Carl,
But the Koch Brothers and other elites use Libertarianism as a seduction so
that these young people who like the philosophy, end up organizing in the
interests of Capitalism, even though they're unaware of it. You'll notice in
the article, that this Libertarian master organization figured out how to get
US government funds to help it overthrow Latin American governments. The Koch
Brothers, also supposedly Libertarians, manage to enjoy huge government
subsidies for their energy business. Libertarianism is just a front for greedy
Capitalists.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2017 5:36 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Sphere of Influence: How American Libertarians
Are Remaking Latin American Politics
The Koch Brothers may find Chafuen to be their Golden Boy, but in fact, they
are funding their own demise. At first blush, Libertarian governments look
real good, in so far as offering weak resistance to being ravaged and plundered.
But should they succeed in actually establishing such a Libertarian government,
its very weak and limited structure would leave itself open to revolution. As
surely as such a limp Libertarian government can be easily manipulated by the
Corporate Privateers, so will it crumble under the boots of angry Workers,
cheated one time too often.
For the Billionaires, Capitalism, especially Corporate Capitalism is a far more
stable government, still well disposed to their control. For the Working
Class, some form of Socialism would be in their best interest. That is why the
current Ruling Class has spent so much time, energy and money on discrediting
socialism. The rich understand what is a threat to their privileged lives.
Too bad the Working Class can't figure out what sort of government would be to
their advantage...and go for it.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/9/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
© First Look Media. All rights reservedTerms of use Privacy Photo
Illustration: The Intercept. AP Photo
Sphere of Influence: How American Libertarians Are Remaking Latin
American Politics
Lee Fang
August 9 2017, 6:00 a.m.
For Alejandro Chafuen, the gathering this spring at the Brick Hotel in
Buenos Aires was as much a homecoming as it was a victory lap.
Chafuen, a lanky Argentine-American, had spent his adult life working
to undermine left-wing social movements and governments in South and
Central America, and boost a business-friendly version of
libertarianism instead.
It was a lonely battle for decades, but not lately. Chafuen was among
friends at the 2017 Latin America Liberty Forum. The international
meeting of libertarian activists was sponsored by the Atlas Economic
Research Foundation, a leadership-training nonprofit now known simply
as the Atlas Network, which Chafuen has led since 1991. At the Brick
Hotel, Chafuen was reveling in recent victories; his years of work
were starting to pay off, thanks to political and economic
circumstances — but also because of the network of activists Chafuen has been
working for so long to cultivate.
Over the past 10 years, leftist governments have used “money to buy
votes, to redistribute,” said Chafuen, seated comfortably in the
lobby. But the recent drop in commodity prices, coupled with
corruption scandals, has given an opportunity for Atlas Network groups
to spring into action. “When there is an opening, you have a crisis,
and there is some demand for change, you have people who are trained
to push for certain policies,” Chafuen noted, paraphrasing the late
Milton Friedman. “And in our case, we tend to favor to private
solutions to public problems.”
Chafuen pointed to numerous Atlas-affiliated leaders now in the spotlight:
ministers in the new conservative government in Argentina, senators in
Bolivia, and the leaders of the Free Brazil Movement that took down
Dilma Rousseff’s presidency, where Chafuen’s network sprang to life
before his very eyes.
“In Brazil, I have been in the street demonstrations, and I’m like,
‘Hey, this guy I met when he was 17, 18 — he is up there on the bus leading
this.
This is crazy!’” Chafuen said, excitedly. Those in Atlas’s orbit were
no less excited to run into Chafuen in Buenos Aires. Activists from
various countries stopped Chafuen intermittently to sing his praises
as he walked through the hotel. For many, Chafuen, from his perch at
Atlas, has served as a mentor, fiscal sponsor, and guiding beacon for
a new political paradigm in their country.
Ousted Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya, left, looks down inside a
car on his way to the airport where he will board a flight to
Nicaragua on the outskirts of San Jose, Sunday, June 28, 2009. Soldiers
seized Honduras'
national palace and sent the President Zelaya into exile in Costa Rica
on Sunday, hours before a disputed constitutional referendum. Zelaya,
an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said he was victim of a coup.
