Twenty years ago, on this day, June 11, 2003, AEI + IPA vs, well, life on earth.
On June 11, 2003, AEI and an Australian think tank, Institute for Public Affairs (IPA), cosponsored a conference titled “Non-governmental Organizations: The Growing Power of an Unelected Few,” held at the AEI offices in Washington, D.C. The conference laid the ground for the launch of “NGO Watch” – a website and political campaign cosponsored by AEI and The Federalist Society.
(Hardistry and Furdon 2004)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Public Affairs were both long-lived think tanks which had been captured by the neoliberals in the 70s and 80s. And were now launching a full frontal assault on civil society and NGOs. In order to get the ignorant rabble in line.
What I think we can learn from this is that there is a never-ending war for public perception and the power struggle to make sure that the state is insulated from popular pressure and can be a trough for favoured industries and research and development, and also function to continue to batter the proles until they submit.
And the “DDT is good for you” myth never goes away.
What happened next
As you’d have predicted, the IPA then set about trying to attack and smother civil society organisations in the United in Australia. It set up a fake environmental group in 2005 in order to try to confuse people, because that’s who these scum buckets are.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.