Networked Hegemony: The dynamic at the heart of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
Introduction:
It has long been understood that the ruling class, however it may be conceived, has an interest in avoiding the appearance of coercion in maintaining and re-establishing its hold over the minds of the people. Niccolo Machiavelli spoke to this subject at length and in reference to the dominant and emerging formations in which a prince or - to be clear - a warlord would find themselves working to retain or acquire more power.(1)
Antonio Gramsci coined the term ‘cultural hegemony’ which engages the Edward Bernays concept of the ‘engineering of consent’ which was famously rephrased by Noam Chomsky as ‘manufacturing consent’. Gramsci’s purpose was to counter the pervasive control of industrial corporatism (fascism) in favour of Marxist internationalism (communism). Hegemony became an important term to explain social control by the ruling class while avoiding the ugly appearance of coercion. The historical context of Gramsci’s writing is industrial society and late colonial nation states as opposed to Machiavelli’s principalities and emergent colonial/nation-state based formations.
Industrialism gave birth to the urban worker attached to the city factory. The expansion of industrialism took place in the wake of the degradation of peasant and tribal life after centuries of the capture of the commons and the lands on which indigenous people made their existence. Machiavelli wrote his advice for warlord-princes, and Gramsci wrote his prison notebooks for Marxist revolutionaries and about corporate industrialists embedded in nation states. Machiavelli’s ‘prince’ can be compared to the industrial leader identified by Gramsci, be it a politician or a captain of industry.
Wrong Kind of Green:
Some time in late 2015 or early 2016 Cory Morningstar and I settled on ‘networked hegemony’ as a key term to describe the principle dynamic operating within the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) as it was conceived by the theorists who contributed to the book ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Funded’.
You can find the term used in our writings on the Wrong Kind of Green (WKOG) website from 2016 onward. Considering the way we use the term and the context in which it is applied will go some way to help you understand how it applies to the manufacturing of consent.(2)
Cory and fellow WKOG member Forrest Palmer worked closely with Jay Taber to produce a paper called Communications in Conflict (2013) in which Taber cited his colleague, a retired RAND Corporation analyst David Ronfeldt who had expanded on his 1996 treatise titled ‘Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks’. This framework posited that social evolution, dependent on the human response to changes in technology and its effects on social formations, would move beyond market economics onto power relations mediated by networked formations. It is contended by Ronfeldt that emergent networked formations represent a qualitative shift in power dynamics.(3)
Greater than the sum of its parts::
Networked hegemony has a particular quality. Not only is its shape and reach difficult to discern, but its capacity to expand and force multiply particular concepts and misapprehensions is difficult to identify. Cory Morningstar’s highly detailed explications of networks within the NPIC, if consumed in copious quantities as I did from late 2013 can result in the dazzling comprehension of how seemingly disparate entities can be made captive to conceptions of reality originating from institutions firmly entrenched in the ruling class.(4)
Cory Morningstar focused on key individuals involved in the incubation of new organisations and the dissemination of particular ideas. A good example of a key individual embedded in establishment networks is the ‘new power’ exponent Jeremy Heimans, an expert in behaviour change and connecting consumer brands to the activities of the non-profit online organising space. It was Cory’s writings on Heimans et al that exposed me to applications of behavioural economics through the creation of entities like Avaaz, Purpose, MoveOn, SumOfUs and GetUp that were used to harness the efforts of activist groups and run interference for the ruling class.(5)
Through control of the incubation, corporate networking and political networking of online activism people like Jeremy Heimans could, at arm’s length, shape the messaging and marketing of social and environmental campaigning. These networks of control helped to determine the figureheads that would be installed, like Naomi Klein at 350.org, that would bring their established credibility to bolster the plausible, but ruling class approved campaign messaging.(6)
The networked whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts because, with the collusion of the ruling class and compliant liberal media, a coherent and consistent logic appears to be at the heart of supposed revolutionary efforts, but when the authenticity of such movements is tested with the application of semiotic analysis as Cory Morningstar has done, key signifiers of an absence of revolutionary autonomy appear. Cory was right to question why 350.org, a product of the marriage of a projects incubated by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund – Sustainable Development program and endorsed by the Clinton Global Initiative, should spearhead the global expansion of climate activism.(7)
Funding to steer the ship:
Funding will garner control over the messaging. It puts players in the game through the power to incubate organisations and disseminate messaging. This is the case for social issues such as gender ideology which can be understood by reading the work of Jennifer Bilek (8). But this essay is about the principles behind the research that Cory Morningstar pioneered.
While largely focused on environmental issues, Cory’s view into the consent manufacturing machine helped her expose the humanitarian war propaganda construct, the White Helmets (9). Cory showed that the same marketing operations that were incubating and disseminating key messaging for the climate movement were framing the campaign messaging for humanitarian war and NATO/Zionist aligned imperialism.