Honduras'
Congress sworn in Sunday congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as
the country's new President. (AP Photo/Kent Gilbert) Ousted Honduras
President Manuel Zelaya, left, looks down inside a car on his way to
the airport where he will board a flight to Nicaragua on the outskirts
of San Jose, Sunday, June 28, 2009.
Photo: Kent Gilbert/AP
A rightward shift is afoot in Latin American politics. Triumphant
socialist governments had once swept the region for much of the 21st
century – from Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to land
reform populist Manuel Zelaya in Honduras – championing new programs
for the poor, nationalizing businesses, and challenging U.S. dominance in
hemispheric affairs.
In recent years, however, leftist leaders have fallen one after
another, sometimes in spectacular fashion. Zelaya was led from the
presidential palace in his pajamas in a military coup; in Argentina, a
real-estate baron swept to the presidency and Kirchner was indicted
for corruption; and in Brazil, the ruling Workers’ Party, facing a
growing corruption scandal and a mass protest movement, was swept out
of office via impeachment over charges of budget chicanery.
This shift might appear as part of a larger regional rebalancing,
merely economic circumstances taking hold. And yet the Atlas Network
seems ever-present, a common thread nudging political developments along.
The story of the Atlas Network and its profound impact on ideology and
political power has never been fully told. But business filings and
records from three continents, along with interviews with libertarian
leaders across the hemisphere, reveal the scope of its influential
history. The libertarian network, which has reshaped political power
in country after country, has also operated as a quiet extension of
U.S. foreign policy, with Atlas-associated think tanks receiving quiet
funding from the State Department and the National Endowment for
Democracy, a critical arm of American soft power.
Though recent investigations have shed light on the role of powerful
conservative billionaires, such as the Koch brothers, in developing a
business-friendly version of libertarian thought, the Atlas Network,
which receives funding from Koch foundations, has recreated methods
honed in the Western world for developing countries.
The network is expansive, currently boasting loose partnerships with
450 think tanks around the world. Atlas says it dispensed over $5
million to its partners in 2016 alone.
Over the years, Atlas and its affiliated charitable foundations have
provided hundreds of grants to conservative and free-market think
tanks in Latin America, including the libertarian network that
supported the Free Brazil Movement and organizations behind a
libertarian push in Argentina, including Fundación Pensar, the Atlas
think tank that merged with the political party formed by Mauricio
Macri, businessman who now leads the country. The leaders of the Free
Brazil Movement and the founder of Fundación Eléutera in Honduras, an
influential post-coup neoliberal think tank, have received financial
support from Atlas, and are among the next generation of political
operatives that have went through Atlas’s training seminars.
The Atlas Network spans dozens of other think tanks across the region,
including prominent groups supporting right-wing forces behind the
unfolding anti-government movement in Venezuela and the campaign of
Sebastián Piñera, the right-of-center candidate leading the polls for
this year’s presidential election in Chile.
FILE - In this Dec. 2, 2015 file photo, people demonstrate against the
government as they take part in protest in favor of impeaching
Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, in front of the National Congress,
in Brasilia, Brazil. The country has seen a vicious circle of
ballooning crises over the past year. Major scandals, some of which
are connected to Rousseff, have combined with tanking commodity prices
to deliver blows to the powerhouse economy, including credit-rating
downgrades, a sharp currency devaluation and 10-percent annual
inflation. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File) People demonstrate against
the government as they take part in protest in favor of impeaching
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, in front of the National Congress, in
Brasilia, Brazil in Dec. 2, 2015.
Photo: Eraldo Peres/AP
Nowhere has the Atlas method been better encapsulated than in a newly
formed network of Brazilian free-market think tanks. Recently formed
institutes worked together to foment anger at socialist policies, with
some cultivating academic centers, while others work to train
activists and maintain a constant war in the Brazilian media against
leftist ideas.
