There is much to learn about the Atlas Network from one of Ron Manners’ Mannkal Economic Education Foundation newsletters. This Mannkal newsletter was issued in April 2015. The project continues unabated.
The Atlas Network is a global interconnection of over 500 faux “thinktanks” (or junktanks), dedicated to reinforcing and propagandising the “free market” message. The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) is considered its steering committee. The Atlas Network was designed from 1981 to metastasise similar bodies to sell “business” ideas. It finds local enthusiasts and donors around the world to eliminate obstructions to profit for American corporations and local fellow-travellers. The MPS is secretive: its membership is only rarely leaked. Ron Manners, with mining money, founded Mannkal in 1997. He is currently a life member and on the board of the MPS. He was appointed to the Advisory Council for the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 2010. In 2020, he was awarded Atlas’s Sir Antony Fisher Achievement award. The newsletter explains that the name Mannkal originated in the cable/telex address of the company he inherited.
The Mannkal newsletter illustrates the connection to the MPS which first met in 1947. It brought together Austrian School economists such as Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises together with the Chicago School’s Milton Friedman. The MPS, through Hayek, began the process of creating plutocrat-serving law and economics institutes in universities around America.
It also took the model provided by bodies such as the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), founded in 1946, to create the mirage that a chorus of genuine policy experts supported the political economy that the donors desired. Friedman did much of the public relations for the project before the junktanks became more organised.
In the 1950s, Brit Antony Fisher, inspired by The Road to Serfdom, visited Hayek for advice. One of the UK junktanks in the Network explains that Hayek “told him bluntly to forget politics. Politicians just follow prevailing opinions. If you want to change events, change ideas.” He instructed Fisher to found thinktanks to help shift the prevailing mood away from the consensus that government, labour and capital all had a say in how society should operate towards a world where capital could dictate all including directing the government for its own ends.
When the co-founder of the Atlas Network Heritage Foundation, Ed Feulner, visited Australia in 1985 to conduct a workshop, he contrasted Friedman’s role marketing supply side economics, privatisation and the flat tax with the need for bodies to “set the terms and agenda of public policy.” The intent was to propagandise or “market an idea.” There must be “permanent saturation campaigns with multi-pronged, longterm strategies.” Proctor and Gamble, he explained, sell Crest toothpaste by “keeping the product fresh in the consumers’ minds.” That was to be the junktanks’ role. (These are a combination of Dr Jeremy Walker’s summaries and Feulner’s own words. The essay is well worth your time to see the history and people of Atlas in Australia.)
That Adam Smith Institute essay continues to boast that the Atlas Network had grown at the time of writing to 450 bodies. Now, the essay boasts, “They are changing events all over the world – from land reform in Peru, through privatization in Britain, public debt control in Pakistan, to low-cost education in India. And spreading the ideas of liberty in even the most unlikely places, in the Muslim world from Morocco through Turkey to Yemen and Kazakhstan; in Africa from Mali and Ivory Coast to Ethiopia; in Europe and the Far East.”
The MPS and its Atlas Network have conscientiously worked to change university campuses from places of free inquiry and critical thinking. Those beachheads in universities are matched by opportunities to find and promote “conservative” students. The idea is to shape them and potentially promote their careers in politics, the law, media, policy, academia and business.
One of Mannkal’s primary roles is the selecting of libertarian students in Western Australia for scholarships to Atlas Network junktanks around the world. In this edition of the newsletter, two report back on attending an MPS conference. One celebrated attending “networking events with prominent intellectuals and businesspeople from around the world.” Another was dazzled by, “Having dinner alongside a mining magnate, the chairman of a prominent think-tank, a famous TV presenter and an ex-CIA agent”. He continued, “I was exposed to a network rich in knowledge and influence, including a plethora of world-class academics, Nobel laureates and senior political figures.” (Nafeez Ahmed’s Alt Reich shows the significance of the CIA – and their former Nazis – in the shaping of the Atlas Network.)
Melbourne’s Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a 1943 creation, was absorbed into the Atlas Network in the era of the Liberal Party’s battle between the Wets and the Dries. It was reportedly “hijacked” by “radicals” after people senior in the body attended an MPS conference.
