I have many reckons on this. Many. But I can’t write them down because it makes me so mad.
One thing I will say, as a Kiwi living in Australia, I wasn’t surprised by the Voice result. But a lot of my lefty Brunswick bubble were. And that’s the problem.
We as progressive people who stand against racism, colonialism, rich c**ts who want to destroy the planet, need to start taking to people who aren’t in the same bubble.
I joked about it to you, Josh, that I only talk to terminally online people. And it’s kind of true. But if the pandemic has taught us and The Voice has proven is there are a large portion of socially isolated people who are susceptible to the heavily focus grouped right wing lizard brain messaging that will be turned on like a fire hose from now in order to build support for this referendum. Shit. We saw it three years so with the cannabis referendum. Fear and finance won.
The only way to combat this is to talk to people outside our bubbles and to show up and be good allies. Cos fuck me, the boring dystopia we live in doesn’t need to be spiced up by sliding into actual fascism.
That documentary is brilliant - needs to be required viewing country-wide, and especially in secondary schools so the upcoming generation of voters know exactly how they're being manipulated and by whom. The Atlas Network can really only be described as evil, wrapped up in soft soap and a great deal of money. Presumably the name derives from the appalling Ayn Rand and her equally appalling 'Atlas Shrugged'?
Yes, the evil organisation who's main work output is the horrific support of small business, anti-corruption movements, and education initiatives in the third world. Truly the scum of the earth.
Josh, thank you for this. As an American living in NZ for the past 6 years I have so many thoughts on the Atlas Network and without looking I would bet everything I have (except the dog) that the Heritage Foundation and ALEC are members. Their messaging is so insidious but powerful because it speaks to fear and tells people it's okay, they aren't to blame for not being a gazillionaire by the time they are 30, that the brown skinned person over there is to blame instead. I've always said Aotearoa is lucky not to have Rupert Murdoch and his minions on the airwaves but now I see in his place an abundance of lobbyists and academics posing as unbiased sources of news. Short of all news media in the country adhering to your suggestions - what can we do? Jackson's suggestion of talking to people outside our bubbles is an excellent start. I almost feel like it's 2015 in America and we are sitting around laughing about the idea of a trump presidency and thinking Americans aren't that gullible.
I am begging you to find me the document produced by Atlas that says "Plan For World Domination: Step 1 - blame brown people for the scarcity of millionaires." Or just anything that in anyway resembles that.
Most of their work is actually in third world countries trying to prevent corruption and reduce poverty. Super racist claim of you to be making really.
But hey I think it's a good idea if all organisations adhered to Josh's descriptions. “Now we have a spokesperson for Tax Justice Aotearoa, an organisation that consists of four people in Wellington” or “A spokesperson for Greenpeace, a vigilante organisation run by a former Green Party co-leader”
This is exactly what we needed out there before the election, I was trying to warn people Atlas was doing the same here with all their Astrotrufs and now Atlas has all their lackeys in government. After looking into their network for years, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Atlas call themselves “the freedom movement” either, they’re behind Advance NZ, Advance Australia and if not funded, they definitely inspired the fake “freedom movement” we see globally destroying democracies so destructive industries and continue to exploit our planet.
By 'Atlas' astroturfs' I assume you mean that NZTU. You can't mean ACT or National because they won a significant amount of the vote, so there are clearly people supporting them. However, it's erroneous to call the NZTU either Atlas' or an astroturf. The NZTU was founded years before the founders ever interacted with Atlas. It's also not an astroturf, that would require it to have a fake grassroots support base. The reality is the NZTU has over 200,000 supporters and is mainly (80% funded by small dollar donations).
At the root of this I think is a misconception of what Atlas actually is. Their aim is to support groups that have a classical liberal outlook. They are a pretty small organisation as far as US groups go. Their annual turnover is around US$20 million a year. Heritage Foundation has six times their revenue – just for US policy. So to fantasise that the global overlord is run on a budget smaller than the budget for some US house campaigns is farcical.
To believe otherwise I guess (which you're entitled to do) probably would make you a conspiracy theorist. It'd be the same as throwing your hands in the air and saying "I don't care about the evidence, what I care about is what I already believe about the world, and when that conflicts with the evidence, I chose to back my beliefs even if they lack anything concrete to support them."
