ and then gave millions to the successful 2010 Senate campaigns of such first-time Tea Party candidates as Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, and Pat Toomey. Also in 2010, DeMint introduced the first bill intended to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Senator DeMint followed up that legislation a few months later with his first published article/op-ed on Breitbart News, dated 6 May 2010. Breitbart repeatedly showered him with glowing coverage, so he went on to publish another article there on 27 Jul 2012, in which he endorsed Tea Party candidate Ted Cruz for Senate and lauded the aforementioned Club for Growth’s monetary “air and ground support” for Cruz’s campaign.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">A large chunk of the money for that tactical assault was provided by Robert Mercer, with other miniature morsels of Mercer Money going to DeMint, Toomey, and Rubio at various times. Unsurprisingly, Club for Growth rated Paul, Johnson, Lee and DeMint as 4 of the only 5 Senators to vote ‘correctly’ 100% of the time, with Lee and Demint tying for the Heritage Foundation’s top honor at 99% approval.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">“Breitbart Embassy” in DC, 2012 (Source)]</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">DeMint resigned from the Senate less than two months after the 2012 election in order to become president of Heritage — a thinktank which shares an enormous number of historical, practical, and membership commonalities with ALEC — by which time Atlantic Bridge had been dead [in the UK] for over a year. Even so, it’s easy to imagine DeMint, Liam Fox, J.D. Gordon, and/or any of the other Atlantic Bridge ambassadors still managed to make their way to any one of the legendary parties thrown at the “Breitbart Embassy”, a four-story townhouse rented (?) by Breitbart near the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">As for the gregarious and cigar-chomping heavy drinker Nigel Farage, we don’t have to imagine anything. He was treated as the guest of honor at a Breitbart Embassy dinner & cocktail party in September 2014, where the stars of the new right rubbed shoulders with journalists from across the media spectrum. Other guests that night included LifeZette’s Laura Ingraham, a reporter from Rolling Stone, Jeff Sessions, and Sessions’ then-top aide Stephen Miller.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Steve Bannon had been partially living at the Embassy since at least 2011, when Breitbart staff and writers were first encouraged to work & sleep there, though it was initially expected to serve as a means to rub shoulders with the movers & shakers of the DC political elite. “Andrew [Breitbart] said that if you didn’t have a place within spitting distance of the Capitol, no one would come,” Bannon told The Washington Post at an Embassy blowout schmooze-and-boozefest CPAC rager in 2014. “He loved to throw big parties.”</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">But regardless of the precise circumstances by which Bannon became enmeshed with the UK’s conservative elite prior to mid-2012, engrossing as the detailed story may be, his friendship with UKIP & Brexit’s Farage tells us all we need to know. As such, we should be unsurprised to learn it was allegedly Steve Bannon who urged the Mercers to invest US$15m in big data research funds with the British defence contractor SCL Group.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">...</div>
=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/trump-linked-christian-fundamentalists-are-pouring-dark-money-into-europe-and-boosting-the-far-right/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/trump-linked-christian-fundamentalists-are-pouring-dark-money-into-europe-and-boosting-the-far-right/</a><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/author/claire-provost/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Claire Provost </a>and <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/author/mary-fitzgerald/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Mary Fitzgerald</a><div class="p1_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">According to a <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/revealed-trump-linked-us-christian-fundamentalists-pour-millions-of-dark-money-into-europe-boosting-the-far-right/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">new analysis released by openDemocracy</a>, Christian-right fundamentalists linked to the Trump administration and Steve Bannon are among a dozen American groups that have poured at least $50 million of dark money into Europe over the last decade.<div class="p2_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div id="attachment_1112087" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 5px auto 20px; padding: 0px; border: none; max-width: 100%; text-align: center; position: relative; overflow: hidden; width: 1410px;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: left;">[graf]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: left;">
</div><p class="wp-caption-text" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5); text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 11px 10px; line-height: 1.4; font-style: italic; position: absolute; bottom: 0px; left: 0px; width: 629.986px; transition: all 0.4s ease 0s;">
<div class="p3_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Between them, these groups have backed armies of ultra-conservative lawyers and political activists, as well as so-called family values campaigns against LGBTQ rights, sex education and abortion—and a number appear to have increasing links with Europe’s far right.<div class="p4_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">They are spending money on a scale “not previously imagined,” according to lawmakers and human rights advocates, who have called openDemocracy’s findings “shocking.”<div class="p5_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Among the biggest spenders is a group whose chief counsel is also Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow. Another organization has collaborated with a controversial Rome-based institute backed by Steve Bannon.<div class="p6_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">None of these American groups discloses who its donors are—though at least two have links to famous conservative billionaires, such as the Koch brothers (who helped bankroll the Tea Party movement) and the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.<div class="p7_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">‘Nobody should be in any doubt as to the insidious nature of these fundamentalist groups’<div class="p8_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The increasing ties between some of these Christian conservative groups and the European far right will be on display this weekend at a summit of the World Congress of Families (WCF): a network of American, Russian and other ultra-conservative activists.<div class="p9_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Right-wing politicians and their supporters from across Europe are expected to attend the event in Verona, Italy—including the Italian deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who has described the WCF as a showcase for “<a href="https://www.interris.it/italia/formato-famiglia--l-europa-che-piace-a-salvini" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">the Europe that we like</a>.”<div class="p10_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">A cross-party group of more than 40 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) has called on the EU’s transparency tsar Frans Timmermans to look into the influence of “U.S. Christian fundamentalists… with the greatest urgency” ahead of May’s European Parliament elections.<div class="p11_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In a letter reacting to openDemocracy’s findings, and copied to the presidents of the European Council, European Commission and European Parliament, the MEPs have demanded action to protect European democracy “against nefarious outside influences.”<div class="p12_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Scottish National Party MEP Alyn Smith, who sits on the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and signed the letter, said on Wednesday: “This investigation by openDemocracy is extremely timely and shines a light on a major challenge facing democracy in Europe.”<div class="p13_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">OpenDemocracy’s findings “are highly alarming, and nobody should be in any doubt as to the insidious nature of these fundamentalist groups,” he continued. “No group of any kind should be able to use dark money to distort debate and to subvert democracy in Europe, least of all groups such as these whose causes are deeply regressive.”<div class="p14_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">‘The Europe we like’<div class="p15_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">OpenDemocracy has examined <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nIOy8oXsGikTtxP55I8hlJNN7zzjdamAjLgBW3lOBiw/edit?usp=sharing" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a decade of U.S. Christian organizations’ financial accounts</a> and found that several of them appear to have significantly increased their spending in Europe over the past five years.<div class="p16_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">These findings come as far-right parties aim for big wins in the upcoming European Parliament elections in May, and show how large amounts of foreign money have supported the spread of their “traditional values” messages.<div class="p17_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">OpenDemocracy has reviewed hundreds of pages of financial filings for a dozen religious conservative groups that are registered as tax-exempt non-profit organizations, and thus are required to disclose some information about their foreign spending.<div class="p18_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Some of these groups have been previously accused of supporting campaigns to criminalize homosexuality in Africa, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20130709/dangerous-liaisons" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“draconian” anti-abortion laws in Latin America</a> and controversial projects to encourage gay people in the United States to <a href="https://www.focusonthefamily.com/socialissues/sexuality/leaving-homosexuality/leaving-homosexuality" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“leave homosexuality.”</a><div class="p19_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">But the extent of their European activity has—until now—received little scrutiny. The new investigation reveals that some of these groups have:<div class="p20_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><ul class="ul1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 50px; list-style: none;"><li class="li3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px; list-style: square; position: relative; line-height: 1.7;">Sent teams of lobbyists to Brussels to influence EU officials</li><li class="li3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px; list-style: square; position: relative; line-height: 1.7;">Challenged laws against discrimination and hate speech in European courts</li><li class="li3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px; list-style: square; position: relative; line-height: 1.7;">Supported campaigns against LGBTQ rights in the <a href="https://aclj.org/aclj/christian-science-monitor---u-s-evangelicals-aim-to-influence-european-law" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Czech Republic</a> and <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/romania-battleground-backlash-lgbt-rights/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Romania</a></li><li class="li3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px; list-style: square; position: relative; line-height: 1.7;">Funded a network of seemingly grassroots anti-abortion campaigns in Italy and Spain</li><li class="li1" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px; list-style: square; position: relative; line-height: 1.7;">Deployed ambulance-chasing evangelists after tragedies such as the Grenfell Tower fire, and in the wake of terrorist attacks ???</li></ul>Five of the conservative groups have previously been listed as <a href="https://profam.org/world-congress-of-families-partners-2017/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">partners of the World Congress of Families (WCF)</a> network, which is meeting in Verona this week.<div class="p21_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">It’s not just European politicians who are concerned about them: These groups are controversial in America too. The WCF itself has been described as an “<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/world-congress-families" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">anti-LGBT hate group</a>” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors extremist movements and tracks this network’s <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2019/global-hate-hate-travels" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">increasing connections with the far right</a>.<div class="p22_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The SPLC <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/anti-lgbt" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">explains</a> that “viewing homosexuality as unbiblical or simply opposing same-sex marriage” is not enough to be categorized as a “hate group.” Groups on this list go further—claiming that homosexuality is dangerous, linked to pedophilia, and should be criminalized, disseminating “disparaging ‘facts’ about LGBT people that are simply untrue.”<div class="p23_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This is, says SPLC, “no different to how white supremacists and nativist extremists propagate lies about black people and immigrants to make these communities seem like a danger to society.”<div class="p24_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Joseph Grabowski, a WCF spokesperson, told openDemocracy: “We dispute entirely the premise [of the ‘hate group’ designation]… It’s an unfortunate slight for the countless Americans and the people around the world who hold the same views as we do on marriage, the nature of family and the right to life, that are part of the fabric of Christianity and also other traditional points of view,” he said.<div class="p25_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The WCF is a project of the <a href="https://www.profam.org/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">International Organization for the Family</a> and the Illinois-based Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, whose <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mdXJo66et1YHV1TxgW6xAlNmqDHdLu7x/view?usp=sharing" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">directors</a> include <a href="https://www.eldiario.es/sociedad/conexiones-Vox-grupos-ultracatolicos_0_843766322.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">anultra-conservative Spanish activist linked to the leader of the far-right Vox party</a>.<div class="p26_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Other directors include <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y2ky8bx7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a close associate</a> of a Russian oligarch who sponsored a 2014 <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/12/anti-lgbt-hate-group-world-congress-families-gather-moldova-week-reveals-details-last" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“secret meeting”</a> in Vienna with key French and Austrian far-right leaders—and an <a href="https://www.ilpost.it/2018/05/07/azerbaijan-consiglio-europa/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Italian politician</a> facing corruption charges in his country.<div class="p27_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Over the last decade, the WCF has hosted at least seven major meetings in Europe, attended by hundreds of religious right activists and a growing list of far-right politicians. Its 2017 meeting in Budapest was <a href="https://profam.org/wcf-xi-launches-worldwide-pro-family-revolution-iof-weekly/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">opened</a> by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán.<div class="p28_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Among the <a href="https://wcfverona.org/en/sponsors/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">conveners</a> of this week’s event in Verona is an Italian anti-abortion group <a href="https://www.corriere.it/extra-per-voi/2017/07/06/tutti-legami-pro-vita-forza-nuova-0f71ba70-6254-11e7-84bc-daac3beed6c1.shtml" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">linked</a> to the neo-fascist Forza Nuova party, whose leader is also expected to attend the WCF.