It is no accident that the Australian “conservative” movement has transformed into an echo of the toxic American Right. Fossil fuel money and a giant international network of junktanks bear much of the blame.
Dr Jeremy Walker’s research into the Atlas Network’s Australian partners brought that American body to prominence over the referendum campaign. The media coverage of his academic study into the influence of “think” tanks such as the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) and the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) carrying Atlas strategies into the Australian civic discourse raised Atlas’s profile.
The latest attack by Atlas partner organisations, including (unofficially) News Corp, is a strategic campaign against offshore wind farms.
The model, as Walker reports, for the supposedly grassroots campaign against offshore wind farms on coastal NSW is derived from a related campaign in the United States. Researchers into climate disinformation at Brown University’s IBES first noticed local groups springing up with high production value visual material and matching talking points. While some figures acting in local Facebook groups seem to be authentic (if misled), others seem suspiciously strategic in their interaction.
Sydney University of Technology hosted an international webinar last week that brought together some of the best research voices challenging the climate disinformation industry which is in large part coordinated by Atlas. This sector continues to block any real action to prevent climate catastrophe – indeed is responsible for causing this crisis – as well as escalating the destruction of democratic projects around the world. There is to be no scope for any nation’s public to obstruct their ultra-free market goals.
Walker led the program hosted by former senator Scott Ludlum. Duke’s Professor Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains expanded on her investigative history of this movement. Professor Timmons Roberts from Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab and environmental journalist Brendan DeMille, executive director of the crucial DeSmog blog, detailed their work and resources. (Unfortunately Amy Westervelt of the outstanding Drilled site and podcast was called away.)
The two hours of the webinar was filled with densely conveyed information and access to resources such as the collection of fossil fuel industry documents illustrating that they knew carbon would create a climate disaster from the 1950s but decided from the 1980s to destroy the civic debate instead of changing business model to avert the catastrophe. Desmog provides extensive information about the Atlas Network’s functions and its partners around the globe. Roberts gave a link to the CDL site to contradict fossil fuel-funded disinformation about offshore wind energy. (The latest series from Drilled focuses on the criminalisation of climate and environmental protesters, and its crushing of free speech.)
Walker outlined the history of the Atlas phenomenon, pointing out that international oil industry manoeuvring began in the earliest years of the 20th century, even before widespread universal suffrage in democracies. Their goal to override national sentiments and constraints in supranational treaties and trade deals is central to their power and profit.
Walker pointed out that the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) acts as the inner sanctum of the Atlas Network. It was founded in 1947 with oil connections from the outset, and neoliberalism can be dated from its inaugural conference. Atlas founder Anthony Fisher’s daughter Linda Whetstone was a director of his prototype “think” tank the British Institute of Economic Affairs, president of the MPS in 2020 and chairman of the Atlas Network from 2016.
As of the last leaked membership list of the secretive MPS in 2013, former Prime Minister John Howard was a member. John Roskam (Executive Director until 2022, now Senior Fellow, at the IPA) and News Corp’s Janet Albrechtsen were listed. Director and Founder of the CIS, Greg Lindsay, was a former president of the MPS. Ron Manners, founder of Atlas connected “think” tank the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation is a current director of the MPS. Maurice Newman, around the time he was chair of the ABC, was also listed. He helped found the CIS and was a seminal backer of Advance Australia which led the campaign against the Voice to Parliament.
The notorious Charles Koch took over orchestrating Atlas’s success after Fisher’s 1987 death, not to mention being a member of the MPS. Koch Industries was identified to be a “kingpin of climate science denial.” Without the Kochs and Rupert Murdoch, the Tea Party which morphed into Trump’s MAGA movement would have been stillborn. In 1980, when his brother and partner David ran as a Libertarian Party candidate, father of American conservatism William F Buckley described their politics as “Anarcho Totalitarianism.”
MacLean’s presentation highlighted the fact that the figures who held these “public choice” theories, devised by James Buchanan and largely funded by Koch (and peers), knew their ultra free market ideas would not win majority votes and so set out secretly to cripple democracy by any “technology” they could devise. MacLean drew attention to global attacks on democracy and surging autocracy, featuring the Atlas-connected money and “think” tanks that drove the Brexit vote as well as promoting far-right and neofascist politics in Europe. Both movements are tied to climate denial.
