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.
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.
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.
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.
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"!
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.
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.
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".
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.”
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:
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
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.”
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.
One speaker is under investigation for right-wing extremism, others argue the Christchurch mosque shooter 'had legitimate concerns', gay marriage is 'a destructive experiment', & the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory is real!
The far-right ♥️ #NatCon
Who funds it?
The #NatCon2024 Brussels event was sponsored and coordinated by Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a Hungarian 'think tank' funded by oil & gas money, & which received more than £1.3 BILLION in Hungarian state funding in 2020.
Nigel Farage's entirely predictable #NatCon2024 speech was live-streamed on the far-right #propaganda channel GB "News", bankrolled by bigoted evangelical "Christian" billionaire Paul Marshall, whose hedge fund has £1.7 BILLION invested in fossil fuels!
More than a year since @elonmusk bought @X with a promise to "defeat the spam bots or die trying", the problem is worse than ever, with much of the bot traffic casting doubt on climate science.
In London, 14.9% of people experienced a crime either to their person or household year ending September 2023, compared to 15.7% nationally.
The latest homicide stats position London not as "crime capital of the world", but as having the 237th most homicides/capita of any city.
When it comes to antisocial behaviour, the crime survey shows London has one of the lowest rates. In the year to September 2023, just 26.4% of people said they’d witnessed or experienced antisocial behaviour, compared with 34.2% across England and Wales.
On 16th June 2016, Nigel Farage launched ’s Breaking Point poster. The same day, Jo Cox was murdered by Thomas Mair who shouted "This is for Britain".
Four days later, UKIP Leader Farage spoke at a public meeting in Gateshead under this backdrop: Leave.EU
Current Reform Party leader, multimillionaire Richard Tice, was a founder & co-Chair of & Leave Means Leave. The similarities between the Breaking Point poster & a Nazi propaganda film picturing large streams of Jewish refugees as a threat, are undeniable. Leave.EU
Witnesses testified that during the attack on Jo Cox, Mair had cried out "This is for Britain", "Keep Britain independent", and "Britain first".
Far-right white supremacist Mair was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and an act of terrorism.
I'm old enough to remember when @BBCPolitics shows had serious panelists on, were well chaired by politically savvy people, & were worthy of being taken seriously.
This week on the increasingly clickbaity #bbcqt, for his TENTH appearance in ten years, is Rod Liddle...
The damaged & troubled Rod Liddle has forged a career by using grotesque rhetoric designed to outrage decent normal people.
A young Liddle considered becoming a teacher, but decided against it on the grounds that he "could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids."
Liddle was the Editor of the @BBC's Today programme from 1998 to 2002.
In 2001, BNP leader Nick Griffin was interviewed in the aftermath of the race riots in Oldham. The BBC was fiercely criticized for giving the BNP publicity and credibility it did not warrant.
The UK Government's new definition of extremism is straight out of Orwell's 1984: its focus is ideas - thoughts - not actions.
Effectively, Thought Police will ban from contact with Govt any groups who exhibit Thought Crime (political thoughts unapproved by the régime).
Michael Gove wants to use parliamentary privilege to name groups under his new definition of extremism, despite government lawyers warning him about the legal implications of doing so.
The @Conservatives are the most dangerous extremist group in Britain.
The Govt’s new preferred option for Anti-Muslim Hate Advisor is Haras Rafiq, former CEO of Quilliam, which was funded by pro-Trump donors, & which worked with US-based anti-Muslim think-tanks that promoted the far-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory.