Spain
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MMA
Right-wing media use Iberian Peninsula power outage to justify Trump's energy agenda
Power outages happen under many circumstances, but this one became a fixation of conservatives attempting an attack on renewable energy technology
Special ProgramsClimate & Energy
Written by Ilana Berger
Published 05/13/25 MMA
- Right-wing media have attempted to politicize a major power outage that hit Spain, Portugal, and parts of France at the end of April by making it a symbol of the dangers of decarbonization and renewable energy. In reality, the causes of the power outage are still being investigated, and emerging findings suggest it to be a multifaceted problem that implicates the entire energy grid.
Europe has long drawn criticism from the right in the U.S. and abroad for its ambitious net-zero goals. Spain, for example, is a global leader in renewable energy and aims to source 81% of its energy from renewable sources by the end of this decade.
In the U.S., opponents of renewable energy claimed the power outage exposed the irreconcilable shortcomings of wind, solar, and storage batteries and used it to validate President Donald Trump’s hostility toward these technologies and his “drill baby drill” energy agenda of oil and gas expansion. But power outages have also long impacted fossil fuel energy grids, and renewable energy has proved resilient in the face of past extreme weather.
- ## What we know about the power outages: Still not much, but there is speculation
- On April 28, Spain, Portugal, and parts of France experienced widespread power outages that impacted millions. By the next day, power was almost entirely restored. But the event left people stranded on public transit and in elevators and has been tied to at least seven deaths. It was the largest power outage ever recorded in Spain. AP News, [4/30/25; rtve, 4/29/25; Reuters, 4/28/25]
- Spain’s electric grid operator Red Eléctrica and Spanish officials say they still do not know what exactly caused this response from the grid, however, a cyberattack has been ruled out.Red Eléctrica has ruled out a cyberattack and an unusual atmospheric event that was first thought to have sparked the power outage. The company’s operations director, Eduardo Prieto, has also said there were no “definitive conclusions” about what happened. Environment Minister Sara Aagesen pointed out, “The system has worked to perfection with a similar demand situation and with a similar energetic mix [in the past], so pointing the finger at renewables when the system has functioned perfectly in the same context doesn’t seem very appropriate.” Wired,[5/2/25; The Guardian, 4/30/25; Scientific American, 4/30/25]
- The power outage occurred following a large and sudden drop in energy generation, leading to the grid “automatically disconnecting both internally and from the rest of the European grid,” according to Wired.Red Eléctrica found that three separate losses of power generation occurred right before the power outage, and that two losses in southwest Spain likely involved at least one solar plant. But Aagesen said officials are still “seeking to identify the plants” that were compromised. Wired,[5/2/25; Bloomberg, 5/5/25; Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, 5/2/25]
- The power outage came as European power sources are shifting away from fossil fuels.On April 16, Spain reached a landmark energy achievement when renewable resources met 100% of the country’s electricity needs. A drop in demand for fossil fuels and ambitious renewable energy targets in the European Union have discouraged investment in oil and gas, and Spain has a plan to shutter all of its remaining nuclear plants by 2035. At the time of the power outage, some gas and nuclear plants were online, but “solar accounted for 59% of the country’s electricity supplies, wind nearly 12%.” Carbon Brief, [4/30/25, 1/22/25; Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, 5/2/25; ABC News, 5/9/25; Ember Energy, 1/23/25]
- Power outages have also long impacted fossil fuel energy grids.The news site Heatmap pointed to 2021 power outages that killed 200 people in Texas to illustrate that “even on renewable-heavy grids, blackouts can still come down to failures of fossil fuel systems.” Heatmap, [4/30/25]
- In the past, renewable energy has proved resilient in the face of extreme weather. After Hurricanes Fiona and Ian hit Puerto Rico and Florida in 2022, respectively, public utility customers largely lost power. But reporting at the time highlighted homes, businesses, and even an entire community in Florida that were all able to keep the lights on because of solar. Inside Climate News, [9/20/22; CNN, 10/2/22]
- Climate change will continue to make energy grids less reliable. In summer 2023, heat-related power outages impacted oil refineries in Texas and Louisiana, decreasing energy production and causing higher gas prices. Spectrum News 1, [7/28/23; Forbes, 10/9/23]
- :{Experts say what’s needed is to better incorporate renewable energy into the mix, rather than abandoning renewables. Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas wrote, “Authorities need to focus on how to better integrate growing renewable production into the grid to strengthen resilience, rather than retreat from and dismantle net-zero generation.” And Reuters pointed out, “The European Union's power grid mostly dates back to the last century and half the lines are over 40 years old. … While global investment in renewables has nearly doubled since 2010, investment in grids has barely changed at around $300 billion a year.”