The Atlas Network’s main goal, as Demille summarised it, has been to spot and train global talent in the ultra free-market libertarian field and connect it to the free-flowing money that the alliance functions to assist. They now have at least 515 partner organisations in over 100 nations. The contributions of donors and even the fact of bodies functioning as Atlas partners, have been hidden as part of making any account such as this look like a conspiracy theory. They know that the impacts of complete deregulation – tainted water, air, dangerous workplaces – will be unpalatable even to the people inculcated to believe deregulation is desirable. The secession of the rich from civil society, particularly in paying tax, has meant ever fewer services and deteriorating infrastructure for the electorate. Secrecy is key for the corporations and plutocrats funding this model, structuring replicating “think” tanks and funding academics and spin doctors to sell what the backers can’t say.
George Monbiot, environmental and political journalist, describes these “think” tanks as “junktanks.” Included are those like the CIS that prefer to remain in the background targeting “high” strategies at politicians, CEOs and journalists. Also included are bodies such as the IPA which play to the “low” strategies at least in their public facade. The IPA fosters every idiot ball distraction that fuels the grievances and resentment in the culture war ignition of an enraged base. Those idiot balls are framed by their colleagues in America and imported lightly tinkered for the Australian market. Much of this is channelled through News Corp mastheads and Sky News, now funnelled free-to-air into the regions. Many idiot balls, such as the tantrums about EVs ruining the weekend or the threat to gas stoves, serve fossil fuel interests.
We must work out how to demarcate junktanks from think tanks doing genuine research. We must remove tax free status and ensure that their donor lists are made public. Every journalist or politician that emerges from or remains allied to such a junktank, every interviewee representing them, should be identified as such whenever they make a pronouncement. These disingenuous actors will, of course, feign outrage, pretending that bodies with integrity such as The Australia Institute are their mirror image “on the left.”
We must draw attention, constantly, to the asymmetric warfare at work. While one part of our civic space functions according to old (flawed) rules, the new Right respects no rules, traditions or norms. One of their strategies is projection: every political actor, researcher or “enemy” media body is as belligerent as they are. They also act to nobble the referees. Pretending that factcheckers, media bodies or public servants are as politically-driven as themselves is one of their weapons.
Our politicians and independent media figures need to speak about this architecture of influence and its anti-majoritarian goals.
This is no minor skirmish. The divisions in society that they are working to create can lead to authoritarian regulation and civic violence.
For some of the oligarchs behind and strategists working for the Atlas Network and interrelated bodies there is a genuine reactionary yearning for an older white society governed by strict “biblical morality.” Christian Libertarianism is a description of America’s perverted libertarianism that desires statist control of bodies. For other cynics in the network, religious Right factions provide a voter bloc and cover for the free market and climate-denial activities. For these reasons, the forces work in concert with and fund Christian Nationalists.
The autocracies promoted by these forces around the globe promote fossil fuel production and consumption. Ultra free-market concepts are matched with repression of individuals and the end of rights and freedom of conscience. Citizens who are content to earn and consume may not notice the difference until climate disasters make their food unaffordable or unavailable. Those who aim to protest the breakdown of our societies under the manifold pressures of the climate catastrophe and economic injustice, combined with the brutal treatment of climate refugees, will be branded extremists or terrorists and will suffer.
The irony is that the people targeted by the strategists into becoming part of the climate denial and delay movement – such as the conspiracists who join the NIMBYs to fight renewables like offshore wind farms – are almost right. But this conspiracy is tracked and piled high with peer-reviewed academic study.
Atlas’s credo is: “We believe that all individuals have the right to pursue opportunities, enjoy success, and live a life of freedom without coercion or persecution. And so we tirelessly aid in the unshackling of individual liberty, free enterprise, and voluntary cooperation to prevent future poverty.” This pablum is actually intended to disguise the impoverishment of the vast majority of humanity, indeed its destruction in the climate catastrophe, while the 0.1% enjoy the liberty that statement celebrates.
Atlas and partners like the CIS hate attention. We must not let them hide.
A shorter version of this essay was published at Pearls and Irritations as Secrecy and the climate disinformation industry
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Good article as always in a complex field, hence, is ignored locally; suggesting local media is not really up to dealing well if at all with ‘long games’, like long conflicts and complexity.
Jane Mayer and her peer who has researched something similar, Nancy MacLean (Democracy in Chains) are very good presenters and they can elaborate more to an audience e.g. via ‘Poetry & Prose’ bookshop presentations on YouTube; highly recommended.
