THE ATLAS NETWORK has been trending lately – in the minds of the New Zealand Left. Devastated by the election result, and further demoralised by recent polling showing the Right increasing its grip on New Zealanders’ political imagination, the Atlas Network has provided the Left with what it most needs – an explanation for its failure.
Good heavens, Susie. I am astonished that you are disconcerted by the plethora of right-wing thinks tanks in the world. After all, they have only been there, in plain sight and much reported upon, for the better part of half-a-century.
And, is it really all that surprising that right-wing politicians are closely connected with these organisations? When the whole purpose of think tanks is to research and frame responses to the many economic and social phenomena by which political leaders and governments are challenged.
Perhaps you should reserve your concern (and your sarcasm) for the leaders and parties of the Left who, as New Zealanders discovered to their cost, were unequal to virtually all of the challenges they faced - bar the first few months of the Covid Pandemic.
You might also like to ruminate on the lack of transparency that characterised so much of the Labour Government's policy development - most notably on Crown-Maori relations. That is not a charge you can fairly throw at right-wing think tanks - they publish and publicise their favoured solutions.
Conspiracies are hatched and developed in private, Susie, and conspirators of evil intent do not usually issue press releases and make themselves available for interviews. It may be inconvenient for leftists of all hues that the Right possesses the advantage of wealthy backers, but it is neither immoral nor illegal for it to use them.
A left-wing government could, of course, pass legislation making state-funding available to all political parties and their respective research institutions. Oh, but wait-a-minute, isn't that precisely the sort of suggestion that a think tank might flesh-out into implementable policy? What a pity the Left in New Zealand lacks the gumption to form a serviceable one of its own.
It doesn't have to be a large or complicated affair. Virtually all of the thinking that led to the Social Security Act of 1938 took place in the home of Kurow's GP - ably assisted by its Presbyterian minister and the headmaster of the Kurow school. Ah, but that was back in the days when the Left devoted itself to working out what to do - not who to blame.
Good heavens, Mr Trotter. Astonished that you should write this. Just any old bunch of neoliberal think tanks, like any other old bunch with rich donors? Perhaps you have an exploratory journey as yet not taken. Start here and follow a few links: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/06/rishi-sunak-javier-milei-donald-trump-atlas-network. But then this article is written by another of those paranoid lefties, eh.
Btw I can’t think of anything sunny about the NZ Initiative, which, like the Taxpayers Union is an Atlas Network ‘partner’. Jordan Williams of TPU along with David Seymour are proud Atlas Network MBA graduates, but surely they have left all that behind them in their buoyant youth.
Some people on the right lost their damned minds when Ardern was elected. They imagined that she was controlled by the WEF, or by the International Socialist Youth of which she was once president, or Soros, or Davos, or whatever. It was all stupid. She had views and talked with a lot of people who broadly shared her views. There was no conspiracy.
Same is now happening on the left. Impossible to say whether they're just stinging from the election result and looking for something external to blame (as you suggest) or whether they're throwing mud because they think it'll be effective against those with opposing political views. I think it's both.
Well said Chris! I spent some time with David when he was in Canada. I took him for his first ice skating adventure at the historic Forks Market (Centre of Winnipeg, therefore centre of Canada) where fur trading originated in Canada hundreds of years ago. We skated on the famous Red & Assiniboine rivers. -Buzz Grant
Thanks, Chris. Excellent analysis. Mihi Forbes, for one, is convinced that The Voice was voted down in Australia because shadowy cabals like the Atlas Network put money into the No campaign. She claims the same forces are behind Seymour's referendum.
What she fails to mention — including in her doco Trick or Treaty? — is that the Yes campaign was heavily supported and generously funded by Big Oil and Mining (BHP put in $2 million, among other big sector players that contributed), alongside Qantas ($500k free travel for Yes campaigners) and the big Four Banks and Accounting firms that all backed the Yes side.
The official figures of who donated what to both sides of the campaign won't be out until April 1 but it seems unlikely that the No side will have received anything like the funding the Yes campaign received (estimated by some to be $50m at least).
Maybe shadowy groups are indeed funding Seymour — who knows? — but the left really needs better evidence than the claim he worked for think tanks in Canada to make their case.