Additionally, the centralized nature of most traditional energy grids, where energy flows from the grid to customers and provides a consistent energy frequency, doesn’t take advantage of the strengths of renewable energy. Institutions like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (which President Donald Trump recently targeted with layoffs) are researching technology called grid-forming inverters that can prevent power outages in renewable energy systems, and similar projects are being constructed around the world. Bloomberg, [4/30/25; Reuters, 5/6/25; IEEE Spectrum, 4/13/24; S&P Global, 5/5/25; Reuters, 5/5/25; Colorado Public Radio, 5/5/25]}:
- ## Right-wing media made renewable energy the villain in the incident, radically oversimplifying the obstacles countries like Spain are facing
- Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the fossil fuel-funded Heartland Institute, noted in The Daily Signal that there are subsidies for renewable energy in Europe and claimed that in the U.S., “Inflation Reduction Act subsidies for wind and solar, now being reconsidered by Congress, are central to the problem” of grid instability.“The president is taking steps to prevent blackouts by cutting subsidies for renewables; keeping existing power plants running; rolling back some environmental rules; and pulling out of net-zero international agreements,” she concluded. The Daily Signal, [5/5/25; Media Matters, 7/31/24]
- Renewable energy opponent Michael Shellenberger claimed that Spanish leaders “know that it was renewables” but have been “spreading misinformation about it, so to speak,” on Fox Business and dedicated two editions of his newsletter,Public, to the issue.He also noted that “the number of Spaniards that believe in God has declined, and sunlight and solar is sort of the new God.” In his newsletter, Shellenberger claimed that “the Spanish government is lying about the blackout” because the “electrical grid operator blamed renewables.” Fox Business,*The Bottom Line,*[5/1/25; Substack, 4/28/25, 4/30/25; Media Matters, 8/29/23]
- Comedian-turned-right-wing-influencer Russell Brand amplified Shellenberger’s newsletter, calling it an “excellent analysis on how this situation has been brought about.” Brand also suggested that the power outages were intentional: “This could be because of overreliance on renewables. That’s certainly one perspective — maybe that was part of the plan all along.” Rumble, [4/30/25]
- On Fox Business, during an interview with Energy Secretary Chris Wright, host Stuart Varney said that “the outages were caused by over-reliance on renewable energy sources, wind and solar,” and Wright responded that it’s too early to be certain but “I think that’s quite likely.” Wright also used the power outages to justify rolling back climate policy in the U.S. After speaking about Trump’s agenda for what Varney called “energy dominance,” such as ramping up liquified natural gas exports, Wright also called Europe’s climate programs “unproductive” and said they are “not changing global greenhouse gas emissions.” He argued, “They’re deindustrializing their nations, they’re impoverishing their citizens, and they’re making their energy more expensive and less reliable. … No one else is going to go down that road.” Fox Business,*Varney & Co.*, [4/30/25]
- A Wall Street Journal op-ed from two members of the University of the Hesperides’ Peter Huber Center in Spain, which is named for the late Manhattan Institute fellow and climate denier Peter Huber, blamed “energy-transitionist ideologues” who “engineered a vulnerability” and “disregarded warnings grounded in laws of physics.” The Wall Street Journal, [4/30/25; The Federalist Society, accessed 5/9/25; SourceWatch, accessed 5/9/25]
- On Fox Business,Big Money Showco-host Taylor Riggs said, “Michael Shellenberger’s full takedown of the Spain and Portugal big rolling blackouts that they’re having. He says, ‘Renewables don’t risk blackouts, said the media, but they did and they do. … It’s clear that too little inertia due to the excess solar resulted in a system collapse.’”Fox Business, *The Big Money Show*, [4/29/25; Substack, 4/28/25]
- Interior Secretary Doug Burgum referenced the European outage in an interview with Fox News’ Harris Faulkner and claimed that the U.S. is in a different place because Trump’s “energy dominance” is preventing “the Biden blackouts and brownouts that were potentially put right on our doorstep here because of the energy policies of the prior administration.”Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus,*[4/29/25]