You can also add the dirty little secret in the background, not just fossil fuels & climate science denial, geopolitics, Voter ID, ‘owning’ the GOP, Tories and LNP and economic muse Buchanan’s ‘segregation economics’, but related to the latter, sharing donors with the ‘most influential unknown man in America’.
It was dec. white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton, was in Rockefeller Bros. Fund supported ZPG Zero Population Growth (Washington Post 1977), described as ‘racist founder of the modern anti-immigrant movement’ (SPLC), admired white Oz, visited and hosted (’80s-90s); manifested in migration policies, ‘great replacement’, individuals like Bannon, Miller, Farage et al, RW media outlets, Brexit, Trump etc.
In my opinion the target has always been increasing numbers of above median age voters, especially regional, less educated/diverse, socially conservative and many Labor too. In the US also Evangelical &/or conservative Christians, who are nested within Koch and Tanton Networks via CNP Council for National Policy, but very contrary ideology for many ‘conservatives’ when Tanton was also not just anti-semitic, but also anti-Catholic, pro-abortion and eugenics?
Someone to track on confusing and/or contradictory talking points and links with multiple offshore ‘conservative’ institutes or think tanks, including Atlas, is Tony Abbott. He is linked to Koch’s Heritage which is allegedly anti-Ukraine/EU/NATO and pro-Putin (shared outlook?), but he then pops up at a (Murdoch owned) Wall Street Journal event last week, to meekly ask new GOP House Speaker Johnson if something could be done for Ukraine per Xmas….bit like his threatened ‘shirt fronting’ of Putin?
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/zelensky-invokes-christmas-in-us-visit-to-plead-for-war-funding-20231213-p5er2n.html
It’s concerning that in any discussion on the threats to democracy that the same names keep reappearing.
Thank you, Lucy, for another great article.
Sadly, fools like me, walking with my head up my arse made me unaware of atlas.
The no campaign was led by the two factions:
blacks who wanted the power the voice couldn’t deliver
whites who thought it would give blacks the power
The yes campaign was led by idiots who thought enough Australians knew ‘it was the right thing to do’. They not only sat but forgot that 56 years ago 500000 Australians thought that Aboriginal people should not be counted as Australians. They probably didn’t know that, after the war, Aboriginal people had to deny their Aboriginality to live a normal darwin life.
This is a GOOD summary.
I see wam is identifying the similarities of Israel/ Palestine and our mangled Voice idea, where the idea of constructive engagement with reality and “others” is mutilated in favour of rejection lest it interfere with business as usual.
We are surprised that AIM would publish a piece like this relying on mere innuendo and false statements.
For the record:
1: CIS was started before Atlas in Greg Lindsay’s back garden. CIS was not created by Atlas.
2: all our research is on the public record. We are not ‘trying to hide’
3: our only carbon research to date has recommended a carbon tax.
4: we do not , and have never received funding from Atlas.
@ Andrew Smith: Abbott’s pathetic attempts at relevancy merely bring attention to his being the total airhead he always was, perhaps now no longer even a threat to Putin. He’s fulfilled his brief for the fossil fuel industry and now he can play benevolent Catholic. It’s been his MO since his student days.
But can you assist with this seeming ‘contradiction’ (Wiki)? ‘With Nouh El Harmouzi she (Linda Whetstone) co-edited the book “Islamic Foundations of a Free Society”, which was published in Dari, Indonesian, Arabic, French and Persian.’
In any event appropriately chairman, never chairwoman/chairperson.
Thank you for your indispensably (for me at any rate) illuminating articles throughout the year Lucy, and best wishes for a restful yuletide.
Dear Karla,
Thanks for your reply.
CIS was reportedly founded with Antony Fisher, the man behind the Atlas Network, on his tours of the world promoting these self-replicating bodies. The IPA was founded amongst the earliest of the neoliberal thinktanks (around 30 years before the CIS) and is an Atlas partner too.
The Atlas strategy is to connect talent, money and training. It networks.
There is no accusation that the CIS was founded by Atlas or is funded by them. The CIS uses its own Australian wealthy to fund its activities, as is generally the case with Atlas partners.
The research is on the public record but the “think” tanks of this sort have a record of secrecy about funding and behind the scenes activity in fostering their funders’ goals. (They claim independence and intellectual rigour but most of us will be happy to contest that.)
