 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
Custom Search
| Questions and Comments backfire@ofthisandthat.org |
ofthisandthat Commentary |
Copyright © 2010 ofthisandthat.org.
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved.
October 23, 2013
THE TEA PARTY -- ASTROTURF NOT GRASSROOTS
The Tea Parties didn’t arise spontaneously: they were boiled up by big business to do
exactly what they have been doing in the last two weeks -- try to take money from the
poor and give it to the rich.
By George Monbiot.
Source: The Guardian and Monbiot.com
The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest
exercises in false consciousness the world has ever seen. And it is the biggest
astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related.
An astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a
spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by
elite interests. Some astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all(1).
Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party movement belongs in the
second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think
they are fighting elite power, and who are unaware that they’ve been organised by the
very interests they believe they are confronting. We now have powerful evidence that
the movement was established and has been guided with the help of money from
billionaires and big business. Much of this money, as well as much of the strategy and
staffing, were provided by two brothers who run what they call “the biggest company
you’ve never heard of.”(2
)
Charles and David Koch own 84% of Koch Industries, which is the second-largest
private company in the United States. It runs oil refineries, coal suppliers, chemical
plants and logging firms. It turns over roughly $100bn a year, and the brothers are
each worth $21bn(3
). The company has had to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements for
oil and chemical spills and other industrial accidents(4
,5
). The Kochs want to pay less tax, keep more profits and be restrained by less
regulation. Their challenge has been to persuade the people harmed by this agenda
that it’s good for them.
In July 2010, David Koch told New York magazine, “I’ve never been to a Tea Party
event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me.”(6
) But a new fascinating film, (Astro)Turf Wars, by Taki Oldham, tells a fuller story(7
). Oldham infiltrated some of the movement’s key organising events, including the
2009 Defending the Dream summit, convened by a group called Americans for
Prosperity. The film shows David Koch addressing the summit. “Five years ago,” he
explains, “my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for
Prosperity. It’s beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous
organisation.”
A convenor tells the crowd how AFP mobilised opposition to Barack Obama’s
healthcare reforms. “We hit the button and we started doing the Twittering and
Facebook and the phonecalls and the emails, and you turned up!” Then a series of
AFP organisers tell Mr Koch how they have set up dozens of Tea Party events in their
home states. He nods and beams from the podium like a chief executive receiving
rosy reports from his regional sales directors. Afterwards, the delegates crowd into
AFP workshops, where they are told how to run further Tea Party events(8
).
Americans for Prosperity is one of several groups set up by the Kochs to promote
their politics. We know their foundations have given it at least $5m(9
), but few such records are in the public domain and the total could be much higher. It
has toured the country organising rallies against healthcare reform and the
Democrats’ attempts to tackle climate change. It provided the key organising tools
which set the Tea Party movement running. The movement began when the CNBC
reporter Rick Santelli called from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a
bankers’ revolt against the undeserving poor(10
). (He proposed that the traders should hold a tea party to dump derivative securities
in Lake Michigan to prevent Obama’s plan to “subsidise the losers”: by which he
meant people whose mortgages had fallen into arrears). On the same day, Americans
for Prosperity set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party
events(11
).
Oldham’s film shows how AFP crafted the movement’s messages and drafted its
talking points. The New Yorker magazine, in the course of a remarkable exposure of
the Koch brothers’ funding networks, interviewed some of their former consultants(12
). “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded [the Tea Party]“, one of them
explained. “It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and
the frogs come out of the mud – and they’re our candidates!” Another observed that
the Kochs are smart. “This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as
a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.”
The AFP is one of several groups established by the Koch brothers. They set up the
Cato Institute, which was the first free market thinktank in the US. They also founded
the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which now fills the role once played
by the economics department at Chicago University: as the originator of extreme
neoliberal ideas(13
,14
). Fourteen of the 23 regulations that George W. Bush put on his hitlist were,
according to the Wall Street Journal, first suggested by academics working at the
Mercatus Center(15
).
The Kochs have lavished money on more than 30 other advocacy groups, including
the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, the
Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute(16
). These bodies have been instrumental in turning politicians away from environmental
laws, social spending, taxing the rich and distributing wealth. They have shaped the
widespread demand for small government. The Kochs ensure that their money works
for them. “If we’re going to give a lot of money,” David Koch explained to a libertarian
journalist, “we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent.
