The NZSIS threat report names foreign influence targeting academic institutions, concerningly limiting scope to state and state affiliated actors. There is increasing influence of private organisations in universities astroturfing their views to weaken the NZ state and university institution.
Students for Liberty
SFL is a member of Atlas Network and they are invading our campus. They are part of a libertarian organization that stokes culture-wars and climate change denial in order to keep politicians which cut taxes in power – particularly taxes on oil and tobacco industries. They intend to use our campus and people to do it and they are VERY WELL FUNDED. They are not the university. We are. If they want to try claim our identity as students they will have to fight us for it.
A threat to the university is a threat to us all, Students for Liberty are anti-university as outlined by their very own books and the university is one of the few institutions still capable of holding austerity governments to account.
Let it be clear. They may hire university students, but they are not the university and they do not care for this institution, or the people who work so hard at it, or the communities they serve.
We are the university, and we will not be bought by tobacco lobbyists.
An introduction to Think Tanks
I recommend Tom Nicholas' video on Think Tanks (42min)
Here is some information about SFL and both the Atlas Network and the Koch family that fund them:
Students for Liberty
From the SFL Wikipedia Page.
- Le Monde and The Investigative Desk described SFL as "a key organisation in the Koch system" of groups. SFL is a partner in the Atlas Network.
- The organization has received financial support from billionaires David Koch and Charles Koch and related groups such as the Cato Institute. According to Le Monde and The Investigative Desk, Students for Liberty has not formally disclosed its funders since 2016.
Their book titles demonstrate their focus on stoking culture wars between staff and students in order to promote bullshit ideologies of individualism: "The Economics of Freedom: What Your Professor Won't Tell You", "The Morality of Capitalism: What Your Professors Won't Tell You", "After the Welfare State, and Why Liberty"
ATLAS Network
ATLAS is an international oil, gas, tobacco lobby group – essentially thye take money from those who profit from the destruction of our communities and planet, and funnel that into manipulating politics so we have less and less of a say in it.
- PSA have written about ATLAS here.
- The University of Bath's Tobacco Control Research Group have written about ATLAS here
- Atlas Network Wikipedia Page
- Atlas Network [...] is a non-governmental 501(c)(3) organization based in the United States that provides training, networking, and grants for libertarian, free-market, and conservative groups around the world.
- Notable members of Atlas Network include [...] the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union.
- Margaret Thatcher, F. A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman, all friends of Fisher, formally endorsed the organization.
- Initially comprising only Fisher's think tanks, Atlas Network grew to include many others, including those affiliated with the Koch family.
- The rapid growth of Atlas, now arguably the largest think tank network in the world, was partly prompted by challenges to fossil fuel interests from governmental efforts against climate change, Bryan S. Turner suggests.
- According to The Guardian, more than a fifth of Atlas Network affiliates worldwide had either opposed tobacco controls or taken tobacco donations.
- A 2017 paper in the International Journal of Health Planning and Management said that Atlas Network "channeled funding from tobacco corporations to think tank actors to produce publications supportive of industry positions."
- The University of Bath's Tobacco Control Research Group said Atlas Network "appears to have played a particular role in helping the tobacco industry oppose tobacco control measures in Latin America" during the 1990s.
- Atlas Network has been linked to oil and gas producers, and to efforts opposing initiatives by governments and activists on climate change.
- It collaborated with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute of Canada in a push for oil and gas development on Indigenous land, according to documents described in The Guardian.
- Its affiliates in Canada have "extensive and deepening board interlocks" involving the fossil fuel industry, other policy groups, and academia, and are "a reactionary current" against most climate actions, Nicolas Graham wrote in the Canadian Review of Sociology.
- An article in The New Republic blamed Atlas Network for its partners' efforts in some countries to criminalize climate protesting, particularly in Germany, although Atlas Network has said it supports free speech for climate protestors.
- Some academics have described Atlas as an "oil-industry-funded transnational network" and "the predominant vehicle for fossil capital's global mobilization against climate science and policy", and its affiliates as being "partly funded by Koch and allied capitalists, with heavy support from fossil fuel-based fortunes".
- The Intercept, The Guardian, and The New Republic have described Atlas Network as having ties to right-wing and conservative movements, including the administration of Donald Trump in the United States, Brexit in the United Kingdom, and anti-government protests in Latin America.
- An article in International Affairs analyzing 52 Atlas partners said that "while some Atlas-affiliated partners show readiness to confront the threat of nationalist and authoritarian societal mobilization, others conceive it as a tactical or strategic opportunity to advance free market causes".
- In Brazil, Atlas Network had a role in the "Free Brazil" movement in 2014 that led to the rise of Jair Bolsonaro, and it sponsors the Liberty Forum where policies of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva were opposed.