There’s a lot of assuming in your reply which would make you the conspiracy theorist if that’s what you want to believe, did I say they are a “global overlord”, I didn’t mention the NZTU but you share went to their defence there. I was talking about several of Atlas astroturfs and think tanks, and no I don’t have a misconception of what Atlas is, it is not a small Network, they brag about how large they are on their own website, and it’s also aligned with the Heritage Foundation and many other fossil fuel funded orgs. The aim of Atlas, is not what many members may believe it is, it’s to build a larger cult to protect their funders, their “think tanks” recruit, ‘educate’ or de-educate, and send their members out to start more groups to groom people and spread the gospel of Koch/Rand, aka science denial, fascism and extreme greed.
I’m not sure you even read my reply given yours seems to be largely putting words in my mouth based on assumptions.
But if you want to talk NZTPU, there is concrete evidence showing they work hand in hand with Atlas Network, with Jordan Williams being funded by them to change policy in Aotearoa via NZTU, Groundswell, his campaign company... and NZTU were actually founded with Tobacco and Fossil Fuel money, they are not “grassroots” as they claim to be. It is not a conspiracy theory that Williams is an Atlas Network member and common knowledge to anyone following these organisations.
It’s also not a conspiracy theory that ACT is made up of Atlas Network members, their founder and their leader being a long time members, there’s a long list of them involved with ACT. There are many members in National too, the leader is involved if you actually read the article you are replying to, you’d know this.
It’s not as small as you believe and I’d like to know how you know their turnover? None of these groups are fully open and transparent about the vast amount of money flowing through them. I’m not the one fanaticising here and it’s not something I would ever fanaticise about, I sometimes wish I didn’t even know about them tbh because ignorance is bliss.
I am begging you to say the words "The aim of Atlas, is not what many members may believe it is, it’s to build a larger cult to protect their funders, their “think tanks” recruit, ‘educate’ or de-educate, and send their members out to start more groups to groom people and spread the gospel of Koch/Rand, aka science denial, fascism and extreme greed." out loud to a normal person on the street. I think you might realise that regardless of your statements to the contrary, you do indeed sound like you are fanaticising over this.
Now here comes the big reveal - I have worked for both the NZTU and the New Zealand Initiative! That's why I find this discussion so frustrating. As much as you might not want to believe it, the NZTU is not an astroturf. I would know, I was partially responsible for managing the (at the time) 160,000+ supporters. As for funding, you can find their accounts on their annual report and financial report - both of which are publicly available. These show that 80% of their funding comes from small dollar donations and only 2.1% from industry. Once again, I would know, I had to spend hours and hours writing thousands of cards to thank supporters for their donations.
I'm focusing on the NZTU because that's the only ATLAS-associated advocacy group I can think of (The NZI's interaction with ATLAS has consisted only of the gift of a camera for youtube videos and instructions on how to use it). All of this you would know if you did the only a cursory amount of research.
Of course Atlas, the NZTU, and The Initiative overlap and occasionally interact. This shouldn't surprise anyone - they are all broadly pro free market organisations. Likewise it shouldn't be a surprise that there are politicians that are in some way connected to atlas, if atlas shares their values of low corruption, high productivity and free markets. Personally, I don't find it all surprising that there are many ties and personnel overlaps between the NZ Greens, NZ Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, and Greenpeace International - after all, these organisations and the people in them share the same values and ideas - there's nothing sinister about that.
You might not like these organisations, and you might wish they didn't exist, and you might decry them online - you have every right to do so. However, claims like 'astroturfing' 'science-denial, fascism and extreme greed' and that they are providing masses of funding to influence New Zealand policy are empirical claims and require empirical backing, which you haven't been able to provide. Likewise for the claim that atlas, whose main efforts center around fighting corruption and encouraging growth in third world countries, is pulling the strings of the NZ govt on a budget of $20 million a year, of which only $75,000 gets spent on initiatives in Australia and New Zealand. https://admin.atlasnetwork.org/assets/documents/financials/Atlas-22-FS-Final.pdf?_gl=1*1lmipy8*_ga*MjEyMTQ5OTEyNy4xNzEzODQxODUy*_ga_F992Z0Y4W1*MTcxMzg0MTg1MS4xLjEuMTcxMzg0MjIzMS41Mi4wLjA.