The effort to focus anger solely at the left paid dividends last year
for the Brazilian right. The millennial activists of the Free Brazil
Movement, many of them trained in political organizing in the U.S.,
led a mass movement to channel public anger over a vast corruption
scandal against Dilma, the left-of-center president popularly known by
her first name. The scandal, nicknamed Operação Lava Jato, or
Operation Car Wash, is a still-unfolding tale of bribery involving
leading politicians from all of Brazil’s major political parties,
including the right-wing and center-right parties. But the social
media-savvy Free Brazil Movement, known by its Portuguese initials,
MBL, managed to direct the bulk of outrage squarely at Dilma,
demanding her ousting and an end to the welfare-centric policies of her
Workers’ Party.
The uprising, which has drawn comparisons to the tea party movement,
especially considering the quiet support from local industrial
conglomerates and a new conspiracy-minded network of far-right media
voices, ended 13 years of rule by the Workers’ Party by removing Dilma
from office through impeachment in 2016.
The landscape that MBL sprang from is a new development in Brazil.
There were perhaps three active libertarian think tanks 10 years ago,
said Helio Beltrão, a former hedge fund executive who now leads
Instituto Mises, a nonprofit named after the libertarian philosopher,
Ludwig von Mises. Now, he said, with the support of Atlas, there are
close to 30 such institutes active in Brazil, all working
collaboratively, along with groups, such as Students for Liberty and
MBL.
“It’s like a soccer team. Defense is the academia. The forward guys
are the politicians. We’ve scored a few goals,” he said, referring to
Dilma’s impeachment. The midfield, he said, are the “cultural guys”
that shape public opinion.
Beltrão explained that the think tank network is hoping to privatize
the national post office in Brazil, calling it “low-hanging fruit”
that could lead to a larger wave of free-market reforms. Many of the
conservative parties in Brazil embraced libertarian campaigners when
they showed they could mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to
protest against Dilma, but haven’t yet adopted the fundamentals of
supply-side theory.
Fernando Schüler, an academic and columnist associated with Instituto
Millenium, another Atlas think tank in Brazil, made the case another way.
“Brazil has 17,000 unions paid by public money, one day of salary per
year goes to unions, completely controlled by the left,” said Schüler.
The only way to reverse the socialist trend has been to out-maneuver
them. “With technology, people could by themselves participate,
organize at low cost — WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, using networks, a
kind of public manifestation,” he continued, explaining the way
libertarian organizers mobilized a protest movement against left-leaning
politicians.
Organizers against Dilma had created a daily barrage of YouTube videos
mocking the Worker’s Party government, along with an interactive
scoreboard to encourage citizens to lobby their legislators to support
impeachment.
Schüler noted that the Free Brazil Movement and his own think tank
receive financial support from local industrial trade groups, but the
movement had succeeded in part because it is not identified with the
incumbent political parties, most of which the general public views
with suspicion. He argued that the only way to radically reshape
society and reverse popular sentiment in support of the welfare state
was to wage a permanent cultural war to confront left intellectuals
and the media.
maxresdefault-1502212171
Fernando Schüler.
Photo: Screenshot from Youtube
One of the founders of Schüler’s Instituto Millenium think tank,
Brazilian blogger Rodrigo Constantino, has polarized Brazilian
politics with hyperpartisan rhetoric. Constantino, who has been called
the “Breitbart of Brazil” for his conspiratorial views and acidic
right-wing commentary, chairs yet another Atlas think tank, Instituto
Liberal. He sees the Brazilian left’s every move as a veiled attempt
at subverting democracy, from the use of the color red in the
country’s World Cup logo to the Bolsa Família cash assistance program to poor
families.
Constantino is credited with popularizing a narrative that Worker’s
Party supporters are limousine liberals, wealthy hypocrites that flock
to socialism to claim the moral high ground while snubbing the working
classes they claim to represent.
The Breitbartization of public discourse is but one of the many ways
the Atlas network has subtly influenced political debate.
“It’s a very paternalistic state. It’s crazy. It’s a lot of state
control, and that’s the long-term challenge,” said Schüler, adding
that despite recent victories, libertarians had a long way to go in
Brazil. He hoped to copy the model of Margaret Thatcher, who relied on
a network of libertarian think tanks to push unpopular reforms. “This
pension system is absurd. I would privatize all education,” Schüler,
rattling off a litany of changes he would make to society, from
defunding labor unions to repealing the law that makes voting
compulsory.