- Climate denier Marc Morano told One America News guest host Riley Lewis, “When you have a grid reliant on solar and wind, it is not flexible. In other words, any jolt to the system and it goes down.”Morano also amplified disinformation about power outages that occurred in Texas in 2021, claiming that the state had a similar situation during a winter storm that killed hundreds. One America News, *The Real Story with Riley Lewis*, [4/29/25; DeSmog, accessed 5/9/25; Media Matters, 2/19/21]
- On Fox Business, Morano claimed that the cause of the power outages was “solar and wind for one simple reason: Spain has been focused on net zero.”Morano continued, “When you have that much solar power, particularly in renewables running, it is not a durable power system, and it can't handle shocks to the system.” Fox Business, *The Bottom Line*, [4/28/25]
- On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity called the power outages “radicalism on display” because “Spain has one of the highest proportions of renewable energy, providing about 56% of the nation's electricity.”Premiere First, *The Sean Hannity Show,* [4/28/25]
- :{:{On his show, right-wing influencer Benny Johnson also amplified Shellenberger’s commentar}:y saying, “Overreliance on renewables behind catastrophic blackouts in Spain. … Renewables don't risk blackouts, said the media, but they did and they do. The physics are simple.” [YouTube, The Benny Show,
; Substack, 4/28/25]}:
- The Daily Mail wrote a misleading article suggesting that renewables were to blame for the power outages and quoting a climate denier as an expert. The Mail proclaimed that “scientists reveal what’s to blame for the Iberian Peninsula’s cascading power outage,” citing in part “heavy reliance on wind and solar,” despite also acknowledging that “the source of the cascading failure might have been a combination of different factors.” The Mail also used energy consultant and climate denier Kathryn Porter as an expert, quoting her saying that “there's a strong chance that the large amount of solar on the system created the conditions for this to be a widespread blackout and made it much worse.”
The Daily Mail, [4/29/25; Twitter/X, 4/21/25]
- ## Right-wing media have a track record of misleadingly blaming power outages on renewable energy when in reality, it has been a source of stability during extreme weather
- In 2021, Fox News and other right-wing influencers spread the false claim that wind energy was responsible for a major power outage in Texas which contributed to the deaths of over 200 people.After the deadly winter storm, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson and others blamed “Green New Deal policies.” An image of a frozen-looking wind turbine, which was actually shot in 2014 in Sweden, went viral. It became clear that Texas’ energy infrastructure, including natural gas equipment, was not set up to withstand the cold temperatures. Media Matters, [2/19/21; The Texas Tribune; 1/3/22]
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an 7 23 $
The danger of worldwide fascism is being accelerated by the one thing few people want to talk about
Thom Hartmann
and Raw Story
July 12, 2023
The government of the Netherlands fell last week. The issue that tipped it over the edge was immigration driven by climate change. If Putin wanted to destroy democracy in Europe (and he does), back in 2015 he couldn’t have picked a better strategy. Odds are, though, he was just trying to protect his deepwater ports; it wasn’t until the crisis developed that he realized how he could exploit it to overthrow liberal democracies in the EU. The way it’s played out gives us a glimpse into our future — and the future of democratic republics all across the world — as the global climate emergency and the refugee crisis associated with it grows more severe over the next few years.
The current rise-of-rightwing-fascism crisis building in Europe began in 2010 and started with global climate change.
The fall of that year saw unusually severe rainfall across the wheat-growing parts of Canada, cutting that nation’s wheat harvest, along with drought across Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and China. A La Nina caused crop failures in Argentina and Peru. Worldwide prices of staple foods, particularly wheat, exploded.
On December 17 of that year a street vendor in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire to protest the high cost of the wheat he needed to make the foods he and his peers sold, and the harassment of police against their protests. It sparked what we referred to then as the Arab Spring, that lasted through most of 2011.
