Climate change deniers, theocrats and neoliberals meet in London for the scariest Halloween Party
It was helpful of Greg Sheridan to advertise in The Australian (27/10) the new ultraconservative conference that he is attending in London. While his column is no doubt intended to recruit, it is useful in shining a spotlight on a traditionally shadowy architecture of influence.
Apparently 1,500 citizens from around the world are gathering at the O2 venue over Halloween in London to talk about how to save the world from the “elites” at a cost of AUD2870 per head. The new body promoting conservative activism is the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). The body’s tagline is that the “The ARC of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” The “ark” wordplay to denote them as saviours of Western Civilisation is no doubt intentional.
One of the key figures organising this event is John Anderson, former National Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister. He recently appeared at Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Australia conference which was a Trumpist rallying cry against the Voice to Parliament and LGBTQIA+ rights. He also spoke at the reactionary Family First NZ conference. More significantly, Anderson, according to the ARC site, runs “Australia’s pre-eminent politico-cultural video podcast,” an “enterprise” that has 400,000 subscribers.
On his program, Anderson interviewed the unbearable Jordan Peterson; now they are at the helm of this nascent body. Peterson is one of the stars of the internet manosphere where he makes his money selling sexism, Western chauvinism and climate denial. Joining these two as founder is Baroness Philippa Stroud, formerly of the Legatum Institute, an influence body whose “lead sponsor” is the Legatum Group, representing a Dubai-based private hedge-fund billionaire. This is the “think” tank that fought for the strictest Brexit with no tariffs, and drones to cope with the Irish border issue. The economic conditions created by “think” tanks such as this have one million British children living in “destitution,” more than doubling the figure over the last five years.
The pretext for forging this alliance is that climate action is going to destroy the ability to provide food for humanity, pushing us into poverty. Recent scientific findings that point to evidence that all “life on Earth is imperilled” by the climate crisis are not accepted. Desmog has described the ARC conference as a key event in the “climate crisis denial movement.”
Of the international crowd, 150 are Australian. Anderson and Sheridan are to be joined by former Prime Ministers John Howard, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. Anti-abortion activist Amanda Stoker is on the advisory panel alongside Howard, Abbott and Andrew Hastie. Angus Taylor, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Ted O’Brien and James Paterson are attending, as is Barnaby Joyce. Mark Latham is too. The only political surprise is Julian Leeser who was a more moderate actor in the Voice debate.
Most delegates are coming from the UK and the US. Sheridan counts 300 as deriving from Europe. One of the most noteworthy American attendees is new House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is a fully-fledged theocrat. He has been described by a colleague as a “despicable bigot of the highest order.” The list of figures on the advisory board alone features notables representing climate denial, Western chauvinism and ultraconservative religious beliefs from around the world. It also has what Sheridan characterises as “serious business backers.”
Anderson explained to Sheridan that, “Citizens in the West feel marginalised, treated with contempt by the elites.” The Voice was apparently a project of the “expertocracy” that patronised the voter. We need elites, but “the right elites.” This reflects a trend in the National Conservative (Nat Con) movement that, while pitched at actual elites, demonises the intellectual “elites” as the crisis in society. It feigns populism while aiming to control all the behaviours and beliefs in the populace that are not “traditional.” It is simultaneously statist in its disdain for the individual’s choices and libertarian for the “conservative” business world.
This is an important moment to read prize winning journalist and historical researcher Anne Nelson’s “Shadow Network” book, recounting the history of the Council for National Policy in the US. It illustrates the strategies at work in this body as well as the global Atlas Network. The “think” tanks and organisations formulated in this model unite disparate actors in cutting edge strategies led by a multitude of misleadingly-named bodies to foster ultra-free market policy and ultraconservative social goals. Many of the plutocrat funders are fossil fuel billionaires.
The game-plan of the Atlas Network was rolled out for the Voice to Parliament referendum, as UTS lecturer Jeremy Walker examined. The 500 Atlas affiliates around the world have consistently worked to break the union of Indigenous populations and environmental action impeding resource extraction. Their ploys include depicting climate activists and environmentalists as terrorists or extremists. This has been the case for Indigenous environmental protectors around the world. They have also worked to co-opt some First People with mining profits to break unity and fight the resource extractors’ opponents for them. ARC Advisor Magatte Wade heads Atlas affiliate “Center for African Prosperity” where she argues climate activism is the new colonialism, intended to impoverish Africans.