Yet the only way to make all that possible, he added, would be to
build a network of politically active nonprofits all waging separate
battles to push the same libertarian goals. The existing model — the
constellation of right-wing think tanks in Washington, D.C., supported
by powerful endowments — is the only path forward for Brazil, Schüler
said.
Atlas, for its part, is busy doing just that. It gives grants for new
think tanks, provides courses on political management and public
relations, sponsors networking events around the world, and, in recent
years, has devoted special resources to prodding libertarians to
influence public opinion through social media and online videos.
An annual competition encourages Atlas’s network to produce viral
YouTube videos promoting laissez-faire ideas and ridiculing proponents
of the welfare state. James O’Keefe, the provocateur famous for
needling Democrats with his undercover videos, has appeared before
Atlas to explain his methods. Producers from a Wisconsin group that
worked create online videos to discredit teacher protests against Gov.
Scott Walker’s law busting public sector unions have also provided
instructions for Atlas’s training sessions.
Caracas, Distrito Federal, Venezuela, South America Crowd burning
puppet of President Hugo Chavez at Plaza Altamira in protest against
government.
Photo: Lonely Planet Images/Getty Images
Among its other exploits of late, Atlas has played a role in a Latin
American nation roiled by the region’s most acute political and
humanitarian
crisis: Venezuela. Records obtained through the Freedom of Information
Act by author and activist Eva Golinger, as well as State Department
cables disclosed by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, reveal U.S. policymakers’
sophisticated effort to use Atlas think tanks in a long-running
campaign to destabilize the reign of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez.
As early as 1998, Cedice Libertad, Atlas’s flagship think tank in
Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, received regular financial support from
the Center for International Private Enterprise. In one grant letter,
NED funds marked for Cedice are listed to help advocate “a change in
government.” The director of Cedice was among the signatories of the
controversy “Carmona Decree”
supporting the short-lived military coup against Chávez in 2002.
A 2006 cable laid out a strategy from U.S. Ambassador William
Brownfield for funding politically active nonprofits in Venezuela: “1)
Strengthening democratic institutions, 2) penetrating Chávez’s
political base, 3) dividing Chavismo, 4) protecting vital U.S.
business, and 5) isolating Chávez internationally.”
In Venezula’s current crisis, Cedice has promoted the recent spate of
protests against President Nicholás Maduro, Chávez’s embattled successor.
Cedice is closely affiliated with opposition figure María Corina
Machado, one of the leaders of the massive anti-government street
demonstrations in recent months. Machado has publicly recognized Atlas
for its work. In a videotape message delivered to the group in 2014,
she said, “Thank you to the Atlas Network, to all freedom fighters.”
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has recognized Atlas
for its work: “Thank you to the Atlas Network, to all freedom
fighters,” she said in 2014.
At the Atlas Network’s Latin American Liberty Forum in Buenos Aires,
young leaders buzzed back and forth, sharing ideas on how to defeat
socialism at every level, from pitched battles on college campuses to
mobilizing an entire country to embrace impeachment.
Think tank “entrepreneurs” from Peru, the Dominican Republic, and
Honduras competed in a format along the lines of “Shark Tank,” an
America reality show where start-up businesses pitch to a panel of
wealthy, ruthless investors. Instead of seeking investments from a
panel of venture capitalists, however, the think tank leaders pitched
policy marketing ideas for a contest that awarded $5,000. In another
session, strategies were debated for attracting industry support to
back economic reforms. In another room, political operatives debated
arguments “lovers of liberty” can use to respond to the global rise of
populism to “redirect the sense of injustice many feel” toward
free-market goals.
One young leader from CADAL, a think tank in Buenos Aires, presented
on an idea to rank each Argentine province using what he called an
“economic liberty index,” which would use the level of taxation and
regulation as the main criteria to generate buzz for free-market
reforms. The idea is consciously modeled on similar strategies from
the U.S., including the Heritage Foundation’s “Index of Economic
Freedom,” which measures countries based on criteria that includes tax
policies and regulatory barriers to business formation.
Think tanks are traditionally associated with independent institutes
formed to develop unconventional solutions. But the Atlas model
focuses less on developing genuinely new policy proposals, and more on
establishing political organizations that carry the credibility of
academic institutions, making them an effective organ for winning
hearts and minds.
