@lucyham
Doctoral student at UTS. Researching transnational Right’s infiltration of Australian politics and society, esp religio-ethnonationalism. Writer of explanatory journalism. Living on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land. She/her https://linktr.ee/Lucyham
Only a 2-part 🧵 this time 😅
This is the Council for National Policy that co-evolved with the Atlas Network: all the “free market” with much more of the Christofash authoritarianism.
www.youtube.com/live/d9mvRl4...
🧵More important than what Tony Abbott said is the fact he was networking with the Alliance Defending Freedom operations in 2016, 17. One of the core (hate groups) in the Christofascist Council for National Policy. #auspol
tonyabbott.com.au/2016/01/tran...
tonyabbott.com.au/2017/11/tran...
Swearing provides me with a lot of relief. 🤯🤣
This needs more attention. The guys who drove the Iraq invasion after 9/11 are back advising Trump on #Iran.
And don’t get me started on their eugenics.
Well ok: open.substack.com/pub/lucyham2...
when it was clear the culture was ruthless enough to screw over the masses entirely.
So now we have tollbooths on every essential service for the profiteers. Privatised and expensive nonsense where it shouldn’t be (“welfare”) and an utterly unlimited UHNWI class ending the world.
To be marginally fairer to Hayek, the version of his book Road to Serfdom that went mega viral from 1944 was the abridged Readers Digest one that took out any softening & nuance.
But they got worse as their neoliberalism got closer to winning the battle of ideas. Friedman dropped his UBI idea
The message was “freedom” but never added the footnote: for the very rich - and serfdom for the masses. Hayek was pretty disdainful of democracy and thought someone like Pinochet could be better for untrammelled markets. I guess throwing protesters out of 🚁 is handy for exploiting bosses etc
The Lever narrative misses that backstory. The commonwealth account has Antony Fisher, British tycoon, set up the IEA in the UK in 55 as the start of his spawning 🌍 junktanks at Hayek’s advice. The plan was to change the culture so the pols could give the 💰its goals (but not phrased so crassly)…
a fringe pack of weirdos spruiking a counter-factual political economy that was better because it was based in
🌟 theory 🌟 not trapped in mundane data 🙄 to the centre of everything under Pinochet, Reagan, Thatcher. The tycoons became plutocrats, real wages haven’t raised since.
One of the figures related to the movement turned up on a Sunday show to spruik pharma’s freedom position. “We need more thalidomide babies” because - in the end - unconstrained experimenting will help more. 😩
These beachheads metastasised across the US’s unis & out into the world. They grew from
a key one. The tycoons didn’t like Chicago’s position that monopoly was anti free trade. So he swapped them round. Started industry funded projects re how they’d change the law to stop it limiting eg pharma. After thalidomide, there was the work to make pharma adhere to standards enforcing caution.
Thank-you. The strategy at work since 47 as a background to it is both fascinating & shocking. The account of economic superstar Hayek coming to Chicago U after the 47 gig and encouraging the formation of tycoon-funded beachheads that made the place from “free market” to “the Chicago School” is
March 9, 2005- Albanese says “ecological decline is accelerating and many of the world’s ecosystems are reaching dangerous thresholds.” #auspol
allouryesterdays.info/2022/03/09/m...
I say this every year, but:
The uni students I'm teaching are thoughtful, intelligent, will make everything they encounter better.
With a new addition for 2026:
They deeply hate AI.
Truly. If we keep scrambling around noticing symptoms but don’t see the disease, we’re stuffed.
Sadly, yes.
NZ is leading the anglophone world with this discussion. Aus is only just catching on. We need all of us seeing the connections & patterns. Thanks for the share.
Thanks!
read this thread
Thank-you
We should also reference the work of Prof Sharon Beder at Wollongong Uni. & her string of excellent books through the late 90s/oughts revealing the organised attacks on public values & institutions by corp-backed junktanks, particularly 2006’s ‘Free Market Missionaries’.
🇨🇦 Roughly a 25-part thread for #Canada #Cdnpoli #canpoli 🤣
Agreed
🤞🤞 our information space is particularly pathetic. Australians are particularly averse to deep thinking about our politics. I hope you are correct though…
🤣 Right? Or was that vice versa 😵💫
And of course the Atlas Network junktank the American Enterprise Institute was the node for the neocons who sent us to war in Iraq. They didn’t go away:
bsky.app/profile/lucy...
👌
Yale law professor Mehrsa Baradaran showed how neoliberalism is as much a law phenomenon as a (bunk) economics one. The big money constantly using legal trickery to control government for their ends & subvert every attempt to restrain their excesses. wwnorton.com/books/978132...
🇨🇦National conservatism (and ARC) is religio-ethnonationalism using faith (Christian, Judaism, Hinduism) as a placeholder for “race”. (Also big promoter of Pahlavi. Fractious coalition united by demonisation of Islam). Fossil fuel funding. www.desmog.com/2025/02/16/l...