The purpose of such bodies as yours is to choose a different strategy and focus. HR Nicholls (Atlas partner) focussed on crippling worker strength. The Bennelong Society (defunct Atlas partner) worked on crippling First People’s self-determination in favour of assimilation. The Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance (Atlas partner) worked on starving the government of funds to provide the services a flourishing society needs. LibertyWorks Inc (Ugh. Atlas Partner) worked on bringing the Trump clown car to Australia via CPAC.
The great entertainment for those short of a crossword puzzle is to go through the public records of founders, funders, employees and affiliates of the bodies to work out which ones overlap. Some have shared post boxes and phone numbers.
The connections can be overt – like the elite mining figure whose name crops up over and again – or more allusive. The degree to which connection with Atlas and MPS are significant at the new Alliance for Responsible Citizenship will be interesting to see. There is certainly an overlap.
I would love to chat to you sometime about the degree to which the average person working with a body such as yours is aware of the international connections or whether it is only the top dogs who zip off to MPS and Atlas meet-ups.
Regards,
Lucy
Excellent and important article, Lucy.
These matters are without doubt our greatest challenge.
Last Saturday I visited friends up in the ranges, central western Vic. Their star boarder / god-son on sabbatical, is a bright reasonably well informed left-leaning buck approaching 30.
After we had wandered the surrounds, we were sitting watching the cricket (Oz vs Pakistan), and in some weird context or other, he said. ” … of course Pakistan is so corrupt.” I responded, “No more so than Oz, or for that matter the rest of the ‘west’.” In defense of his position, his response, “That’s bullshit!” I thought I’d leave that unanswered, so he might consider his retort.
I dropped my head. To myself, I mused, “We just conceal it better, with a faux gravitas, mountains of obfuscating paper-work, rhetoric and a (greasy) smile.” And further, thought quietly, “Over 40 years of traveling the globe and doing international business on matters industrial and of governmental interest, as well as years of business / government dealings in Oz, I guess I know nothing.” I didn’t want to insult him with irony.
He got up and went and made us a drink.
I don’t blame him for his absolutist retort, to me it’s born out of fear and apprehension, and some desire to hope it’s simple.
Later, seeking to maintain engagement, he posited a discussion on the current Israel / Palestine situation. I quietly demurred, saying, “It’s complex, I’ll send you something.”
We went on to enjoy the cricket, and a fine repast with the entire household.
Today, I’ll be sending him this article, along with my potted timeline political/cultural history of the Levant – some 3,500 years.
@Lucy Hamilton. The allegation that CIS was founded with this Fisher fellow is a false statement. And quite frankly, insulting to Sydney maths teacher Greg Lindsay, who founded CIS in his backyard shed. This is a matter of public record. Whoever Anthony Fisher was, he had nothing to do with CIS. And frankly, for people to keep stating otherwise is a bit insulting not only to Mr Lindsay, but to Australians as a whole. This smacks of the kind of cultural cringe that states Australians couldn’t by themselves found such an organisation. It’s akin to the tinfoil hat brigade who are sure that aliens created the pyramids because they erroneously don’t believe that the ancient Egyptians were able to work it out for themselves. Further, we do not share post boxes and phone numbers with anybody. You also made a slur about us claiming intellectual rigour. For the record, all our research is externally peer-reviewed. You may state you would be happy to contest that, but it is a fact. Happy to chat at any time, being an average person working at CIS who is well aware that these conspiracy fairy tales are rubbish… far from your further insinuation that I am ignorant. There simply is no ‘shadowy conspiracy’.
@ Michael Taylor: Oh dear, you seem to have hit a nerve. Such a reflex action frequently indicates that you also hit the target. I am reminded of the notorious comment by Malcolm Turdball, ”There are no factions in the LIARBRAL party”; to which I would add, ”Because we all work at the direction of the unelected political hacks who control pre-selection and promotions within the party”.
Thanks, Karla.
The handy point is that there is a lot of peer reviewed research and investigation that proves the Atlas Network exists and has done immense damage to societies and the environment around the globe through the policies it has fostered. (And evidence that its Australian partners have helped damage us by pushing us from “economic rationalism” towards more American ultra-free market ideological goals).
The far Right Christian Nationalism that has begun infiltrating our “conservative” parties is another angle of that grotesque Americanisation. We have a former PM who illustrated that very well, not to mention a number of Liberal Party grandees importing Orban’s far right ideas. To pre-empt, I’m not blaming the CIS for those either.