In much the same way as the foreign aid agencies of the US and the UK supported the White Helmets to sanitise the reputations of the supposed ‘moderate rebels’ and bolster the ‘Assad bad man’ refrain in the war on Syria executed by NATO/Zionist aligned forces, philanthropists worked to fund and incubate the vast networks of climate campaigning groups.
Cory and I have written about the ‘Design to Win’ plan at length (10)(11)(12)(13)(14). The plan was prepared for a group of largely American philanthropies and spearheaded by President Biden’s outgoing climate tsar, John Podesta. It is our analysis of the purpose and effect of the funding provided under this plan that sets the WKOG apart from groups like Deep Green Resistance (US).
We contend that the funding provided under the ‘Design to Win’ plan was intended to support business as usual for fossil fuels, but with carbon capture and storage applied, and that the renewables revolution is not part of any real transition, but exists to support illusory net zero ambitions. The Design to Win plan advocates for the application of carbon capture to fossil fuels and for the acceptance of “unavoidable” fuels. We would argue that what is ‘unavoidable’ would be determined by the penetration of carbon capture into the market.
Again, as with all the efforts of the non-profit industrial complex, ruling class/[philanthropic networks incubated and/or funded campaign groups to shape messaging while engaging compliant media to broadcast that messaging and its accompanying conflated logic to a credulous public. Evidence of the success of John Podesta’s efforts can be seen in the advancement of carbon capture and storage infrastructure which is largely ignored by those in receipt of philanthropic funding or reliant on the prescribed narratives of the funders. Groupings like Extinction Rebellion, Oil Change International, Fridays for Future, Just Stop Oil and individuals like Greta Thunberg and Tzeporah Berman (15) clearly see no merit in acknowledging CCS infrastructure advances because it conflicts with the prescribed narrative that a renewables revolution is taking place in response to the global climate consensus that produced net zero as a central principle.
No smoking guns:
Networked hegemony is a conjectural concept. The non-profit industrial complex can be described as a conspiracy theory. The only authentic response to a conspiracy theory is to challenge and attempt to dissemble its evidentiary basis. This requires attending to the factual assertions and contentions made by those who posit that the ruling class has conspired to ensure business as usual for big oil and gas, the military industrial complex, the patriarchy or any other component of the ruling class war on humanity going back to before the warlords of Machiavelli’s time.
Critics of the theorists who analyse the non-profit industrial complex are few and far between. Indeed there are no dedicated critics, merely the acassional offhand dismissal. Those who have benefitted from the networking, funding, incubation, messaging and broadcasting have little interest in questioning if whole movements have been co-opted. For the credulous masses as for the many careerist pundits and professional activists, consideration that the ruling class conspires against them, even as it pours entensive resources into manufacturing credible allies with abundant resources, is a rabbit hole too far.
The only honest response – if you don’t want your movement to lose – is to get reading.
References:
1. Niccolo Machiavelli, ‘The Prince - XIX – The need to avoid contempt and hatred’
“One of the most powerful safeguards a prince can have against conspiracies is to avoid being hated by the populace.”
2. Cory Morningstar, ‘Environmentalism is Dead – Welcome to the Age of Anthropocentrism [McKibben’s Divestment Tour – Brought to You by Wall Street: Part XIV of an Investigative Report]’
“the non-profit industrial complex as an instrument of hegemony.“
3. Jay Taber, ‘Communications in Conflict – Intelligence Information Ideas’
“In his 1996 treatise “Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks, RAND analyst David Ronfeldt proposed a framework about societal evolution that viewed the conflict between these primary forms of social organization as something akin to growing pains. Each form, having come about to accommodate human needs or desires, had to adapt to the others as they themselves evolved as a result of both conflictual and cooperative dynamics.”
https://intercontinentalcry.org/publications/communications-in-conflict/
4. Cory Morningstar, ‘Environmentalism is Dead – Welcome to the Age of Anthropocentrism [McKibben’s Divestment Tour – Brought to You by Wall Street: Part XIV of an Investigative Report]’
“The NPIC’S networked hegemony is propagated with a perversion of bio-mimicry. The complexity of the tangled and institutionalised tendrils make it virtually incomprehensible.”
5. Cory Morningstar, 'Avaaz: Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War | Part II, Section II'
"Organizations such as Purpose, 350.org/1Sky, Avaaz, in a sense, play both sides of the fence. While the persona, via branding, that they exude is one of youthful grassroots, in reality, they are drinking champagne and jet-setting with the Imperialist dinosaurs keeping us caged within the twentieth-century."
6. Cory Morningstar, 'This Changes Nothing. Why the People’s Climate March Guarantees Climate Catastrophe'
"What you are about to witness is the global mobilization of “consumers” to be ushered into the green economy, without SAYING it is the green economy. The climate parade in NYC, coinciding with the release of 350’s Naomi Klein’s new book, is the launching pad."
7. Cory Morningstar, 'Rockefellers’ 1Sky Unveils the New 350.org | More $ – More Delusion'
"Access to immense funding, the ruling classes and corporate media will ensure your message gets heard.
