DeMuth, C
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furious minds big orban booster
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natcon has UK version?
y mail 5 23
this week an important conference in London featured a showdown between powerful elites and brave dissidents.
No, I’m not talking about the National Conservatism conference, this week’s great political circus that led the news thanks to the attendance of senior Conservative politicians.
I mean Salome Nduta, a Kenyan human rights campaigner at OilWatch Africa, who believes she was deliberately excluded from the Africa Energies Summit in London as vested interests sought to dodge any awkward questions about fossil fuel expansion.
Nduta bought a £4,000 delegate pass to the event – whose sponsors included Royal Dutch Shell, TotalEnergies, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Eni – but was then told it was “sold out”.
Global Witness’s Hanna Hindstrom commented: “This is the classic fossil fuel playbook: push to extract; shut out and ignore the participation of those who will be hit first and hardest as a result of their toxic practices.” Read the full story by DeSmog’s Phoebe Cooke here.
Speaking of pollution, over at the NatCon event, talks were hosted with Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, Tory Deputy Chair Lee Anderson, former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Lord (David) Frost.
But as DeSmog’s Joey Grostern and I reported, the event was packed with speakers and groups hostile to climate action and with ties to the fossil fuel industry.
For example, the conference co-chair Christopher DeMuth was president of the American Enterprise Institute from 1986 to 2006, a US-based climate science denial think tank which has received millions from ExxonMobil and the fossil fuel funded Koch Industries. DeMuth has himself cast doubt on climate science in the past.
And so, it’s fitting that NatCon should have been headlined by Braverman, who – lest we forget – ran for Tory leader last year vowing to “suspend the all-consuming desire to achieve Net Zero by 2050”, while fellow speaker Lord Frost is a director of DeSmog faves the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
But while NatCon speakers used their platforms to rail against “the elites”, genuinely brave campaigners like Salome Nduta are standing up to real power in defence of human rights and protecting the planet.
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no lnx few
https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/national-conservative-manifesto-a-plan-for-fascism-but-it-s-not-hypothetical/
'National Conservative' manifesto: A plan for fascism — but it's not hypothetical
[Viktor Orbán in 2014, Wikimedia Commons
Trump endorses strongman Viktor Orbán in Hungarian election: ‘He has my complete support’]
Kathryn Joyce andSalon June 24, 2022
Last November in Orlando, dozens of the right's leading intellectuals, writers and think tank staffers gathered for the first meeting of the National Conservatism conference since the COVID pandemic hit, drawing journalists from across the political spectrum seeking to untangle what this high-brow gathering of avowed nationalists was all about. The emergence of the "NatCon" movement several years earlier had alarmed many liberal, centrist and even mainline conservative observers with its efforts to rehabilitate the concept of nationalism.But it energized many on the right who were starting to describe themselves as "post-liberal," meaning they were no longer satisfied with the conservative marriage of convenience that had existed since at least the Reagan era and had drawn together the religious right, anti-communists and free-marketeers in a potent but sometimes uneasy coalition. That consensus, they declared loudly, was dead, and a new conservative fusion must arise to take its place.
After the disruption of the pandemic, the loss of the presidency and the rage of Jan. 6, last fall's NatCon II conference was focused on the goal of building that new coalition along nationalist and post-liberal lines: blending extreme social conservatism with a skeptical approach to some forms of laissez-faire capitalism and a sharp hostility to both global or international authority and what they see as corporate-driven liberal cultural hegemony.
Now, the movement has formalized its ideas in a new manifesto, "National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles," released last week by the Edmund Burke Foundation. This ambitious document calls for the creation of a "world of independent nations" as the sole bulwark against "universalist ideologies" that would impose a "homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe." The credited authors include some leading lights of the NatCon world: Israeli political theorist and Burke Foundation chair Yoram Hazony, former American Enterprise Institute president Christopher DeMuth, First Things editor R.R. Reno and American Conservative columnist Rod Dreher.
But the list of signatories is much longer, and also far broader, ranging from right-wing mega-donor Peter Thiel to former Trump administration staffers Mark Meadows and Ken Cuccinelli, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, anti-critical race theory activist Christopher Rufo, multiple officials from Hillsdale College — a nerve center of contemporary right-wing politics — and numerous other think tank staffers and writers from across the spectrum of conservative media.