Mr Lindsay may have thought Aussie ideas were good enough for us, but the connection of Atlas partners in Australia proved that was not their view. Collective elite cultural cringe before American neoliberalism.
Your Mr Lindsay may have been an Aussie battler maths teacher forging a conservative movement in his backyard. He went on to be a president of the invitation-only Mont Pelerin Society with the Kochs and plenty of other plutocrats and enablers. The MPS is the “inner sanctum” of the Atlas Network. I commend him on his rise to greatness.
I never asserted the CIS shares infrastructure. It does, however, have a number of overlapping figures with various other Atlas and similar groups.
I will speak to my associates about garnering useful questions to put to you before I take you up on your kind offer.
Many thanks.
Lucy
That’s nonsense, Lucy. You’re implying that Atlas directs or influences our ideas and research. I can assure you they do not have any input at all. I look forward to further discussion but it would be more productive to contact me directly by email for that. You are already aware that your editor has my email address, I’m sure.
We have the Lucy vs. Karla going on, making points, taking issues, challenging assumptions, false or not. But, nothing is more perverse, rotten, dangerous and idiotically intrusive than religious superstitions of an aggressive and highly self fixated type. The three “desert” Abrahamic, monocultural ones, one God and we murder anyone who opposes that, are full of supremacist and triumphal ratbaggery, thieving and murdering and oppressing through history, with great claims of righteousness, exclusivity, being select, chosen, anointed, blessed. and they all know the other are WRONG and that infidels, heathens, blasphemers, transgressers are Wrong. Zionism is murderous and thieving, as was classical imperialism, and the great waves of Islamic slaughter for greatness and blessing. “We” must have clear citizenship based on accurate acceptable paperwork, not ancient fraud myths about being chosen, being promised, being “saved” forever. We must have clear, agreed borders. In my time , millions have died needlessly and unfairly, and Sudeten lands, Alsace Lorraine, Polish corridors, Kashmirs, Macedonias, Schleswig-Holstein, so many border contested areas, have been a part. The imperial hordes stole, murdered, enslaved, exterminated, When will this end? Can brainless superstition be finally, eventually ended? Can PEACE be given a chance?
Maybe not this Xmas Phil
By coincidence an American friend heard George Monbiot* speak about Atlas Network presence at Tufton St. London and US ‘bill mill’ ALEC; *he was invited for first time to BBC’s QT (= Q&A) as RW media, Tory/UKIP and Tufton St. think tankers are preferred, to avoid people like Monbiot 🙂
On Atlas linked CIS and ‘wheels within wheels’, many may have missed how they hosted or platformed the Anglo ideological anti-imperialist left’s and related media’ favourite geopolitical ‘expert’, John Mearsheimer for an event October, in QLD:
https://www.cis.org.au/person/john-mearsheimer/
Same Mearsheimer who has visited and met Abbott’s chum PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban in Hungary, linked to the Charles Koch Foundation:
‘A foreign policy analyst with extensive ties to the non-profit network operated by Charles Koch publicly cast doubt about whether Russian forces are attacking civilians in Ukraine. The analyst, Professor John Mearsheimer, also suggested that, if Russian forces have attacked civilians, such attacks would be justified.’ (18 April ’22)
https://popular.info/p/koch-funded-analyst-raises-doubts
Coincidentally, he is also linked to Putin’s Valdai Club https://valdaiclub.com/about/experts/4624/
Finally, many in the Anglosphere, including supposed geopolitical ‘experts’, could learn about analysis of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine especially misinformation, by someone with clear expertise, Finnish misinfo academic Pekka Kallioniemi and his team’s ‘Vatnik Soup’ database:
(1st thread of 22): ‘I’ll introduce an American political scientist, John Mearsheimer. He’s best-known for his theory of offensive realism, for his pandering to authoritarian regimes, and for ignoring sovereignty of independent countries.
https://vatniksoup.com/en/soups/250
@ Michael Taylor: The above Lucy v Karla ”discussion” reminds me of the apostolic enthusiasm of religious nutters being confronted with objective properly researched information disagreeing or disproving the nutters cause.
Thank you Lucy for another informative article.
@Michael. It’s unfair of you to frame Lucy as being like a religious nutter. She’s just misinformed and possibly swayed by the romance of conspiracy theories. But to call her a nutter is wrong.
