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August 28, 2007
George Monbiot and the Neoliberals
Amazing, Geroge Monbiot has actually cracked the secret code. No, seriously, it's not David Icke and his Green Lizards, nor the Grey Aliens, not even the Illuminati nor the Rosicrucians, who rule our world.
These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something in common. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises.
When the Mont Pelerin Society first met, in 1947, its political project did not have a name. But it knew where it was going. The society's founder, Friedrich von Hayek, remarked that the battle for ideas would take at least a generation to win, but he knew that his intellectual army would attract powerful backers. Its philosophy, which later came to be known as neoliberalism, accorded with the interests of the ultra-rich, so the ultra-rich would pay for it.
The Mont Pelerin Society! Yes, we have a winner, these are the people who are oppressing the masses!
No, really!
The first great advantage the neoliberals possessed was an unceasing fountain of money. US oligarchs and their foundations - Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others - have poured hundreds of millions into setting up thinktanks, founding business schools and transforming university economics departments into bastions of almost totalitarian neoliberal thinking. The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and many others in the US, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, were all established to promote this project.
And the Adam Smith Institute? Wow. I never realised how close I was to the coat-tails of power. There's I've been, toiling away in the blogmines for my ration of salt and I'd never realised that I was close to, have even met, the UK organiser of the great global conspiracy! For there is only one person who joins these different institutions, Mont Pelerin and the ASI.
Yes, meet your Lord and Master, Dr. Eamonn Butler.
So, when do I get my Dukedom? To crush my enemies and hear the lamentations of their women? Get a few groupies, even if it might have to be on a time-share basis?
Or should we just advise George to take a little more water with it?
August 28, 2007 in Idiotarians | Permalink
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Comments
Easy there, Conan.
Posted by: Philip Thomas | Aug 28, 2007 11:41:49 AM
Wow I knew all those organisation were sound but didn't know just how sound they are! Glad to have worked with at least 2 of them in my past.
Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge | Aug 28, 2007 12:01:23 PM
Those ideas which threaten their interests are either ignored or ridiculed.
..and you opted for ridicule while ignoring his substantive points. That showed him then.
Posted by: StuartA | Aug 28, 2007 12:01:58 PM
I see the Robert Fisk is now asking what really happened on 9/11.
All the leftists are becoming sane at once.
Posted by: Grassy Nollington | Aug 28, 2007 2:01:26 PM
Oops: Neo-liberal has got 'neo' in it.
I see this has confused and enraged quite a few of the more intellectually challenged CiF commenters into reflexive gibbering about neo-cons.
Posted by: commenter | Aug 28, 2007 2:20:18 PM
Off topic:
crush my enemies and hear the lamentations of their women
What if you crush your enemies and their women do not lament? What if they are glad?? Perhaps you should check with them first.
Tim adds: Err, won't I then find myself within a circle of grateful women? Result?
Posted by: Ed | Aug 28, 2007 2:48:32 PM
I read they have loads of money. And to think I've been their wold domination job for free!
No more free lunches!
I WANT MY MONEY!
Posted by: Miguel | Aug 28, 2007 3:06:33 PM
How dare rich people independently fund organisations of their own choice which support there own private views!
Surely it is Governments' role to fund think tanks and QUANGOs that conspire against the freedoms and aspirations of the people using said people's money extracted by force by said governments.
Posted by: Roger Thornhill | Aug 28, 2007 3:14:52 PM
Doh! Of course, liberals are running the world. How could I be so stupid. The liberal policies of the UK and US governments should have given it away! (Note: for any American readers, that was what we in the UK call Sarcasm. Look it up)
Posted by: Zorro | Aug 28, 2007 3:27:43 PM
"..and you opted for ridicule while ignoring his substantive points. That showed him then"
Stuart. I'm afraid George Monbiot has proved himself to be in that category of people along with Blair, Toynbee, that if he said "the sky on a cloudless day is blue", I would immediately look up to check it hadn't gone green.
He's literally incapabable of making a substantive point, in fact he wouldn't know a substantive point if one punctured his eyeball.
Posted by: Zorro | Aug 28, 2007 3:31:41 PM
Tim adds: Err, won't I then find myself within a circle of grateful women? Result?
Yes, unless you really wanted to hear those lamentations. Better to focus on the crushing in my opinion. Of course, it may still be a good idea to check in advance, as you want to make sure your enemies hear any lack of lamenting :-)
Posted by: Ed | Aug 28, 2007 3:55:18 PM
Damn, I have been sure it was the Lizards all along. I'm gutted.
Posted by: Deirdre | Aug 28, 2007 4:01:29 PM
He's literally incapabable of making a substantive point, in fact he wouldn't know a substantive point if one punctured his eyeball.
Monbiot made a case, of whatever merit, and Tim then did what Monbiot predicted: he ignored that case while ridiculing a straw man ("Yes, meet your Lord and Master, Dr. Eamonn Butler.", etc.). I fail to see how that is a persuasive response.
Posted by: StuartA | Aug 28, 2007 4:51:47 PM
"The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and many others in the US, .... were all established to promote this project."
It was quite clever of Herbert Hoover to found an institute in 1919 to promote a project that began in 1947.
Posted by: Ross | Aug 28, 2007 7:44:36 PM
I'd been wondering whom to thank for the fact that we have today's crises instead of the sort of crises they had in the mid-20th Century. Way to go, Mont Pelerin Society!
Posted by: Paul Zrimsek | Aug 28, 2007 10:45:46 PM
It was quite clever of Herbert Hoover to found an institute in 1919 to promote a project that began in 1947.
Where does Monbiot say the project "began in 1947"?
Posted by: StuartA | Aug 28, 2007 11:03:44 PM
"Where does Monbiot say the project "began in 1947"?"
When he writes that:
" They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises."
Posted by: Ross | Aug 29, 2007 12:21:11 AM
He said the foundations "for a philosophy of government" were laid in 1947. Further down, he said various thinktanks, including the Hoover Institute, were founded to "promote [the neo-liberal] project". You have apparently equated these in a display of sub-Worstall pseudo-pedantry.
Posted by: StuartA | Aug 29, 2007 9:39:24 AM
Who is StuartA and why doesn't he have a sense of humor?
Posted by: Charles | Aug 29, 2007 11:27:49 AM
Where does Monbiot live?
I ask because I'd love to live in a universe where liberals have even half as much influence as he ascribes to them.
Posted by: Nasikabatrachus | Aug 30, 2007 6:47:47 AM
No, I change my mind, I want to live in the universe of one of the commenters under that article:
Excellent as ever. You'[ve not mentioned the blatant lies that also prop up our current system of anarcho capitalism;
Burst out laughing, gentlemen.
Posted by: Nasikabatrachus | Aug 30, 2007 6:57:44 AM