The manifesto hasn't gotten much attention so far — which isn't surprising, considering how much else is happening in the political realm. A column by David von Drehle in the Washington Post declared its contents akin to fascism, and a more substantial fisking in The Bulwark by Cathy Young found it "a document steeped in thinly veiled and sometimes distressingly overt authoritarian ideology." That's not wrong. But it's also worth observing that, in the battle to build a new conservative coalition, much of the NatCon platform has already won.
As Young notes, many of the NatCon's 10 priorities read, at first, like banal restatements of conservative ideology in general: national independence, the rule of law, God and public religion, free enterprise, family and children. But in ways both subtle and unsubtle, those familiar terms don't all mean what you'd think.
The NatCons hope to divorce nationalism from its association with the Nazis, who they claim were not "nationalist" at all.
The first two items, national independence and rejecting globalism and imperialism, follow one of the core, if questionable, goals of the NatCon movement, which is to divorce the concept of nationalism from its most powerful associations, such as the fascist regimes of Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, which National Conservatives see as imperialist. Instead, NatCons want to attach the term to smaller, scrappier scrappy countries that resisted the Nazis or Soviet Communism.
While the manifesto holds that "Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course," in alignment with its own legal, cultural and religious traditions, it warns against their "transferring" authority to any "transnational or supranational bodies" and advocates opposing "imperialism in its various forms." Those forms include modern-day China and Russia, of course, but also "the liberal imperialism of the last generation, which sought to gain power, influence and wealth by dominating other nations and trying to remake them in its own image."
The "liberalism" described here, as in most NatCon contexts, isn't the center-left politics of the Democratic Party, but rather "classical" liberalism, focused on individual rights, free trade and pluralistic cultures, which until recently was embraced by most mainstream conservatives as well. But within the post-liberal and NatCon world, that small-l liberalism contained the seeds of conservatism's undoing, leading inevitably to the big-L liberalism of progressive ideology by creating a culture in which it's too hard to raise children along traditionalist lines. In this view, societies that uphold pluralistic tolerance and diversity are inherently unfair by denying the majority the right to live in a culture that supports their values — in essence, allowing the minority to oppress the majority.
While both Young and von Drehle read the jabs at boomer "imperialism" as allusions to the Iraq War — which is at least partly true — "empire" for NatCons also has a larger meaning. First, they believe that international compacts, accords and governing bodies like the European Union or the UN infringe on national sovereignty, particularly when it comes to social issues. In the movement's conference this March in Brussels, Hazony sought to align the NatCon vision with Ukraine's fight against Russian aggression. Vladimir Putin's disdain for borders and national independence, he suggested, mirrored the attitudes of bureaucrats in Brussels and Washington. The obvious subtext was that Hungary and Poland — two post-liberal, overtly nationalist countries greatly admired within the movement — were facing EU sanctions over a variety of human rights issues, which Hungarian and Polish leaders rejected as an attempt to squash the rights of the nation-state, and sympathetic fellow speakers cast as the workings of a new "evil empire."
"Empire," in the NatCon world, refers to the right's long, losing battle in the cultural sphere, these days largely waged against what American conservatives call "woke corporations."
...
George W. Bush's Anti-Environmental Advisors: Beyond the Official Bios
SEPTEMBER 2, 1999
This report was released in September, 1999
Beyond the Official Bios
An article in The National Journal ("A Few Hints of Green," August 7, 1999) introduced a group of people gathered to advise George W. Bush on crafting a "conservative environmental agenda." What most voters do not know is that the assembled group of policy advisors typically work for corporate front groups working for goals far outside the mainstream environmental perspective.
These corporate front groups support everything from "takings" legislation that would pay companies not to break environmental and public health laws and dismantling the Endangered Species Act, to denying the existence of global warming and the seriousness of air pollution. The group does not generally value the environment outside of conservative economic terms, and broadly opposes environmental protections that the American people consistently support in political polls.
A few individuals even have ties to the so-called "wise use" movement, an extreme movement whose 25 stated goals include "immediate wise development of the petroleum resources of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge" and "creation of National Mining System" under which "all public lands including wilderness and national parks shall be open to mineral and energy production under wise use technologies."(The Wise Use Agenda, edited by Alan Gottlieb, 1989).