<div class="p29_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Trump, the far-right and the Christian ‘legal army’<div class="p30_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Two of the Trump-linked groups examined by openDemocracy are Christian-right legal powerhouses: Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the American Center for Law and Justice. Together, they have spent more than $20 million in Europe since 2008.<div class="p31_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">They don’t disclose their funders, but journalists have previously traced <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/the-christian-legal-army-behind-masterpiece-cakeshop/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">at least $1 million</a> in grants to ADF from a foundation controlled by the billionaire family of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education secretary, and Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater mercenary firm.<div class="p32_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">ADF was co-founded by Alan Sears, a Christian-right leader who <a href="https://www.conservativebookclub.com/book/the-homosexual-agenda-exposing-the-principal-threat-to-religious-freedom-today" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">co-authored a book</a> against “the homosexual agenda.” It is increasingly active internationally, including in Latin America. It supported a 2016 law in Belize making gay sex punishable <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/08/11/belize-supreme-court-strikes-down-colonial-era-anti-lgbt-law" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">with 10 years in jail</a>.<div class="p33_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This group tripled its annual spending in Europe between 2012 and 2016, to more than $2.6 million a year. It now has <a href="https://adfinternational.org/who-we-are/locations/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">offices</a> in Belgium, France, Austria, Switzerland and the UK, and spends <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y2qjaoo8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">hundreds of thousands of euros</a> lobbying EU officials, according to separate transparency data.<div class="p34_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Among its European projects, the group supported the defense of a notorious German activist who <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/german-antiabortion-activist-holocause-injunction-klaus-annen-echr-a8546901.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">compared abortion to the Holocaust</a> and accused specific doctors of murder.<div class="p35_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This year, ADF International also co-hosted <a href="https://adfinternational.org/news/aviso-un-side-event-on-the-exploitation-of-children-and-women-through-surrogacy/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">an event</a> with the French group La Manif Pour Tous, which has been previously been linked to the far-right party <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ee4bf05e-944f-11e6-a80e-bcd69f323a8b" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Front National</a>.<div class="p36_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ahead of the last European Parliament elections in 2014, La Manif Pour Tous launched a “<a href="https://tinyurl.com/y42nunq5" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Europe for Family</a>” campaign that got 230 French candidates to sign a pledge opposing marriage equality, trans rights and sex education.<div class="p37_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Speaking to openDemocracy, a spokesperson for ADF International said they are “exclusively privately funded by people from all over the world, who care about human rights” and that their activities include “advocating for freedom of speech in Europe.”<div class="p38_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Asked for more detail about whom the group gives its money to, they said: “Since our advocacy involves court cases in countries where people are harassed, stigmatized, and even killed because of their religious convictions, it is our general policy not to disclose any recipients of funding in order to protect their personal safety and livelihoods.”<div class="p39_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The second of the two Trump-linked groups, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), also operates through the courts. It was founded in 1990 by American televangelist Pat Robertson to <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20130709/dangerous-liaisons" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">oppose the American Civil Liberties Union</a>.<div class="p40_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The group’s current chief counsel is Jay Sekulow, a conservative talk-show host who has been described as “<a href="https://tinyurl.com/y6fybjrz" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">the top lawyer</a>” on Donald Trump’s legal team in the Mueller inquiry.<div class="p41_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This group has had an office in Strasbourg, France—home of the European Court of Human Rights—for more than 20 years, from where it has <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y3v88vt3" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">intervened in numerous cases</a>on issues including same-sex marriage, abortion rights and artificial insemination.<div class="p42_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The director of its Strasbourg outfit <a href="https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=09000016806974ca" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">has also represented the Holy See at the Council of Europe</a>, while its Moscow center <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-lawyer-backed-putins-anti-gay-agenda?ref=scroll" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">has praised</a> Putin’s laws banning “gay propaganda.”<div class="p43_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Trump, Franklin Graham and U.S.-sanctioned Kremlin officials<div class="p44_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is another major spender. It is led by the famous evangelical preacher’s son, Franklin Graham, who said Satan is the <a href="https://billygraham.org/decision-magazine/february-2014/ducking-the-issue/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">architect of same-sex marriage</a> and described Islam as an “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/07/us-evangelical-preacher-franklin-graham-uk-critics" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">evil and very wicked religion</a>.”<div class="p45_68" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Franklin Graham, who has supported Trump as someone who “<a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/418180-franklin-graham-on-supporting-trump-he-defends-the-christian" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">defends the faith</a>,” was in Russia earlier this month <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/why-was-franklin-graham-schmoozing-with-a-sanctioned-russian-official-this-month-b38f1aa1af13/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">meeting with Kremlin officials under U.S. sanctions</a>, on a trip that he said was personally signed off on by Vice President Michael Pence.<div class="p46_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In 2018, his group organized <a href="https://www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Councillors-threaten-Franklin-Graham-ahead-of-Blackpool-visit" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">festivals</a> in England and Scotland amid protests from Muslim and LGBT rights groups. It also supports “rapid response chaplains” that target crises and <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/abletochoose/2018/02/billy-graham-ambulance-chaser/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">have been accused</a> of “chasing ambulances” and “exploiting tragedy.”<div class="p47_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Its filings disclose more than $23 million spent in Europe through two different U.S. entities between 2008 and 2014—making it the largest spender in this region, of the American groups analyzed by openDemocracy.<div class="p48_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">However, 2014 is the latest year for which openDemocracy was able to find public documents for this group, which has offices in the <a href="https://billygraham.org.uk/international-offices/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">UK, Germany, France and Spain</a>, so the true extent of its influence in the region is not yet known.<div class="p49_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Training Europeans, on the ‘front lines of the Culture War’<div class="p50_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">A number of groups spending smaller amounts of money appear to have increased their activities in Europe in recent years.<div class="p51_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, which combines a conservative Christian worldview with free-market economics, has received <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers/front-groups/acton-institute-study-religion-liberty/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">hundreds of thousands of dollars</a> from the Koch family foundations.<div class="p52_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This group spent more than $1.7 million in Europe since 2008, with its spending in the region rising in recent years (from around $166,000 in 2008 to almost $240,000 in 2017).<div class="p53_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In Italy, it has collaborated with the <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y3gz9obw" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Dignitatis Humanae Institute</a>—of which Steve Bannon is a trustee—that has locally controversial plans to use a monastery outside Rome as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%252fworld%252feurope%252fwith-support-from-steve-bannon-a-medieval-monastery-could-become-a-populist-training-ground%252f2018%252f12%252f25%252f86dac38a-d3c4-11e8-a4db-184311d27129_story.html%253f" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“gladiator school for culture warriors.”</a><div class="p54_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Also on the list is the U.S. branch of the Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), an ultra-conservative transnational Catholic movement that <a href="https://www.tfp.org/the-counter-revolution/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">says it’s</a> “on the front lines of the Culture War, peacefully defending the values of tradition, family and private ownership.”<div class="p55_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This group said it spent about $100,000 in Europe since 2010. Its filings don’t detail where this money went, but the TFP has been linked to <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/ultra-conservative-institute-has-infiltrated-polish-state-to-ban-abortion/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a controversial think tank</a> in Poland that has helped develop policies for far-right Law and Justice (PiS) politicians.<div class="p56_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">A ‘wake-up call’ to prevent ‘foreign interference’<div class="p57_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Under U.S. law, the groups analyzed by openDemocracy are required to publicly disclose some information about their foreign spending, but not the names of their overseas recipients, details of what activities they fund—or the identities of their own funders.<div class="p58_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The $50 million figure drawn from <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nIOy8oXsGikTtxP55I8hlJNN7zzjdamAjLgBW3lOBiw/edit?usp=sharing" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">openDemocracy’s analysis</a> is also a likely underestimation of the resources that U.S. conservatives have channeled into Europe in recent years.<div class="p59_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Data for 2018 is not yet available; meanwhile, there are some important loopholes. Religious organizations registered as churches, for example, don’t need to file the same disclosures.<div class="p60_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">A number of other U.S. Christian conservative groups appear to be spending money in Europe, but do not disclose this on their U.S. filings—including the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, which has coordinated the WCF network.<div class="p61_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Reacting to openDemocracy’s findings, German Green MEP Terry Reintke, who sits on equality-related committees at the European Parliament, said: “This extreme extent of financial support flooding the EU is shocking—especially with the European elections ahead of us.”<div class="p62_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The SNP MEP Alyn Smith has said he and his fellow parliamentarians who signed Wednesday’s letter have called for the mobilization of “EU institutions and member states in preventing malign actors such as those identified in the investigation from interfering in the European Parliament elections in May—and beyond.”<div class="p63_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Caroline Hickson, regional director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s European Network, said: “The scale of this meddling by U.S. extremists is shocking, but sadly no surprise to us. Every day European societies face concerted attacks by outside forces seeking to impose reproductive coercion… This is utterly at odds with the European values of democracy and human rights.”<div class="p64_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“This is dark money coming into Europe to threaten human rights, and we’re not doing anything about it,” warned Neil Datta, secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development, describing the amounts of money involved as “staggering.”<div class="p65_68" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“It took the Christian right 30 years to get to where they are now in the White House,” he said. “We knew a similar effort was happening in Europe, but this should be a wake-up call that this is happening even faster and on a grander scale than many experts could have ever imagined.”</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/donald-trumps-trade-war-masks-darker-agenda-aiding-far-right-europe">https://www.alternet.org/donald-trumps-trade-war-masks-darker-agenda-aiding-far-right-europe</a>djt moron butthere are others with a more sophisticated agenda, however, which may be even more concerning since they seem to see Trump as a useful tool. One of those is former Trump campaign chief and senior adviser Steve Bannon, who has been out of the limelight these last few months. The last we heard Trump was calling him "sloppy Steve," but apparently Bannon hasn't lost his affection for the big guy in spite of that. Frankly, Trump may not have lost his for Bannon either -- as long as someone is willing to kiss his ring he'll invite them back into his circle before long.
Fareed Zakaria interviewed Bannon in Rome recently where he was enthusiastically cheering on the chaos of the recent Italian elections, implying that a new day of economic populism was surging across Europe like a Panzer division on methamphetamines. He was full of the usual contradictions and muddled philosophical compost, but he essentially made the case that right-wing nationalism is the wave of the future, while trying unconvincingly to claim that race, ethnicity and religion have nothing whatsoever to do with it. He sputtered his way through an unconvincing explanation about how Trump's massive tax cuts were the basis of Trump's economic populism:Europe is about a year ahead of the United States. . . . You see populist-nationalist movements with reform [here]. . . . You could begin to see the elements of Bernie Sanders coupled with the Trump movement that really becomes a dominant political force in American politics.It's hard to say what's going to happen in America but it's hard to imagine a successful marriage between Sanders' left-wing populism and Trump's right-wing nativism. The xenophobia and racism is a real sticking point.
In Europe there is certainly a rising right-wing movement that Bannon and his allies are closely observing, presumably for tips on how to use Trump to make it happen in America. For instance, Trump's newly confirmed ambassador to Germany, a former right-wing hit man and odious Twitter troll named Richard Grenell, has made one of the worst first impressions of any diplomat in history with this tweet:
There was widespread indignation from across the German political spectrum but Grenell refused to back down, basically telling the German people he was only following orders:Mind you, he was the only U.S. ambassador to do such a thing. Over the weekend Grenell went even further, giving an interview to Breitbart News in which he said he was “excited” by the rise of far-right parties in Europe and was prepared “to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders.” Breitbart reported:
Unafraid to name names, Mr Grenell expressed a deep respect and admiration for the young Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz saying, “Look, I think Sebastian Kurz is a rockstar. I’m a big fan.”Chancellor Kurz, leader of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), formed a coalition with the populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) earlier this year, and has been one of the strongest advocates for securing the European Union’s external border.
Not long after the formation of the coalition, Kurz stood up to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejecting the controversial European Union migrant quota system. He was also been [sic] a leading conservative on the topic of counter-Islamisation while Foreign Minister in the previous coalition government, advocating and helping to pass a ban on the full-face Islamic veil.The German government was not amused. According to Robert Mackay at The Intercept, it "demanded a formal explanation from the United States on Monday of what, exactly, the new U.S. ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell, meant when he promised to use his office to help far-right nationalists inspired by Donald Trump take power across Europe." Grenell tweeted that he did not plan to endorse anyone but stood by his claim that Europe, like America, is “experiencing an awakening from the silent majority — those who reject the elites and their bubble. Led by Trump.”No doubt America's European allies were thrilled to hear that, especially with the neo-fascist rumblings coming from Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and now Slovenian right-wing nationalist Janez Janša.The trade war is bad enough. White nationalist Trumpers stomping around Europe shooting off their mouths and giving support to far right politicians is making it worse.
In a detail nearly no one will notice, Trump just named a right-wing academic and filmmaker named Michael Pack, who is allied with Bannon, to lead the broadcasting arm of the U.S. government, a $685 million agency that oversees prominent outlets such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. What could possibly go wrong there?<a href="https://littlesis.org/org/232750-The_Atlantic_Bridge">https://littlesis.org/org/232750-The_Atlantic_Bridge</a><div class="relationship-section" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-right-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-image: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-top-color: initial;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="related_entity" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.3em; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 0.5em 0.5em 0.4em 0.3em;"><div class="related_entity_entity" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 20px; overflow: hidden;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/55402-Liam_Fox" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Liam Fox</a> UK Secretary for International Trade, Conservative MP for North Somerset</div><div class="related_entity_relationship" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.2em; padding-left: 0.5em;">• <a href="https://littlesis.org/relationships/1131306" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Founder (past)</a> </div></div></div><div class="relationship-section" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-right-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-image: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-top-color: initial;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="related_entity" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.3em; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 0.5em 0.5em 0.4em 0.3em;"><div class="related_entity_entity" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 20px; overflow: hidden;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/55778-Michael_Gove" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Gove</a> MP for Surrey Heath, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice</div><div class="related_entity_relationship" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.2em; padding-left: 0.5em;">• <a href="https://littlesis.org/relationships/1131311" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Advisory Council member (past)</a> </div></div></div><div class="relationship-section" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-right-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-image: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-top-color: initial;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="related_entity" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.3em; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 0.5em 0.5em 0.4em 0.3em;"><div class="related_entity_entity" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 20px; overflow: hidden;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/46761-Michael_Hintze" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Hintze</a> From Australia, hedge fund billionaire working in England</div><div class="related_entity_relationship" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.2em; padding-left: 0.5em;">• <a href="https://littlesis.org/relationships/1131318" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Advisory Council member (past)</a> </div></div></div><div class="relationship-section" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-right-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-image: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-top-color: initial;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="related_entity" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.3em; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 0.5em 0.5em 0.4em 0.3em;"><div class="related_entity_entity" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 20px; overflow: hidden;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/67986-Boris_Johnson" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Boris Johnson</a> UK Foreign Secretary, Former Mayor of London, Conservative politician</div><div class="related_entity_relationship" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.2em; padding-left: 0.5em;">• <a href="https://littlesis.org/relationships/1131322" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Board of Advisors (past)</a> </div></div></div><div class="subsection" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0.4em 0.4em 0.2em 0.2em;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Other Affiliations</div><div class="relationship-section" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-right-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-image: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-top-color: initial;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="related_entity" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.3em; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 0.5em 0.5em 0.4em 0.3em;"><div class="related_entity_entity" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 20px; overflow: hidden;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/org/49463-American_Legislative_Exchange_Council" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> conservative state legislators plus corporations</div><div class="related_entity_relationship" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.2em; padding-left: 0.5em;">• <a href="https://littlesis.org/relationships/1131319" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Special Partnership ('07→'11)</a> </div><div class="related_entity_relationship" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.2em; padding-left: 0.5em;">---</div><div class="related_entity_relationship" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.2em; padding-left: 0.5em;"><table class="table" id="entity-connections-table" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0px; width: 646px; max-width: 100%; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><thead style="box-sizing: border-box;"><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><th id="connected-entity-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; text-align: left; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: bottom; border-top: 0px; width: 193px; border-bottom: 1px solid lightgrey !important;">Recipient</th><th id="connection-stat-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; text-align: left; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: bottom; border-top: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid lightgrey !important;">Total</th><th id="connecting-entity-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; text-align: left; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: bottom; border-top: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid lightgrey !important;">Donors</th></tr></thead><tbody style="box-sizing: border-box;"><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td class="connected-entity-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); width: 193px;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/org/228848-Vote_Leave" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Vote Leave</a></td><td class="connection-stat-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);">$146,000</td><td class="connecting-entities-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/46761-Michael_Hintze" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Hintze</a></td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td class="connected-entity-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); width: 193px;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/53770-David_Davis" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">David Davis</a></td><td class="connection-stat-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);">$14,637</td><td class="connecting-entities-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/46761-Michael_Hintze" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Hintze</a></td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td class="connected-entity-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); width: 193px;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/55402-Liam_Fox" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Liam Fox</a></td><td class="connection-stat-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);">$13,303</td><td class="connecting-entities-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/46761-Michael_Hintze" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Hintze</a></td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td class="connected-entity-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); width: 193px;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/67986-Boris_Johnson" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Boris Johnson</a></td><td class="connection-stat-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);">$7,213</td><td class="connecting-entities-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/46761-Michael_Hintze" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Hintze</a></td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td class="connected-entity-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); width: 193px;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/163547-Theresa_May" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Theresa May</a></td><td class="connection-stat-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);">$1,752</td><td class="connecting-entities-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/46761-Michael_Hintze" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Hintze</a></td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td class="connected-entity-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); width: 193px;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/org/52794-Conservative_Party" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Conservative Party</a></td><td class="connection-stat-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);">$0</td><td class="connecting-entities-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/46761-Michael_Hintze" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Hintze</a></td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td class="connected-entity-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); width: 193px;"><a href="https://littlesis.org/org/228846-Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Global Warming Policy Foundation</a></td><td class="connection-stat-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);">$0</td><td class="connecting-entities-cell" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 8px; line-height: 1.42857; vertical-align: top; border-top: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221);"><a href="https://littlesis.org/person/46761-Michael_Hintze" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Hintze</a></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></div>Facebook has removed the page of violent fascist organisation Britain First -- which had posted videos comparing immigrants to animals and describes its leaders as “islamophobic and proud”.Two of Britain First’s leaders are currently in jail for racist hate crimes. Yet, Mastercard, Visa and American Express continue to process donations for the hate group.Racist groups can't operate without money.SumOfUs members have already pushed Paypal to stop processing funding for the violent French white supremacist group Génération Identitaire. Now, let’s make the credit card giants take responsibility and cut all ties with Britain First.Washington and New Delhi are having a mutual lovefest these days.Donald Trump is popular in India — where <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/11/15/indians-prefer-obama-to-trump-when-handling-world-affairs-a-new-survey-shows/?utm_term=.df0521eea087" target="blank" title="only 17 percent" style="text-decoration-line: none;">only 17 percent</a> of the population considers the president “intolerant,” compared to a global average of 65 percent — and he has warmly welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House. Both leaders are eager to <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2017/11/white-house-trump-and-modi-resolve-that-us-and-india-should-have-the-worlds-greatest-militaries/" target="blank" title="bump up" style="text-decoration-line: none;">bump up</a> bilateral security cooperation to the next level.Even Donald Trump Jr. is getting in on the act. He’s visiting India this week as part of the Trump organization’s myriad economic connections to the subcontinent. Indians, treating the president’s son as a representative of the White House, are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/18/dinner-with-donald-trump-jr-offered-to-indias-keen-investors" target="blank" title="paying a lot of rupees" style="text-decoration-line: none;">paying a lot of rupees</a> to gain access to his ear.Who can blame them? It’s virtually impossible to disaggregate the different components of the Trump megaplex.The U.S.-India love connection, which predates Trump, is based on mutual economic interest and similar concerns about Pakistan and China. But Trump and Modi bring something else to the equation. Both leaders share a personalistic, business-friendly governing style best captured by <a href="https://www.narendramodi.in/minimum-government-maximum-governance-3162" target="blank" title="Modi’s phrase" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Modi’s phrase</a> “minimum government, maximum governance.”But there’s another, underlying similarity. Trump is borrowing a page from Modi’s book on how to advance majoritarian politics in a multiethnic country.