The steady warming and drought in that area, though, never let up and the desert in North Africa relentlessly continued to eat up millions of acres of food-producing land, particularly across Syria. By 2015 it had pushed over a million Syrian subsistence farmers off their land — that had desertified — and into Syria’s cities, particularly Damascus and Aleppo.
Northern Africa became the world’s number one food importer, and the prices kept rising relentlessly.
Newly homeless, hungry, and destitute, these Syrian farmers began demonstrations in the streets demanding food, shelter, and employment or “welfare” payments from the Syrian government.
Bashar Assad, being a psychopathic dictator, ordered his troops to fire live ammunition into the crowds in 2012 and 2013, and soon a full-blown revolt was on: “rebels” seized Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, in early 2013.
Syria was also the base for Russia’s Mediterranean fleet, with multiple deep-water ports that Putin believed were critical to his nation’s military defense. By 2015 he had a dozen battleships there, along with submarines and other warships.
He had to prevent the Assad government from falling or risk an “Arab Spring democracy” emerging — as happened for a short while in Tunisia and Egypt — that might align itself with the West and kick Russia out.
Making a long story short, Putin bombed the crap out of Syria on Assad’s behalf, virtually leveling the city of Aleppo, killing hundreds of civilians.
It was one of the worst war crimes of this century, almost as deadly as George W. Bush’s brutal and criminal invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions of climate and war refugees fled the country, joining Bush’s wars’ fugitives making their way into Europe by any means possible.
Thus began Europe’s refugee crisis, which just helped bring down Holland’s government. In two weeks, it may well cause the rightwing fascist-aligned anti-immigrant People’s Party to come to power in the Spanish elections on July 23.
As the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) noted in a 2021 report:
“By the end of 2016, nearly 5.2 million refugees and migrants reached European shores, undertaking treacherous journeys from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries torn apart by war and persecution.”
This flood of brown-skinned Muslims fleeing African and Middle Eastern climate change and wars into Europe over the past decade is why Italy and Sweden now have rightwing leaders; why Viktor Orbán was able to gain and hold power in Hungary with his promise to “build a wall” along Hungary’s southern border (a promise he kept); and why rightwing parties are today growing so rapidly in Germany, Greece, Norway, Austria, Belgium and France.
The legacy of five centuries of racist imperialism across four continents has been that wealth and safety from the ravages of climate change are concentrated in mostly White-run nations, while vulnerability to desertification and poverty are concentrated in mostly Brown- and Black-run nations.
When Russia intervened in British politics to tear apart the EU, their trolls’ mainFacebook pitch for Brexitwas that “those [Brown and Black] people” the EU had let in were now making their way to the UK.
While every country in the world can accept refugees in small numbers without crisis, when “other people” begin showing up in large numbers the response by every nation in history typically tends toward rightwing nationalism and xenophobia, an obsession with borders, and demands for racial, cultural, and religious “purity.”
Here in North America we’re seeing a similar dynamic. Reagan so severely destabilized Central America and Venezuela with his sanctions, illegal Iran-Contra program, and support for rightwing death squads that those nations never recovered. In the years since, climate change has bit these weakened governments deep, forcing millions of subsistence farmers — just like in Syria but here mostly from hard-hit Guatemala — off land that once grew crops but is now, just a few years later, scrub desert.
Exploiting the climate refugee crisis on America’s southern border, Republican politicians have spent the years since Obama’s election in 2008 falsely claiming that Democrats had thrown the border “open,” producing thousands of news stories that have been used by coyotes — human traffickers — to draw even more refugees toward the United States.
Compounding that, Trump launched his 2016 campaign on keeping Brown people out of the United States, and today racism and xenophobia form the foundation of most Republican political campaigns (when they aren’t hating on queer people or women).
:{
}:
The result of these trends has been a worldwide shift to the right. As Freedom House noted in a 2022 report, over 60 countries experienced “declines” in democracy the previous year; only about 20 percent of people worldwide now live in “free” nations:
“Global freedom faces a dire threat. … Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties, and at providing aid to others who wish to do the same. …
“The global order is nearing a tipping point, and if democracy’s defenders do not work together to help guarantee freedom for all people, the authoritarian model will prevail.”