Not exactly the kind of people Americans want potentially guiding the nation's environmental future.
Terry L. Anderson
Anderson is the Executive Director of the corporate front group the Political Economy Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, MT. PERC bills itself as a "free market environmental think tank," meaning it opposes most environmental regulations in favor of "market solutions." PERC has received funding from Amoco, Arco, The Chemical Manufacturers Association, Conoco, Eli Lilly and Co., Pfizer, Coors, and the conservative foundations of the JM Foundation, the Scaife-run Carthage Foundation, Olin Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. PERC is listed as a "networking participant" in the "wise-use" umbrella organization, Alliance for America.
Anderson has also been an adjunct scholar at the libertarian/conservative Koch-funded Cato Institute and a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Gale Norton
Norton began her private legal career as a staffer at the anti-environmental Denver-based Mountain States Legal Foundation where she spent four years before being elected to two terms as Colorado's attorney general. Other Mountain States Legal Foundation alumni include Anne Gorsuch, Reagan's controversial EPA head who was forced to resign amidst scandal, Roger and Nancie Marzulla of the Defenders of Property Rights (another extreme property rights legal foundation), Wayne Hage, a founder of the "Sagebrush Rebellion" who is now engaged to the controversial Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-ID), and Clint Bolick and William "Chip" Mellor who founded Washington, DC's far-right Institute for Justice.
The Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF)was founded in 1977 with initial funding provided by well-known supporter of far-right and anti-environmental causes, beer baron Joseph Coors. The organization’s first president was James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's notorious Secretary of the Interior. MSLF claimed to have received donations from over 175 corporations in its first year. MSLF also receives significant funding from many corporate and right-wing foundations, including the Coors-run Castle Rock.
Among other issues, MSLF promotes "takings" legislation. MSLF has been extremely active in the so-called "wise use" movement and has aggressively litigated against environmental protections. In addition to courtroom activities, MSLF was a sponsor of the first "wise use" conference in Reno, Nevada in 1988. The conference was organized by hard-core anti-environmental leaders Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise and funded by companies such as Boise Cascade, DuPont, and Louisiana Pacific. Conferees authored the 25 point agenda cited in the opening paragraphs.
Norton has also been a member of many other extreme "property rights" groups. She was a member of the Legal Advisory Council for Defenders of Property Rights and co-chaired an environmental forum at the National Policy Forum which is headed by Republican Party Chair Haley Barbour. She was a member of the Farm Credit Bank Property Rights Task Force, the ad hoc group that was formed in 1994 with the purpose of launching the Farm Credit Property Rights Foundation.
Lynn Scarlett
Scarlett is the Executive Director of the Reason Public Policy Institute, a project of the Reason Foundation. The Reason Public Policy Insitute also favors "free market" solutions to environmental problems. Reason downplays the risks from global warming and opposes tighter standards for particulate air pollution.
David H. Koch of Koch Industries, a massive oil company, sits on the board of the Reason Foundation and is also a funder. Koch Industries is currently under two unrelated investigations by the EPA for environmental violations in Minnesota and the southwest, and has paid millions in environmental fines for other violations of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. The Reason Institute, like the Pacific Research Institute, is a member of the Heritage Foundation's State Policy Network.
Scarlett was a senior fellow at the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), the Montana-based organization that was exposed last year by The Washington Post for holding anti-environmental junkets for federal judges at a Montana dude ranch. FREE is bankrolled by polluting interests that fund litigation before the federal bench.
The Reason Foundation has received funding from the Farm Bureau, Amoco, Arco, Chevron, Coors, David H. Koch Foundation, Eli Lilly, Exxon, Ford Motors, Olin Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Mobil, Pfizer, Philip Morris, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Texaco, Unocal, and Xerox.
Christopher C. DeMuth
DeMuth is the president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI). A fellow of AEI, Charles Murray, wrote the controversial book, The Bell Curve, which suggests a correlation between race and intelligence.
AEI’s directors and trustees represent Dow Chemical, Procter and Gamble, American Cynamid, FORBES, Coca Cola, Texaco, New England Electrical Systems, Eli Lilly and GTE. AEI has been funded by Procter and Gamble, Amoco Foundation, ARCO Foundation, Chevron, Union Carbide, Scaife Family Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Coors-run Castle Rock Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.
