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Right-Wing Mercer, Koch Money Creating Fake Grass-Root Protests
At Smart Dissent, we focus on specific actions taken by government and their actual or potential impacts, often topics not receiving any mainstream attention. Please permit us to stray from that this once.
A network of right-leaning individuals and groups....has helped incubate the fervor erupting in state capitals across the country.... being amplified, and in some cases coordinated, by longtime conservative activists, whose robust operations were initially set up with help from Republican megadonors.
The ads on Facebook sounded populist and passionate... But the posts, funded by an initiative called “Convention of States,” were not the product of a grass-roots uprising alone. Instead, they represented one salvo in a wide-ranging and well-financed conservative campaign to undermine restrictions that medical experts say are necessary to contain the coronavirus ...
The protests are reminiscent of the tea party movement and the demonstrations against the Affordable Care Act that erupted in 2010, which also involved... shrewd behind-the-scenes funding.
The anti-quarantine protest are being coordinated by right wing billionaires and the Trump campaign.
The Convention of States project launched in 2015 with a high-dollar donation from the family foundation of Robert Mercer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican patron. It boasts past support from two members of the Trump administration — Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Ben Carson, secretary of housing and urban development.
A longtime associate of the conservative activist Koch family, Eric O’Keefe is the board president of Citizens for Self-Governance, the parent organization of the Convention of States project....
... encouraged by some of the president’s allies outside the White House, including Stephen Moore, once considered for a top post at the Federal Reserve.
These "grass-roots" uprisings against lockdowns are astroturf funded by the usual right-wing suspects. Astroturf is a commonly utilized term to describe these because it is a fake grass replacement, ie the opposite of grass-roots.
Polls suggest most Americans support local directives encouraging them to stay at home as covid-19 ravages the country.... Public health officials, including epidemiologists advising Trump’s White House, agree that sweeping restrictions represent the most effective mitigation strategy in the absence of a vaccine, which could be more than a year away.
Shame on any commentators who didn't realize that from the start.