Free-market ideas — such as slashing taxes on the wealthy; whittling
down the public sector and placing it under the control of private
operators; and liberalized trade rules and restrictions on labor
unions — have always struggled with a perception problem. Proponents
of this vision have found that voters tend to view such ideas as a
vehicle for serving society’s upper crust. Rebranding economic
libertarianism as a public interest ideology has required elaborate
strategies for mass persuasion.
But the Atlas model now spreading rapidly through Latin America is
based on a method perfected by decades of struggle in the U.S. and the
U.K., as libertarians worked to stem the tide of the surging post-war welfare
state.
Map of Atlas group locations in South America.
Map of Atlas group locations in South America.
Map: The Intercept
Antony Fisher, a British entrepreneur and the founder of the Atlas
Network, pioneered the sale of libertarian economics to the broader
public. The tack was simple: Fisher made it his mission to, in the
words of an associate, “litter the world with free-market think tanks.”
The basis for Fisher’s ideals came from Friedrich Hayek, a forbearer
of modern thought on limited government. In 1946, after reading the
Reader’s Digest version of Hayek’s seminal book, “The Road to
Serfdom,” Fisher sought a meeting with the Austrian economist in
London. As recounted by his close colleague John Blundell, Fisher
suggested Hayek enter politics. But Hayek demurred, replying that a
bottom-up focus on shifting the public discourse could better shape
society.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., another free-market ideologue, Leonard Read,
was entertaining similar notions after leading the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce’s Los Angeles branch into bruising battles with organized
labor. To counter the growth of the welfare state, a more elaborate
response would be necessary to share popular debates around the
direction of society, without the visible link to corporate interests.
Fisher was propelled forward by a fateful visit to Read’s newly formed
nonprofit, the Foundation for Economic Education, in New York, which
was founded to help sponsor and promote the ideas of free-market
intellectuals.
There, libertarian economist F.A. Harper, at the time working at FEE,
advised Fisher on methods for creating his own nonprofit in the U.K.
During the trip, Fisher also traveled with Harper to Cornell
University to observe the latest animal industry breakthrough of
battery cages, marveling at the sight of 15,000 chickens housed in a
single building. Fisher was inspired to bring the innovation home with
him. His factory, Buxted Chickens, grew rapidly and made Fisher a
substantial fortune in the process.
Some of those profits went into other goal fostered during his New
York
trip: In 1955, Fisher founded the Institute of Economic Affairs.
IEA helped popularize the once-obscure set of economists loosely
affiliated with Hayek’s ideas. The institute was a place to showcase
opposition to British society’s growing welfare state, connecting
journalists to free-market academics and disseminating critiques on a
regular basis through opinion columns, radio interviews, and
conferences.
Businesses provided the bulk of funding to IEA, as leading British
industrial and banking giants — from Barclays to BP — pitched in with
annual contributions. According to “Making Thatcher’s Britain,” by
historians Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders, one shipping magnate
remarked that, since universities were providing ammunition for the
unions, the IEA was an important source of bullets for business.
As the economic slowdown and rising inflation of the 1970s shook the
foundations of British society, Tory politicians gravitated more and
more to the IEA to provide an alternative vision — and IEA obliged
with accessible issue briefs and talking points politicians could use
to bring free-market concepts to the public. The Atlas Network proudly
proclaims that the IEA “laid the intellectual groundwork for what
later became the Thatcher Revolution of the 1980s.” IEA staff provided
speechwriting for Margaret Thatcher; supplemented her campaign with
policy papers on topics as varied as labor unions and price controls;
and provided a response to her critics in the mass media. In a letter
to Fisher after her 1979 victory, Thatcher wrote that the IEA created
“the climate of opinion which made our victory possible.”
“There’s no doubt there’s been enormous progress in Britain, the
Institute of Economic Affairs, which Antony Fisher set up, made an
enormous difference,” Milton Friedman once said. “It made possible
Margaret Thatcher.
It made possible not her election as prime minister but the policies
that she was able to follow. And the same thing in this country, the
developing thought along these lines made possible Ronald Reagan and
the policies he was able to follow.”
