Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory

Quote:(Ebay founder  Pierre) Omidyar, whose Omidyar Network funds AELP, also funds the Democracy Fund which is now part of Omidyar Group (1). The Democracy Fund, in turn, together with the Knight Foundation, Quadrivium, the McArthur Foundation and Luminate (also funded by Omidyar) fund Democracy Works (2). Omidyar also funds Democracy Fund Voice, which in turn contributes to Defending Democracy Together (3). Then there is Healthy Democracy which is funded by the Democracy Fund, Silicon Valley Community Foundation (which also receives money from Democracy Fund) (4) and the Ford Family Foundation. The Omidyar Network also co-funds New Public by Civic Signals, along with the Knight Foundation, One Project, the National Conference on Citizenship and the University of Texas at Austin, Centre for Media Engagement. Of course, the University of Texas at Austin, Centre for Media Engagement is also funded by the Omidyar Network, the Democracy Fund (funded by Omidyar), the Knight Foundation, Robert McCormick Foundation, and Google. To name just a few others, the Ada Lovelace Institute also receives funding from Luminate, the Wellcome Trust and Nuffield Foundation, while TicTec, a MySociety event about ‘civic tech’, is funded by Facebook, Luminate and Google, among others.
Now that may boggle your mind a bit. Indeed, feel free to draw yourself a diagram. You may need it, because this is just the beginning. Many of these funds fund other funds. That fund other funds. That fund other funds.


And then – and this is the really interesting part – a lot of these funds fund some very interesting organisations indeed.
For example, Luminate, which is part of the Omidyar Group and chaired by Pierre Omidyar, funds:

• ‘grassroots’ and ‘outreach’ groups like: Campaign Bootcamp, Do Something (to the tune of $8million), Civic Hall, and MySociety;
  
• as well as a slew of ‘research and information centres’ such as the Data and Society Research Institute (received $4.5million in 2018); More in Common; the Centre on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law; Full Fact (now a Facebook partner, also supported by Flax, Bytemark and Google’s Digital News Initiative); and the Centre for Public Integrity.
  

Together with over 250 ‘angel investors’, Luminate also funds the New Media Ventures Innovation Fund (NMV). While NMV also covers information services (the Daily Kos forms part of its portfolio), it focuses much of its effort on:

• Grassroots groups, such as: PeoplesHub; LuzCollective; Momentum; Project Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations; Climate Cabinet Action Fund; Sunrise Movement; Mobilise America; Stay Woke;
  
• party-political campaigns and vote turn-out optimisation, such as: Vote.org; SwingLeft; Contest Every Race; Flippable; SisterDistrict; ActBlue Civics; Three Point Strategies; BallotReady; Resistance Labs; Run for Something; Pantsuit Nation; Voter Circle;
  
• and advanced market-research organisations like: Avalanche Insights; Swayable; and Open Field.
  

Meanwhile, the American Economic Liberties Project, funded by the Omidyar Network (which also funds Luminate, which together with other ‘Angel Investors’ funds all of this) is contemplating soulfully how the concentrated might of the coffee industry hides behind a series of flimsy brand names.
The irony of that is just sublime.

One could write not just a book, but an entire encyclopaedia on this topic. However, for the sake of brevity, let’s focus on a few of the groups that receive funding in this convoluted manner, because as we shall see they form something like a political conveyor belt, covering all aspects of the political process.
Exhibit A: Sunrise Movement
The first piece of this funding machine is the grassroots groups. Take the environmentalist Sunrise Movement. You may remember it as the group of youth activists who staged a sit-in at House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, which was joined by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a high-profile media event that resulted (according to the Sunrise Movement) in 4,000 articles being published about it within 48 hours.
The Sunrise Movement was founded in 2017 and its goal, among other climate-related issues, is to push the Green New Deal through the US legislature. Now I personally rather like the Green New Deal, although I am sometimes concerned that a publicly funded green-energy transition could become a cash cow for large companies seeking to update their infrastructure on the taxpayer’s dime. After all, that kind of profiteering happens all the time. And I have become significantly more worried about that possibility since I came across the Sunrise Movement’s logo under the ‘investment portfolio’ of New Media Ventures Innovation Fund. What, after all, is an investment group doing with a ‘grassroots’ organisation of environmentally concerned teenagers on its hands?
According to Luminate, ‘New Media Ventures is a seed fund and national network of angel investors supporting media and tech startups that disrupt politics and catalyse progressive change’. According to NMV’s website, the fund ‘invest[s] in progressive start-ups’ to ‘spark civic engagement’, ‘change culture’ and ‘build movements’. This ‘applies leverage at three critical points, creating momentum’ in order to ‘shift power’, ‘driving long-term political impact’. In order to facilitate this process they have ‘designed a fund structure that allows us to invest flexibly across startups – for profit and nonprofit, mission-driven and political – for the greatest impact’.
Finally, Omidyar Network CEO Mike Kubzansky stated in an interview: ‘Philanthropic money is the most risk-tolerant capital out there, whether it’s deployed for-profit or not-for-profit or on advocacy. And we view part of our role, in terms of social impact, as being risk capital for very difficult issues that society needs to take on…’
If one accepts what ‘givers’, like Omidyar et al, say, it becomes apparent that rather than participating in traditional acts of charity, like founding a hospital for the needy, they are attempting to engage in ‘social engineering’ – that is, using their resources to artificially change the structure of society to what they think it should be. If successful, this would amount to an extreme circumvention of democracy, utilising money not just to win elections, but to substitute paid or subsidised content for actual support, and thereby flip an entire political culture on to a different track by amplifying some voices and drowning out others. Moreover, just to keep things interesting, this is viewed in quite explicit investment terms – and investors tend to expect a return on their investment.
If one accepts this model or ‘theory of change’, as they frequently call it, then ‘investing in’ the Sunrise Movement – a group of teenage and twentysomething activists who complain that ‘fossil-fuel billionaires’ (but not, apparently other billionaires) have influenced government policy and who campaign for ‘investment in technology that would reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere…’ – makes sense.