“Majoritarianism insists on different tiers of citizenship,” <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/01/18/rohingya-murderous-majorities/" target="blank" title="writes" style="text-decoration-line: none;">writes</a> Mukul Kesavan in The New York Review of Books. “Members of the majority faith and culture are viewed as the nation’s true citizens. The rest are courtesy citizens, guests of the majority, expected to behave well and deferentially.”This kind of majoritarianism is most prominently on display these days in Myanmar — where the government considers the Rohingya minority to be foreigners, not citizens at all, and thus has no problem expelling them (or, in some cases, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/rohingya-crisis-myanmar-military-admits-killings-180111102253768.html" target="blank" title="killing them" style="text-decoration-line: none;">killing them</a>). Majoritarianism has also been a major feature of political life in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.In India, meanwhile, Modi heads a right-wing nationalist party that believes that the country is essentially Hindu with no particular obligation to guarantee minority rights. Indeed, several <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-40402021" target="blank" title="disturbing examples of mob rule" style="text-decoration-line: none;">disturbing examples of mob rule</a> have taken place during Modi’s tenure, and the government has both explicitly and through various dog whistles <a href="https://theprint.in/2018/01/24/nearly-four-years-rule-something-like-modi-ism/" target="blank" title="appealed to Hindus" style="text-decoration-line: none;">appealed to Hindus</a> over (and against) Muslims.As Kesavan points out, majoritarianism is not simply Islamophobia — in India or Myanmar or anywhere else.<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Majoritarian politics results from the patiently constructed self-image of an aggrieved, besieged majority that believes itself to be long-suffering and refuses to suffer in silence anymore. The cultivation of this sense of injury is the necessary precondition for the lynchings, pogroms, and ethnic cleansing that invariably follow.</blockquote>The besieged majority: What better way of capturing the appeal of Trumpism in the United States? In the looking-glass world of 2018, Donald Trump, too, has a dream: to make white people, regardless of the contents of their character, once again supreme.Of course, majoritarianism looks a little different in the United States than in South Asia. But this malign philosophy helps explain not only some political dynamics in America, but also the pattern of friendships that Trump has developed around the world.Deplorables vs. Dreamers?The underlying message of “Make America Great Again” is to return the country to an age of majoritarian politics, when white people controlled everything on behalf of white people and when everyone else was accorded second-class citizenship.After the victories of the civil rights movement and other social movements, some white people have acquired the mentality of a besieged majority: They fear that they will lose their remaining privileges, like members of an elite frequent flyer program forced to sit back in economy class. Perhaps only a minority of white people — mostly white men — feel like a besieged majority. But for the next decade or so, before demographics decisively downgrade white status, this group will continue to flex its political muscle.Trump’s appeals to this group follow in a sordid American tradition of racist and anti-immigrant movements such as the Know-Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan. The conflicts that swept through the United States in the 19th and early 20th century resembled, avant la lettre, the communal strife that accompanied the consolidation of modern nations in South Asia. America narrowly avoided partition in the 1860s, but not the “lynchings, pogroms, and ethnic cleansing” of majoritarian politics that followed. Even the mass population transfers that took place between India and Pakistan could be detected in the Great Migration of African Africans to the North beginning in the Jim Crow period.Today, Trump has cleverly given the “besieged majority” a platform on immigration, economic policy, and the “history” question. On the economy, Trump promised to revive sunset industries that have traditionally been white bastions, such as coal in Appalachia and manufacturing in the Midwest. On history, Trump <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/347589-trump-on-removing-confederate-statues-theyre-trying-to-take-away-our" target="blank" title="has argued" style="text-decoration-line: none;">has argued</a> that by removing the statues of Confederate heroes, “they’re trying to take away our culture.” The “our” is a telling touch, since it could refer equally to the U.S. or to white people.The immigration question in particular continues to bedevil the administration and Congress. To get a deal that would allow the Dreamers — young people brought to the United States as children who remain undocumented — liberals have even been willing to approve funding for Trump’s famous wall along the border with Mexico. Basically, the Democratic Party was poised to pay a ransom of almost $14,000 a head to save the Dreamers (that’s $25 billion for the wall in exchange for 1.8 million Dreamers staying in the United States).Trump, however, said no, despite all sorts of assurances that he cares very deeply about the Dreamers. You’d think that the president would be concerned about the public opinion polls that show a large majority of Americans — <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/368959-poll-most-americans-support-daca" target="blank" title="around 70 percent" style="text-decoration-line: none;">around 70 percent</a> — in favor of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.But that’s the problem with a president who has such low favorability ratings. He doesn’t need to compromise to maintain his base of support because that base is so narrow in the first place. Only 18 percent of Americans <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nation-tracker-americans-weigh-in-on-trump-immigration-remarks-first-year-in-office/" target="blank" title="support Trump unconditionally" style="text-decoration-line: none;">support Trump unconditionally</a>, according to a recent CBS poll, and another 23 percent do so only when he delivers what they want.Here, then, is the most dangerous consequence of a president embracing majoritarian views held by only a minority of the majority. Trump sees no reason to reach beyond his base. As The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-trump-to-the-dreamers-drop-dead/2018/02/17/26799300-1320-11e8-8ea1-c1d91fcec3fe_story.html?utm_term=.fed76803cbe0" target="blank" title="put it" style="text-decoration-line: none;">put it</a>:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The president, along with Mr. McConnell, is intent on a blame game, not a solution. He suggested no compromises and engaged in no negotiations, preferring to stick with maximalist demands. Despite barely mentioning it as a candidate, Mr. Trump has not budged from insisting on a plan to reduce annual legal immigrants to the United States by hundreds of thousands, to the lowest level in decades.</blockquote>The last line contains the kicker — the population transfer that Trump yearns to orchestrate.In addition to deporting the Dreamers, the undocumented, and those with temporary protected status like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/us/salvadorans-tps-end.html" target="blank" title="Salvadorans" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Salvadorans</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/us/haitians-temporary-status.html" target="blank" title="Haitians" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Haitians</a>, Trump wants to keep out as many folks from “shithole” countries as he can. If he gets his way, the administration is looking to “transfer” several million people out of the country, nearly comparable to the population transfer out of India at the time of partition in 1947. Going the other way in Trump’s dream world would be a trickle of Norwegians and other racially acceptable immigrants.Majoritarians of a FeatherTrump and Modi are only two of the new global leaders who have come to the forefront championing the interests of the “besieged majority.”Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia by going after the Chechens, whom he blamed for a series of <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/moscow-bombings-mikhail-trepashkin-and-putin" target="blank" title="suspicious apartment building bombings" style="text-decoration-line: none;">suspicious apartment building bombings</a>. Putin has since taken aim at all manner of minorities, from the <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/0701/Russia-s-majoritarian-crackdown-on-minorities-rolls-on-with-new-anti-gay-law" target="blank" title="LGBTQ community" style="text-decoration-line: none;">LGBTQ community</a> to the liberals that oppose his concentration of power. He’s emphasized that traditional values serve as a bulwark against what <a href="https://www.pravmir.com/conservatism-protects-russia-from-aggressive-minorities-putin/" target="blank" title="he’s called" style="text-decoration-line: none;">he’s called</a> “aggressive minorities.”Benjamin Netanyahu has driven Israel into a corner by rejecting Palestinian (and international) demands for a two-state solution. The Jewish majority is fast on its way to becoming a minority within Israel. Once constituting 87 percent of the population in 1950, Jews are now <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-israel-the-demographic-issue-gains-resonance/" target="blank" title="close to parity" style="text-decoration-line: none;">close to parity</a> with Arabs if you count everyone in the Occupied Territories and Gaza (6.1 million Jews and 5.8 million Arabs). Yet Netanyahu continues to advocate on behalf of the “besieged majority” by supporting illegal settlements, rejoicing in the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and kowtowing to the country’s religious right.Saudi Arabia, a Sunni majority country, is also home to a large Shiite minority of about 10 percent of the population. Riyadh has systematically discriminated against this minority — in part because of fears of its links to Iran. The Saudi government has imprisoned and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/death-sentences-of-shiites-point-to-limits-of-saudi-reforms.html" target="blank" title="executed" style="text-decoration-line: none;">executed</a> leading members of the community and has even effectively <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/is-saudi-arabia-waging-war-on-its-shiite-minority/a-40045513" target="blank" title="waged war" style="text-decoration-line: none;">waged war</a> against Shi’ites in the city of Awamiya.I’ve chosen these three countries because Donald Trump has formed strong bonds with Putin, Netanyahu, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But there’s no shortage of other leaders that fall into this category — Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. They all aspire to follow the South Asian example.Majoritarianism has morphed into one of the 21st century’s greatest threats. The “tyranny of the majority” that America’s founding fathers warned about has become a reality thanks to the failure of left liberalism to sell multiculturalism more effectively.Majoritarianism has evolved into a knee-jerk response to what globalization offers, for better or worse — from increased trade and greater flows of immigrants and refugees to the freer exchange of information behind both rapid technological transformation and the demands of transnational human rights movements. Nationalism, a disguise that the majority dons to make their demands somehow more palatable, is a bunker that a country can crawl into to survive the high winds of change.The institutions that stand against the majoritarians are old and in need of some serious overhaul.The United Nations was formed in the aftermath of World War II. The European Union and other regional organizations were in part responses to the Cold War. The international financial institutions were likewise forged in a different era. Meanwhile, the institutions that form the nervous system of our brave new world, like Facebook and Twitter and Google and Amazon, view multiculturalism as a way to maximize profit, like those <a href="https://innovativedesignhistory.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/the-united-colors-of-benetton-campaign-history/" target="blank" title="old “United Colors of Benetton” ads" style="text-decoration-line: none;">old “United Colors of Benetton” ads</a> that featured a multicultural array of models that made the clothes seem chic and edgy. At least Benetton was willing to ruffle some feathers with its campaign.Combatting majoritarianism requires a new campaign and new institutions. That’s my dream: a world that recognizes that multiculturalism isn’t just cool but essential to democratic politics, strong economies, and healthy societies that don’t tear themselves apart from the inside.Where, oh where has this internationalism gone?<div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style=""><div class="bio-new body_world" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); width: 630px; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both;"><div class="author-bio" style="">John Feffer is the director of <a href="http://fpif.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Foreign Policy In Focus</a> at the Institute for Policy Studies.</div></div>=see steven miller
When TV news viewers saw Trump adviser Stephen Miller accuse Jim Acosta of harboring a “cosmopolitan bias” during Wednesday’s news conference, they might have wondered whether he was accusing the CNN White House reporter of an excessive fondness for the cocktail made famous on “Sex and the City.” It’s a term that’s seldom been heard in American political discourse. But to supporters of the Miller-Bannon worldview, it was a cause for celebration. Breitbart, where Steve Bannon reigned before becoming Trump’s chief political strategist, trumpeted Miller’s “evisceration” of Acosta and put the term in its headline. So did white nationalist Richard Spencer, who hailed Miller’s dust-up with Acosta as “a triumph.”Why does it matter? Because it reflects a central premise of one key element of President Donald Trump’s constituency—a premise with a dark past and an unsettling present.So what is a “cosmopolitan”? It’s a cousin to “elitist,” but with a more sinister undertone. It’s a way of branding people or movements that are unmoored to the traditions and beliefs of a nation, and identify more with like-minded people regardless of their nationality. (In this sense, the revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine might have been an early American cosmopolitan, when he declared: “The world is my country; all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”). In the eyes of their foes, “cosmopolitans” tend to cluster in the universities, the arts and in urban centers, where familiarity with diversity makes for a high comfort level with “untraditional” ideas and lives.For a nationalist, these are fighting words. Your country is your country; your fellow citizens are your brethren; and your country’s traditions—religious and otherwise— should be yours. A nation whose people—especially influential people—develop other ties undermine national strength, and must be repudiated.
One reason why “cosmopolitan” is an unnerving term is that it was the key to an attempt by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to purge the culture of dissident voices. In a 1946 speech, he deplored works in which “the positive Soviet hero is derided and inferior before all things foreign and cosmopolitanism that we all fought against from the time of Lenin, characteristic of the political leftovers, is many times applauded.” It was part of a yearslong campaigned aimed at writers, theater critics, scientists and others who were connected with “bourgeois Western influences.” Not so incidentally, many of these “cosmopolitans” were Jewish, and official Soviet propaganda for a time devoted significant energy into “unmasking” the Jewish identities of writers who published under pseudonyms.
What makes this history relevant is that, all across Europe, nationalist political figures are still making the same kinds of arguments—usually but not always stripped of blatant anti-Semitism—to constrict the flow of ideas and the boundaries of free political expression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, has more and more embraced this idea that unpatriotic forces threaten the nation. As Foreign Policy put it in 2014:
