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@docrussjackson
Nov 23, 2021 • 30 tweets • 12 min read • Read on X
#THREAD

The Heritage Foundation is a dangerous & very influential US neoliberal free-market fundamentalist think tank that represents the interests of the 0.1%

Charles WL Hill: "given that the Heritage Foundation has a political agenda, its work should be viewed with caution."
In 2005, Heritage established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

Thatcher herself maintained a long relationship with The Heritage Foundation. Shortly after leaving office, Thatcher was honoured by Heritage at a September 1991 dinner.
The Heritage Foundation rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, & is one of many climate change denial organizations that have been funded by ExxonMobil.

The Heritage Foundation strongly criticized the Kyoto Agreement to curb climate change.

link.springer.com/article/10.100…
The Heritage Foundation projected that the 2009 American Clean Energy & Security Act would result in a cost of $1,870 per family in 2025 and $6,800 by 2035; although the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projected that it would only cost the average family $175 in 2020.
The Heritage Foundation has promoted false claims of voter fraud. Hans von Spakovsky, who heads their Election Law Reform Initiative, played an influential role in making alarmism about voter fraud mainstream among Republicans, despite having no evidence.

washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/…
Following the 2020 presidential election—in which President Donald Trump made baseless claims of fraud after he was defeated for re-election—the Heritage Foundation launched a campaign in support of Republican efforts to make state voting laws more restrictive.
The antidemocratic Heritage Foundation, through its political arm, Heritage Action, plan to spend $24 million over two years across eight states to support efforts to restrict voting, in coordination with the Republican Party & other conservative groups.

motherjones.com/politics/2021/…
Over 20 election bills introduced by Republicans in early 2021 were based on a Heritage letter & report. They also mobilized in opposition to a Democratic bill to establish uniform nationwide voting standards, reform campaign finance law, & prohibit partisan redistricting.
Heritage Action spent $750,000 on television ads in Arizona to promote the false claim that "Democrats... want to register illegal aliens" to vote, even though the Democrats' legislation creates safeguards to ensure that ineligible people cannot register.
newyorker.com/magazine/2021/…
In 2021, the Heritage Foundation said one of its two priorities (along with pushing to tighten voting laws) was to push Republican-controlled states to ban or restrict critical race theory instruction - despite it being a perfectly respectable established academic sub-discipline.
Leading Conservatives Priti Patel, Liz Truss, Sajid Javid, Liam Fox, Daniel Hannan, & Owen Paterson & their donors have close ties to influential think tanks like the radical-right Heritage Foundation - determined to roll-back abortion rights in the US.

bylinetimes.com/2021/08/24/the…
Facing accusations of downplaying Islamophobia & known for his controversial & reactionary views, the "temporary" contract for the role of UK head of the 'Commission on Countering Extremism' was recently extended for the Heritage Foundation's hard-right extremist Robin Simcox.
The scariest thing about hard-right extremist weirdo Simcox is that while at the Heritage Foundation he argued that making white supremacy the subject of a "countering extremism policy" was mostly driven by "political correctness" & could be "overreach"!

independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…
The key point to remember is that this unimaginably well-resourced, antidemocratic & reactionary hard-right free-market think tank is part of a global network representing the interests of the 0.1%, which has it's eyes on the #NHS, & is now embedded in the heart of the UK Govt.
Groups like the Heritage Foundation & the UK Government threaten our freedoms with their unhinged, divisive & hateful 'anti-woke' rhetoric.

To paraphrase divisive hateful ex-corporate lobbyists & divide & rule specialist Priti Patel: Decent people should not tolerate this evil.
This #THREAD explores how Priti Patel learned the very effective dark arts strategy of 'Divide & Conquer' - now deployed by the Tory Government against the British people - when she worked for Weber Shandwick, representing the interests of Big Tobacco.

