Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

You've probably never heard of the US organisation called 'Club for Growth' - a cheery name for a very well-funded, extremely influential, deeply concerning & frankly sinister hard-right libertarian organisation, which raised $62 million in the 2020 election cycle.

The conservative Club for Growth is known in the #USA as a '501(c) organization' - one of over 29 types of nonprofit organizations exempt from some federal income taxes.

The Club for Growth agenda is focused on cutting taxes & other libertarian-right economic policy issues.

Club for Growth's largest funders are the billionaires Jeff Yass & Richard Uihlein: Yass is a member of the executive advisory council of the dangerously divisive libertarian Cato Institute, & Uihlein is a longtime donor to ultra-conservative Republicans.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1472738708583550977?s=20

Unsurprisingly, Uihlein is anti-union, anti-tax & pro-deregulation, has a history of supporting far-right candidates, has often supported efforts in opposition to gay rights, & has supported hard-right weirdos Ted Cruz & Roy Moore, & the libertarian Illinois Policy Institute.

From 2016 to 2018, a political action committee funded by the Uihleins gave at least $646,000 to a new network of free newspapers & websites, created by Brian Timpone, that mimic local newspapers but offer pay-for-play articles to conservative clients.

In the 2018 election cycle, Uihlein made $37.7 MILLION in contributions to outside spending groups, making them on the tier of other Republican mega-donors, such as the Koch family, Sheldon Adelson, & Robert Mercer.

qz.com/1085077/mercer…

From 2015 to 2020, the Uihleins donated $4.3 million (including $800,000 in October 2020) to Tea Party Patriots, a group that may have co-sponsored the March to Save America rally that preceded the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol!

During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Liz Uihlein declared the pandemic "overhyped" & like all right-wing libertarians, was an outspoken critic of stay-at-home directives issued to combat the spread of COVID. In November 2020, the couple announced that they had contracted COVID.

Predictably, according to its website, the Club for Growth's policy goals include cutting income tax rates, repealing the estate tax, supporting limited government & a 'balanced budget' amendment, welfare reform, free trade, tort reform, school choice, & deregulation.

Even more predictably, like Big Tobacco denied & then downplayed the link between smoking & cancer, & just like Koch & other contemporary right-wing billionaire libertarians now, the Club for Growth has opposed government action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Politico, "The Club for Growth is the pre-eminent institution promoting Republican adherence to a free-market, free-trade, anti-regulation agenda."

Club for Growth spent $20m supporting 42 politicians who voted to invalidate the results of the 2020 election.

Club for Growth President, David McIntosh, is a member of another organisation you've never heard of: The Council for National Policy (CNP) - another hard-right nonprofit group, described as "a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country".

CNP is "a hyper-secretive Christian Right powerhouse that helps set the movement’s agenda".

A recent book about CNP, describes how the organization connects "the manpower & media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats".

newrepublic.com/article/156431…

In 2016, anyone who hoped to make sense of Trump’s election could have done worse than turn to a book released earlier that year: Dark Money by Jane Mayer, which laid bare the tremendous political influence of a handful of far-right billionaires.

blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofboo…

In the years since Dark Money was published, & the election of a far-right multimillionaire to US President, there has been a boom in books that trace the hidden influence of the uber-wealthy industrialists & financiers who powered the modern conservative movement.

🚨READ THEM!

Christopher Leonard’s #Kochland documented the immense, polarising & toxic reach & political power of Koch Industries.

theguardian.com/us-news/2019/d…

Nancy MacLean, one of the foremost historians of the Ku Klux Klan, spent a decade writing Democracy in Chains, on the intellectual and institutional roots of the right-wing billionaires’ takeover of the Republican Party.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1316654443836866560?s=20

Joshua Green, Jane Mayer, & others have shown how Trump’s team effectively sold their campaign to hedge fund billionaires Robert & Rebekah Mercer, who bankrolled the flailing operation in exchange for control over its messaging & ideological orientation.

bylinetimes.com/2020/11/03/tru…

These books expose the misleading narrative, promoted in the US & UK, of a conservative movement guided mainly by organic, popular discontent: the right-wing takeover of Govts & swaths of the media was not bottom up - it was imposed from the top down by a handful of billionaires.

Mainstream media has failed voters: far too many UK & US voters STILL have NO IDEA that supposedly 'grassroots' right-wing movements - from the Tea Party to the Leave campaign - were secretly bankrolled by a handful of (often the same) toxic, selfish libertarian billionaires.

So much of what is wrong with the modern world—from the rise of authoritarian leaders to Govts’ strident unwillingness to meaningfully address climate change—can, in part, be laid at the feet of just a few individuals, who have set the world on fire, in order to make more money.

Peter Thiel is another one:

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1475127556152205313?s=20