“The new theme of Russian politics [is] the conflation of loyalty to the Kremlin with patriotism. It says much that dissidents at home, from journalists failing to toe the official line to protesters on the streets, are castigated either as outright ‘foreign agents’ (every movement, charity, or organization accepting foreign money must register itself as such) or else as unknowing victims and vectors of external contamination — contamination, that is, from the West, whose cosmopolitanism and immorality Putin has come to see as an increasing threat to Russia’s identity.”That same notion has characterized the politics of the former Soviet bloc. In Hungary, the president of its Parliament has repeatedly denounced his political opponents as “people without a country,” loyal only to values like freedom, contemptuous of tradition and religion. Its prime minister, Viktor Orban, has openly advocated for “illiberal democracy” and launched a campaign against the Jewish financier and philanthropist George Soros. In Poland, the reigning Law and Justice Party sees the nation besieged by dangerous influences. An article last year in World Press succinctly summarized the situation:“In the party’s propaganda the country is in ruins, its economy robbed blind by international capital, while the foreign ownership of some newspapers and other types of mass media outlets made Poland into a colony, infecting Poles’ minds with rootless cosmopolitanism. … What is at stake is Polish Christian national values that must be protected at all cost, namely the linguistic and religious homogeneity of the country. Only Poles should reside in Poland, and a proper Pole must be a Polish-speaking Catholic.”In one form or another, such sentiments have been at play in the politics of the Netherlands, Germany, France, and (in less blatant form) in the Brexit vote in Great Britain last year.And they undergirded much of Trump’s campaign. One of its central premises was that “globalists,” regardless of ideology or party, were undermining American interests—by bringing low-skilled workers to our shores, by building factories in other lands, by letting international financial institutions grow rich while hollowing out American cities and towns.“We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be—always—America First.”To be clear: Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller would angrily wave away any suggestion that they are echoing the sentiments of anti-democratic political movements, much less anti-Semitic dog whistles. But there is no evading the unhappy reality that to label someone a “cosmopolitan” carries with it a clear implication that there is something less patriotic, less loyal … someone who is not a “real American.”So maybe the next time Miller wants to duel with an obstreperous reporter, he might consider going back to “elitist”—that’s a real homegrown insult.<a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/03/the-ugly-history-of-stephen-millers-cosmopolitan-epithet-215454">http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/03/the-ugly-history-of-stephen-millers-cosmopolitan-epithet-215454</a>century of spin miller dinan10. Cameron and the Neo-cons 161
...Atlantic PartnershipThe Atlantic Partnership is an elite policy planning group set up 
to foster closer relations between the US and Europe, though its 
main impetus in Europe seems to have come from pro-US forces in 
the UK including those with close links to NATO and other 
Atlanticist groups. According to its own account:Atlantic Partnership is a bipartisan initiative that aims to 
foster debate about the relationship between America and Europe 
while promoting the beneﬁts of a strong and stable Atlantic 
community of nations.27
 Cameron and the Neo-cons 169Founded by Conservative Party leader Michael Howard in 2001, AP 
‘seeks to inﬂuence the transatlantic debate through sought-after 
breakfast meetings, occasional conferences and the media 
activities of our impressive stable of chairmen, vice-chairmen, 
patrons and panelists’. Peter Gummer and Michael Howard are on its 
executive. Amongst its directors is one of Cameron’s close aides, 
Catherine Fall, who previously ran Michael Howard’s Business 
Liaison Unit and whomet Mr Cameron at Oxford and worked with Mr Osborne in the 
research department. An identical twin, she is beautiful and 
enigmatic, preferring to keep out of the limelight. The daughter 
of a former ambassador, she concentrates on making sure Mr Cameron 
is always well briefed and on time and ensures he keeps in touch 
with MPs, donors and dignitaries. She developed her skills working 
in Michael Howard’s office and as director of the think tank The 
Atlantic Partnership.28
Atlantic Bridge
The Atlantic Bridge is yet another conservative Atlanticist group 
which aims to ‘establish, and then develop rapidly, a strong, 
well-positioned, network of like-minded conservatives in politics, 
business, journalism and academe on both sides of the Atlantic’. 
The aim is to build ‘on the common thinking which underpins the 
natural trans-Atlantic alliance between the UK and the USA’.29 In essence the Bridge is an elite conservative dining and 
networking club-cum-think tank. Amongst its funders is the 
pharmaceutical giant Pﬁzer and the project is run by Liam Fox MP. 
The researcher on the project was Gabrielle Bertin – former equity 
trader at BNP Paribas who went on to become an adviser to David 
Cameron. US involvement comes in the form of Clark S. Judge, 
managing director of PR ﬁrm the White House Writers Group, and 
Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, a US free market think 
tank dedicated to privatising health care.The connections to the 
free market and pro-US networks are many and varied and the views 
adopted and policies promoted are distinctively free market 
fundamentalist, coupled with Euroscepticism and a neo-conservative 
devotion to US imperial interests. The extent of the admiration 
for the neo-conservatives is clear in the public statements of 
Cameron’s aides. In an article in February 2004, George Osborne 
confessed to being a ‘fan’ of George Bush:
 170 A Century of SpinI’m a signed-up, card-carrying Bush fan. I have been ever since I 
met him when he was governor of Texas… He found an answer to this 
question: what is the Right for in the age of Clinton–Blair?30Former Conservative MP Matthew Parris writes:Listen to this: ‘England is going back to sleep. And little wonder 
when we’re told every day by sages in our national media that the 
War on Terror is misconceived, that the terrorist threat is 
exaggerated, that what we’ve done in the last three  years has 
only made matters worse, and that the Iraq war was a ghastly 
mistake that is best forgotten... There are few voices to be heard 
putting the other view: that the terrorists pose a fundamental 
threat to our way of life, that ﬁght them we must, that Iraq was 
part of that ﬁght and that we are winning.’‘This is taken’, Parris continues, ‘from an article that appeared 
inThe Spectator  only 22 months ago [March 2004]. Its author did not realise that 
within little more than a year he and his friend David Cameron 
would be the two most powerful ﬁgures in the Conservative Party. 
Or that in time they would be odds-on to form the next 
government.’ As Parris concludes, ‘The thought, sentiment and 
fervour behind his article are of a clever, thoughtful 
neoconserva-tive: more Wolfowitz than Bush, more egg-head than 
jar-head, but neo-con nonetheless.’31Like Osborne, Cameron aide Michael Gove is a fan of Bush and an 
enthusiast for Operation Iraqi Freedom. ‘If you had to identify 
what you might call Michael’s abiding passion in politics’, argues 
Matthew Parris, ‘you would ﬁnd it in a consistent, intelligent 
rage against what he would see as the unwitting appeasement of 
wicked and violent men by ﬂabby, woolly-minded liberals. Now in 
Parliament, he is part of the small group of Tories, somewhat 
mis-named the Notting Hill Set, in control of the higher brain 
functions of that great and ancient political beast, the 
Conservative Party.’32To what extent Cameron shares these views is a little difﬁcult to 
determine given the carefully manicured nature of most of his 
public pronouncements. But we can tell something about his views 
from his career trajectory, starting with his job as a spin doctor 
for Michael Green’s Carlton Communications.Cameron’s reputation 
for honesty and trustworthiness as a spin doctor was, however, not 
high. Jeff Randall, the journalist who was appointed to the BBC to 
turn its coverage decisively in a pro-business direction, said he 
would not trust Mr Cameron ‘with my daughter’s pocket money’.....<a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/its-not-just-trump-toxic-right-wing-nationalism-rising-across-planet">http://www.alternet.org/world/its-not-just-trump-toxic-right-wing-nationalism-rising-across-planet</a>...With surprising speed and simultaneity, a new generation of populist leaders emerged from the margins of nominally democratic nations to win power.  In doing so, they gave voice, often in virulent fashion, to public concerns about the social costs of globalization.Even in societies as disparate as the affluent United States and the impoverished Philippines, similarly violent strains of populist rhetoric carried two unlikely candidates from the political margins to the presidency. On opposite sides of the Pacific, these outsider campaigns were framed by lurid calls for violence and even murder.As his insurgent crusade gained momentum, billionaire Donald Trump moved beyond his repeated promises to fight Islamic terror with torture and brutal bombing by also advocating the murder of women and children. “The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he <a href="http://time.com/4655992/donald-trump-spicer-american-terrorists/" style="text-decoration: none;">told</a> Fox News. “They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.”At the same time, campaigning in the Philippines on a law-and-order program of his own, Rodrigo Duterte, then mayor of a remote provincial city, swore that he would kill drug dealers across the nation, sparing nothing in the way of violent imagery. “If by chance that God will place me [in the presidency],” he <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/03/01/license-kill/philippine-police-killings-dutertes-war-drugs" style="text-decoration: none;">promised</a> in launching his campaign, “watch out because the 1,000 [people executed while he was a mayor] will become 100,000. You will see the fish in Manila Bay getting fat. That is where I will dump you.”The rise of these political soulmates and populist strongmen not only resonated deeply in their political cultures, but also reflected global trends that made their bloodstained rhetoric paradigmatic of our present moment. After a post-Cold War quarter-century of globalization, displaced workers around the world began mobilizing angrily to oppose an economic order that had made life so good for transnational corporations and social elites.Between 1999 and 2011, for instance, Chinese imports had eliminated 2.4 million American jobs, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/business/economy/more-wealth-more-jobs-but-not-for-everyone-what-fuels-the-backlash-on-trade.html" style="text-decoration: none;">closing</a> furniture manufacturers in North Carolina, factories that produced glass in Ohio, and auto parts and steel companies across the Midwest. As a range of nations worldwide reacted to such realities by imposing a combined 2,100 restrictions on imports to staunch similar job losses, world trade actually started to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/upshot/a-little-noticed-fact-about-trade-its-no-longer-rising.html" style="text-decoration: none;">slow down</a> without a major recession for the first time since 1945.The Bloodstained History of PopulismAcross Europe, hyper-nationalist right-wing parties like the French National Front, the Alternative for Germany, and the UK Independence Party <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/05/world/europe/populism-in-age-of-trump.html" style="text-decoration: none;">won over voters</a> by cultivating nativist, especially anti-Islamic, responses to globalization. Simultaneously, a generation of populist demagogues either held, gained, or threatened to take power in democracies around the world: Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Erdogan in Turkey, Donald Trump in the U.S., Narendra Modi in India, Prabowo Subianto in Indonesia, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, among others.Indian essayist Pankaj Mishra recently <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2016-10-17/globalization-rage" style="text-decoration: none;">summed</a> up their successes this way: “Demagogues are still emerging, in the West and outside it, as the promise of prosperity collides with massive disparities of wealth, power, education, and status.” The Philippine economy offered typically grim news on this score.  It <a href="http://www.philstar.com/business/2016/01/06/1539645/philippine-economy-and-benigno-aquino-iiis-presidency-2010-2016" style="text-decoration: none;">grew</a> by an impressive 6% annually in the six years before Duterte launched his presidential campaign, even as a staggering 26 million poor Filipinos <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/775062/12m-filipinos-living-in-extreme-poverty" style="text-decoration: none;">struggled</a> to survive on a dollar a day.  In those years, just 40 elite Filipino families <a href="http://business.inquirer.net/110413/philippines-elite-swallow-countrys-new-wealth" style="text-decoration: none;">grabbed</a> an estimated 76% of all the wealth this growth produced.Scholar Michael Lee <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00335630601080385?journalCode=rqjs20" style="text-decoration: none;">suggests</a> that a populist leader succeeds by rhetorically defining his or her national community by both its supposedly “shared characteristics” and its inevitable common “enemy,” whether Mexican “rapists” or Muslim refugees, much as the Nazis created a powerful sense of national selfhood by excluding certain groups by “blood.” In addition, he argues, such movements share the desire for an “apocalyptic confrontation” through a final “mythic battle” as “the vehicle to revolutionary change.”Although scholars like Lee emphasize the ways in which populist demagogues rely on violent rhetoric for their success, they tend to focus less on another crucial aspect of such populists globally: actual violence. These movements might still be in their (relatively) benign phase in the United States and Europe, but in less developed democracies around the world populist leaders haven’t hesitated to inscribe their newfound power on the battered bodies of their victims.For more than a decade, for instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin, a reasonable candidate for sparking this wave of populism, has demonstrated his famously <a href="https://welltempered.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/vladimir-putin-barechested.jpg" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">bare-chested</a> version of power politics by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/world/europe/moscow-kremlin-silence-critics-poison.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">ensuring</a> that opponents and critics meet grim ends under “mysterious” circumstances.  These include the lethal spritz of polonium 210 that killed Russian secret police defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006; the shooting of journalist and Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment that same year; a dose of rare Himalayan plant poison for banker and Putin nemesis Alexander Perepilichny in London in 2012; a fusillade that felled opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow in 2015; and four <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/world/europe/a-russian-critic-of-putin-is-assassinated-in-ukraine.html" style="text-decoration: none;">fatal bullets</a> this March for refugee whistleblower Denis Voronenkov on a Kiev sidewalk, which Ukraine has denounced as “an act of state terrorism.”As an Islamist populist, Turkish president Recep Erdogan has projected his power through a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/world/europe/un-turkey-kurds-human-rights-abuses.html" style="text-decoration: none;">bloody repression</a> of, and a new war with, the country’s Kurdish minority. He portrays the Kurds as a cancer within the country’s body politic whose identity must be extinguished, much as his forebears rid themselves of the Armenians.  In addition, since mid-2016, he’s overseen a <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/erdogans-purge-50000-ousted-arrested-or-suspended-inturkey/article30987001/" style="text-decoration: none;">wholesale purge</a> of 50,000 officials, journalists, teachers, and military officers in the aftermath of a failed coup, and in a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/26/europe/turkey-coup-attempt-aftermath/" style="text-decoration: none;">brutal round</a> of torture and rape filled Turkish prisons to the brim.<div class="in_content_ad_container ad_13" style="width: 300px; height: 250px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); float: left; margin: 0px 15px 15px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="div-gpt-ad-1420251685282-1" data-google-query-id="CJylmNfkiNMCFZOSYgodh-wDrg" style="width: 300px; height: 250px;"><div id="google_ads_iframe/1010624/New_AlterNet_300x250_STORY_EMBED_2_0container" style="border: 0pt none;"></div></div></div>