So far, the western world’s refugee crisis has been mostly driven by massive policy errors and outright war crimes: Russia’s response to the Syrian farmers, the US invasion and destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, and American meddling in Central America and Venezuela.
:{
}:
But all have been either triggered or exacerbated by the worldwide climate emergency. And, as we can see from this summer’s weather worldwide, that emergency is building at a rate far more rapid than even alarmist climate scientists were predicting just a decade ago.
Recent projections show that within just the next two decades as many as three billion people could be fleeing areas that will soon only marginally support human life.
As equatorial regions become uninhabitable, the mostly darker-skinned people living there will be migrating north and south into areas controlled by lighter-skinned people in numbers that will make today’s Syrian, Iraq, and Afghan refugee crisis look like a statistical blip.
It will put worldwide white supremacist and Nazi movements into hyperdrive.
In addition to acting immediately to mitigate climate change and green the world’s economy, the free nations of the world must harden our democracies against reactive rightwing violence- and hate-based racist political movements.
That will alsorequire radically reducing the Supreme Court-gifted political power of big money here in America— particularly from the fossil fuel industry and the billionaires it has created — and returning that power and wealth to the hard-hit majority. The Democratic Party in America is increasingly committed to this, but Republicans and the dozens of billionaires in their camp are prepared to spend heretofore unimaginable sums to keep climate deniers and race-baiters in office.
We also must help those nations most hard-hit by the warming — caused largely by our carbon pollution — to deal with their own refugees internally, lest they irrecoverably destabilize first their own governments and then ours.
To paraphrase JFK, we are not helpless before this task.
But it will require western and American media and political systems to take on these three crises — climate change, the refugees it produces, and politicians who demagogue the issue while blocking forward progress — now.
We are quite literally out of time.
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Oct 16, 2017 - Forest fires burned across Portugal and northern Spain, fanned by strong ... in Chandebrito, a village in the northern Spanish region of Galicia.
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Spanish Socialist Party Leader Pedro Sánchez Sworn In as Prime Minister
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/this-trump-linked-super-pac-is-part-of-an-explosive-plot-to-push-europes-voters-into-the-arms-of-the-far-right/
A controversial Madrid-based campaign group, supported by American and Russian ultra-conservatives, is working across Europe to drive voters toward far-right parties in next month’s European Parliament elections and in Spain’s national elections this Sunday, a new openDemocracy report reveals.
OpenDemocracy’s findings have caused alarm among lawmakers who fear that Trump-linked conservatives are working with European allies to import a controversial U.S.-style super PAC model of political campaigning to Europe—opening the door to large amounts of dark money flowing unchecked into elections and referenda.
The Madrid-based campaign group CitizenGo is best known for its online petitions against same-sex marriage, sex education and abortion—and for driving buses across cities with slogans against LGBTQ rights and “feminazis.”
OpenDemocracy’s report reveals new evidence of “extraordinary coordination” between this group and far-right parties across Europe—from Spain to Italy, Germany and Hungary.
In Spain, CitizenGo is supporting the far-right party Vox that is expected to make big gains this weekend, winning seats in the country’s parliament for the first time and potentially forming part of the new government.
Speaking to openDemocracy’s undercover reporter posing as a potential donor, CitizenGo’s director described plans to run attack ads against Vox’s political opponents, and talked about how to get around campaign finance laws.
Meanwhile a senior Vox official compared CitizenGo to a “super PAC” in the United States, referring to the controversial groups that can spend unlimited sums supporting influencing elections in America—and which are known for aggressive, negative campaigning.
According to openDemocracy’s investigation, CitizenGo has been supported by an experienced American political fundraiser and tech consultant linked to the Trump campaign, the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, who boasted of being able to use controversial technology to collect personal data about potential voters.
Former Senator Russ Feingold, D-WI, described openDemocracy’s findings as “frightening” and called on European leaders to act to protect the democratic process.
“Europe has an opportunity to get ahead of this and not make the same mistakes that were made here in the United States,” said Feingold, who worked alongside Republican Senator John McCain for reform of electoral finance.