I am "Mountain_Tui" from Reddit and have read this post with interest. I agree with most of what you say but I disagree that the reason the "Left" (if this is what I have become too,) is focused on Atlas because of a demoralizing loss. Ironically, I hardly even followed these guys before this election. But various things, including Shane Jones's rhetoric attracted my attention and after some digging, it was clear that Mr Seymour follows the Atlas Network ideology. This is important to the degree transparency is important, and Mr Seymour's denial of his connections with them is also of interest.
Finally, the current project is filled with lobbyists who have worked with oil, mining and tobacco - from Nicola Willis to Bishop and Seymour.
That all said, I am comfortable with your conclusion - and agree with it. Thanks.
The Atlas conspiracy theory was largely developed and promoted by Joanne/Mihirangi Forbes based on reckons from her far left mates. Turns out her oversized media influence is funded by hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars, apparently far more money than the Atlas group ever spent . Sean Plunket has a look, 5 minute clip: https://youtu.be/QnQBsJJm7YI
Chris: "If the Right’s stories were made more convincing by a sympathetic think tank, then the Left should not be getting mad at their opponent’s effective apparatus, it should be getting mad at itself for not having one of its own."
Really Chris? With almost the entirety of academia and the substantially "progressive" media arrayed against the Right it's not a lack of fire power that's lacking.
Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals
"Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich".
I think Roger Douglas was in fact a Labour Party minister, but this is, otherwise, an excellent antidote to the nonsense that's poisoning the public debate on these issues.
I think the loss was worse than you describe in that the Labour Party and coalition abandoned both reality and the majority and were entirely non progressive.Labour immediately resorted to Stalinist type public controls which were not equitable, legal or fair at all when faced with a crisis everyone had been warned would happen for years. They simply aren’t up to the job and did, as the Government today continues to do, really dumb and borderline illegal things to people. They seem to still want to double down on their mistakes and ineptitude thinking no one will notice. But of course people do. I can’t see any of them being aware of their obligations to citizens in the slightest. Like kids in a playpen but they’re vacuous adults with facile prejudiced and bigoted views. Which are not laws.
Good heavens, Susie. I am astonished that you are disconcerted by the plethora of right-wing thinks tanks in the world. After all, they have only been there, in plain sight and much reported upon, for the better part of half-a-century.
And, is it really all that surprising that right-wing politicians are closely connected with these organisations? When the whole purpose of think tanks is to research and frame responses to the many economic and social phenomena by which political leaders and governments are challenged.
Perhaps you should reserve your concern (and your sarcasm) for the leaders and parties of the Left who, as New Zealanders discovered to their cost, were unequal to virtually all of the challenges they faced - bar the first few months of the Covid Pandemic.
You might also like to ruminate on the lack of transparency that characterised so much of the Labour Government's policy development - most notably on Crown-Maori relations. That is not a charge you can fairly throw at right-wing think tanks - they publish and publicise their favoured solutions.
Conspiracies are hatched and developed in private, Susie, and conspirators of evil intent do not usually issue press releases and make themselves available for interviews. It may be inconvenient for leftists of all hues that the Right possesses the advantage of wealthy backers, but it is neither immoral nor illegal for it to use them.
A left-wing government could, of course, pass legislation making state-funding available to all political parties and their respective research institutions. Oh, but wait-a-minute, isn't that precisely the sort of suggestion that a think tank might flesh-out into implementable policy? What a pity the Left in New Zealand lacks the gumption to form a serviceable one of its own.
It doesn't have to be a large or complicated affair. Virtually all of the thinking that led to the Social Security Act of 1938 took place in the home of Kurow's GP - ably assisted by its Presbyterian minister and the headmaster of the Kurow school. Ah, but that was back in the days when the Left devoted itself to working out what to do - not who to blame.
Good heavens, Mr Trotter. Astonished that you should write this. Just any old bunch of neoliberal think tanks, like any other old bunch with rich donors? Perhaps you have an exploratory journey as yet not taken. Start here and follow a few links: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/06/rishi-sunak-javier-milei-donald-trump-atlas-network. But then this article is written by another of those paranoid lefties, eh.
You might follow this one too: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374262009_Silencing_the_Voice_the_fossil-fuelled_Atlas_Network's_campaign_against_constitutional_recognition_of_Indigenous_Australia though I can’t guarantee the author isn’t a leftie either.