Excuse me, Karla?
Exactly where did that comment come from? It’s not an entirely unexpected style from someone determined to defend CIS, but I can’t see any such remark from Michael, so … oh, hang on, you mean NEC. Plus you’re somewhat confused as to which of you is the nutter and which is the proper researcher. I wouldn’t have thought it would be necessary to clarify that, given NEC’s last line, but here we are …
@Karla Pincott… you might want to reconsider your above comment, as there is no reference to Michael Taylor referring to Lucy Hamilton as a ‘nutter’ to be found on this page, or indeed, in any of the other pages of this website. I suggest a re-reading of NEC’s 5.46 am post, where any open-eyed & alert reader will see that clearly the reference to Lucy is to be found in the second half of the sentence – ‘objective properly researched information’ – and the target group, nutters, wrt to the main body of Lucy’s essay, the think tanks and covert groups working to undermine foundational democracy in this and other countries.
You have, in effect, cast a slur at both the host of this website and Lucy Hamilton. Perhaps a strong cup of coffee before early morning postings may assist in future offerings.
‘Have to admit, this discourse is way above my pay grade and intellectual capacity but as Manuel used to say in Fawlty Towers : ‘I learn, I learn’ !
On reading the information on the Atlas Network I note that it says :
” Atlas Network is not endowed and it does not accept government funding. It does not support political candidates or parties, or otherwise involve itself in partisan politics.”
Sounds like a fairly innocuous group, in fact I seem to remember my wife being involved in a quilting group with similar objectives : does Atlas do quilts ?
@leefe, yes, I meant NEC. Apologies to @michael. And it was amusing to defend Lucy, whose errors I have corrected several times, particularly the furphy that this US chap she mentions had anything at all to do with creating CIS. I have already invited her to contact me directly.
@canguro, I have not cast a slur at anybody… and would certainly not do so to the host of this website, now with Pearls and Irritations, which first published her piece, and which as you would be aware, also publishes pieces by CIS researchers.
Boys and girls, this has been lots of fun, but I need to stop playing here and return to the world of genuine research and fact. I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and advise you not to get too close to your microwaves in those tinfoil hats.
Over and out.
“Boys and girls… I need to stop playing here and return to the world of genuine research … and advise you not to get too close to your microwaves in those tinfoil hats.”
Classy comment. Superiority implied, along with contempt for the commentariat and denigration as well. A broad serve at all who offer their views at whatever level of finesse.
Well done, Karla Pincott. Go to the top of the class, and enjoy your smirks over Chrissy drinks.
@Karla Pincott,
You appear to have emerged from nowhere, and via your comments on this article (and I note there have been numerous others of a similar vein), done little to convince the learned commentators of your bona fides, nor have you provided transparent attributions supporting your contentions and opinions. In the alternative, sadly, perhaps affected by haste, you appear to have taken the path of bombast and slur. Nevertheless, your Linkedin profile casts light. With your history and as Communications Director for CIS, it appears to be somewhat counter-productive that you would traduce our respected host and the widely published and respected researcher, Lucy. Unfortunately the style of your comments appear as a tell-tale m.o. that will not pass the credibility test of contributors, commentators and observers of this fine publication. CIS would surely be keen to pass the credibility test.
To me, and I’m sure, the many others looking on, it is curious that rather than continue your ‘discussion’ on these pages for all to see, you have opted to suggest it would be “… more productive …” to have a closed discussion with Lucy only via email. What about the rest of us? To be fair, Lucy did say she would “… love to chat with you sometime …” But for you, and the rest of us, rather than retreat from public transparency, many would be entertained, and further informed, should you take the proper and noble path of submitting your response, contest and contentions, via a well constructed and properly cited and attributed article for us all to consider. It would go a long way to furthering the never ending process of research, the essential broadening of peer review and knowledge available for all.
In anticipation, regards 🙂
Like you all, I’m fascinated by Karla’s input here.
It appears that the CIS has chosen to abandon its traditional more dignified silence and is choosing to engage in the culture wars, like its already fallen colleague, the IPA. There are other signs that the CIS is starting to betray that commitment to peer-reviewed research and the high road. More to follow. One imagines that Karla’s responses suggest that this article has hit a nerve: colleagues who have written about the body before have not been blessed with a personal response.