CitizenGo’s board also includes a close business associate of the “Orthodox oligarch” Konstantin Malofeev—who has been targeted by U.S. and European sanctions for allegedly propping up the pro-Russian breakaway republic in eastern Ukraine—and an Italian politician, Luca Volonte, currently on trial in Milan facing corruption charges.
European lawmakers have described openDemocracy’s findings as “explosive” and have called for “urgent action” to “maintain the integrity” of upcoming elections.
In a letter to the European Commission’s transparency tsar Frans Timmermans, members of parliament and senators from six European countries said that openDemocracy’s findings “merit urgent and high-level investigation by the European Commission and relevant national authorities.”
“We have all seen how democracy can easily be eroded if we remain complacent about the activities of anti-democratic actors… [who oppose] European fundamental rights, European values and liberal democracy,” they warned.
‘Make Spain Great Again’
The Spanish far-right party Vox has pledged to build walls around Spanish enclaves in North Africa, jail Catalan independence leaders, loosen gun control laws and “make Spain great again.” The party also opposes “political correctness,” marriage equality for gay people and laws against gender-based violence.
CitizenGo’s leader, Ignacio Arsuaga, has publicly supported Vox, as has the group’s Spanish language partner organization, HazteOir—which recently lost the equivalent of charity status after campaigns the government said “denigrate or devalue” LGBTQ people.
But openDemocracy’s research reveals new evidence of the close relationship between CitizenGo, HazteOir and Vox.
Describing Vox to openDemocracy’s undercover reporter as “my friends,” Arsuaga said they have met with its senior officials to share their campaign plans and described how they “indirectly” support the party.
“This is something we haven’t made public,” Arsuaga told the undercover reporter, “but we’re going to launch a campaign before the general elections… where we are going to show bad things that have been said” by the leaders of parties that Vox is running against—“bad things” meaning in this case statements “in favor of abortion or in favor of LGBT[Q-friendly] laws”—describing since-released posters and advertisements against candidates from other parties.
The Vox official that Arsuaga put openDemocracy’s undercover reporter in touch with confirmed that supporting CitizenGo could help the party, “indirectly,” describing them as independent, but “we are actually currently totally aligned.”
“There are other ways of making support,” he added, describing “a lack of regulation in terms of the equivalent of super PACs in the United States, those institutions or organizations that give airtime or advertising in support of causes or candidates or political parties. I understand that that is outside of the limitations of the actual political parties, which is very, very regulated.”
Super PACs don’t officially exist in Europe, but he said “there are movements to create those, and I think they are unregulated,” and “Ignacio’s organization [CitizenGo], that’s kind of that.”
Vox has been hit by several financial scandals, including the late 2018 Spanish supreme court condemnation of its then vice president for “accounting irregularities” in one of his companies, disqualifying him from overseeing other accounts for three years.
It also received €800,000 in donations from an extremist Iranian opposition group for its 2014 European elections campaigns—and has been linked to a controversial foundation that glorifies Francisco Franco, Spain’s former dictator.
Arsuaga also told openDemocracy’s reporter that Vox’s General Secretary Javier Ortega Smith, who is also the lawyer leading Vox’s private prosecution of Catalan independence supporters, “comes, I would say, from the hard right, like Falangists, Franco’s movement—but nobody knows, it’s kind of a private thing.”
Neither Ortega Smith nor the Vox party responded to openDemocracy’s requests for comment on Arsuaga’s claim.
Responding to openDemocracy’s request for comments before publication, Arsuaga said: “It is self-evident that supporting HazteOir.org or CitizenGo means indirectly supporting the parties that defend (in some way) the principles we defend.”
It’s “public knowledge that we work to influence and put pressure on political parties,” he said, saying that this is done “by no means ‘behind the scenes.’” He also disputed the characterization of parties that CitizenGo aligns with as “far right.”
Powerful International Backers
Founded in 2013—the same year as Vox—CitizenGo was set up to be an ultra-conservative version of the progressive online campaign platforms Avaaz.org and MoveOn.org. It has run powerful campaigns globally, including in Kenya where it helped get the reproductive health charity Marie Stopes temporarily banned from providing abortion services last year.