The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), an Australian Atlas affiliate, has strong personnel connections to the Advance body that led the No campaign through its Fair Australia brand. Advance shares personnel and an address with sites that that promoted a range of disruptive and contradictory positions against the Voice, including a Christian one (not least because spiritual connections to country are a pagan threat). The cluster includes an anti-climate action offshoot called “Not Zero.” Advance has personnel and logistical connections with Whitestone Strategic consulting, a shadowy company that also has links with the Pentecostal movement’s peak body, the Australian Christian Lobby, and with Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party. It’s uncertain how much damage to the referendum was achieved by Advance and friends: they seem a clumsy attempt at the Atlas model.
Nelson illustrates how the possible American political collapse into fossil fuel-embracing, theocratic authoritarianism was created over 50 years with the kind of networking reflected in the ARC conference. The O2 event trumpets the spread of the fossil fuel-promoting, ultraconservative movement internationally, work that Atlas has been carrying out in secret.
This might be 2023’s scariest Halloween party.
This was first published in Pearls and Irritations as An ultraconservative shadow network is forming, designed to influence you
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
18 comments
Login here Register here-
uncletimrob -
Steve Davis -
Phil Pryor -
New England Cocky -
New Bruce -
RomeoCharlie -
Lawriejay -
Max Gross -
Brad Black -
andyfiftysix -
paul walter -
andyfiftysix -
Clakka -
Andrew Smith -
Bronwyn Grantham -
Clakka -
GL -
Terence Mills
Return to home pageSo, it’s a group who:
– don’t care
– don’t understand the science
– do understand the science but say it’s wrong
– do understand the science but don’t care
– believe in the biblical creation story
– have a political or faith barrow to push
– believe in a “global conspiracy” of scientists, politicians, faith leaders, teachers, universities, research organisations. NASA, ESA ….. have I left anyone out?
– have amongst them such intellectual luminaries who believe the earth is flat
I need to be there! It sounds just like my cup of tea!
uncletimrob, great comment.
We have to ask, just how much propaganda control do they want?
They have almost total control of the MSM, and that’s not enough?
This could be a sign of panic; a sign that they fear losing control of the narrative.
In the dictionary of political perversion “Sheridan” will be found near “shithead”, “Shonky”, “shyster”, and “shameless”, but more romanist ratbags in conservative ranks can be found in his company and colleagues. The dirty old superstitions, especially romanist ravings, which afflict this world with misery, disaster and damage have been refined by neofascist fistfloggers and intellectual perverts who utilise imagery of hatred to replace attacks on “heathens” and any outsider they wish to reduce. Uncivilised garbage…this is how Mussolini started his foul, gutless, murderous perversion of political science, leading to his coalition with Hitler the Horror, and it has not died. We learned, absolutely, by 1945, that the only good nazi or fascist was a dead one, for our sake, for civilisation’s sake, for a decent future. But, as Murdoch and many know, there is money and power in conflict and capturing idiocy for that.
Any institution associating with John Anderson, the former leader representing the NOtional$ in the now abandoned Gwydir electorate centred on Moree NSW, should be treated with the contempt it deserves.
.
Perhaps his only saving grace was pushing Tony Windsor out of NOtional$ pre-selection for the NSW electorate of Tamworth, that fired a response from concerned Tamworth business persons who undertook to fund the Windsor campaign as an Independent.
.
Tamworth thrived for the decade of work done by Windsor before he progressed on to representing New England in the feral Parliament after the 2000 elections, which he won with a 62% first preference vote.
.
New England thrived while Gwydir remained stuck in the 19th century. Anderson even threatened to withhold feral funding for the Tamworth ALC (horse events) project if Windsor attended the opening ceremony.
.
Anderson became Campaign Manager for Beetrooter’s return ”home” from his term as Queensland Senator rather than his preferred HoR electorate of Maranoa Qld, to replace Windsor when he retired on health grounds in 2013.
.
Anderson as Campaign Manager authorised a slanderous campaign during the 2017 ”Kiwi bye-election” accusing Windsor of chasing skirt wherever it could be found, knowing it to be completely untrue and without any foundation, and terrorising old Mrs Windsor with a constant barrage of telephone harassment. Indeed, many sceptical political commentators wondered whether this representation of Windsor actually reflected the personal experience of some of the NOtional$ Campaign Committee.
.
After retiring from politics Anderson took an interest in Eastern Star Gas, during which period Beetrooter purchased two ”grazing properties” in the Pilliga Scrub reported as being located over CSG deposits. Subsequently a re-routing of the unfinancial Northern Inland Railway to about 20 km from these properties, then a re-negotiation of the COALition Agreement provided about $1500 MILLION finance for the NIR to be extended from Toowoomba to the CSG Port Gladestone CSG export facility.