One of the strategies used by the fossil fuel sector and its propagandists (not the CIS, Karla) is agnotology. That is the deliberate creation of confusion so the public does not mass behind inconvenient action. As part of the propaganda campaign, the strategists discredited climate scientists by depicting them as conspiracy theorists, statists who wished to control the public or socialists, incompetents, and cynical careerists. I am honoured to have a little taste of this as a “conspiracy theorist.” Watch this space because the next stage is often “lawfare” where the “free speech” Right works to silence critics by threatening them with legal action. Legal threats are a handy way of chilling those who write about the hidden side of bodies such as these, asking questions, for example, about why they avoid donor transparency.
If Karla had impressed us all with the quality of her debate, we might have chosen to crowdfund a copy of Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money” and Anne Nelson’s “Shadow Network” so that she could understand the longer history of her own body’s framework. I am entertained that having gone ad hominem, Karla denied her own words to say that she hadn’t. Interesting debating strategies and not ones to build confidence in the CIS’s rigour.
Sadly her rebuttal of me has been consistently neglectful of the detail of my words. In fact, a colleague pointed out that Karla’s initial response might have been a copy and paste response from the recent interaction with Violet Coco, where Violet was not quite up to speed on her facts. It was there that Karla might have found accusations of CIS being founded or funded with the Atlas Network’s help.
It is not really interesting whether the CIS was founded in the backyard of a homely mathematics teacher with or without having met and communed with Brit Antony Fisher. What is relevant is that (unlike the IPA which dates from 1943) the CIS was founded the year after Milton Friedman toured Australia (1975) and the year that Friedrich Hayek toured (1976). A rash of similar “think” tanks was spawned at that moment to import Chicago School economics into Australia (cultural cringe?). From the Tufton St Adam Smith Institute (Atlas partner): “So [Fisher] visited Hayek, who told him bluntly to forget politics. Politicians just follow prevailing opinions. If you want to change events, change ideas.” The spawning of artificial ideas through “think” tanks and academic beachheads etc was the result as per Hayek’s advice to Fisher, who spent many years and considerable funds forging and fostering these bodies around the anglosphere.
Have no fear, friends. When I send my questions to Karla, I will be sharing the findings with you. I already have a series of suggestions from highly qualified colleagues.
Ooh booyy! A certain orange faced child won’t be happy…tantrums and screaming fits galore looming.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/19/trump-off-colorado-ballot/
Clakka,
“In anticipation, regards 🙂”
I suggest you start learning to hold your breath because I will be very surprised if Karla posts here again.
Clakka, thats what i said but my post has disappeared up my klakka again, hahahahaha.
Just wanted to bring up another perspective in this ever changing field of revelations.
I get a sense that the tide is slowly turning. The level of understanding is just ever so slowly increasing. I think we are over peak MAGA and GOP and their fellow travellers. After all, you cant fool that many people all the time. Sooner or later they have to come to account for their narcism……… sorry screwed over enough people
Karla Pincott stated on December 19, 2023 at 3:15 pm, in response to Lucy Hamilton’s proffered comment that the Atlas Network plays a role in CIS policy-making, the following: that it was nonsense to suggest as such, and that “you’re implying that Atlas directs or influences our ideas and research. I can assure you they do not have any input at all.”
This refutation of any Atlas Network involvement would appear to be directly contradicted by the inclusion within the CIS’s website under the ‘PEOPLE” header, in the listings of Scholar in Residence, of a person by the name of Tom G. Palmer, the executive vice president for international programs at Atlas Network, and a libertarian smuggler of smuggler of books, cash, photocopiers, and fax machines into Eastern Europe in aid of furtherance of his promotion of Atlas Network ideals, along with more recent endeavours in the Middle East along similar lines.
Was Ms Pincott unaware of this when she directly denied Lucy’s assertion of Atlas Network’s relationship to the Centre for Independent Studies, or was she simply stonewalling an uncomfortable observation with regard to being in bed with this American group along with their affiliation with the Koch network, that multi-billion dollar enterprise associated with taking opposing positions in relation to anthropogenic causation of global warming & climate change?
Round of applause for Canguro.
In its mission statement the CIS says that :
The Centre for Independent Studies promotes free choice and individual liberty, and defends cultural freedom and the open exchange of ideas.
That almost makes them a sister organisation to AIMN but I’m not sure what ‘cultural freedom’ actually means (and I have googled the term).