IEA had come full circle. Hayek set up an invitation-only group of
free-market economists called the Mont Pelerin Society. One of its
members, Ed Feulner, helped found of the conservative Washington think
tank the Heritage Foundation, drawing on IEA’s work for inspiration.
Another Mont Pelerin member, Ed Crane, founded the Cato Institute, the
most prominent libertarian think tank in the U.S.
Austrian-British economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek
(1899
-
1992) with a class of students at the London School of Economics, 1948.
(Photo by Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images) Austrian-British
economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek with a class of
students at the London School of Economics, 1948.
Photo: Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images
In 1981, Fisher, who had settled in San Francisco, set out to develop
the Atlas Economic Research Foundation at the urging of Hayek. Fisher
had used his success with IEA to court corporate donors to help
establish a string of smaller, sometimes regional think tanks in New
York, Canada, California, and Texas, among other places. With Atlas,
though, the scale for Fisher’s free-market think tank project would
now be global: a nonprofit dedicated to continuing his work of
establishing libertarian beachheads in every country of the world.
“The more institutes established throughout the world,”
Fisher
declared, “the more opportunity to tackle diverse problems begging for
resolution.”
Fisher began to fundraise, pitching corporate donors with the help of
letters from Hayek, Thatcher, and Friedman, including an urgent call
for donors to help reproduce the success of IEA through Atlas. Hayek
wrote that the IEA model “ought to be used to create similar
institutes all over the world.” He added, “It would be money well
spent if large sums could be made available for such a concerted effort.”
The proposal was sent to a list of high-level executives and soon,
money began pouring in from corporate coffers and Republican
mega-donors, including Richard Mellon Scaife. Companies, such as
Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, and Shell, all gave to Atlas. But their
influence would need to remain cloaked for the project to work, Fisher
contended. “To influence public opinion, it is necessary to avoid any
suggestion of vested interest or intent to indoctrinate,” Fisher noted
in a proposal outlining the purpose of Atlas. Fisher added that IEA’s
success hinged on the perception that it was academic and impartial.
Atlas grew rapidly. By 1985, the network featured 27 institutions in
17 countries, including nonprofits in Italy, Mexico, Australia, and Peru.
And the timing could not have been better: Atlas’s international
expansion came just as the Reagan administration was doubling down on
an aggressive foreign policy, hoping to beat back leftist governments abroad.
While in public, Atlas declared that it received no government funding
(Fisher belittled foreign aid as just another “bribe” used to distort
market forces), records show the network quietly worked to channel
government money to its growing list of international partners.
In one 1982 letter from the International Communication Agency, a
small federal agency devoted to promote U.S. interests overseas, a
bureaucrat at the Office of Private Sector Programs wrote to Fisher,
in response to an inquiry about acquiring federal grants. The
bureaucrat said he was barred from giving “directly to foreign
organizations,” but could cosponsor “conferences or exchanges with
organizations” hosted by groups like Atlas.
He encouraged Fisher to send over a proposal. The letter, sent one
year after Atlas’s founding, was the first indication that the network
would become a covert partner to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Memos and other records from Fisher show that, by 1986, Atlas had
helped schedule meetings with business executives to direct U.S. funds
to its network of think tanks. In one instance, an official from the
U.S. Agency for International Development, the principal foreign aid
arm of the federal government, recommended that the head of
Coca-Cola’s subsidiary in Panama work with Atlas to set up an
IEA-style affiliate think tank there. Atlas also drew funding from the
coffers of the National Endowment for Democracy, a government-charted
nonprofit, founded in 1983, that is funded largely by the State
Department and USAID to build U.S.-friendly political institutions in
the developing world.
Alejandro Chafuen, of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, back
right, shakes hands with Rafael Alonzo, of Venezuela's Freedom Center
for Economic Studies, CEDICE, left, as Peruvian writer Mario Vargas
Llosa applauds during the opening of the "Freedom and Democracy"
international forum in Caracas, Thursday, May 28, 2009.(AP
Photo/Ariana Cubillos) Alejandro Chafuen, of the Atlas Economic
Research Foundation, back right, shakes hands with Rafael Alonzo, of
Venezuela’s Freedom Center for Economic Studies, CEDICE, left, as
Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa applauds during the opening of the
“Freedom and Democracy” international forum in Caracas, Thursday, May
28, 2009.