Steven Hayward
Hayward is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. The Pacific Research Institute, a libertarian free-market think tank, is a member of the State Policy Network, an association of state think tanks organized by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. Pacific Research Institute has received funding from most of the large conservative foundations: Sarah Scaife Foundation, the David H. Koch Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation.
The Pacific Research Institute recently published Environmental Gore, A Constructive Response to Earth in the Balance. Contributing authors include John Baden of FREE, global warming deniers Robert Balling, Hugh Ellseasser, and Richard Lindzen, Lynn Scarlett of Reason, and Mountain States Legal Foundation alumna Nancie Marzulla, now of Defenders of Property Rights.
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Contact: Brendan DeMelle, Analyst, Environmental Working Group, 202-667-6982.
ggl 10 25
[### Trumpism, Nationalism, and Conservatism
Claremont Review of Books
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com › trumpism-nation...](https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/trumpism-nationalism-and-conservatism/)
Donald Trump's presidential candidacy began as a furious attack on both ... Christopher DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. Next ...
[### What Is Nationalism: A Conversation with Chris DeMuth
Hudson Institute
https://www.hudson.org › foreign-policy › what-is-natio...](https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/what-is-nationalism-a-conversation-with-chris-de-muth)
In a podcast interview with The American Mind, Chris DeMuth discusses nationalism and conservatism in the era of President Trump.
[### Trump on Mt. Rushmore?. Should he? Will he? | by
Medium · Chris DeMuth Jr
1 like · 7 months ago](https://chrisdemuthjr.medium.com/trump-on-mt-rushmore-7de4e5df0ae2)
Disclaimer / Disclosure. Should he? My normative view is that he shouldn't. No disrespect to the president, who I root for every day.
[### How Congress Unleashed the Presidency
The Heritage Foundation
https://www.heritage.org › commentary › how-congress...](https://www.heritage.org/american-history/commentary/how-congress-unleashed-the-presidency)
Nov 1, 2024 — Chris DeMuth is a Distinguished Fellow in American Thought and AWC Family Foundation Fellow in Heritage's B. Kenneth Simon Center for.
[### Nationalism - Christopher DeMuth Sr.
ccdemuth.com
https://ccdemuth.com › nationalism](https://ccdemuth.com/nationalism/)
Trumpism has an essence, and that essence is nationalism. It is the American version of the revival of the spirit of nationhood in the rich democracies of the ...
[### Christopher DeMuth: I hope that we will see more predictability The ...
thebusinesssoiree.com
https://www.thebusinesssoiree.com › article › christophe...](https://www.thebusinesssoiree.com/article/christopher-demuth-i-hope-that-we-will-see-more-predictability)
President Trump believes that reimporting certain kinds of jobs and manufacturing is an important part of solving these problems. Tariffs cannot bring back ...
[### Christopher DeMuth and Adam White Transcript
Conversations with Bill Kristol
https://conversationswithbillkristol.org › transcript › chr...](https://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/christopher-demuth-adam-white-transcript/)
DEMUTH: And I think that President Trump could do some similarly important things. I think approving the Keystone Pipeline would be one. He wants to ...
[### Hon. Christopher C. DeMuth
The Federalist Society
https://fedsoc.org › bio › christopher-demuth](https://fedsoc.org/bio/christopher-demuth)
Christopher DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at Hudson Institute. He was president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) ...
[### Chris DeMuth Jr (@ChrisDeMuthJr) / Posts ...
X · ChrisDeMuthJr
9.7K+ followers](https://x.com/ChrisDeMuthJr)
A large screen displays Donald J Trump President of the United States in glowing text with ... Chris DeMuth Jr profile. Chris DeMuth Jr. ChrisDeMuthJr. Oct 25.
[### Is There a Benign Trumpian Nationalism? (Christopher ...
Niskanen Center
https://www.niskanencenter.org › is-there-a-benign-trum...](https://www.niskanencenter.org/is-there-a-benign-trumpian-nationalism/)
Jul 9, 2019 — One finds in DeMuth's lengthy essay not a hint of recognition that Trump's brand of nationalism rests not on unity but corrosive divisiveness.