I'm reasonably certain I might never convince you about this, but I would like to leave you with a thought to mull over. I'm able to find numbers to back my claims, numbers which if they were lied about, would have serious legal and professional implications for the organisations involved. So I'm inclined to believe them. You are not able to find those same numbers to support your case, and so I'm not inclined to believe you when you make your claims, because you make them without evidence, and without evidence they are unfalsifiable.
So maybe at the end of the day you think my employment history makes me some sort of crypto-fascist (an accusation I will vehemently and rightfully deny) and will feel justified writing off my points and not engaging with them from that perspective. But if you live in Wellington I'd be happy to get a coffee with you to chat about this stuff in-person, I find arguments online can become so heated as to be unproductive. My twitter handle is @_max_salmon feel free to send me a message there if you're interested!
This has to be one of the sadder pieces I've read. At it's strongest, it's a guy jumping up and down shouting "correlation shows causation!!" At its weakest it's eerily similar to Qanon level conspiracism.
The only two pieces of evidence you actually manage to marshal are the claims "People of a certain political leaning tend to work for groups that share their political leanings" and "Groups that share political leanings tend to support similar ideas". Perhaps at a stretch you're also saying "Political organisations like to associate and share ideas with similar organisations in other countries."
All seem so painfully obvious that they border on truisms and subsequently are correct no matter where you look on political spectrum. The rest of it just isn't far removed from the "trust me bro" attitude that resulted in nasty rumors about a local celebrities soft spot for white powder.
I guess the really upsetting thing is that for your audience you're using your association with the fourth estate to present this as some sort of truth telling exercise, but your claims (where they aren't tautological) don't hold up to the slightest scrutiny. I mean I totally agree with your four points about lobbyists, but to pretend that this is a problem solely on the right of politics is just dishonest.
I think the easiest and most obvious indictment of the whole rationale of this piece is that I could whip up an eerily similar obsidian map for former employees and associates of action station, the greens, the labor party, etc. Importantly, I wouldn't pretend like that's a bad thing, or some kind of secret! I think it's perfectly normal that people with shared political ideas would end up associating with each other
Where the Qanon streak really comes through with the idea of the Atlas network as some sort of malevolent Soros/Gates/(insert favorite punching bag of conspiracists here) entity pulling the strings of New Zealand politics. Not only is this abjectly untrue, the only way you get away with presenting it as otherwise is to rely entirely on the most simplistic observations and a refusal to engage in any sort of actual journalism (which might involve actually doing serious research). The unfortunate truth for you I suppose is that Atlas has as much control over these groups as the Global Climate Action Network has over NZ Greenpeace. To claim otherwise on nill evidence just shows shoddy work. But hey, it makes a good story and satisfies your pre-existing biases, so what the hell.
Will this have a broadcast release? Or has it already? The audience this should be squarely aimed at still watches good old TV, and need to know how the wool is being firmly pulled over their eyes. But what really pisses me off is the inertia of all this. As someone who campaigned on the left I was constantly asking why all this wasn't being made obvious BEFORE the election? Appreciate the work of Annabelle and Mihi Forbes, but it really is all crumbling around them with so many vested interests.
It wasn't made obvious because it isn't true. It just confirms biases you already had, so you'd like to believe it is. But, because there isn't any evidence actually confirming any of this, it never made it as a story in the mainstream media, because there isn't a story there.
One slight problem with that Max. While it was made with a certain viewpoint (you may call it bias, I wouldn't), if there wasn't any information confirming what they were saying, it would not have even made it past the sniff test of TVNZ's lawyers. Anything that One News makes, whether for broadcast or online has to measure up, or it opens the possibility of Broadcasting Standards Authority complaint. Haven't looked lately, but don't think this programme has had any inaccuracy complaints. Are you saying that the details they (and others) have revealed are not true?