The Tufton St climate change denialist think tank Global Warming Policy Foundation had been partly funded by the Donors Trust, a “dark money ATM” for right wing business interests such as Charles Koch, which has strong links to the Heritage Foundation.

opendemocracy.net/en/global-warm…
The GWPF also received $210,525 in 2018 & 2020 from the US based Sarah Scaife Foundation – set up by the billionaire libertarian heir to an oil & banking dynasty, which was among the largest contributors to the climate change denial movement from 2003 to 2010.
The Sarah Scaife foundation has $30m worth of shares in 22 energy companies including $9m in Exxon & $5.7m in Chevron. It has bankrolled numerous conservative causes, including the right-wing Daily Caller news site & the UK Govt's friends, the Heritage Foundation think tank.
The Donors Trust has significant links to Koch family foundations, & like ALL Tufton St think tanks, “The groups funded by Donors Trust more or less pursue the same agenda—eliminate regulations, kneecap unions, shrink government, & transfer more power to the private sector.”
The Donors Trust gives significant sums to the Heritage Foundation, which has recently hosted Conservatives like Brandon Lewis, Priti Patel, Oliver Dowden, who recently gave a weird culture war speech about the ‘privet hedges of suburbia’, & Lord Frost.

leftfootforward.org/2022/03/oliver…
Dowden's absurd & embarrassing Heritage Foundation speech was - like any far-right conspiracy theory YouTuber - basically a 'random culture war phrase generator': "cancel culture"; a “woke psychodrama”; left wing activists "engaged in a form of Maoism".

huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/oliver-d…
Frost said that in Dowden, Lewis & Patel speaking at the Heritage Foundation “They are also a tribute to the huge role that Heritage, & you personally, Nile (Gardiner, Telegraph columnist & Heritage Foundation employee) here at the Margaret Thatcher Centre, have played in this.” ImageImage
Nile Gardiner, former aide to Thatcher & Director of Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, plays a leading role in connecting the architects of Brexit to US conservative funders through his Heritage role. Here’s the panel of an event he hosted online in 2021: Image
See @bakerstherald for analysis of one of the most dangerous people on earth, Matthew Elliott, & all the other key players in what is effectively a subversion of democracy & decency on an unimaginable scale, which is already having catastrophic results

bakerstreetherald.com
The Heritage Foundation pushed Brexit because it wants Britain to become a deregulated free-for-all for corporate power.

“unshackled from the strictures of EU bureaucracy, the British economy could register substantial improvements in key policy areas such as business freedom.” Image
Frost argued that Brexit allowed the UK to evade the “constraints on national democracy & freedom of choice” imposed by the EU.

Given recent profoundly antidemocratic developments in the UK, this is Orwellian double-speak on steroids.

It's now clear where culture war rhetoric coincides with right-wing populist nationalist/deregulatory antidemocratic libertarian (& some may say #neofascist) ideology: Frost went on to blame internationalism for creating “political disaffection” & “identity politics”.
This is similar to Dowden’s culture war rhetoric in his speech to the Heritage Foundation: the West WAS under attack by the forces of multicultualism & globalism, but now, thanks to Brexit it’s back, reasserting those national borders - but just not the problematic Irish one.
This @BylineTimes article explicitly links the culture war rhetoric now frequently deployed by hard-right politicians, pundits & press, with the frightening realpolitik of eroding democracy & essential safeguards, & transferring wealth from poor to rich.

bylinetimes.com/2022/02/14/rum…

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More from @docrussjackson

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Mar 25
🧵 Online #Incel communities foster misogyny, resentment & extremism, which have led to multiple murderous attacks in the US & UK, motivated by hatred toward women.

Their echo chambers also amplify mental health issues like isolation & anger, radicalizing vulnerable men & boys. Image
In the US, proven murders attributable to incels include: Elliot Rodger, who killed 6 & injured 14 in a shooting & stabbing spree; Lyndon McLeod shot & killed 5; & Mauricio Garcia shot & killed 8 & injured 7.

In the UK, Jake Davison shot & killed 5, including a 3-year-old girl. Image
Farage defended his Reform UK MP who was jailed for repeatedly kicking his girlfriend (which wasn't disclosed to voters before he was elected), & in 2014, he dismissed as "just a joke" an MEP's comment that beating women "helps bring wives back to Earth."