The newsletter report of a third scholarship holder illustrates the Cold War dread of communism that continues to motivate the MPS and its Atlas junktanks. Former Czech president Vaklav Klaus, then a member of the MPS for 25 years, spoke at a lunch. People who have suffered under communist and socialist governments are often rolled out to warn audiences of the continuing threat of authoritarianism. The offspring of refugees who have had awful experiences in such countries provide some of the enthusiastic recruits for Mannkal.
Neoliberalism was always a bunk economics that trumpeted itself as superior because it was driven by theory and rejected evidence. In fact it was an ideology – and a network of activists – that functioned to serve the rich donors. As the project became our new normal, it created ever more dramatic inequalities, resulting in the fury and pain that drives sadopopulism. Youthful interest in social democracies has been a more productive response. In 2024, the IPA was sharing American Atlas junktank Cold War 2.0 propaganda to address the risk that youth might turn away from the “freedom” they sell.
Those of us watching the Atlas Network’s Heritage Foundation plans come to fruition in the first week of Trump’s second term see where authoritarianism lurks right now. Heritage’s Mandate for Leadershiphas come a long way since its first iteration set out the Ronald Reagan economic revolution’s steps. Now it combines its ultra-libertarian positions with authoritarian social policy and autocratic governance.
In this newsletter, Mannkal boasts of 154 scholarships available. Many are to conferences. Fifteen are “midyear internships abroad.” Another 45 are “3-month internships abroad.” The students are sent to Atlas junktanks around the world with 12 partners in particular listed. They include the inspiration for Mannkal, the FEE in Atlanta mentioned above. The Institute of Economic Affairs in London is another. That’s the body that helped create Maggie Thatcher’s economics after she was inspired by The Road to Serfdom. She co-founded another Atlas junktank, the Centre for Policy Studies.
One of the interns celebrates Maggie Thatcher’s certainty of the importance of Atlas: “It started with Sir Keith and me, with the Centre for Policy Studies, and Lord Harris at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Yes, it started with ideas, with beliefs. That’s it. You must start with beliefs. Yes, always beliefs.” Thatcher and Reagan make repeat appearances as Atlas heroes in the newsletter.
Another intern went to the New Zealand Institute, where the Chief Economist is Eric Crampton, MPS director.
The intern who was sent to Atlas headquarters in Washington was delighted to attend events at several of the Atlas junktanks including the Cato Institute (where Rupert Murdoch was a board member in the 1990s) and the Leadership Institute (party to Project 2025 and, like Heritage, to the Christian Nationalist Council for National Policy). She was impressed by Tom Palmer: Atlas’s Executive Director for International Programs. His patronising speeches at the Friedman Conference over the years can be found online.
Another of the interns was deeply grateful to spend time in Melbourne at the IPA with John Roskam. Two went to the Menzies Research Centre (MRC). One was thrilled to sit in on “meetings with high-level politicians and policy-advisors.” Mathias Corman, then Finance Minister, spoke at an MRC event about “shrinking government” in New Zealand and Australia. The Atlas Network’s Project 2025 shows how brutal the cuts to government are ultimately intended to be.
The Executive Director of the Liberal Party-affiliated MRC Nick Cater has just spent the European summer with Viktor Orbán’s junktanks in Budapest.
Scholarship donors are listed in the newsletter as Manners, Gina Rinehart, Willy Packer and Toby Nichols.
One public figure who shows the path and now models the Atlas policy influence is David Seymour, Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand/Aotearoa. He was recruited on his university campus by the Atlas Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT). The ACT is the now the political party that he leads. Seymour was awarded an Atlas “MBA” after a fortnight’s training at Atlas headquarters. He went on to work in the Canadian Atlas Frontier Center before returning to Atlas work in NZ. He is far from the only political leader with deep Atlas Network ties.
Austrian School economics is largely dead these days, although Atlas partners continue to try to resuscitate them. One of the intern reports in the newsletter says the “highlight of my experience was learning about Austrian economics, a stream of economics that is not taught in Australian high schools or universities.” There is a cogent reason why she was freshly discovering the contribution from “economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter and Frederic Bastiat – important economists whose ideas or names have never once been mentioned in my four years of studying economics.” Several interns mention this inculcation of Austrian School truthiness as part of their experience.
One of the most ebullient floggers of Austrian thought in America has been Rand Paul. The intern sent to Canada’s Fraser Institute was excited to report that he met the man.