CitizenGo also has some very powerful international backers and partners. As previously mentioned, Alexey Komov, a close associate of the “Orthodox Oligarch” Konstantin Malofeev, and Luca Volonte, the Italian politician currently on trial in Milan facing corruption charges, both serve on the group’s board of trustees.
Bank statements from Volonte’s Novae Terrae Foundation in Italy, seen by openDemocracy, show that it paid CitizenGo €12,000 in 2014—at the same time as the foundation was receiving money from entities later identified as part of a “laundromat” pumping illicit cash into Europe from Azerbaijan and Russia. There is no evidence to suggest that the money paid to CitizenGo came from these illicit sources.
Meanwhile Arsuaga told openDemocracy’s undercover reporter that Patrick Slim, son of the Mexican oligarch Carlos Slim, gave his group €40,000, which “for him is just a very small amount,” said Arsuaga—although it is close to the maximum individual donation to a political party permitted under Spanish law (and four times election campaign limits).
It was not clear whether this money was for CitizenGo or HazteOir, neither of which are political parties. At the time of publication, Patrick Slim had not replied to openDemocracy’s request for comment.
Another CitizenGo board member is Brian Brown, a prominent American anti-LGBTQ activist who leads the World Congress of Families (WCF) network that recently met in Italy, with deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini from the far-right Lega party among its speakers.
Arsuaga told openDemocracy’s reporter that he met Brown at the World Congress of Families meeting in Madrid in 2012 and that CitizenGo gets advice “every couple of months or so” from a “senior expert” in fundraising and technology who is “paid by Brian Brown.” This is Darian Rafie, Brown’s partner at a U.S. group called ActRight, which describes itself online as a “clearinghouse for conservative action.”
Previously, CitizenGo has presented itself in the logo on its website as a “member of the ActRight family,” and openDemocracy understands that ActRight paid for a CitizenGo staff member in 2013, a claim that Rafie did not deny in emailed comments.
On its website, ActRight is currently encouraging people to “thank president Trump for stopping transgender insanity in the military.” On Facebook, its recent posts include those supporting Trump; those mocking the appearances of left-wing women; and asking “How much do you think Barack Obama paid Harvard to admit his pot-head daughter?”
Your Phone Is Leaking Information
ActRight’s Darian Rafie is an experienced political consultant in the United States who has played key roles in a number of companies that have worked for the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party in Ohio and Michigan; received payments from a super PAC supporting Texas Republican Ted Cruz (as did ActRight in 2015); and worked with the Tea Party group Think Freely Media.
Speaking to openDemocracy’s undercover reporter, Rafie said he “did a lot of fundraising politically with Trump,” mostly through political action committees (PACs) but also “directly with the campaign… [and] directly with the party” and that he expects one of his companies to be working “in the majority of states” in the 2020 presidential election campaigns.
“There is a lot of stuff to be done with mobile phones and geo-fencing areas,” he told the reporter. “Say there’s a rally somewhere, one of these big Trump campaign rallies. What we’ll do is we’ll draw a polygon around that event and then we’ll register all the phones that were there… Then we follow those phones home, then we know who they are, and what they do, and now I know what your Netflix unique ID is, and I’ve got your Facebook unique ID, so then I can communicate with you through a whole variety of ways.”
Rafie said, “you can do that in Europe” too, though “it’s a little more limited… because the privacy laws are better [there], for the consumer.”
He said: “It’s actually really scary, when you peek beneath the covers, and realize that this phone that you’re carrying around with you is leaking everywhere all of your information,” which can be correlated with personal data “very quickly.” In the United States, he explained, “all of the data is routinely collated and correlated and available for sale.”
Over email, Rafie clarified to openDemocracy that this company uses “ad networks” as do “many political campaigns and businesses in the United States…. to delineate an area and identify unique device IDs and their associated advertising profiles.”
“We should all be frightened by the amount of data routinely collected, collated and sold by ad networks (such as Google and Facebook),” he added.
Friends Across Europe’s Far Right
On stage at the World Congress of Families meeting in Verona, Italy, in late March, CitizenGo’s Arsuaga urged European and other international ultra-conservatives to pursue an indirect, “less understood, practiced path to power” that he summarized as: “By controlling [politicians’] environment… you also control them.”
