1/Not sure who needs to hear it but the Oslo Freedom Forum and its parent org Human Rights Foundation is a hive of antidemocratic Libertarian ideologues and goldbug/crypto zealots laundering their extreme positions through human rights activists.
2/Founded with funding from Peter Thiel, the group’s chair Kasparov lets his name be used to legitimize the organization with mainstream liberals, with whom he has cultivated an audience. He has disowned Thiel since then, but his imprint remains.
3/Meet Justin Moon, who is “going to live like a redneck until the FED [sic] collapses,” referring to the longtime fetish of Ron Paul / Thomas Massie acolytes of “Ending the Fed.” And he’s using AI to 10x “activists” (i.e. crypto supporters.)
4/And they’re warning about the dangers of the Libertarian’s ultimate nightmare — CBDC’s 😱 — which are competition to Bitcoin. They’re also nascent and the target of extreme paranoia.
washingtonspectator.org/new-populist-b…
5/Alex Gladstein, perhaps the worst offender, is a longtime acolyte of Peter Thiel and has repeatedly taken up lines indistinguishable from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. (Wars are caused by “central bankers” and Bitcoin will bring “peace.”) He is a nonsense peddler.
hrf.org/latest/why-bit…
6/HRF/OFF exploits the work of legitimate activists who have fought for human dignity often under brutal repression. Many don’t know they are bolstering an organization whose agenda is largely indistinguishable from the John Birch Society, or Goldwater ‘64. It’s a sham.
7/I frequently encounter people who are not aware of this history and have had to warn them off of OFF/HRF. They get it, once they know. I have also heard from many people who took them at face value but were shocked, shocked to find Libertarian nuttery right under the surface.
8/All this is to say, “do your homework” on every organization, especially those that burnish their own image and pat themselves on the back for their “strong moral stances.” There is often a product being sold under the hood and you need to find out what it is.
9/There is lots more to say about this, especially founder Thor Halvorssen, but suffice to say that he, too, is a buddy of Peter Thiel’s.
buzzfeednews.com/article/matthe…
10/And while Kasparov is a champion of Ukraine and says Thiel doesn’t fund HRF anymore, here they are in 2013 (not so long ago) discussing their longing for a “Libertarian moment.” Needless to say I am skeptical of Kasparov’s “disavowal” of Thiel.
11/Either way, the marriage of Libertarian ideology with liberal “human rights” coded messaging provides them with cover to push antigovernment messaging even in places where government is and should be a net good. This is an extremist group masquerading as a rights organization.
12/And gosh, this little nugget from the 2016 piece on Halvorssen was too juicy not to share… lunatics, all of them.
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