Atlas Network? Yawn.
One of the most compelling articles I’ve read about Atlas Network is from The Guardian columnist George Monbiot.
His article is titled: “What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies.”
It’s an excellent summation outlining the strategies and modus operandi of the Atlas Network, and recommended reading.
It can also be summarily and loosely captured as: “very, very rich players craft politicians, drive government policies, own corporate and media mouthpieces, successfully shape public opinions, and wage war against ordinary people & the environment under the guise of public interest. Doing it all over the world - coming to a town near you.”
I guess ABBA was trying to warn us [ex-relationship content]: “Money, money, money, must be funny, in the rich man’s world”.
Looking back - it’s now one year ago that, after my research, I publicised my realisation that David Seymour was “deeply affiliated with Atlas Network - the mother of all think tanks”.
Atlas wasn’t common knowledge yet.
And I wrote about it - on a forum that I thought welcomed information. My opening sentence:
“I’d like to post about Atlas Network in the hope it will help spread awareness of this group’s aims and objectives in NZ.”
The key exhortation was:
“I urge you to read this yourself, so that we don’t repeat the same machinations and manipulations that other governments and countries have exposed themselves to.”
It was always my hope that we’d avoid the same fate as the UK.
Although late to politics, I also knew then that we - as a country - had made a large, potential mistake in voting for Atlas Network affiliated politicians - but still hoped we could avoid the pitfalls before us.
Atlas Network Wikipedia on Reddit
A year later, the term Atlas Network is more widely recognised.
The similarities between the Atlas Network modus operandi and our government’s policies are also strident and unsettling.
And even though I no longer mention Atlas frequently, the following paragraph from Monboit’s article is a framework I constantly recall.
The typical Atlas Network playbook:
A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike.
Over the last year, I’ve registered that our Coalition government has moved on almost every point - in many cases, instantly - except criminalising peaceful protests and perhaps adding to strike restrictions.
‘They are waiting for an excuse to criminalise protests,’ I have thought.
But yesterday, ACT’s Brooke Van Velden moved to penalise partial strikes with pay deductions, reversing Labour’s decision in 2018. A partial strike is where the employee is still doing some form of their work.
She dressed it up as ‘for Kiwis’, saying that allowing workers engaging in partial strikes have led to “delays to receiving medical scans and treatment due to increased waiting lists, kids missing out on education and parents missing out on work, and train passengers left waiting at platforms.”
Yet striking is about non-serious inconvenience, but more so, allowing workers the power and space to tell their employers, “We want to be heard, and we are doing it in a way where we ask you to take us seriously.”
Striking is also about workers’ fundamental rights1. And as I learned recently, NZ’s unions already have very onerous and restricted rights.
Still - that didn’t stop the government.
Word on the street is the government is going to privatise radiology services soon [guess who is a Director in multiple private radiology companies?] and, in response, public health units in radiology chose to partially strike in August.
So ACT used radiology as an example of a ‘bad strike’, clamping down with law - dissent shall not go unpunished and doing it where it influences people the most - in their pockets.
Brooke Van Velden’s latest piece of pro-employer legislation ticks the bosses of destroying worker protections and restricting the right to strike - but symbolically it’s far more significant because we are only one year in - and the government’s absolute fearlessness in centralising political and business power is extraordinary.
It’s really about control - and re-balancing the power in favour of the true elite.
And not the supposed ‘elite’ term that the right co-opted to describe the educated and professional classes that threaten their agendas.
In some respects, it’s frightening how emboldened this government are.
How little they care for the little voice and how skilled they are at positing elite friendly policies while masking it as beneficial to all.
Nor are the policies competent - in the way we’d typically expect and want in a government.
As Monboit noted, Liz Truss’s disastrous political platform and mini-budget [which saw £425 billion pounds wiped off of UK pension funds & left homeowners £300 billion pounds worse off to this day] was created by the UK’s Atlas Network partner, Institute of Economic Affairs [IEA].
Truss rewarded her Atlas Network and junk tank friends with House of Lords appointments when she resigned 44 days later.
To this day, Truss does not accept blame.
Back in NZ, it can also be distressing how we see long-fought-for protections for workers, the disabled, the environment, Māori, and the vulnerable, rolled back so easily, and also, without much contention.
Two new polls were released yesterday: 1News and the questionable David Farrar & Taxpayers Union affiliated outfit, Curia Market Research.
Curia’s polls once again rated National highly - high enough to form government on their own - which is a strong deviation from multiple recent polls.
However, the 1News poll also gives confidence to the Coalition government they are still leading - with all three parties needed to hold enough seats if an election was held today.
Luxon also retained his spot as preferred PM.
So he is wealthy and sorted, and his government is still winning, according to the most recent polls.
They see no reason to retract their approach.
But what worries me much more than polls - which are interesting and sometimes fun to write about, but still a world away in terms of the real election - is the knowledge that the large majority of Kiwis don’t care for political machinations or deep diving about the Atlas Network, or the strategies behind the PR.
Nor do they land on conclusions such as: it’s incredulous and concerning that corporate “junk tanks”, as Monboit calls them, may be driving our country’s literal approach.2
Simeon Brown claimed Maori wards were not democratic even though even National Party aligned councils told them it helped communities - yet how about close relationships with Atlas Network operatives - who are frequently funded by fossil fuels, tobacco, and foreign wealthy interests - to write and inspire legislation and create political campaigns.
Is that “democracy in action”, Mr Brown?
What most Kiwis care about is the food on their table, the latest movie, or relationship, the kids’ education, and their job security and finances - and more than half obtain their news and analysis from social media.
The right wing junk tanks know that.
And it’s why this government - who appear to be advised by these lobbyists - have confidence to keep pushing the envelope to their ideology, and detractors and evidence are unimportant - because the goal isn’t unity or social cohesion - it’s power.
Atlas Network? Yawn.
Policy and impact is where the battle lines are drawn, but it doesn’t mean it’s completely irrelevant for those with an interest anyway.
As Monbiot wrote,
When a government responds to the demands of the [Atlas] network, it responds, in reality, to the money that funds it.
The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power…They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands.. This is how nominal democracies become new aristocracies.”
Excerpts from The Guardian:
Today Newstalk ZB reports that the Employers and Manufacturers Association Head of Advocacy Alan McDonald backs Van Velden’s latest move.
No teachers, nurses, radiologists, doctors or transport workers were interviewed.
In “Chiding in Plain Sight,” David Williams references an ex-ACT whistleblower who told RNZ the Taxpayers’ Union “did a lot of the groundwork” for the Act Party in the 2020 election campaign through its Campaign for Affordable Housing. “It was actually a contrived problem that the Act Party told them to create.”
The success of Atlas policies is undoubtedly tied to the average citizen being unaware of the machinations going on behind the scenes, and unfortunately not caring that they are unaware. When you add on control of much of the media you can see that Atlas is a scarily effective force. What puzzles me still is the blind support of their foot soldiers, people like Seymour and Jordan Williams - what’s in it for them? They’re not that smart but with massive resources they carry a lot of power…
Strong unions are our only hope and Atlas are very aware of that, they look to destroy unionism from every angle.