The Atlas Network and its global influence in New Zealand
No other organisation has had the kind of impact on NZ domestic legislation quite like the foreign Right Wing think tank, The Atlas Network.
Funded by big oil, polluters and alt-Right billionaires with weird culture war fetishes, The Atlas Network enable domestic right wing astroturf front groups to influence domestic policies.
The Atlas Network specialise in giving domestic right wing astroturf front groups the social media tools that trigger the worst angels of low education voters.
The petty bigotries of low education voters are manipulated into supporting the interests of big oil, polluters and alt-Right billionaires with weird culture war fetishes
The Atlas Network’s deregulation agenda is seen throughout this Government’s legislative programme, alongside their climate denial and anti-indigenous rights agenda.
The Atlas Network‘s influence on our anti-Māori education policies is astounding. The concept is that indigenous cultures remember the first wave of extractive capitalism and promoting their identity inside public education creates a culture of permanent resistance that plays out in the present..
THAT is the reason Māori is being stripped out of our public education, The Atlas Network thinks 10 years ahead.
For those claiming The Atlas Network doesn’t exist, read this…
Atlas Network” Disinformation os a Weapon of Neoliberalism
The organisation, founded in 1981, has 589 think tanks in 103 countries that finance the hatred and hoaxes of the extreme right. The objective: to protect the privileges of capital owners.
Founded in 1981 by Antony Fisher, observing the evolution of Atlas Network into the transnational giant it is today and understanding its influence on the anti-democratic offensive means revealing the last of the layers behind which those who feed Trump, Orbán, Abascal or Ayuso are hidden. In the end, “the truth”, “the homeland”, “the family” or, par excellence, “the freedom” that these political figures claim to defend are nothing more than empty signifiers with which the great owners of capital that finance Atlas Network justify the barbarities committed in defence of their growing privileges.
Fisher, who had founded the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London in the 1950s, was a key figure in the establishment of neoliberal ideology in the United Kingdom. With Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 electoral victory, neoliberalism moved from an economic school of thought to a hegemonic worldview imposed with dogmatic force. “There is no alternative,” the then British prime minister would proclaim. It was the era of the “end of history”: capitalism, having freed itself from state oversight, had evidently reached its final evolutionary stage. From then on, society’s destiny was simply to watch the market absorb everything. It was the ideal system, our supposed future as a human community.
Atlas Network was born in this context with a clear objective: to inject the neoliberal doctrine not merely as one socio-economic model among others, but as a rationality unto itself, one capable of shaping how people perceive and interpret the world. Achieving this required depoliticising concepts such as the free market, privatization, or deregulation, detaching them from the concrete interests they in fact serve, and presenting them instead as irrefutable truths. The chosen instrument for this purpose was what researchers Marie-Laure Djelic and Reza Mousavi call as the “neoliberal think tank”.
With the support of neoliberalism’s intellectual progenitors Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman (founders of the Mont Pelerin Society and figureheads of the Austrian and Chicago schools), together with Thatcher and substantial private donations, Atlas Network (originally “Atlas Economic Research Foundation”) launched operations in San Francisco. Its annual budget hovered around $150,000, with the mission of serving as an incubator for neoliberal think tanks worldwide. The arrival of Ronald Reagan to the government in January 1981, as well as the participation of huge American ultraconservative foundations such as Heritage in the implementation of Atlas, made the United States the perfect place for its establishment. After all, it is the cradle of capitalist imperialism. In 2023, and according to the organisation’s own annual report, Atlas Network already had a budget of 28 million dollars and its network of think tanks totaled 589 entities in 103 different countries.
The methods used by these institutions of indoctrination range from the organisation of events, in which the network is reinforced and expanded, to the creation of educational centers to inoculate the younger generations with ultraliberal ideology, through more heterodox strategies such as the formation of the International Atlas Freedom Corps in 2003, whose task is to scour the world for candidates for think labs leaders. To put it simply, the objective has always been to pour neoliberal doctrine from as many places as possible, passing it off as independent expertise or even as scientific-looking hypotheses, thanks to the efforts deposited in the academic field.
…TDB was threatened by The Atlas Network last year for our reporting on them, we told them to got fuck themselves.
The ease with which you have your petty bigotries manipulated by The Atlas Network without your comprehension is one of the real joys of living in New Zealand.
It’s like harvesting ignorance.
Your enemy isn’t the kid transitioning, or the Māori protesting for the Treaty, or a woman demanding quality or environmentalists reminding you of climate change!
Your enemy is who it has always been.
The Banks, the Billionaires, the Corporations, the polluters and Big Oil.
You have been tricked.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
Economists, politicians, and commentators have a common delusion. They are all suffering from the delusion that the Government should be run just like a household or business and manage by budgeting their income. It is a case of the classic composition fallacy. Or is it a false equivalence fallacy? It is clearly a fallacy. Households and commerce may not create the nations fiat money. Since that sole right is with the state and the state create our fiat money the operation of the Government finances must be the inverse of households and business. The limits on the the Government is the level of resources (water, labour, raw materials, capital plant capacity, and energy) it can mobilise. Efficiency results from putting these resources into full use.
The Government does not need to borrow and pay any finance entity any interest. Government is the creator and guarantor of the countries fiat money. Economising to get a ‘surplus’ is madness as it removes equity from the population and un-needed austerity. I think the licence for banks to create loans and put extra money into circulation should be revoked after all it is the bank created debt that is behind crisies not the Government debt. Use the state’s control of money creation use that money to lend to the finance sector for them to on lend to households and commerce at higher interest rates. So the state would benefit rather than the finance sector.
Atlas Network!!! There has to be a way to put an end to this extreme right, privileged, over-confident, brain-washing bunch of bullies in NZ, whose sole purpose is to undermine democracy in favour of deregulation and privatization. Their plan is all about them, their greed, their power and their egos. It is not ever going to be of help to a small country like NZ or in fact any country. What can we do? What should we do? Please someone come up with a plan for NZ to permanently get rid of this dangerous, self-entitled organisation. We have enough woes of our own – we don’t need any more manipulative groups interferring in our country. What are other countries doing to thwart them? Should we be joining forces to oppose this interference? Just remember when you VOTE FOR ACT you are VOTING FOR ATLAS!
Sadly one of my family members has found his way down this rabbit hole along with his wife who has joined the anti vax brigade as well .She was well up in the nursing teaching at the local poli tech but once down the Atlas hole all of that knowledge disapeared .NZ is being destroyed by this evil corporate greed .Just look at the shit trade deal Luxon wants us to sign up to .Tariff reductions in 10 years time ,maybe ,but an influx of the indian population as those with work visas will be able to bring 10 others with them who will also be allowed 10 others as well .This is just cover for a mass exodus of cheap labour into NZ while our own kids move to AUS .Soon we will be the Deli of the south pacific .