Speaking to openDemocracy’s undercover reporter at this event, Arsuaga revealed that CitizenGo also has “a lot of contact” with the Fidesz and Lega far-right parties in Hungary and Italy, respectively, along with “some contact” with the far-right AfD in Germany.
Asked if he discussed his group’s campaign strategies with these parties, Arsuaga told the undercover reporter, “yeah, yeah… we inform them about what we are going to do.”
He also offered to introduce openDemocracy to Lega party senator Simone Pillon and an AfD official believed to be Maximilian Krah, who was photographed with Salvini at the Verona event.
In Germany, CitizenGo’s events have attracted Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis—another World Congress of Families speaker, patron of conservative Christian causes and a friend of Steve Bannon—along with the AfD’s Benjamin Nolte.
In Italy, CitizenGo was one of the organizers of the WCF event in Verona along with the ProVita anti-abortion campaign that has ties to the neo-fascist party Forza Nuova.
CitizenGo has also been involved in training Italian activists including via a four-day workshop in 2018 with the Leadership Institute—a U.S. conservative group that counts Vice President Mike Pence among the alumni of its trainings in America.
OpenDemocracy contacted the Lega, AfD and Fidesz parties, but they did not respond to requests for comment on their relationships with CitizenGo.
‘A Loud and Clear Wake-Up Call’
Lawmakers from across Europe have expressed alarm at openDemocracy’s findings about CitizenGo and its international networks.
German MEP Terry Reintke, Greens/EFA spokesperson for gender equality and social policy in the European Parliament, said: “It is shocking how close and deep-running the ties between right-wing, nationalistic populists are—even spanning over the Atlantic. Especially with the European elections ahead, this is extremely worrying.”
She added that this “needs to be a loud and clear wake-up call… This is an attack on fundamental rights and freedoms of all of us.”
Commenting on openDemocracy’s findings, former Wisconsin Democratic senator Russ Feingold warned of a “downward spiral effect on democracy.”
“There is a great irony in this. [Far-right parties] are trying to appeal to ultra-nationalist sentiments, but they are using tactics that are completely contrary to the sovereignty of those countries. These are international actors, oligarchs and others who are trying to control the political processes of these countries. Even if you are a nationalist, one would think you would be a little bit concerned about that,” Feingold said.
Speaking from Washington, D.C., Adav Noti, a U.S. election lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, also warned that super PACs have been “destructive” in the United States, with “horrible effects” for American democracy:
“The last eight years since the invention of this super PAC vehicle have seen a real sharp increase in the extent to which our elections are dominated by a small number of ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations.
“A federal election in the U.S. is supposed to be decided by 150 million voters and yet the policy preferences are being determined by literally 20 people, 20 major donors.”
In emailed comments to openDemocracy, CitizenGo’s Ignacio Arsuaga said that his groups do report donors to Spain’s Ministry of Interior and that “according to the current Data Protection legislation, we cannot tell the press who is our donor.” He said “all the donations we have received are legal,” and that “the destination of our funds has always been legal and public.”
Adam Ramsay is the coeditor of openDemocracyUK. He also works with Bright Green. Previously, he was a campaigner with People & Planet. Find him on Twitter: @adamramsay.
Claire Provost is editor of openDemocracy 50.50 covering gender, sexuality and social justice. Previously, she worked at the Guardian and was a fellow at the Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of London, Goldsmiths. Find her on Twitter: @claireprovost.
This article was produced by openDemocracy in partnership with the Independent Media Institute.
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catalan indep, gov't uses to distract from rw fails, corrupt
https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-30-2017/
after Greek podemos, spain was expected to be next
sebastian fahberg (sp)
pro-Franco still
facsism legal, buty head of catalan charged with sedition and __
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corp conq:
In the case of Repsol, the Spanish fossil fuels giant, we see how the relentless pursuit of new gas and oil reserves in Peru takes direct aim at the region’s indigenous territories and forests, leaving social destruction and environmental decimation in its wake. At the same time, Repsol’s complex web of national and international industry lobby groups has allowed it to cash in on carbon markets while blocking efforts to cut emissions at source....http://democracyctr.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Corporate_Conquistadors-EN-webFINAL.pdf