This is very draft, unfinished but at least I’ve started. Please expect it to be extended and elaborated.
Thinktanks are here as a huge part of the political landscape providing ready-made policy and even huge quantities of staff to governments matching their bigoted perspectives. The topic of thinktanks can be overwhelming and easily lead to distraction.
I had not realised that thinktanks have such influence in contemporary politics. It’s claims that thinktanks exerted huge influence over Brexit and that the Conservative manifesto was written and the Labour manifesto mostly written by think tanks. [M]
There is also the claim that donating to a thinktank gets you far better influence for your money than simply donating to a political party and that thinktanks are so influential because they have such huge media exposure. [M] George Monbiot complains that thinktanks are often presented in the media as experts without any mention of their political biases. [GM]
There are claims that thinktanks and the media conspire to promote their mostly shared agendas. I’ve come across this claim from two sources so expect that it’s probably correct. So you have lobbying, the mostly right-wing media and mostly right-wing thinktanks exerting their malign influence – the agenda of the rich and powerful – in politics and on political parties. [need to find these refs]
There are left-wing as well as right-wing thinktanks although it appears that right-wing ones are more influential, quite possibly through being far better funded.
One issue that I was chasing down in writing this article is how thinktanks can propose the totally insane position of exploit fossil fuels to the fullest extent possible – a proposition adopted by US and UK governments.
[M] article explains ‘The ASI’s chief executive Madsen Pirie has said that they propose things that at first are thought of as the “edge of lunacy”, which then become the “edge of policy”.’ This is the explanation for the exploit fossil fuels to the fullest extent proposition – it is actual, literal lunacy passing for policy. This is Heritage Foundation lunacy contained in it’s Project 2025, a detailed insane program of actions for the next insane Republican president and govenment to follow.
It is insane, isn’t it? The world is burning to a crisp with extreme weather events all over the globe, we’re likely to pass 1.5C in a few years when we’re already fekked at 1.1 or 1.2C and these insane fekkers want to accelerate global destruction. Why is anyone taking them seriously? They belong in an asylum. We’re talking about people getting killed and nature destroyed on a huge scale!
Heritage Foundation is the largest, most influential thinktank in US. It provided huge nimbers of staff for the Trump administration and promoted the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
References
[GM] George Monbiot https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/05/rightwing-thinktanks-government-bbc-news-programmes
[M] Mace https://macemagazine.com/wonk-warriors/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/28/far-right-climate-plans-00107498