I think I agree with your contention, so I'll state my case a bit more carefully (I think I've done it in detail in some other comments if this still leaves you wondering). The piece is based upon arguments that are stupefyingly obvious. The central one is that "people who share political viewpoints work for organisations that share their political viewpoints" perhaps another is "organisations that share political viewpoints are likely to work together." These revelations are so incredibly obviosuly true, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. At one end you have instances of this such as Chloe and David heading up the Euthanasia bill. At the other end you have forest and bird/greenpeace being headed up by former greens MPs.
Totally agree with your comments about BSA complaints. The point I'm trying to make is that this is an 'the emperor has no clothes moment' the supporting arguments devolve instantly into truisms and the research consists of a flick through LinkedIn job history. There's nothing to complain about, because there's nothing there. The argument is perfectly hollow.
Is this one of those comments exhaled by a drunk uncle after his ninth beer that he thinks is stupendously witty while the rest of the family is determinedly ignoring him
I think you might find that this is, in fact, conspiracy theorizing. The crux of Josh's piece is "organisations that share political beliefs tend to work together." The only problem is that this is a truism - organisations that share political beliefs do work together wherever they align. That's why the greens and greenpeace have such a strong relationship. That's why ACT and the Greens worked together on the End of Life Choice Bill. Josh's contribution is to rely on almost 0 research to make the claim that this is a bad thing only when it happens on the right of politics.
For instance, Two Green Party MPs now run Greenpeace and Forest & Bird. I think that's a really normal thing. It makes sense. You don't see me hollering from my computer (complete with red-string chart) about the imminent collapse of NZ society from the malicious influence of the conservation lobby.
I have many reckons on this. Many. But I can’t write them down because it makes me so mad.
One thing I will say, as a Kiwi living in Australia, I wasn’t surprised by the Voice result. But a lot of my lefty Brunswick bubble were. And that’s the problem.
We as progressive people who stand against racism, colonialism, rich c**ts who want to destroy the planet, need to start taking to people who aren’t in the same bubble.
I joked about it to you, Josh, that I only talk to terminally online people. And it’s kind of true. But if the pandemic has taught us and The Voice has proven is there are a large portion of socially isolated people who are susceptible to the heavily focus grouped right wing lizard brain messaging that will be turned on like a fire hose from now in order to build support for this referendum. Shit. We saw it three years so with the cannabis referendum. Fear and finance won.
The only way to combat this is to talk to people outside our bubbles and to show up and be good allies. Cos fuck me, the boring dystopia we live in doesn’t need to be spiced up by sliding into actual fascism.
*talking to people. On mobile. Can’t edit.
That documentary is brilliant - needs to be required viewing country-wide, and especially in secondary schools so the upcoming generation of voters know exactly how they're being manipulated and by whom. The Atlas Network can really only be described as evil, wrapped up in soft soap and a great deal of money. Presumably the name derives from the appalling Ayn Rand and her equally appalling 'Atlas Shrugged'?
Yes, the evil organisation who's main work output is the horrific support of small business, anti-corruption movements, and education initiatives in the third world. Truly the scum of the earth.
https://www.atlasnetwork.org/stories/registering-to-be-his-own-boss-in-nepal
https://www.atlasnetwork.org/stories/opening-the-books-in-west-virginia
https://www.atlasnetwork.org/stories/freedoms-champion-aimable-manirakiza
https://www.atlasnetwork.org/stories/inspiring-change-through-song
Josh, thank you for this. As an American living in NZ for the past 6 years I have so many thoughts on the Atlas Network and without looking I would bet everything I have (except the dog) that the Heritage Foundation and ALEC are members. Their messaging is so insidious but powerful because it speaks to fear and tells people it's okay, they aren't to blame for not being a gazillionaire by the time they are 30, that the brown skinned person over there is to blame instead. I've always said Aotearoa is lucky not to have Rupert Murdoch and his minions on the airwaves but now I see in his place an abundance of lobbyists and academics posing as unbiased sources of news. Short of all news media in the country adhering to your suggestions - what can we do? Jackson's suggestion of talking to people outside our bubbles is an excellent start. I almost feel like it's 2015 in America and we are sitting around laughing about the idea of a trump presidency and thinking Americans aren't that gullible.