Photo: Ariana Cubillos/AP
With corporate and U.S. government funding pouring in, Atlas took
another fortuitous turn in 1985 with the arrival of Alejandro Chafuen.
Linda Whetstone, Fisher’s daughter, remembered in a tribute that, in
1985, a young Chafuen, then living in Oakland, showed up to Atlas’s
San Francisco office “and was willing to work for nothing.”
The Buenos Aires-born Chafuen hailed from what he described as “an
anti-Peronist family.” They were wealthy and, though raised in an era
of incredible turmoil in Argentina, Chafuen lived a life of relative
privilege.
He spent his teenage years playing tennis, dreaming of becoming a
professional athlete.
Chafuen credits his youthful ideological path to his appetite for
devouring libertarian texts, from Ayn Rand to booklets published by
FEE, the Leonard Read group that had originally inspired Fisher. After
studying at Grove City College, a deeply conservative Christian
liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, where he served as the president
of the student libertarian club, Chafuen returned to his home country.
The military had stepped in, claiming a threat from communist
revolutionaries. Thousands of students and activists would be tortured
and killed in the crackdown on left-wing dissent following the coup
d’etat.
Chafuen remembers the time in a mostly positive light, later writing
that the military had acted out of necessity to prevent a communist
“takeover of the country.” While pursuing a teaching career, Chafuen
encountered “totalitarians of every style” within academic life. After
the military coup, he wrote that he noticed that his professors became
“gentler,”
despite
their differences with him.
In other Latin American countries, too, libertarianism was finding a
receptive audience among military governments. In Chile, after the
military swept out the democratically elected government of Salvador
Allende. Mont Pelerin Society economists quickly flocked to the
country, setting the stage for widespread libertarian reforms,
including the privatization of industry and the country’s pension
system. Throughout the region, under the watch of right-wing military
leaders that had seized power, libertarian economic policies began to
take root.
For his part, Chafuen’s ideological zeal was on display as early as
1979, when he published an essay for FEE titled “War Without End.” He
described the horrors of leftist terror, “like the Charles Manson
family, or in regimental strength, like the guerilla troops in the
Middle East, Africa, and South America.” There was a need, he wrote,
for the “forces of individual freedom and private property” to fight back.
His enthusiasm garnered attention. In 1980, at age 26, Chafuen was
invited to become the youngest member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He
traveled to Stanford, an opportunity that put him in direct contact
with Read, Hayek, and other leading libertarians. Within five years,
Chafuen had married an American and was living in Oakland. He began
reaching out to Mont Pelerin members in the Bay Area, including Fisher.
Throughout the region, under the watch of right-wing military leaders
that had seized power, libertarian economic policies began to take root.
According to Atlas’s board meeting notes, Fisher told his colleagues
he had made a $500 ex gratia Christmas payment that year to Chafuen,
and hoped to hire the young economist full-time to develop Atlas think
tanks in Latin America. The following year, Chafuen organized the
first Atlas summit of Latin American think tanks in Jamaica.
Chafuen understood the Atlas model well and worked diligently to
expand the network, helping to launch think tanks in Africa and
Europe, though focusing his efforts in Latin America. Describing how
to attract donors, Chafuen once noted in a lecture that donors cannot
appear to pay for public surveys because the polls would lose
credibility. “Pfizer Inc. would not sponsor surveys on health issues
nor would Exxon pay for surveys on environmental issues,” Chafuen
noted. Libertarian think tanks, such as the ones in Atlas’s network,
however, could not only present the same survey with more credibility,
but do so in a way that garnered coverage in the local media.
“Journalists are very much attracted by whatever is new and easy to
report,”
Chafuen said. The press is less interested in quoting libertarian
philosophers, he contended, but when a think tank produced a survey
people would listen. “And donors also see this,” he added.
In 1991, three years after Fisher died, Chafuen took helm of Atlas and
would have the opportunity to speak to donors with authority about
Atlas’s work.
