New reporting shows the US State Department planning to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks, charities, and political movements in Europe. That includes organisations and figures linked to UK politics.

This video follows the money: from post-war neoliberal networks, to modern think tanks, to today's use of US state funding to legitimise extremist ideology. The far right no longer opposes the state. It has captured parts of it and is now using that power in the USA to attack democracies, including our own here in the UK.

This is as organised, deliberate, and dangerous as if China and Russia were doing it - so why aren't the media saying so?

This is the audio version:

This is the transcript:

State-sponsored fascism is happening in the UK right now. That is the message of this video, and I'm worried about  it.

The USA has announced it is going to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks and political parties in Europe, and that is what I mean by state-sponsored fascism.

The far-right has now captured the state and is planning to use it to overthrow our state. This is not exaggeration; this is about the US government actively funding the spread of far-right ideology, and it is going to impact the UK. We need to talk about it.

What do I mean by state-sponsored fascism? Let's be clear. As I have said often on this channel,  fascism does not only arrive with mobs and uniforms. It also arrives through institutions, and through think tanks, and through the media, and it's backed by big money, and now through legitimacy conferred by the state itself in the  form of the US state controlled by Trump. That's  what I'm talking about here today, and this matters right now.

For decades, the far-right claimed to oppose the state, but now, parts of the state in the USA are actively sustaining it; there is a fundamental change in their attitude. They are now using the US state to undermine our state, and that is politically dangerous.

This did not, of course, happen overnight. Nothing about the far-right happened overnight, as I've explained in previous videos, and no doubt, as I will explain again. This has been a long-term plan that is now working out. The modern far-right intellectual network can be traced back to 1947, when something called  the Mont Pelerin Society was founded on the shores of a lake in Switzerland,  below the mountain in question. Who was present?  Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Hayek provided  the politics. Friedman provided the economics, and market fundamentalism came wrapped in claims of freedom.

That freedom, of course, was for the rich. It was not for anyone else. For everybody else, the message was one of oppression, but they were ignored.  Everybody, apart from the rich, was treated by this ideology as being disposable.

The  network was spread deliberately. Those ideas were replicated globally through think tanks, through charities, through supposedly educational bodies linked to something called the Atlas Network, which shared its founder  with The Institute of Economic Affairs here in the UK. The aim was always the same: to hollow out the state while protecting and promoting power and wealth for a few.

What has changed?  The far-right used to operate outside government. They were opposed to it in all its forms and all its actions. But now they are the government in the USA, and they are using that power to extend their messaging.

This is a decisive shift, and we now have the evidence. The Financial Times has reported that the  US State Department is going to fund MAGA - Make America Great Again - aligned think tanks, and charities, and political parties in Europe  with US public money that will be used to promote a political ideology to undermine our democracy in a deliberate act designed to undermine our state.

The stated purpose is to promote US policy positions and to challenge so-called threats to free speech, but again, I stress free in this context means freedom for the rich and not for anyone else. And, in practice,  what this is all about is exporting far-right narratives under the cover of diplomacy.

The reporting is describing meetings with influential right-wing think tanks in the UK and with figures associated with  Reform, and so with Nigel Farage, and this is not accidental; it is coordinated.

But imagine what would've happened if the reporting did instead refer to  either Russia or China trying to do this. The Financial  Times would not be calm, passive, and sitting back and just saying, this is happening. It would instead be yelling and shouting, but because the US is apparently trying to destroy democracy here by funding far-right politics, a calm approach is permitted, and my argument is, no it isn't. The threat from the US is as big as the threat from Russia, as big as the threat from China, and indeed it's arriving with the  Gestapo included, because that's what we're already seeing, operating on the streets of the USA.

If that's the American values that Trump wants to deliver to the UK, and which we are seeing people in this country embrace in think tanks and in political parties, then I want nothing to do with it, because whilst fascism is always violent, and Trump is clearly proving that, the real issue is that the fusion of state power with ideological exclusion is toxic.  When the state funds ideas that define enemies within society, we are in fascist territory, and that's what's happening.

We are seeing migrants stigmatised.

We are seeing the left stigmatised.  Everybody who disagrees with the far-right is now apparently a communist, a term used deliberately to provoke hatred.

This is happening in our media, and they're reporting it and not yelling about it.

And in all of this, there is, of course, this internal contradiction. The far-right claims to hate the state, yet it is now, depending on the state, for funding, legitimacy, and reach. The hypocrisy tells us something important, which is why it is worth noting again. That is, that this is all about power and has nothing to do with principles.

Figures like Farage thrive in this environment. They normalise politics based upon destruction. They offer resentment instead of solutions, and the state increasingly indulges them. And then, when the state has collapsed as a result of the politics of destruction that they support,  they use the resulting economics of failure as a reason to kick it some more when it is down,  and the consequence is, you will suffer. In fact, let's look at all those consequences.

The first is that  democracy will be corroded. When public institutions  fund ideological extremism, democratic trust collapses. The state becomes partisan. Citizens are no longer equal by choice, by deliberate policy.

The second consequence  is policy capture. Think tanks funded this way shape debate, policy, and media narratives. This is not neutral. This is ideological capture using public money from a foreign state. Once we thought the Russians might do this, now we know the US is. Either way, we lose, and this is a threat tantamount to an act of war.

The third consequence is social division. These ideas thrive on division. They  identify groups to be blamed:  migrants, welfare recipients, protesters, and anyone who disagrees with the power of the right. Division is not a side effect; it is the objective.

Fourthly, there is, of course, an attack on care. The politics of destruction that neoliberals have promoted for decades results in an economy where care is always undermined. Public services are weakened, solidarity is ridiculed, universal provision is portrayed as weakness, and support for people is eroded. This is not politics for people. It is politics that hates people.

What does this tell us? This is not accidental drift. It is organised. It is going to be funded by the US government if it is not already, and it is happening inside our state because people who believe in this way are already sitting in our House of Commons, and that is why it is so dangerous.

What must be done now?  First, we must expose this funding. We must talk about it. That's the first thing to do.

Secondly, transparency is essential. Who is paying how much and for what purpose? This is critical information that we need to know, and if there is any purpose left to Labour, exposing this is one thing it must do.

Thirdly, democratic accountability must be restored. Public money from any state must not fund ideological extremism designed to undermine our democracy, ever. This is a basic democratic requirement. I will say it again. If this had been happening from Russia or China, we would be shouting, but now it's happening from the USA, we should be shouting just as much.

So what must be done?

We must articulate clear alternatives.

We must oppose the politics of destruction.

We must talk about politics for people, a politics that cares for people, for democracy, and for the state as a shared institution.

State-sponsored fascism is not a warning from history. It is a present reality. It's coming from the USA now. Familiar faces will be delivering it with smiles and silly jokes and gags, but it's fascism all the same. If we do not confront it, we allow a foreign state to fund the destruction of our country, our democracy, everything that we value, and that must not be allowed to happen.

What do you think? There's a poll down below.

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