Sunrise Movement activists rally in support of Green New Deal legislation outside of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer's New York City office, 30 April 2019.
The ‘engineered’ aspect of many of these social-change organisations comes through in myriad ways. For example, members frequently refer to ‘how-to’ manuals and books for creating social change (of any kind) according to a fairly technical blueprint. In addition, some organisations are supported by other organisations with the same funders. For example, Sunrise members specifically credit Momentum (which is also part of the NMV investment portfolio) with training them.
In an hour-long webinar posted on Momentum’s webpage, Sunrise members Sara Blazevic and Will Lawrence, together with Momentum members Cicia Lee and Lissy Romanov, explain the ins and outs of this training. The talk included references to the need (also frequently referenced by Extinction Rebellion) to activate 3.5 per cent of the population for environmental change, and featured such statements as ‘Momentum taught us that movements don’t happen by accident’, and that they needed to ‘prepare in advance a movement to go viral’. Speakers stressed the need to become ‘the dominant political alignment’ which ‘defines the common sense of society’ and ‘directs social and economic policy’. Having realised that this would require ‘tak[ing] over the entire United States and all the institutions in it’, they began ‘finding and developing our first leaders’. This involved moving activists into ‘dorm-style Sunrise Movement Houses for three to six months’ in order to create leaders who had a deep level of commitment ‘for everything that would come afterwards’.
A reporter attending a ‘bootcamp’ describes members being encouraged to ‘tell their personal stories as acts of “public narrative”’ and being taught to ‘refer to the fossil-fuel industry as fossil-fuel “elites”, so as not to alienate the industry’s workers’ as well as ‘how to stand during a protest for maximum visual impact’.
It is not bad advice, but the entire impression is of a very steered, technocratic process that attempts to achieve theoretical concepts (‘3.5 per cent mobilisation’, ‘dominant political alignment’) through a kind of brute-force factory production. It is an impression that is heightened when you realise that Sunrise isn’t just powered by a spontaneous coming together of the minds, but gets its core funding and support from ‘angel investors’. In the video, Will Lawrence explained that in addition to small individual donors ‘we also have some support from some philanthropic institutions, foundations’, and that ‘this year our support will probably be like 50-50 between individuals and larger institutions’ (according to another article, ‘Sunrise’s operating budget was $850,000’ in 2018, and $4.5million in 2020 with ‘a 60-40 split between grants and individual donations’).
On one level, it is great that young people are taking part in politics. But on another level it is incredibly fake. The youthful participants aren’t so much being empowered as instrumentalised. After all, they are part of the portfolio of an investment fund that is using them to ‘shift power’, with part of the strategy being to shame politicians for not being nice enough to hysterical children.
So, is power being shifted?
The Sunrise Movement credits itself with pressuring representatives into agreeing to a Select Committee on the Green New Deal, as well as contributing to getting a Green New Deal passed for the state of Maine. Its website also claims that the group contacted ‘over 6.5million voters in the primaries and Presidential Election’, which helped to elect Joe Biden.
While the results are certainly mixed, I think it is fair to say that Republican efforts to eliminate limits on political spending may have backfired and that ‘progressives’ may have overtaken them in the ‘tactical funding’ department.