This decision is being reviewed by the current Albanese LABOR government. Anderson sold his Eastern Star interests to SANTOS that received NSW COALition misgovernment permission to exploit the Pilliga Scrub CSG deposits with over 700 wells, risking pollution of the Great Artesian Basin.
Is uncle rupiah going to be there, or is he still posing for his portrait for the first international banknotes? Or bitnote?
What a cockroach cage full of bullshit.
I know from my high-school days that Round Earthist and Solar-Centric theorists were burnt at the satke by “the church” for heresy, but in the end Science prevailed, and columbus, magellan, de gama et al all sailed off into the sunset, and came back without having fallen off the edge into the abyss, and bringing with them stories ofwhole new worlds to plunder, rape, pillage, and convert.
This lot over in london at O2 stadium sounds like they want to re-write history, and go back to before anyone had worked out how to write on stones.
Is it in the rules that BorderFarce HAVE to let them back in ?
While noting all of the above comments, and I should add agreeing with them, particularly the ‘cockroach cage full of bullshit’, the bigger question for me is ‘How do we combat them?’. There is so much wealth tied up in supporting the promulgation of the climate denial ethos, so much malign influence. At the same time there is so much accurate information that doesn’t make it into the mainstream or lamesteam media, including articles like this which is written in language even the average no-voter can understand, well perhaps not the voters of Maranoa (see Pascoe in the New Daily). At times I have to agree with my wife ‘stop the world I want to get off’.
These people have to be the most insecure bunch of fart phobia warriors ever assembled for a flatulence convention ?
That mob can be summed up in one word: obscurantists
Pigs at a trough, with sincere apologies to pigs who I rate far and beyond the above collection of gutter politicians and their ‘take everything give back nothing’ gluttonous, mercenary old, white and well off mates.
Its such a blatantly stupid club anyway. Saviours of the western world? Who the hell are they kidding? Its their agenda that got us here. Everyone of them has an agenda to fuck things up by opposing anything that will fix things up. Anything Tony Abbott is involved in will be screwed up well and proper.
RomeoCharlie, you ask the question.
Methinks the (ab)use of AI will be the death knell.
Romeocharlie, ” who will fix things up?”. thats an easy one for me. The desruption caused by Solar cells goes on uninterupted because people are voting with their feet. 32% renewables last month continues the trend. 14% global EV uptake means we have passed the tipping point. Toyota and GM are screaming BS spin daily to prop up their share prices. Surely , anyday the markets will see through the garbage. So yes i am very excited by whats coming and this group of shit heads are totally in denial. Nuclear is all talk, when shit hits the fan, the libs will be left with no clothes. Crying that wind farms will kill wales is so far out there, you have to be a gullible fool to take it in. Yes there are lots around but money at the end of the day talks and it talks both ways. I see the farmers federation has thrown its hat in with the liberals. I bet if labor was to call their bluff and say, ok we will go around you and you get nothing, the tune will change.
Lucy, excellent article. Pity its like don’t make the msm. Can’t imagine why.
Wholly at one with all the above comments.
After hearing him on LNL Monday night, just finished Dr Jeremy Watson’s article 30 Sept in UTS ePress
A must read. It’s enough to make yer blood boil.
Big question WTF to do about it?
https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/mcs/article/view/8813
Good article, a meeting of minds in London….but also shows these Anglo transnational links missed by most national media, but what is the end game?
Permanent white Christian nationalist authoritarianism, serving industry especially fossil fuels, mining, industry and big ag, then cutting taxes, budgets and spending, for the <1% by gaming and abusing liberal democracy, as most voters would find their policies unpalatable (unless perceptions are gamed by media & influencers)?
Atlas or Koch Network, in US ‘own’ the GOP, linked to the CNP Council for National Policy (Nelson elaborates in her book, corrals Christians Trump), ALEC ‘bill mill’ lobbying Reps (like National Party owned by alleged IPA donor wedging in moderate Libs), Freedom Caucus see Congress (blocking Speakers etc.) and Federalist Society behind SCOTUS appointments; and at least a symbiotic relationship between Charles Koch and Rupert Murdoch.
