[ExI] Astroturf - Is anything 'real' out there?

[Richard Loosemore]

On 8/4/11 2:04 PM, BillK wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote:
> <snip>
>> Of all the many astroturf situations I have heard about over the last
>> decade, the overwhelming majority were right-wing or libertarian funded.
>>
>> The only time I have heard a journalist do a He-Said-She-Said and try to
>> mention a supposedly left-wing astroturf, to balance mention of a right-wing
>> one, that organisation was one that I (and many other people I know)
>> actually joined, and actively support with email protests .... hence
>> manifestly not a cashroots organization at all, but a genuine one.
>>
>>
> I think it is a bit unfair to say some astroturf campaigns were
> libertarian funded. Libertarians are a tiny group with little funds to
> play with. Overwhelmingly it is big corporations with huge PR budgets
> that are producing astroturf propaganda.
>
> (Unless you define libertarians as Republicans who take drugs).  ;)
>
:-)

I was mindful of the set of very wealthy people who fund right-wing 
initiatives, but whose political allegiances are hard to define, being 
somewhere in the republican/libertarian badlands.



Richard Loosemore