The newsletter discusses its links to the then highlight of the Atlas Network calendar in Australasian region, the Friedman Conference. In 2024, the conference was reduced to a rabble-rousing event called the Triple Conference that gave a day to libertarianism, a day to Christian Nationalism and a day to conspiracy theory nonsense.
The Mannkal newsletter also links to the History of Economic Thought Society Australia (HETSA), which hosts a Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) conference. HETSA is, anecdotally, a host to MPS figures. In 2024, this event took place at the Alphacrucis University College in NSW. Alphacrucis is the official training college of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God network, Australian Christian Churches reshaped under Hillsong’s Brian Houston. Notre Dame University, also a Catholic force in reactionary politicking and culture wars, provided the YSI organiser.
A third conference series mentioned is the “Freedom to Choose” conference, hosted by Notre Dame University and “supported” by Mannkal. The 2024 conference focused as its theme on the “enduring relevance” of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, the book that inspired so many of the big money donors in the early history of neoliberalism.
Ron Manners pontificates on Public Choice Theory in the newsletter. This is a core aspect of Atlas’s history.
One of the key details to be gleaned from the newsletter is that this project is lifelong and often intergenerational for the donors. One of the interns at the IEA considered herself lucky to meet Hayek’s daughter who allowed the interns to “gain insight into the workings of her father first-hand!” Antony Fisher’s daughter, Linda Whetstone, was president of the MPS, chair of the Atlas Network and on the board at the IEA. Rupert Murdoch’s father Keith co-founded the IPA with Charles Kemp. Rupert was an official board member at Cato, and an unofficial conduit of the IPA, Centre of Independent Studies and MRC, whose people are regularly found on his platforms. The Kemp sons, Rod and David, were key figures in the thinktanks and the Atlas Americanisation of Australian politics.
Charles Koch has been a prime force financially and strategically at Atlas for decades.
It is hard to know how much of the change from Keynesian balanced economy to neoliberal brutality is attributable to the MPS and the Atlas Network, compared to how much might be due to the general impact of the donors and ideologues. Industry lobbies and the direct power of the plutocrats intermix with the marketing of the Atlas Network and its soft power impact for American corporations around the world.
The plutocrats ventriloquised through Atlas operations, but do not seem to feel the same compulsion to separate their goals from their faces any longer. Whether it’s Elon Musk or Gina Rinehart, they seem to feel comfortable now dictating oligarch policy for themselves.
Regardless, it’s worth watching Atlas talking about itself: the freedom it declares it fights for was always anti-democratic.
Also by Lucy Hamilton: Australians must not ignore the Religious right’s global warnings 2.0
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So the Atlas Network has been active since 1981, has recruited figures well-known to the public, has spent untold millions on propaganda and manipulation, and has achieved what exactly?
Exactly nothing.
Worse than nothing.
Because in Oz, instead of a move to the right we’ve seen the rise of the teals.
How could this be?
It’s because the types of policies pushed by the far Right do not resonate with voters.
We have an instinctive suspicion of extremism.
This series of articles is fear mongering to no good purpose.
The things that resonate with voters are little wins of a socialist nature.
Little protections for ordinary folk.
Those are the things that the Right wants to eliminate, so instead of complaining about the Right, the more positive thing to do is to protect the wins we have and work towards others.
No, Steve. If you actually read the article, you see that 1947 and 1981 are just two of the dates when these plutocrat tools stepped up their organising against the dread threat to their donors’ possessions posed by a strengthening populace.
They were a large part of turning a better Keynesian consensus, over decades, into a brutal neoliberal (neofeudal) consensus. The battle when the Dries in the Liberal Party destroyed the Wets was just one of their victories.
There is always resistance. It doesn’t prove anything except that they haven’t totally won.
Trump’s executive orders are 2/3 lifted from the Atlas Network’s Project 2025. (See The Lever News)
Authoritarian politics are growing in power in the EU & academic Quinn Slobodian has tracked the influence of Atlas junktanks as well as direct plutocrat /corporate funding.
Of course they haven’t won but the damage being done to First Peoples, the environment, LGBTQIA, women’s equality, Muslims (and Jewish people but slightly concealed by Zionist aspect of far right), non-White people is extensive. Preventing the turn away from carbon-based energy in the 80s was one of the most important activities on their agenda. They didn’t do it alone, but they bring together huge money & power. (See Jane Mayer’s Dark Money)
Your fixation with the deceptive “liberal” in neoliberalism and “free” in free market (= free for plutocrats & enablers, utter suppression of everyone else, intent to control government to suppress competition) makes your commentary underwhelming.