In 2014, retired general Prabowo Subianto nearly won Indonesia’s presidency with a populist <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/uk-indonesia-election-prabowo-idUSKBN0FB03F20140706" style="text-decoration: none;">campaign</a> of “strength and order.”  In fact, Prabowo’s military career had long been steeped in such violence.  In 1998, when the authoritarian regime of his father-in-law Suharto was at the brink of collapse, Prabowo, then commander of the Kopassus Rangers, staged the kidnapping-disappearance of a dozen student activists, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/07/22/indonesia-sliding-toward-economic-social-chaos/d94b2234-4616-4b50-ba65-d6e982155b9c/?utm_term=.3cd5e28dd0c1" style="text-decoration: none;">savage rape</a> of 168 Chinese women (acts meant to incite racial violence), and the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0742538273/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" style="text-decoration: none;">burning</a> of 43 shopping malls and 5,109 buildings in Jakarta, the country’s capital, that left more than 1,000 dead.During his first months in power, newly elected Philippine President Duterte waged his highly publicized war on the drug trade in city slums by loosing the police and vigilantes nationwide in a campaign already marked, in its first six months, by at least <a href="https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/philippines0317_web_1.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">7,000 extrajudicial killings</a>. The bodies of his victims were regularly dumped on Manila’s streets as warnings to others and as down payments on Duterte’s promises of a new, orderly country.And he wasn’t the first populist in Asia to take such a path either.  In 2003, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched his “red shirt” movement as a war on his country’s rampant methamphetamine abuse. In just three months under Thaksin’s rule, the police carried out 2,275 <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/thailand0704/thailand0704.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">extrajudicial killings</a> of suspected drug dealers and users, often <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/08/world/a-wave-of-drug-killings-is-linked-to-thai-police.html" style="text-decoration: none;">leaving</a> the bodies where they fell as a twisted tribute to his power.Such examples of populist political carnage and the likelihood of more to come -- including what Donald Trump’s presidency might have in store -- raise certain questions: Just what dynamics lie behind the urge toward violence that seems to propel such movements? Why does the virulent campaign rhetoric of populist political movements so often morph into actual violence once a populist wins power?  And why is that violence invariably aimed at enemies believed to threaten the imagined integrity of the national community?In their compulsion to “protect” the nation from what are seen as pernicious alien influences, such populist movements are defined by their need for enemies.  That need, in turn, infuses them with an almost uncontrollable compulsion for conflict that transcends actual threats or rational political programs.To give this troubling trend its political due, it’s necessary to understand how, at a particular moment in history, global forces have produced a generation of populist leaders with such potential compulsions. And at the moment, there may be no better example to look to than the Philippines.During its last half-century of bloodstained elections, two populists, Ferdinand Marcos and Rodrigo Duterte, won exceptional power by combining the high politics of diplomacy with the low politics of performative violence, scattering corpses scarred by their signature brutality as if they were so many political pamphlets. A quick look at this history offers us an unsettling glimpse of America’s possible political future.Populism in the Philippines: the Marcos EraAlthough now remembered mainly as a “kleptocrat” who plundered his country and enriched himself with shameless abandon (epitomized by the discovery that his wife possessed 3,000 pairs of shoes), Ferdinand Marcos was, in fact, a brilliant populist, thoroughly skilled in the symbolic uses of violence.As his legal term as president came to an end in 1972, Marcos -- who, like many populists, saw himself as chosen by destiny to save his people from perdition -- used the military to declare martial law.  He then <a href="http://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/07/26/A-longtime-political-opponent-of-Philippine-president-Ferdinand-Marcos/2797428040000/" style="text-decoration: none;">jailed 50,000</a> opponents, including the senators who had blocked his favored legislation and the gossip columnists who had mocked his wife’s pretensions. The first months of his dictatorship actually lacked any official violence. Then, just before dawn on January 15, 1973, Constabulary officers read a presidential execution order and strapped Lim Seng, an overseas Chinese heroin manufacturer, to a post at a Manila military camp. As a battery of press photographers stood by, an eight-man firing squad raised their rifles. Replayed endlessly on television and in movie theaters, the dramatic footage of bullets <a href="http://opinion.inquirer.net/95625/lim-seng-remembered" style="text-decoration: none;">ripping open</a> the victim’s chest was clearly meant to be a vivid display of the new dictator’s power, as well as an appeal to his country’s ingrained anti-Chinese racism. Lim Seng would be the only victim legally executed in the 14 years of the Marcos dictatorship. Extra-judicial killings were another matter, however. Marcos made clever use of the massive U.S. military bases near Manila to win continuing support for his authoritarian (and increasingly bloody) rule from three successive American administrations, even effectively neutralizing President Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy. After a decade of dictatorship, however, the economy began to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/03/business/the-philippines-uncertain-future.html" style="text-decoration: none;">collapse</a> from a too-heavy dose of “crony capitalism” and the political opposition started to challenge Marcos’s self-image as destiny’s chosen one.To either sate or subdue an increasingly restive population, he soon resorted to escalating raw violence. His security squads conducted what were referred to as “salvagings,” more than 2,500 of them (or 77% of the <a href="http://www.manilatimes.net/3257-fact-checking-the-marcos-killings-1975-1985/255735/" style="text-decoration: none;">3,257 extrajudicial killings</a> during his 14-year dictatorship).  Bodies scarred by torture were regularly abandoned in public plazas or at busy intersections so passers-by could read the transcript of terror in their stigmata. In the capital, Manila, with only 4,000 police for six million residents, the Marcos regime also deputized hundreds of “secret marshals” responsible for more than 30 shoot-on-sight fatalities during May 1985, the program’s first month, alone.Yet the impact of Marcos’s version of populist violence proved mutable -- effective at the start of martial law when people yearned for order and counterproductive at its close when Filipinos again longed for freedom. That shift in sentiment soon led to his downfall in the first of the dramatic “people power” revolutions that would challenge autocratic regimes from Beijing to Berlin.Populism in the Philippines: Duterte’s ViolenceRodrigo Duterte, the son of a provincial governor, initially pursued a career as the mayor of Davao City, a site of endemic violence that left a lasting imprint on his political persona.In 1984, after the communist New People’s Army made Davao its testing ground for urban guerilla warfare, the city’s murders soared, doubling to 800, including the assassination of 150 policemen. To check the communists, who took over part of the city, the military <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/04/world/right-wing-vigilantes-spreading-in-philippines.html?pagewanted=1" style="text-decoration: none;">mobilized</a> criminals and ex-communists as death squad vigilantes in a lethal counterterror campaign. When I visited Davao in 1987 to investigate death squad killings, that remote southern city already had an unforgettable air of desolation and hopelessness.It was in this context of rising national and local extrajudicial slaughter that the 33-year old Rodrigo Duterte launched his political career as the elected mayor of Davao City.  That was in 1988, the first of seven terms that would keep him in office, on and off, for another 21 years until he won the country’s presidency in 2016. His first campaign was hotly contested and he barely beat his rivals, taking only 26% of the vote.Around 1996, he reportedly mobilized his own vigilante group, the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/when-a-populist-demagogue-takes-power" style="text-decoration: none;">Davao Death Squad</a>.  It would be responsible for many of the city’s 814 extrajudicial killings over the next decade, as victims were dumped on city streets with faces <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/07/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-philippines-drugs-killings.html?r=0" style="text-decoration: none;">wrapped bizarrely</a> in packing tape. Duterte himself may have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-philippines-president-strongman.html" style="text-decoration: none;">killed</a> one or more of the squad’s victims.  Apart from liquidating criminals, the Davao Death Squad also conveniently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-philippines-president-strongman.html" style="text-decoration: none;">eliminated</a> the mayor’s political rivals.Campaigning for president in 2016, Duterte would proudly point to the killings in Davao City and <a href="http://time.com/4462352/rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-drugs-philippines-killing/" style="text-decoration: none;">promise</a> a drug war that would murder 100,000 Filipinos if necessary. In doing so, he was also drawing on historical resonances from the Marcos era that lent some political depth to his violent rhetoric. By specifically praising Marcos, promising to finally <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-3729122/Philippines-Marcos-unfit-heros-burial-says-historical-group.html" style="text-decoration: none;">bury</a> his body in the National Heroes Cemetery in Manila, and <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/828171/duterte-bongbong-marcos-could-be-our-new-vp" style="text-decoration: none;">supporting</a> Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for vice president, Duterte identified himself with a political lineage of populist strongmen epitomized by the old dictator at a time when desperate Filipinos were looking for new hope of a decent life.On taking office, President Duterte promptly started his promised anti-drug campaign and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/philippines0317_web_1.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">dead bodies</a> became commonplace sights on city streets nationwide, sometimes accompanied by a crude cardboard sign reading “I am a pusher,” or simply with their faces wrapped in the by-now trademark <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-drugs-duterte-idUSKCN11L16K" style="text-decoration: none;">packing tape</a> used by the Davao Death Squad. Although Human Rights Watch would <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/12/philippines-duterte-unleashes-rights-calamity" style="text-decoration: none;">declare</a> his drug war a “calamity,” a resounding 85% of Filipinos <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-duterte-poll-idUSKBN1480HB" style="text-decoration: none;">surveyed</a> were “satisfied,” apparently seeing each body sprawled on a city street as another testament to the president’s promise of order.At the same time, like Marcos, Duterte deployed a new style of diplomacy as part of his populist reach for unrestrained power. Amid rising tensions in the South China Sea between Beijing and Washington, he improved his country’s bargaining position by distancing himself from the Philippines’ classic alliance with the United States. At the 2016 ASEAN conference, reacting to Barack Obama’s criticism of his drug war, he <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-08/rodrigo-duterte-was-directing-comment-at-reporters-not-obama/7828078" style="text-decoration: none;">said bluntly</a> of the American president, “Your mother’s a whore.”A month later during a state visit to Beijing, Duterte publicly <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-philippines-us-20161020-snap-story.html" style="text-decoration: none;">proclaimed</a> “separation from the United States.’’ By setting aside his country’s recent slam-dunk <a href="https://pca-cpa.org/en/news/pca-press-release-the-south-china-sea-arbitration-the-republic-of-the-philippines-v-the-peoples-republic-of-china/" style="text-decoration: none;">win</a> over China at the Court of Arbitration in the Hague in a legal dispute over rival claims in the South China Sea, Duterte <a href="http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/10/22/1636102/philippines-china-sign-24-b-deals" style="text-decoration: none;">came home</a> with $24 billion in Chinese trade deals and a sense that he was helping establish a new world order.In January, after his police tortured and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/world/asia/philippines-police-south-korean-killing.html" style="text-decoration: none;">killed</a> a South Korean businessman on the pretext of a drug bust, he was forced to call a sudden halt to the nationwide killing spree. Like his role model Marcos, however, Duterte’s populism seems to contain an insatiable appetite for violence and so it was not long before bodies were once again being dumped on the streets of Manila, pushing the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-drugs-idUSKBN16H1YV" style="text-decoration: none;">death toll</a> past 8,000.Success and the StrongmanThe histories of these Filipino strongmen, past and present, reveal two overlooked aspects of the ill-defined phenomenon of global populism: the role of what might be termed performative violence in projecting domestic strength and a complementary need for diplomatic success to show international influence. How skillfully these critical poles of power are balanced may offer one gauge for speculating about the fate of populist strongmen in disparate parts of the globe.In Russia’s case, Putin’s projection of strength through the murder of selected domestic opponents has been matched by <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21709028-how-contain-vladimir-putins-deadly-dysfunctional-empire-threat-russia" style="text-decoration: none;">unchecked aggression</a> in Georgia and Ukraine -- a successful balancing act that has made his country, with its rickety economy the <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jul/27/lindsey-graham/graham-russia-has-economy-size-italy/" style="text-decoration: none;">size of Italy’s</a>, seem like a great power again and is likely to extend his autocratic rule into the foreseeable future.In Turkey, Erdogan’s harsh repression of ethnic and political enemies has essentially <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/world/europe/turkey-erdogan-disunity-europe.html" style="text-decoration: none;">sunk his bid</a> for entry into the European Union, plunged him into an <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-unwinnable-war-pkk-protests-media-erdogan-kurds-nato/" style="text-decoration: none;">unwinnable war</a> with Kurdish rebels, and complicated his alliance with the United States against Islamic fundamentalism -- all potential barriers to his successful bid for unchecked power.In Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/prabowo-subianto-withdraws-from-indonesian-presidential-election-on-day-vote-was-to-be-declared-20140722-zvte5.html" style="text-decoration: none;">failed</a> in his critical first step: building a domestic base large enough to sweep him into the presidency, in part because his call for order <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/indonesia-dispelling-ghosts-98" style="text-decoration: none;">resonated</a> so discordantly with a public still capable of remembering his earlier bid for power through eerie violence that roiled Jakarta with hundreds of rapes, fires, and deaths.Without the popular support generated by his local spectacle of violence, President Duterte’s <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/21/china-and-the-philippines-could-ink-oil-exploration-deal-in-south-china-sea.html" style="text-decoration: none;">de facto abrogation</a> of his country’s claims to the South China Sea’s rich <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2016/07/the-south-china-sea-is-really-a-fishery-dispute/" style="text-decoration: none;">fishing grounds</a> and oil reserves in his bid for Chinese support risks a popular backlash, a military coup, or both. For the time being, however, Duterte’s deft juxtaposition of international maneuvering and local bloodletting has made him a successful Philippine <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-36659258" style="text-decoration: none;">strongman</a> with, as yet, few apparent checks on his power.While the essential weakness of the Philippine military limits Duterte’s outlets for his populist violence to the police killings of poor street drug dealers, Donald Trump faces no such restraints. Should Congress and the courts check the virulence of his domestic attacks on Muslims, Mexicans, or other imagined enemies and should his presidency run into further setbacks like the recent repeal-Obamacare humiliation, he could readily resort to violent military adventures not only in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Libya, but even in Iran, not to speak of North Korea, in a bid to recover his populist aura of overweening power. In this way, unlike any other potential populist politician on the planet, he holds the fate of countless millions in his much-discussed hands.If populism’s need for what scholar Michael Lee calls an “apocalyptic confrontation” and a “mythic battle” proves accurate, it might, in the end, lead the Trump administration’s “systemic revolutionaries” far beyond even their most extreme rhetoric into an endlessly escalating cycle of violence against foreign enemies, using whatever weapons are available, whether drones, special operations forces, fighter bombers, naval armadas, or even nuclear weapons. <div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="bio-new body_world" style="width: 630px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-bio">Alfred W. McCoy, a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176044/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy,maintaining_american_supremacy_in_the_twenty-first_century/" style="text-decoration: none;">TomDispatch regular</a>, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the now-classic book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1556524838/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" style="text-decoration: none;">The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade</a>, which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years. His more recent books include Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0299234142/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" style="text-decoration: none;">Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State</a>.</div></div>
Steve Bannon is the nexus point for this strategy. As Trump’s chief strategist, he <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trumps-flashy-executive-actions-could-run-aground-234200" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">reportedly helped draft</a> the Muslim ban. And before joining the Trump campaign, he helped turn Breitbart, where he served as chairman, into the “<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/stephen-bannon-breitbart-backlash-231371" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">platform for the alt-right</a>,” in part by driving these xenophobic storylines.The website <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/here-are-some-of-the-most-controversial-stories-published-by?utm_term=.tcx5RGAk9#.mjdy8qDRl" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">infamously</a> has a tag devoted to “Black Crime” that aggregated stories of offenses committed by African-Americans. They’ve used similar practices to dehumanize undocumented immigrants and Muslims living in the United States and abroad.Breitbart aggregates reports of Muslim “honor killings” from around the globe. As with “black crime,” they have an <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tag/honor-killings/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">entire tag</a> devoted to the subject. They have a <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tag/child-marriage/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">similar tag</a> for stories about child marriage in Muslim countries. And one <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tag/female-genital-mutilation/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">detailing instances</a> of “female genital mutilation.” They also regularly suggest that American Muslims are <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/muslim-brotherhood/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">secret operatives</a> of the Muslim Brotherhood.Breitbart’s reports often portray Muslim refugees as disease-carrying criminals who are a danger to the countries in which they seek asylum, and specifically to those countries’ women. As they have sought to <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/01/06/breitbart-story-about-mob-1000-muslims-attacking-german-church-reportedly-dissolves/214945" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">expand their presence</a> in Europe, the website has <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/author/vhale/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">frequently attacked</a> Muslim communities in European nations and highlighted friction between those communities and white Europeans.
Fox <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmfEHOgw2xw" title="reference on spoke" target="blank">spoke</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6XeYgAC1Cc" title="reference on at" target="blank">at</a> the 2008 ALEC meeting, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNor3MdYWtM" title="reference on thanked ALEC" target="blank">thanked ALEC</a> for their partnership with Atlantic Bridge. The Atlantic Bridge has not only been tied to ALEC, but also to U.S. Congressmen like Jon Kyl and Lindsay Graham, as well as GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, whose <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/10/17/345255/herman-cain-atlantic-bridge/" title="reference on spokesperson" target="_blank">spokesperson</a>, Jeffrey Gordon, is a former defense industry lobbyist.