And their views on ‘other types’ inc indigenous, the ‘the most influential unknown man in America’ (Chavez in NYT), whose network shares donors with Koch Network or Atlas in the US, deceased white nationalist formerly of Rockefeller Bros./Exxon linked ZPG Zero Population Growth, John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton. Tanton was described by SPLC as the ‘architect of the modern anti-immigration movement’, admired the white Australia policy, visited and was hosted by a faux environmental NGO focused on immigration restrictions & population control.
In the US his outlets advise the GOP and media, while in UK ditto with Tories, shares Tufton St. space with Atlas think tanks behind Brexit, and locally it’s getting the media to talk about immigration and population growth, obsessively and negatively or dog whistling, with bipartisan agreement.
Concern is that their electoral demographic powder is running out i.e. older less educated, less diverse and less secular voters, hence, a need to ‘accelerate’ their desired changes before electorates balance out, becoming more educated, more diverse and more empowered; one of these in the US is Project 2025 removing barriers faced by Trump…..
‘Here’s How You Can Help a Future Conservative President Take Down the Deep State’
Thank you Lucy Hamilton for this well-researched article. May the world be kind to you.
AS, read your link
‘Here’s How You Can Help a Future Conservative President Take Down the Deep State’ and the subsequent ‘4 pillars’ link.
Sounds a tad simplistic, a tad authoritarian (and nearing ‘theocratic’), and a bit like an alternative ‘Deep State’. I guess it depends whose hands it is in, and how it is used – madmen and madwomen?.
Suffice it to say the American political machine is in a parlous state, and appears to have been increasingly subverted over the years. Like so may states across the world, their Constitution stands in minds as sacrosanct, whereas now, in modernity most Constitutions are of an olde worlde, and largely inappropriate. And talking of subversions, the Bill of Rights is frequently used to subvert legislative process and thus the Constitution. What a mess.
Outwith the Constitution, surely there has to be a demonstrative will to bring legislation to address important matters such as the nature of political donation, ensuring an apolitical public service, in politics and media ensuring truth in political promulgation, and so forth. But the chances are slim, as the entire caboodle has been blighted and dragged down the drain by mercantile mendacity over the best interest of the entire population. And of course, that mendacity for the short-term is self-defeating in the long run.
Albeit, the chooks are coming home to roost – fast. Their are recent signs of reform in some global outreach of words, but the framework is broke, and deeds continue to be blocked by partisan dysfunction. They are reaping what they sow, and that’s diminishing – they are the masters of their own imminent demise.
Trouble is will they learn, and who and what will crack first? Will they bring the whole world down to hell? It seems much of the world now is earwigging them and it appears they are listening, albeit in action, it is like trying to turn a liberty ship on a dime.
To me, only from the articles, it appears that the recipes of Paul Dans are just tinkering with a meal, when the patrons and passers-by know the entire kitchen and menu is broke.
It’s no wonder that caterpillar eyebrows has trouble understanding multiculturalism. His formaldahyde soaked corpse…I mean body, is inhabited by a 1950’s Menzies era mind. Australia was white with the world and the royal parasites…damn it, family were the be all and end all of civilisation. Best to put him back in the jar and seal it shut.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/02/john-howard-multiculturalism-comments-alliance-for-responsible-citizenship-conference-london
These people have a habit if calling others names, they jostle in the studios of SKY and FOX to be heard and they love it when John Howard calls on them to maintain the rage even though he’s still fighting a war to prevent marriage equality.
They call anybody who doesn’t agree with their warped ideology woke or more recently elites. In both they are misinformed but they don’t care.
I have done some research on wokeism and have to confess that I am probably woke. In its modern-day, politicised context, ‘woke’ is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as : ‘well-informed, up-to-date and more recently alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice’. The Urban Dictionary, meanwhile, explains that ‘being woke means being aware… knowing what’s going on in the community (particularly related to racism and social injustice)’.
OK I surrender, I’m woke and wouldn’t be welcome at this knees-up in London and I’m eminently happy about that. But am I also an elite ?
Gosh !
I looked up elite and find that we (mainly you) ‘are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a society.’ Defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, the elite are ‘those people or organizations that are considered the best or most powerful compared to others of a similar type.’
The elites include bureaucratic, corporate, intellectual, military, media, and government elites who control the principal institutions and whose opinions and actions influence the decisions of the policymakers. So, the elites are a bit like swifties and we (mainly you ) to be part of this group ‘need to hold an influential position within a prominent private or public organization or group’.
I told my wife, “hey I’m an elite” – she said that’s all very well but don’t forget to put the bin out for collection in the morning – I think I’ll stick to being woke for the time being at least.