Lucy, you have neatly avoided my entire comment.
Which was, that despite the immense resources these people have utilised over many decades, Oz has moved to the centre, away from even the moderate Right.
You refer to “damage being done to …”
Of course they’ve had wins.
Reactionaries will continue to have wins because they work constantly at it.
But that’s all they are doing. They are reacting.
They are reacting to the gains made by working people after WW2 and the fear on the Right that this might lead to a socialist revolution. You tacitly acknowledged that in your first paragraph.
What are we to do whenever they have a win?
Wring our hands and clutch our pearls?
As I said earlier, the best way to offset their undermining is to remain pro-active in advancing socialist objectives.
Repeated negativity will not offset anything.
Your final paragraph, a not very subtle dig at my exposure of the liberal/neoliberal link that you seem to find offensive, is unintentionally relevant.
This undermining of little wins made by working people that rightly concerns you, is not a recent development as you suggest.
It’s been going on non-stop since the signing of the Magna Carta and the Forest Charter.
It is built into the structure and operations of the liberal economic framework that you seem unable to condemn.
Atlas, Mont Pelerin, neo-liberalism; these are simply the latest manifestations of a reactionary impulse that has long historical roots, and that we will have to contend with until liberalism collapses under its own contradictions, or we shrug it off and walk away.
The research that went into this post, Lucy, and the write up of it is simply outstanding.
Michael is right to praise the efforts and clarity of purpose of Lucy here. Some circular, vain, obsessive, pointless comment does not offer much, though various facts offer leads and any offering may give us a thread. Chase up Wapshott for Hayek info…perhaps endless futility is our fate. After all this, what is silly self focussed talk when Dogshit Trump is talking of cleaning out the territory of Gaza. The Mad Masturbatory Misfit Mouths Muck Murderously. Only his elimination will “help.”
Good overview of a network that flies under the radar globally, that has even conservative claiming conspiracy, to deflect from their own passive or feigned ignorance of ageing electorates and voters; powered by nostalgia, ‘collective narcissism’ and ‘pensioner populism’.
Atlas has drawn together transnationally, national based think tanks nominally following free market libertarian socio-economic policies of Austrian-Chicago Schools, masking ‘segregation economist’ James Buchanan, John Birch Society, fossil fuels and related industries; protecting legacy investments and incomes into the future, see delay tactics of nuclear etc..
Like pre WWII US, Italy & Germany; Millei’s Argentina, Pinochet’s Chile, Franco’s Spain, Putin’s Russia, Orbán’s Hungary, Trump’s GOP, UK Tories/Reform, Murdoch led RW media, Charles Koch, Musk & Tech Bros. etc. share antipathy towards liberal democracy; labour, consumer & environmental regulation or standards; education & science; open society and empowered citizens.
See Atlas’ related successful outcomes in Brexit, Trump, The Voice No Campaign and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine highlights shared values of Atlas-Koch, Tanton-white Christian nationalists, Fox-Murdoch-Abbott et al, Hungarian PM ‘mini Putin’ Orbán, fossil fuels, oligarchs and Putin’s Russia.
Brexit exemplified the need to try break up their existential threat, ie. the EU, to avoid collective of European nation states with EU protection vs Atlas ‘globalists’ and their corporate sponsors preference for autarky; ‘libertarian trap’* and to avoid the ‘Brussels effect’ on supply chains & Digital Services Directive on BigTech.
They desire a return to inward looking nation states, ‘sustainable economies’ behind strong borders, no globalisation, no migration, no multilateral trade agreements or EU like blocs, no environmental regulation, low taxes, small government, no unions etc.
However, Atlas* et al will be running their influence transnationally and globally outside of nation state borders, electoral democracy, state rule of law, regulations and influence.
“Only his elimination will “help.”
Phil, you are kidding yourself.
When Trump’s gone we will still be dealing with a predatory financial system that is behind all the problems outlined in this article and in your comment, and you think the elimination of one person will help?
Just as if we think that constantly worrying about right wing ratbags and minimising their influence will help.
If we could wave a wand and eliminate every right wing think-tank from the face of the earth tomorrow it would solve nothing.
What do you think was behind the anti-Voice campaign, or the anti-renewable energy campaign, or any other campaign they promote? It’s the protection of their property rights-based system of perpetual plunder.