Btw I can’t think of anything sunny about the NZ Initiative, which, like the Taxpayers Union is an Atlas Network ‘partner’. Jordan Williams of TPU along with David Seymour are proud Atlas Network MBA graduates, but surely they have left all that behind them in their buoyant youth.
Thanks Chris.
Some people on the right lost their damned minds when Ardern was elected. They imagined that she was controlled by the WEF, or by the International Socialist Youth of which she was once president, or Soros, or Davos, or whatever. It was all stupid. She had views and talked with a lot of people who broadly shared her views. There was no conspiracy.
Same is now happening on the left. Impossible to say whether they're just stinging from the election result and looking for something external to blame (as you suggest) or whether they're throwing mud because they think it'll be effective against those with opposing political views. I think it's both.
Well said Chris! I spent some time with David when he was in Canada. I took him for his first ice skating adventure at the historic Forks Market (Centre of Winnipeg, therefore centre of Canada) where fur trading originated in Canada hundreds of years ago. We skated on the famous Red & Assiniboine rivers. -Buzz Grant
Re the Ayn Rand play-on-words in the headline - as Sir Humphrey Appleby would say to Jim Hacker 'how very droll'.
Thanks, Chris. Excellent analysis. Mihi Forbes, for one, is convinced that The Voice was voted down in Australia because shadowy cabals like the Atlas Network put money into the No campaign. She claims the same forces are behind Seymour's referendum.
What she fails to mention — including in her doco Trick or Treaty? — is that the Yes campaign was heavily supported and generously funded by Big Oil and Mining (BHP put in $2 million, among other big sector players that contributed), alongside Qantas ($500k free travel for Yes campaigners) and the big Four Banks and Accounting firms that all backed the Yes side.
The official figures of who donated what to both sides of the campaign won't be out until April 1 but it seems unlikely that the No side will have received anything like the funding the Yes campaign received (estimated by some to be $50m at least).
Maybe shadowy groups are indeed funding Seymour — who knows? — but the left really needs better evidence than the claim he worked for think tanks in Canada to make their case.
Hi there Chris
I am "Mountain_Tui" from Reddit and have read this post with interest. I agree with most of what you say but I disagree that the reason the "Left" (if this is what I have become too,) is focused on Atlas because of a demoralizing loss. Ironically, I hardly even followed these guys before this election. But various things, including Shane Jones's rhetoric attracted my attention and after some digging, it was clear that Mr Seymour follows the Atlas Network ideology. This is important to the degree transparency is important, and Mr Seymour's denial of his connections with them is also of interest.
Finally, the current project is filled with lobbyists who have worked with oil, mining and tobacco - from Nicola Willis to Bishop and Seymour.
That all said, I am comfortable with your conclusion - and agree with it. Thanks.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/19edmzq/act_are_deeply_affiliated_with_atlas_group_atlas/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
The Atlas conspiracy theory was largely developed and promoted by Joanne/Mihirangi Forbes based on reckons from her far left mates. Turns out her oversized media influence is funded by hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars, apparently far more money than the Atlas group ever spent . Sean Plunket has a look, 5 minute clip: https://youtu.be/QnQBsJJm7YI
Chris: "If the Right’s stories were made more convincing by a sympathetic think tank, then the Left should not be getting mad at their opponent’s effective apparatus, it should be getting mad at itself for not having one of its own."
Really Chris? With almost the entirety of academia and the substantially "progressive" media arrayed against the Right it's not a lack of fire power that's lacking.
Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals
"Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich".
https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-treason-intellectuals-third-reich
I think Roger Douglas was in fact a Labour Party minister, but this is, otherwise, an excellent antidote to the nonsense that's poisoning the public debate on these issues.
Ever thought of syndicating this in the union press?
I think the loss was worse than you describe in that the Labour Party and coalition abandoned both reality and the majority and were entirely non progressive.Labour immediately resorted to Stalinist type public controls which were not equitable, legal or fair at all when faced with a crisis everyone had been warned would happen for years. They simply aren’t up to the job and did, as the Government today continues to do, really dumb and borderline illegal things to people. They seem to still want to double down on their mistakes and ineptitude thinking no one will notice. But of course people do. I can’t see any of them being aware of their obligations to citizens in the slightest. Like kids in a playpen but they’re vacuous adults with facile prejudiced and bigoted views. Which are not laws.