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Mar 19
#THREAD

When is a “think tank” not a think tank?

A 🧵 about how spurious and inflammatory claims, based on unevidenced cherry-picked data, are passed off as truth by partisan private limited companies and used as a weapon to divide voters and to scapegoat and demonise migrants. Image
At 1.32pm on Monday 10th March, The Telegraph published the claim that based on “the first data analysis of its kind. Data from the Ministry of Justice, obtained under freedom of information laws,” shows that “Foreigners [are] convicted of nearly a quarter of sex crimes.” Image
Chris Philp, shadow home secretary, said the figures were “shocking.”

Shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, said: “Not only is mass migration making us poorer, but this data proves it’s also making us dramatically less safe.”

A Govt spokesman did not dispute the figures. Image
Read 40 tweets
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Mar 17
🧵

Democracy is under attack. As with the US, Italy is 1 of 5 European Govts undermining the rule of law ‘in nearly all aspects’, with changes to the judiciary & a “heavy intolerance to media criticism”, fueling Europe’s deepening “democratic recession”.

theguardian.com/world/2025/mar…
A report by Civil Liberties Union for Europe said Italy was one of five “dismantlers” – with Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania & Slovakia – that “intentionally undermine the rule of law in nearly all aspects”.

Hungary has long been an “electoral autocracy.”

theguardian.com/world/2022/sep…
“Europe’s democratic recession has deepened.”

The report highlights judicial systems subject to political manipulation, weak law enforcement against corruption, overuse of fast-track legislative procedures, harassment of journalists & growing restrictions on peaceful protests.
Read 16 tweets
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Mar 14
🧵

Many of Britain's most vocal 'anti-establishment' voices attended some of the most expensive schools on earth.

These broken boys masquerade as 'anti-elite' while serving the interests of the ultrarich by turning working class people against each other using 'Divide & Rule'. Image
Moscow born Konstantin Vadimovich Kisin came to the UK aged 11 & was sent to Clifton College boarding school (current fees: up to £18,360/term).

He recently said about Rishi Sunak "He’s a brown Hindu; how is he English?" He's a regular speaker at Paul Marshall's ARC conference. Image
Rupert James Graham Lowe was sent to Radley College, an all-boys independent boarding school (current fees: up to £19,200/term).

Lowe worked in the City of London for companies such as Morgan Grenfell, Deutsche Bank and Barings Bank. Image
Read 13 tweets
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Feb 28
🧵

Jacob Rees-Mogg's dad's 1997 book was originally called The Sovereign Individual: *How to Survive & Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State*😱

It predicted “cybercurrency,” the decline of nation-states & the ascendance of a “cognitive elite” who would rule the world.
My own summary is above, but journalist @gilduran76 - of the brilliant #FrameLab - has now written his own summary, review and interpretation of it, which I reproduce with a few links and commentary, below.

Access his original (25 February) article here:

thenerdreich.com/the-sovereign-…
To fully understand Silicon Valley’s project to destroy democracy, read 'The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State.'

In 1999, it was rebranded as 'The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age.' Image
Read 39 tweets
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Feb 17
#THREAD

Life was demonstrably worse in the 1979 than it is today.

Zymunt Bauman calls this yearning for an imagined past, ‘retrotopia’, in which the ‘Volk’ (the ‘simple folk’, who Reform UK claim to represent) are constructed as homogenous, Christian, white, & ‘indigenous’. Image
Life was demonstrably inferior in the 1970s compared to today for almost everyone in England.

Life expectancy in the UK in 1980 was 71 for men and 77 for women. By 2019, life expectancy at birth in England had increased to 79 years for men & 83.5 for women.
1. Economic Hardship

In 1979, the UK economy was struggling with high inflation, unemployment, and a budget deficit. This eroded purchasing power, making essentials like food, clothing, and housing more expensive relative to wages. "Stagflation" was a significant problem. Image
Read 40 tweets

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