And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw
funding.”(17
)
Most of these bodies call themselves “free market thinktanks”, but their trick, as (Astro)
Turf Wars points out, is to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free
enterprise with personal liberty. Between them they have constructed the philosophy
which informs the Tea Party movement: its members mobilise for freedom, unaware
that the freedom they demand is freedom for corporations to trample them into the
dirt. The thinktanks the Kochs have funded devise the game and the rules by which it
is played; Americans for Prosperity coaches and motivates the team.
Astroturfing is now taking off in the United Kingdom. Earlier this month Spinwatch
showed how a fake grassroots group set up by health insurers helped shape the
Tories’ NHS reforms(18
). Billionaires and corporations are capturing the political process everywhere; anyone
with an interest in democracy should be thinking about how to resist them. Nothing is
real any more. Nothing is as it seems.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. See, for example, the exposure of astroturfing in Chapter 2 of my book Heat: how to
stop the planet burning, 2006.
2. http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/10/15/Profile-of-Billionaire-David-
Koch/index3.html
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/13/tea-party-billionaire-koch-brothers
4. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-
fund.pdf
5. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?
currentPage=all
6. http://nymag.com/news/features/67285/
7. http://astroturfwars.org/
8. http://astroturfwars.org/
9. Greenpeace’s report on funding by the Koch brothers and their foundations shows
that they spent $5m on AFP’s Hot Air tour alone. http://www.greenpeace.
org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf
10. http://www.cnbc.
com/id/29283701/Rick_Santelli_s_Shout_Heard_Round_the_World
11. http://astroturfwars.org/
12. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?
currentPage=all
13. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?
currentPage=all
14. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-
fund.pdf
15. http://mercatus.org/media_clipping/rule-breaker-washington-tiny-think-tank-wields-
big-stick-regulation
16. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-
fund.pdf
17. Interview with Brian Doherty, reported by The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.
com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
18. http://www.spinwatch.org.uk/blogs-mainmenu-29/tamasin-cave-mainmenu-
107/5391-private-health-lobby-out-in-force-at-tory-conference
THE TEA PARTY -- ASTROTURF NOT GRASSROOTS
The Tea Parties didn’t arise spontaneously: they were boiled up by big business to do
exactly what they have been doing in the last two weeks -- try to take money from the
poor and give it to the rich.
By George Monbiot.
Source: The Guardian and Monbiot.com
The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest
exercises in false consciousness the world has ever seen. And it is the biggest
astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related.
An astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a
spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by
elite interests. Some astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all(1).
Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party movement belongs in the
second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think
they are fighting elite power, and who are unaware that they’ve been organised by the
very interests they believe they are confronting. We now have powerful evidence that
the movement was established and has been guided with the help of money from
billionaires and big business. Much of this money, as well as much of the strategy and
staffing, were provided by two brothers who run what they call “the biggest company
you’ve never heard of.”(2
)
Charles and David Koch own 84% of Koch Industries, which is the second-largest
private company in the United States. It runs oil refineries, coal suppliers, chemical
plants and logging firms. It turns over roughly $100bn a year, and the brothers are
each worth $21bn(3
). The company has had to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements for
oil and chemical spills and other industrial accidents(4
,5
). The Kochs want to pay less tax, keep more profits and be restrained by less
regulation. Their challenge has been to persuade the people harmed by this agenda
that it’s good for them.
In July 2010, David Koch told New York magazine, “I’ve never been to a Tea Party
event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me.”(6
) But a new fascinating film, (Astro)Turf Wars, by Taki Oldham, tells a fuller story(7
). Oldham infiltrated some of the movement’s key organising events, including the
2009 Defending the Dream summit, convened by a group called Americans for
Prosperity. The film shows David Koch addressing the summit. “Five years ago,” he
explains, “my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for
Prosperity. It’s beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous
organisation.”
A convenor tells the crowd how AFP mobilised opposition to Barack Obama’s
healthcare reforms. “We hit the button and we started doing the Twittering and
Facebook and the phonecalls and the emails, and you turned up!” Then a series of
AFP organisers tell Mr Koch how they have set up dozens of Tea Party events in their
home states. He nods and beams from the podium like a chief executive receiving
rosy reports from his regional sales directors. Afterwards, the delegates crowd into
AFP workshops, where they are told how to run further Tea Party events(8
).
Americans for Prosperity is one of several groups set up by the Kochs to promote
their politics. We know their foundations have given it at least $5m(9
), but few such records are in the public domain and the total could be much higher. It
has toured the country organising rallies against healthcare reform and the
Democrats’ attempts to tackle climate change. It provided the key organising tools
which set the Tea Party movement running. The movement began when the CNBC
reporter Rick Santelli called from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a
bankers’ revolt against the undeserving poor(10
). (He proposed that the traders should hold a tea party to dump derivative securities
in Lake Michigan to prevent Obama’s plan to “subsidise the losers”: by which he
meant people whose mortgages had fallen into arrears). On the same day, Americans
for Prosperity set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party
events(11
).
Oldham’s film shows how AFP crafted the movement’s messages and drafted its
talking points. The New Yorker magazine, in the course of a remarkable exposure of
the Koch brothers’ funding networks, interviewed some of their former consultants(12
). “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded [the Tea Party]“, one of them
explained. “It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and
the frogs come out of the mud – and they’re our candidates!” Another observed that
the Kochs are smart. “This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as
a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.”
The AFP is one of several groups established by the Koch brothers. They set up the
Cato Institute, which was the first free market thinktank in the US. They also founded
the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which now fills the role once played
by the economics department at Chicago University: as the originator of extreme
neoliberal ideas(13
,14
). Fourteen of the 23 regulations that George W. Bush put on his hitlist were,
according to the Wall Street Journal, first suggested by academics working at the
Mercatus Center(15
).
The Kochs have lavished money on more than 30 other advocacy groups, including
the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, the
Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute(16
). These bodies have been instrumental in turning politicians away from environmental
laws, social spending, taxing the rich and distributing wealth. They have shaped the
widespread demand for small government. The Kochs ensure that their money works
for them. “If we’re going to give a lot of money,” David Koch explained to a libertarian
journalist, “we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent.
And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw
funding.”(17
)
Most of these bodies call themselves “free market thinktanks”, but their trick, as (Astro)
Turf Wars points out, is to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free
enterprise with personal liberty. Between them they have constructed the philosophy
which informs the Tea Party movement: its members mobilise for freedom, unaware
that the freedom they demand is freedom for corporations to trample them into the
dirt. The thinktanks the Kochs have funded devise the game and the rules by which it
is played; Americans for Prosperity coaches and motivates the team.
Astroturfing is now taking off in the United Kingdom. Earlier this month Spinwatch
showed how a fake grassroots group set up by health insurers helped shape the
Tories’ NHS reforms(18
). Billionaires and corporations are capturing the political process everywhere; anyone
with an interest in democracy should be thinking about how to resist them. Nothing is
real any more. Nothing is as it seems.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. See, for example, the exposure of astroturfing in Chapter 2 of my book Heat: how to
stop the planet burning, 2006.
2. http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/10/15/Profile-of-Billionaire-David-
Koch/index3.html
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/13/tea-party-billionaire-koch-brothers
4. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-
fund.pdf
5. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?
currentPage=all
6. http://nymag.com/news/features/67285/
7. http://astroturfwars.org/
8. http://astroturfwars.org/
9. Greenpeace’s report on funding by the Koch brothers and their foundations shows
that they spent $5m on AFP’s Hot Air tour alone. http://www.greenpeace.
org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-fund.pdf
10. http://www.cnbc.
com/id/29283701/Rick_Santelli_s_Shout_Heard_Round_the_World
11. http://astroturfwars.org/
12. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?
currentPage=all
13. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?
currentPage=all
14. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-
fund.pdf
15. http://mercatus.org/media_clipping/rule-breaker-washington-tiny-think-tank-wields-
big-stick-regulation
16. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/2010/3/koch-industries-secretly-
fund.pdf
17. Interview with Brian Doherty, reported by The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.
com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
18. http://www.spinwatch.org.uk/blogs-mainmenu-29/tamasin-cave-mainmenu-
107/5391-private-health-lobby-out-in-force-at-tory-conference