I am begging you to find me the document produced by Atlas that says "Plan For World Domination: Step 1 - blame brown people for the scarcity of millionaires." Or just anything that in anyway resembles that.
Most of their work is actually in third world countries trying to prevent corruption and reduce poverty. Super racist claim of you to be making really.
But hey I think it's a good idea if all organisations adhered to Josh's descriptions. “Now we have a spokesperson for Tax Justice Aotearoa, an organisation that consists of four people in Wellington” or “A spokesperson for Greenpeace, a vigilante organisation run by a former Green Party co-leader”
This is exactly what we needed out there before the election, I was trying to warn people Atlas was doing the same here with all their Astrotrufs and now Atlas has all their lackeys in government. After looking into their network for years, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Atlas call themselves “the freedom movement” either, they’re behind Advance NZ, Advance Australia and if not funded, they definitely inspired the fake “freedom movement” we see globally destroying democracies so destructive industries and continue to exploit our planet.
By 'Atlas' astroturfs' I assume you mean that NZTU. You can't mean ACT or National because they won a significant amount of the vote, so there are clearly people supporting them. However, it's erroneous to call the NZTU either Atlas' or an astroturf. The NZTU was founded years before the founders ever interacted with Atlas. It's also not an astroturf, that would require it to have a fake grassroots support base. The reality is the NZTU has over 200,000 supporters and is mainly (80% funded by small dollar donations).
At the root of this I think is a misconception of what Atlas actually is. Their aim is to support groups that have a classical liberal outlook. They are a pretty small organisation as far as US groups go. Their annual turnover is around US$20 million a year. Heritage Foundation has six times their revenue – just for US policy. So to fantasise that the global overlord is run on a budget smaller than the budget for some US house campaigns is farcical.
To believe otherwise I guess (which you're entitled to do) probably would make you a conspiracy theorist. It'd be the same as throwing your hands in the air and saying "I don't care about the evidence, what I care about is what I already believe about the world, and when that conflicts with the evidence, I chose to back my beliefs even if they lack anything concrete to support them."
There’s a lot of assuming in your reply which would make you the conspiracy theorist if that’s what you want to believe, did I say they are a “global overlord”, I didn’t mention the NZTU but you share went to their defence there. I was talking about several of Atlas astroturfs and think tanks, and no I don’t have a misconception of what Atlas is, it is not a small Network, they brag about how large they are on their own website, and it’s also aligned with the Heritage Foundation and many other fossil fuel funded orgs. The aim of Atlas, is not what many members may believe it is, it’s to build a larger cult to protect their funders, their “think tanks” recruit, ‘educate’ or de-educate, and send their members out to start more groups to groom people and spread the gospel of Koch/Rand, aka science denial, fascism and extreme greed.
I’m not sure you even read my reply given yours seems to be largely putting words in my mouth based on assumptions.
But if you want to talk NZTPU, there is concrete evidence showing they work hand in hand with Atlas Network, with Jordan Williams being funded by them to change policy in Aotearoa via NZTU, Groundswell, his campaign company... and NZTU were actually founded with Tobacco and Fossil Fuel money, they are not “grassroots” as they claim to be. It is not a conspiracy theory that Williams is an Atlas Network member and common knowledge to anyone following these organisations.
It’s also not a conspiracy theory that ACT is made up of Atlas Network members, their founder and their leader being a long time members, there’s a long list of them involved with ACT. There are many members in National too, the leader is involved if you actually read the article you are replying to, you’d know this.
It’s not as small as you believe and I’d like to know how you know their turnover? None of these groups are fully open and transparent about the vast amount of money flowing through them. I’m not the one fanaticising here and it’s not something I would ever fanaticise about, I sometimes wish I didn’t even know about them tbh because ignorance is bliss.
I am begging you to say the words "The aim of Atlas, is not what many members may believe it is, it’s to build a larger cult to protect their funders, their “think tanks” recruit, ‘educate’ or de-educate, and send their members out to start more groups to groom people and spread the gospel of Koch/Rand, aka science denial, fascism and extreme greed." out loud to a normal person on the street. I think you might realise that regardless of your statements to the contrary, you do indeed sound like you are fanaticising over this.