It’s time we faced up to reality.
We can deal with the real issue, or we can come here and play word-games and kid ourselves that we’re achieving something.
Or is that suggestion too circular, vain, obsessive and pointless for you?
S. Davis makes points of value, and we may see some if we choose. Facing up to reality here on a little scribble site is vain. Playing word games is futile. Trump’s elimination will help, as a leader gone is a role eliminated, an example of strength to crooks everywhere. It may not cure much as so much is institutionally wrong in USA politics, finance, society, attitude. We could desist and cease wasting each other’s time. I’m well aware by investigating, but must not irritate others…And, this morning the gloom carries on, expanding.
“And, this morning the gloom carries on, expanding.”
Phil, we allow the gloom to carry on and expand if we devote too much time to the news media, most of which depends on gloom and anger for headlines and income.
Even sites like this can be overwhelming if we allow it.
We have to protect our mental health by making sure that each day we absorb a good dose of positive outlook, or the result will be that we just sit in a corner and worry ourselves sick.
That’s when the bad guys have really won.
Phil, in regard to my point about the need for positivity, Sue Barrett has a great article at Pearls and Irritations titled “Humanity’s Operating System Has Been Infected”, in which she offers sound advice —
1.Install Integrity: Support community independents and leaders who prioritise accountability and sustainability.
2.Eliminate Disinformation: Speak out against lies and propaganda.
3.Strengthen Networks: Join forces with groups fighting for justice and climate action.
4.Upgrade to Ethical Systems: Support businesses that prioritise sustainability and human rights.
5.Demand Environmental Security: Hold corporations accountable for their role in the climate crisis.
6.Share the Update: Stay informed and spread knowledge.
Check it out, well worth a read.
THANKS STEVE.., I GET THAT SITE EVERY DAY AND CHERISH IT, BUT IT IS SO USEFULLY GOOD THAT IT’S FAR ABOVE MASS READING OR “CONVERSION TO SENSE” FOR MOST. (Sorry for the caps)
” … recruited figures well-known to the public, has spent untold millions on propaganda and manipulation, and has achieved what exactly?”
“When Trump’s gone we will still be dealing with a predatory financial system that is behind all the problems outlined in this article … ”
Well, for starters, they’ve achieved the financial system that you so rightly deplore. Neoliberal economics is the order of the day in most developed and developing countries.
Thanks, leefe. Always enjoy your contributions.
Thanks Andrew for more important context as usual.
Thanks, Michael.
Feel free not to read my essays, Steve. They are always wrong, so it’s a waste of your time.
A waste of my time?
Far from it.
Lucy, if I was in your shoes I would be flattered that a reader has taken such an interest in my project, and has spent time and effort in contributing to and adding to it. In elaborating on it and expanding it. In doing actual research. Because it is a very worthwhile project.
And I’m quite sure that you would not take the view that your word on a project of this magnitude, the assault on democracy, is the last word.
I’ve learned a lot along the way, and I hope that you and others have also.
When I first began commenting on this I knew very little about the Magna Carta, I knew nothing of the Charter of the Forest and nothing of the significance of those to the problems of today.
I knew nothing of the Santa Clara v Southern Pacific court case of 1886 that began the support of the legal system for free market doctrine, and that de facto established corporations as having more rights than persons.
I knew a little about the origins of fascism, but have found that there’s still much to learn.
This has impressed upon me the importance of historical background in analysing the problems of today.
Nothing happens in isolation.
Political problems, political movements, do not suddenly spring into existence.
So if some think that your project involves no learning, no expanding of horizons, no occasional changing of views, as I have had to do, then I wonder what they’re doing here.
Thanks Lucy,
From your fine article, I’ve opened a new folder, and a few new files – all to add to my thoughts around my once feeble and aging Kitchen Table for One 😎
“It started with Sir Keith and me, with the Centre for Policy Studies, and Lord Harris at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Yes, it started with ideas, with beliefs. That’s it. You must start with beliefs. Yes, always beliefs.”
That’s a reveal.
Neoliberalism has ruthlessly co-opted religious faith in society.
Ram the superordinate metaphysical status of belief so far home that the neophyte never departs from it even if presented with manifest reality by way of irrefutable empirical fact: belief is of a higher order than truth.
Thus was born truthiness.