He quickly began to rack up corporate sponsors to push
company-specific goals through the network. Philip Morris contributed
regular grants to Atlas, including a $50,000 contribution to the group
in 1994, which was disclosed years later through litigation. Records
show that the tobacco giant viewed Atlas as an ally for working on
international litigation issues.
Journalists in Chile, however, found out that Atlas-backed think tanks
had worked to quietly lobby against smoking regulations without
disclosing their funding from tobacco companies, a strategy similar
think tanks repeated across the globe.
Corporate giants, such as ExxonMobil and MasterCard, were among
Atlas’s donors. But the group also attracted leading figures in
libertarianism, such as the foundations associated with investor John
Templeton and the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which
lavished Atlas and its affiliates with regular contributions.
Chafuen’s fundraising prowess extended to the growing number of
wealthy conservative foundations that were beginning to flourish. He
was a founding member of Donors Trust, a secretive donor-advised fund
that has doled out over $400 million to libertarian nonprofits,
including members of the Atlas Network. He also serves as a trustee to
the Chase Foundation of Virginia, which was founded by a Mont Pelerin
Society member and similarly sends cash to Atlas think tanks.
Another wellspring of money came from the American government.
Initially, the National Endowment for Democracy encountered difficulty
setting up U.S.-friendly political nonprofits. Gerardo Bongiovanni,
the president of Fundación Libertad, an Atlas think tank in Rosario,
Argentina, noted during a lecture with Chafuen that the early seed
money from NED’s grant partner, the Center for International Private
Enterprise, totaled $1 million between
1985 and 1987. The think tanks that received those initial grants
quickly folded, Bongiovanni said, citing lack of management training.
Atlas, however, managed to turn U.S. taxpayer money coming through the
NED and Center for International Private Enterprise into an important
source of funding for its growing network. The funding vehicles
provided money to help boost Atlas think tanks in eastern Europe,
following the fall of the Soviet Union, and, later, to promote U.S.
interests in the Middle East. Among the recipients of the Center for
International Private Enterprise’s cash is Cedice Libertad, the group
thanked by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 09: White House Deputy Assistant To The
President Sebastian Gorka participates in a television interview
outside the White House West Wing June 9, 2017 in Washington, DC. A
former national security editor for Breitbart, Gorka has hard-line
stands on Islam and terrorism and past involvement in right-wing
Hungarian politics. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) White
House Deputy Assistant To The President Sebastian Gorka participates
in a television interview outside the White House West Wing June 9,
2017 in Washington, DC.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
At the Brick Hotel in Buenos Aires, Chafuen reflected on the last
three decades. Fisher “would be overall pleased, and he would not
believe how much our network grew,” Chafuen said, noting that perhaps
the Atlas founder would not have expected the level of direct
political engagement the group is involved in.
Chafuen lit up when U.S. President Donald Trump came up, offering
praise for the president’s appointees. And why not? The Trump
administration is littered with alumni of Atlas-related groups and
friends of the network.
Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s Islamophobic counterterrorism adviser, once
led an Atlas-backed think tank in Hungary. Vice President Mike Pence
has attended an Atlas event and spoken highly of the group. Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos and Chafuen were close through their leadership
roles at the Acton Institute, a Michigan think tank that develops
religious arguments in favor of libertarian policies — which now
maintains an affiliate in Brazil, the Centro Interdisciplinar de Ética e
Economia Personalista.
Perhaps Chafuen’s most prized figure in the administration, however,
is Judy Shelton, an economist and senior fellow at the Atlas Network.
After Trump’s victory, Shelton was made the chair of the NED. She
previously served as an adviser to the Trump campaign and transition
effort. Chafuen beamed when he talked about it. “There you have the
Atlas people being the chair of the National Endowment for Democracy,”
he said.
Before ending the interview, Chafuen intimated that there was more to come:
more think tanks, more efforts to overturn leftist governments, and
more Atlas devotees and alumni elevated to the highest levels of
government the world over. “The work is ongoing,” he said.
Later, Chafuen appeared at the gala for the Latin America Liberty Forum.
Along with a panel of Atlas experts, he discussed the need to ramp up
libertarian opposition movements in Ecuador and Venezuela.