CMI

===

<a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2016/08/11/newly-appointed-government-special-advisers-linked-brexit-climate-denier-network" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.desmog.uk/2016/08/11/newly-appointed-government-special-advisers-linked-brexit-climate-denier-network</a>

The names of those who have been appointed as special advisers in Prime Minister Theresa May’s new cabinet have been steadily trickling out these past few weeks.

Among these newly announced special advisors, or SpAds, are Nick Timothy – the man credited with the demise of the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) – and Rob Oxley of Vote Leave and the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

Meanwhile several others have previously worked on campaigns for Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s London mayoral candidacy, and many more of them formed part of Vote Leave’s core campaign staff.

Here we take a look at some of those who have been appointed so far and their links to the <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/brexit-climate-deniers" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Brexit Climate Deniers</a>:

<h3 style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Theresa May</h3>

Hill for the past few years has been working for lobby and PR firm Lexington Communications, which counts fracking firm Cuadrilla <a href="http://www.appc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/APPC-Register-Feb-2016-9.3.16.pdf" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">among its clients</a>.

Timothy, described as “hugely influential” on May’s work, is credited in the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/30/saved-in-the-nick-of-time-from-the-worlds-most-expensive-power-s/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Telegraph</a> with being the man behind the scrapping of DECC. And according to the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/94e023cc-57fb-11e6-9f70-badea1b336d4" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Financial Times</a>, he’s not a fan of green taxes either.

This past April, Timothy called the Climate Change Act a “monstrous act of self-harm”, echoing a <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2016/07/20/lord-deben-busts-ridley-and-lawson-s-climate-science-denial-epic-post-brexit-speech" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">favourite line</a> used by those in the climate science denying Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

John Godfrey is May’s new director of policy. Most recently he’s worked as director of corporate affairs at Legal & General – which this week <a href="http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-3732268/Legal-General-offer-millions-build-Gatwick-runway-claiming-work-begin-quickly-Heathrow.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">offered millions towards building a new Gatwick runway</a> – and prior to that he was a director of communications at Lehman Brothers. In the late 1980s Godfrey was also special advisor to Minister of State John Patten and then Home Secretary Douglas Hurd.

May’s new communications director is <a href="http://www.conservativehome.com/parliament/2016/07/meet-the-new-team-at-number-ten.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Katie Perrior</a>, former senior media advisor to David Davis when he was shadow Home Secretary. Perrior also helped run the PR campaign for Boris Johnson’s 2008 campaign for mayor, as well as his 2012 bid for a second term. Perrior’s own PR firm, iNHouse Clients, counted <a href="http://www.appc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/APPC-Register-November-2015.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Centrica among its clients</a> up until November 2015.

Lizzie Loudon will become May’s new press secretary. A former special advisor to Iain Duncan Smith when he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Loudon most recently worked on communications for the Vote Leave campaign.

Finally, May’s head of features is Liz Sanderson, who’s worked with May since 2014 after leaving her job at the Mail on Sunday.

<p style="margin: 1em 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; line-height: 18.59px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One of Patel’s new SpAds at the Department for International Development (DFID) will be Robert Oxley, a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/09/priti-patel-new-special-adviser-robert-oxley-critic-uk-foreign-aid-spending-target" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">vocal critic of theUK’s aid spending target</a>. As the former head of media for Vote Leave and previous campaign director at the Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), his appointment was welcomed by Matt Ridley on twitter, <a href="https://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/762669889152749568" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">who wrote</a>: “great news, let me know how to contact you there if poss. [sic]”

On climate finance – something which, along with climate adaptation, DFID has been involved in – Oxley, in his role at theTPA, was <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/362668/UK-pledges-1-8-BILLION-more-for-3rd-World-climate-change-projects" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">once quoted</a> alongside the GWPF’s Lord Lawson, saying: “Ministers should be focusing on how they spend every penny rather than increasing the already sizeable budget that we send abroad.

“International aid is there to help the poorest but that does not mean that taxpayers cannot demand value for money. People will find it bizarre that we are spending even more money propping up governments abroad.”

The appointment has raised further concerns about Patel’s commitment to the Department’s objectives (she’s been<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10122842/Some-countries-do-not-need-our-money-any-more-says-Andrew-Mitchell.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">previously quoted</a> that DFID should be scrapped). Labour MP Stephen Doughty, member of the international development select committee, has called it a “deeply worrying appointment.”

Fox has made a remarkable come-back after he was <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/02/less-shameless-world-liam-fox-s-career-would-have-ended-2011" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">forced to resign as shadow Defence Secretary in 2011</a> amidst controversy over his relationship with friend and self-styled, unofficial adviser Adam Wherrity and their work for the now defunct Atlantic Bridge organisation which held close ties to US neocon groups.

While shadow Defence Secretary, one of Fox’s three SpAds included Luke Coffey, an American army captain who now works for the Washington DC-based free market, climate denying <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/heritage-foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Heritage Foundation</a> (where incidentally, Fox <a href="https://twitter.com/LiamFoxMP/status/514398847465181185" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">gave a speech</a>in 2014).

According to <a href="http://order-order.com/2016/08/08/spad-list-latest-appointments/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Guido Fawkes’s running updates</a>, it looks like Greg Clark will be taking his SpAds Jacob Wilmer and Meg Powell-Chandler with him to the new Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) department.

Meanwhile, no word yet on who’s going to be heading up Davis’ SpAd team over at the Brexit Department. We'll be updating this page as new information comes in.

==

Debacle over Liam Fox & his links to the USA

which ended in his resignation was well documented at the time and since but in view of the recent elevation of Andrew Dunlop to the Lords and his subsequent insensitive appointment to the Scottish Office I decided to dig around the archives to see what might surface. It seemed to me that the Charity Commission was over much eager to put the charity to bed without chastising the Trustees who had failed in their duties. The report will be lengthy and perhaps not for the faint hearted but given the characters will be heavily involved in Scottish politics I believe the journey to be worthwhile. The first post will provide an opening narrative and I expect to add to it daily.

Margaret Thatcher’s Scottish “Rat Pack”. Hurt and dangerous they wait patiently to strike

*. Dr “old Blue Eyes” Liam Fox  (offered a role in the new cabinet but turned it down. Will return to lead the Party sometime before the next election)

*. Adam “Mr Bojangles” Werritty  ( Still around, in London, Near to Westminster. Still close friends with Liam Fox)

*. Michael “Northern Light” Gove  (appointed to a key role as Justice Secretary)

*. Andrew “Rich Boy” Dunlop  (recently elevated to the Lords by David Cameron and given a key role in the Scottish Office overseeing a potentially troublesome SNP dominated Holyrood)

The Atlantic Bridge Research and Education Scheme

The scheme was an educational charity founded in 1997 with Margaret Thatcher as its President to promote Atlanticism, a philosophy of cooperation between the United Kingdom and the United States regarding political, economic, and defence issues.

It was set up by Liam Fox, former Secretary of State for Defence of the United Kingdom. It was dissolved in September 2011, following a critical report from the Charity Commission the previous year.

In discussion with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Fox claimed that the think tank was intended to “bring people together who have common interests and recognise that…[they]  will all be called upon to defend those… interests”.

Its work largely consisted of uniting British and American Conservatives and foreign policy hawks. This included meetings with John Ashcroft and Karl Rove and the presentation of awards to Rudy Giuliani and Henry Kissinger.’

In 2003, when Fox was Shadow Secretary for Health, he also chaired a conference on “scientific research and medical provision”. Speakers included Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, Timothy Morris of GlaxoSmithKline and Peter Farrow of Pfizer.

The Atlantic Bridge was briefly a partnership program of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a free-market organisation with extensive links to American State Legislators and corporate and industrial groups. It hosted events with the Center for Security Policy, the Heritage Foundation and representatives from Lehman Brothers.

Patrons of the Atlantic Bridge included Pfizer, UK Conservative Party donor Michael Hintze and Michael Lewis of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre.

The Atlantic Bridge gained charitable status in 2003 as an “education and research scheme”.

In September 2009, the Charity Commission started a regulatory compliance case after receiving complaints about the charity’s political activity which, as a 501(c) organisation, the US-arm, Atlantic Bridge Inc, was “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.” The offending statement was:

“Americans should look forward to 6 May 2010, after which David Cameron and his government will likely assume power. He will be good for America and better for the Special Relationship.” – Atlantic Bridge CEO Amanda Bowman. Other allegations have Conservative shadow cabinet ministers, sitting on the management structures of the charity,  responsible for rubbishing the NHS in US healthcare debates.

A 2010 report by the Charity Commission ruled that it was “not evident that [it] had advanced education” and “may lead members of the public to call into question its independence from party politics”. It was ordered to enact a 12-month review to bring it into line with its charitable objectives. On 30 September 2011, The Atlantic Bridge was dissolved by its remaining trustees.

The Atlantic Bridge drew upon the experience and expertise of a board of directors, advisory council and an executive council. Each entity included experienced individuals from political, business and academic backgrounds on both sides of the Atlantic.

Honorary Patron

The Rt Hon. The Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC

Advisory Council

Dr Liam Fox MP – UK Chairman

Senator Jon Kyl – Honorary US Chairman

Lord Astor of Hever DL – Trustee

Congressman John Campbell

Senator Lindsey Graham

Eleanor Laing MP

Senator Mel Martinez

Congressman Adam Putnam

John Whittingdale OBE MP

Michael Gove, George Osborne, William Hague and Chris Grayling have also sat on the advisory panel, as have American senator Joe Lieberman.

Executive Council

Scott Syfert – Executive Council Chairman

Frank Fahrenkopf, Jr.

Alan Guarino

Michael Hintze

Nicholas Howard

Clark S. Judge

Malcolm Scott

Board of Directors

Ross Bevevino

Amanda Bowman

Andrew Dunlop – Trustee

Craig Earnshaw

John Falk

Professor Robert MacLaren

Professor Patrick Minford – Trustee

Staff Members

Catherine Bray – US Executive Director

Adam Werritty – UK Executive Director

Kara Watt – Operations Director

Gabby Bertin – Later David Cameron’s spokeswoman, admitted at interview by Sir Gus McPherson (head of the civil service) that she knew Mr Werritty from her time working for Mr Fox when the Conservatives were in opposition and Mr Cameron knew she had worked for The Atlantic Bridge.

...

https://caltonjock.com/2015/05/18/ultra-right-wing-liam-fox-returned-to-power-with-his-neo-con-colleagues-attached-is-a-comprehensive-expose-of-misdeeds-in-public-office-ill-wills-of-change-are-being-foisted-on-scotland-with/

==

==

</div></div>