Now here comes the big reveal - I have worked for both the NZTU and the New Zealand Initiative! That's why I find this discussion so frustrating. As much as you might not want to believe it, the NZTU is not an astroturf. I would know, I was partially responsible for managing the (at the time) 160,000+ supporters. As for funding, you can find their accounts on their annual report and financial report - both of which are publicly available. These show that 80% of their funding comes from small dollar donations and only 2.1% from industry. Once again, I would know, I had to spend hours and hours writing thousands of cards to thank supporters for their donations.
I'm focusing on the NZTU because that's the only ATLAS-associated advocacy group I can think of (The NZI's interaction with ATLAS has consisted only of the gift of a camera for youtube videos and instructions on how to use it). All of this you would know if you did the only a cursory amount of research.
Of course Atlas, the NZTU, and The Initiative overlap and occasionally interact. This shouldn't surprise anyone - they are all broadly pro free market organisations. Likewise it shouldn't be a surprise that there are politicians that are in some way connected to atlas, if atlas shares their values of low corruption, high productivity and free markets. Personally, I don't find it all surprising that there are many ties and personnel overlaps between the NZ Greens, NZ Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, and Greenpeace International - after all, these organisations and the people in them share the same values and ideas - there's nothing sinister about that.
You might not like these organisations, and you might wish they didn't exist, and you might decry them online - you have every right to do so. However, claims like 'astroturfing' 'science-denial, fascism and extreme greed' and that they are providing masses of funding to influence New Zealand policy are empirical claims and require empirical backing, which you haven't been able to provide. Likewise for the claim that atlas, whose main efforts center around fighting corruption and encouraging growth in third world countries, is pulling the strings of the NZ govt on a budget of $20 million a year, of which only $75,000 gets spent on initiatives in Australia and New Zealand. https://admin.atlasnetwork.org/assets/documents/financials/Atlas-22-FS-Final.pdf?_gl=1*1lmipy8*_ga*MjEyMTQ5OTEyNy4xNzEzODQxODUy*_ga_F992Z0Y4W1*MTcxMzg0MTg1MS4xLjEuMTcxMzg0MjIzMS41Mi4wLjA.
I'm reasonably certain I might never convince you about this, but I would like to leave you with a thought to mull over. I'm able to find numbers to back my claims, numbers which if they were lied about, would have serious legal and professional implications for the organisations involved. So I'm inclined to believe them. You are not able to find those same numbers to support your case, and so I'm not inclined to believe you when you make your claims, because you make them without evidence, and without evidence they are unfalsifiable.
So maybe at the end of the day you think my employment history makes me some sort of crypto-fascist (an accusation I will vehemently and rightfully deny) and will feel justified writing off my points and not engaging with them from that perspective. But if you live in Wellington I'd be happy to get a coffee with you to chat about this stuff in-person, I find arguments online can become so heated as to be unproductive. My twitter handle is @_max_salmon feel free to send me a message there if you're interested!
Thank you Josh. I will share far and wide.
This has to be one of the sadder pieces I've read. At it's strongest, it's a guy jumping up and down shouting "correlation shows causation!!" At its weakest it's eerily similar to Qanon level conspiracism.
The only two pieces of evidence you actually manage to marshal are the claims "People of a certain political leaning tend to work for groups that share their political leanings" and "Groups that share political leanings tend to support similar ideas". Perhaps at a stretch you're also saying "Political organisations like to associate and share ideas with similar organisations in other countries."
All seem so painfully obvious that they border on truisms and subsequently are correct no matter where you look on political spectrum. The rest of it just isn't far removed from the "trust me bro" attitude that resulted in nasty rumors about a local celebrities soft spot for white powder.
I guess the really upsetting thing is that for your audience you're using your association with the fourth estate to present this as some sort of truth telling exercise, but your claims (where they aren't tautological) don't hold up to the slightest scrutiny. I mean I totally agree with your four points about lobbyists, but to pretend that this is a problem solely on the right of politics is just dishonest.