Anybody have a working definition ?
I think it means the right of individuals and communities to participate in and benefit from cultural life without discrimination. For example, women should not be banned from wearing a burqa. It proably includes the right to practice one’s own culture, to access cultural resources, and to contribute to cultural expression.
Terence, you’d be as aware as any other thinking person that language can equally be used to explain as to obfuscate matters. FreeChoice, for example, is the brand name for a chain of franchised tobacco outlets in this country, and has a certain element of attraction per name brand inasmuch as it would play on the sense of right by smokers to continue to puff their way towards coronary and other diseases. Free choice as an ideal is appealing, as is individual liberty, if the contra is lack of either of those two notions.
It’s a common trope that many websites that harbour essentially self-interested positions for the people behind them disguise their true intent via the use of soft and appealing language; whether religious zealots, fossil fuel advocates, right wing conservatives, amongst a likely plethora of examples.
Whilst I can’t offer anything definitive about ‘cultural freedom’, for those who feel as if they’d like to live a life of their own choosing, what’s not to like about such a term? It certainly has a better twang about it than ‘cultural imprisonment’.
And not to take a shot at CIS, but the [bolded] statement in your post is about as waffly as it gets, given that ten minutes spent on their website browsing though the list of individuals named hardly inspires confidence in the term ‘Independent Studies’ given the raft of individuals collaboratively involved and the inevitable deference to those with the strongest views and strengths of opinion.
Hi Canguro. I actually came upon CIS while searching for publications by Prof John Sweller, as I’m a teacher. I disagree that his name does not inspire confidence. His research is world class. https://www.cis.org.au/person/john-sweller/ I have uploaded one of his CIS research papers for you to check out, as an exampe, but cannot guarantee the upload will be successful.
Gerhardt, just to clarify; I am not impugning the quality of the individuals named within the CIS website. The salient point I was endeavouring to make was that, within that website, there are literally hundreds of people people named as contributors, scholars, staffers, as well as scholars in residence.
It is undeniable that within that massive cohort of individuals, all of whom bring their respective experience, viewpoints, biases & opinions, the term ‘Independent Studies’ is somewhat loose & slippery, given, as I noted, that the strongest arguments by dint of such aspects as strength of argumentative persuasion and personality along with deference given by dint of people’s professional & academic backgrounds will tend to prevail, as is the common experience across all domains of public & private life.
Gerhardt
Thank you for your definition of ‘cultural freedom’ which pretty well aligns with my own understanding of the term, in a multicultural society such as our own.
I note that John Howard recently said that he has “always had trouble” with the concept of multiculturalism, because immigrants should be expected to “adopt the values and practices” of the country they move to.
So I suppose Howard would not be a supporter of the CIS or cultural freedom but then again, maybe he is – conservatives always confuse me as to what they actually stand for.
Terence, I agree that there is a vast grey area about multiculturalism and cultural freedom. I used the example of women being allowed to wear the burqa, which I’m sure CIS and Howard would agree with. However, they might feel that immigrants should adopt values and practices like not inflicting genital mutiliation or child marriage on their daughters. I guess some immigrants would argue that being banned from doing that restricts their cultural freedom.
Where does the boundary lie?
Gerhardt:
I think the boundary lies with behaviours that cause actual harm to others, such as the aforementioned genital mutilation, or things that impinge on guaranteed rights and freedoms of others. That’s the main reason such behaviours are, in most cases, forbidden by law.
Someone wearing a burqa or a yarmulke or a dirndl does no harm.
Leefe
Acknowledged : but there are practices in some religions which impose genital ‘interference’ on babies and young men and there are still instances of young men in Aboriginal communities who undergo ‘initiation’ which is a euphemism for genital interference or mutilation.
I guess it comes down to informed consent by adults as the yardstick by which we judge these practices.
Terrence:
I agree that that is a problem area, although initiation of males into various levels of traditional knowledge within Aboriginal culture involves a great deal more than circumcision.
FYI – from historian of the Australian Right, Damien Cahill.
I guess it is all about definition of “with.”
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/lnbr4mrqgrdum5lu3tt4x/fisher-and-Lindsay.jpeg?rlkey=q6dhpnrhfvwqh7r9m6r2bh8hd&dl=0
Cultural freedom is like religious freedom with the right to secrecy protected by the principle of being free from questions.
CIS backwards means not my error somebody else made it??