- Atlas Network was linked to an online campaign that used fake accounts against the Cuban government during the 2021 Cuban protests, according to disinformation expert Julián Macías Tovar. Tovar, cited in The Guardian, also said that Atlas Network members' Twitter accounts had been involved in bot or troll center campaigns during the 2019 Bolivian political crisis, the 2021 Ecuadorian general election, and the 2021 Peruvian general election.
- Philadelphia Magazine described Atlas Network as "supporting free-market approaches to eliminating poverty and noted for its refutation of climate change and defense of the tobacco industry."
- In New Zealand, Atlas Network has partnered with the free-market think tank New Zealand Taxpayers' Union.
- The leader of New Zealand's libertarian ACT party, David Seymour, once worked for the Atlas Network-affiliated Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Canada.
- Atlas chair Debbi Gibbs' father helped found the ACT party.
- According to Atlas Network, its grants fund coaching, networking, pitch competitions, award programs, and other "ambitious projects for policy change."
- It has received major funding from Koch family foundations including the Charles Koch Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute, along with Koch-affiliated funds such as Donors Trust.
- Research by the activist website DeSmog said Atlas Network had received millions of dollars from Koch-affiliated groups, the ExxonMobil Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.
- As of 2005, Atlas Network had received $440,000 from ExxonMobil itself.
- Of Atlas Network partners, 57% in the United States received funding from the tobacco industry between 1990 and 2000. Analysis in the International Journal of Health Planning and Management in 2016 said that a lack of transparency and data about think tank funding had made it difficult to ascertain the amounts of tobacco industry funding to Atlas Network and partners since 2003.
- As of 2020, Atlas Network had assets of $15,450,264.
Koch family
I will note here one of the key organisations of the Koch family, the Heritage Foundation, is the same organisation behind Project 2025.
- Bill Koch [...] particularly opposing the Obama administration's climate change program
- Brothers Charles and David who have become famous for their activity in American politics [...].
- Through their family foundations, the brothers contributed to 34 political and policy organizations
- They have since organized a network of an estimated 500 libertarian and conservative donors, candidates, think tanks, and other groups.
- As an example of their influence, investigative journalist Jane Mayer noted House Speaker John Boehner's appeal to David Koch in 2011 when Boehner needed votes to prevent a government shutdown.
- The Koch brothers indicated that they intended to raise almost $880 million in support of candidates in the 2016 elections [that means Trump], and have given more than $100 million to conservative and libertarian policy and advocacy groups in the United States, including The Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, and more recently Americans for Prosperity.
- A focus of their political activities has been the support of think tanks and institutions which deny or downplay man-made climate change or its impact.
- According to a report by American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop, the Koch brothers have built "what may be the best funded, multifaceted, public policy, political and educational presence in the nation today."
- Opposition to the government spending any money on climate change is among this network's activities.
- Anthropogenic climate change skeptic Willie Soon received more than $500,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and a trust used by the Kochs.
- The primary recipients of Koch contributions, including Americans for Prosperity, The Heritage Foundation, and the Manhattan Institute, actively oppose clean energy and carbon legislation and are skeptical of climate science.
- In fact, the Koch brothers were involved in the first known gathering of climate change skeptics in 1991. Organized by the Cato Institute, the meeting shifted the position of the Republican Party on climate change. While George H. W. Bush had still supported research into global warming under the Global Change Research Act of 1990, acceptance of scientific evidence on climate change began to weaken due to the Koch family's influence.
More notes on atlas
- https://x.com/DrJeremyWalker/status/1755839545348886728
- ATLAS NZ UPDATE: Not only is ACT an Atlas Network founded party, but Finance Minister Nicola Willis & Energy Minister Simeon Brown have direct connections to the oil & gas lobby and Atlas units NZI and NZTU, showing clear motive to attack Te Tiriti & rewrite it for oil & gas.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1alk4wc/david_seymour_lies_about_his_ties_to_the_atlas/
- Man who has worked directly for Atlas members, whose friends and political buddies are Atlas members, and whose party was founded by an Atlas member, denies that he has anything to do with Atlas and says actually Atlas doesn't exist lol
- https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1alk4wc/comment/kpfkza9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
- https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1alk4wc/comment/kpgh4hh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
- https://web.archive.org/web/20240208071701/https://www.act.org.nz/speech_the_emergencies_labour_should_have_declared
- "Then the Global Index of Economic Mentality was released in November by my old friends at the Atlas Network. Atlas is an umbrella organisation for free market think tanks all over the world. It is based in Washington, DC, and chaired by a New Zealander, Debbi Gibbs."
- https://www.psa.org.nz/our-voice/understanding-atlas-how-a-right-wing-network-is-building-global-influence/