I think the easiest and most obvious indictment of the whole rationale of this piece is that I could whip up an eerily similar obsidian map for former employees and associates of action station, the greens, the labor party, etc. Importantly, I wouldn't pretend like that's a bad thing, or some kind of secret! I think it's perfectly normal that people with shared political ideas would end up associating with each other
Where the Qanon streak really comes through with the idea of the Atlas network as some sort of malevolent Soros/Gates/(insert favorite punching bag of conspiracists here) entity pulling the strings of New Zealand politics. Not only is this abjectly untrue, the only way you get away with presenting it as otherwise is to rely entirely on the most simplistic observations and a refusal to engage in any sort of actual journalism (which might involve actually doing serious research). The unfortunate truth for you I suppose is that Atlas has as much control over these groups as the Global Climate Action Network has over NZ Greenpeace. To claim otherwise on nill evidence just shows shoddy work. But hey, it makes a good story and satisfies your pre-existing biases, so what the hell.
I mean at the end of the day most of Atlas' work is in promoting education and reducing corruption in third world countries.
Will this have a broadcast release? Or has it already? The audience this should be squarely aimed at still watches good old TV, and need to know how the wool is being firmly pulled over their eyes. But what really pisses me off is the inertia of all this. As someone who campaigned on the left I was constantly asking why all this wasn't being made obvious BEFORE the election? Appreciate the work of Annabelle and Mihi Forbes, but it really is all crumbling around them with so many vested interests.
It wasn't made obvious because it isn't true. It just confirms biases you already had, so you'd like to believe it is. But, because there isn't any evidence actually confirming any of this, it never made it as a story in the mainstream media, because there isn't a story there.
One slight problem with that Max. While it was made with a certain viewpoint (you may call it bias, I wouldn't), if there wasn't any information confirming what they were saying, it would not have even made it past the sniff test of TVNZ's lawyers. Anything that One News makes, whether for broadcast or online has to measure up, or it opens the possibility of Broadcasting Standards Authority complaint. Haven't looked lately, but don't think this programme has had any inaccuracy complaints. Are you saying that the details they (and others) have revealed are not true?
I think I agree with your contention, so I'll state my case a bit more carefully (I think I've done it in detail in some other comments if this still leaves you wondering). The piece is based upon arguments that are stupefyingly obvious. The central one is that "people who share political viewpoints work for organisations that share their political viewpoints" perhaps another is "organisations that share political viewpoints are likely to work together." These revelations are so incredibly obviosuly true, no matter where you are on the political spectrum. At one end you have instances of this such as Chloe and David heading up the Euthanasia bill. At the other end you have forest and bird/greenpeace being headed up by former greens MPs.
Totally agree with your comments about BSA complaints. The point I'm trying to make is that this is an 'the emperor has no clothes moment' the supporting arguments devolve instantly into truisms and the research consists of a flick through LinkedIn job history. There's nothing to complain about, because there's nothing there. The argument is perfectly hollow.
As per https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/01/taxpayer_funded_conspiracy_theories.html
I'm curious why YOUR conspiracy theories get state funding but mine don't.
Does he have a "right" side. I think he "left" his analysing brain behind.
Is this one of those comments exhaled by a drunk uncle after his ninth beer that he thinks is stupendously witty while the rest of the family is determinedly ignoring him
Don't try out for any mastermind shows Josh!!
Please tell me what the hell you are on about before my limited attention span fails and I ban you
What an amazing article. Thank you Josh. I feel sick. How do we know whom to trust. I don’t want to become a conspiracy theory junkie but......
I think you might find that this is, in fact, conspiracy theorizing. The crux of Josh's piece is "organisations that share political beliefs tend to work together." The only problem is that this is a truism - organisations that share political beliefs do work together wherever they align. That's why the greens and greenpeace have such a strong relationship. That's why ACT and the Greens worked together on the End of Life Choice Bill. Josh's contribution is to rely on almost 0 research to make the claim that this is a bad thing only when it happens on the right of politics.
For instance, Two Green Party MPs now run Greenpeace and Forest & Bird. I think that's a really normal thing. It makes sense. You don't see me hollering from my computer (complete with red-string chart) about the imminent collapse of NZ society from the malicious influence of the conservation lobby.
I miss The Civilian Party
Thanks Josh. Money makes the world go round and all that. Hideous.