At the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative, President Clinton announced the 1Sky campaign. Clinton personally congratulated the 1Sky campaign’s commitment to accelerate bold federal policy on global warming. Rockefeller Brothers Fund President Stephen Heintz; Betsy Taylor, 1Sky Chair; and Jesse Fink, Mission Point Capital Partners, joined President Clinton on stage in recognition of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund commitment to 1Sky. The Rockefeller family contributed at minimum 1-5 million to the Clinton Foundation.”
https://www.theartofannihilation.com/rockefellers-1sky-unveils-the-new-350-org-more-more-delusion/
8. Jennifer Bilek, ‘Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology?
“I found exceedingly rich, white men with enormous cultural influence are funding the transgender lobby and various transgender organizations. These include but are not limited to Jennifer Pritzker (a male who identifies as transgender); George Soros; Martine Rothblatt (a male who identifies as transgender and transhumanist); Tim Gill (a gay man); Drummond Pike; Warren and Peter Buffett; Jon Stryker (a gay man); Mark Bonham (a gay man); and Ric Weiland (a deceased gay man whose philanthropy is still LGBT-oriented). Most of these billionaires fund the transgender lobby and organizations through their own organizations, including corporations.”
https://thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology/
9. Cory Morningstar, 'SYRIA: Avaaz, Purpose & the Art of Selling Hate for Empire'
"The New York public relations firm Purpose has created at least four anti-Assad NGOs/campaigns: The White Helmets, Free Syrian Voices [3], The Syria Campaign [4] and March Campaign #withSyria."
https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2014/09/17/syria-avaaz-purpose-the-art-of-selling-hate-for-empire/
10. Cory Morningstar, 'The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg For Consent: A Design to Win — A Multi-Billion Dollar Investment [VOLUME II, ACT I]'
"The 2007 report Design To Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming would serve to shape the future of the climate movement."
11. Michael Swifte, 'Clinton to McKibben to Steyer to Podesta: Comments on Planet of the Humans'
"John Podesta has a long relationship with the Clintons, both as politicians and philanthropists. In the various roles he has played – always as a Democrat – his focus has been on the future of energy and how to message a position on climate change for the party and for the global philanthropo-capitalist agendas."
(12) Michael Swifte, 'The Unannounced Death of the Green New Deal: Part 2 – An Object of Projection'
"A National Climate Council would support a “Podesta-like” position in the White House. A top climate official with significant authority. Jason Bordoff, who is thought to be highly influential in the Biden campaign team advocates for the creation of a “deputy national security advisor for climate and energy” working under the National Security Council."
13. Michael Swifte, 'Climate Warriors and Flagships from Hell'
"Bellona are BECCS hawks. They are one of John Podesta’s favourite NGOs. Their positions are aligned with the Design To Win imperative/concession position to leave space for “unavoidable fossil fuels”. CANE collectively represent the climate warrior positions which have always included an end to fossil fuels, but are tempered by the pragmatics of managing a transition to renewables and energy efficiency. Everywhere in the ClimateWorks empire you see Design to Win funding for both the hawkish NGOs like Clean Air Task Force and climate warrior NGOs like Global Energy Monitor."
https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2021/11/25/climate-warriors-and-flagships-from-hell/
14. Michael Swifte, 'Briefing: SDG 13 & the Carbon Capture Boom'
"The Design to Win plan launched John Podesta’s ClimateWorks Foundation which became his vehicle for establishing a vast network of NGOs of varying types including re-granting NGOs which disseminated the prescribed narratives and talking points to smaller NGOs. The media helped to reinforce prescribed narratives through amplifying selected NGOs and spokespeople, and participated in considerable silences regarding the growing political will for carbon capture and storage."
https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2023/02/06/briefing-sdg-13-the-carbon-capture-boom/
15. Michael Swifte, 'We need to talk about Tzeporah'
"If we skip forward to the present we find that Tzeporah has never made mention of the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line despite the fact that it became operational in June 2020 and celebrated its ‘megatonne milestone’ in March 2021. In November 2021 the Pathways Alliance announced their ‘vision’ of a CO2 pipeline and storage project that would emulate the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line. The project would combine the efforts of the six largest oil sands producers in Canada: Canadian Natural, Cenovus, Conocco Phillips, Imperial, MEG Energy and Suncor. On 23 March 2024 the Pathways Alliance announced that it had filed an application for a 400 kilometre CO2 pipeline from northern Alberta to a storage hub near Cold Lake."
https://michaelswifte.substack.com/p/we-need-to-talk-about-tzeporah
Just finished reading your extraordinary article. There is a lifetime of work in that. Would I be right to suggest that what we are looking at is a series interlocking limited hangouts, often contradictory, but never touching the real problems facing us? I need to burrow into your and Corey's work further and will.
On 350.org, you might remember an attack on the Michael Moore produced film "‘Planet of the Humans’. It had some flaws such as its emphasis on over-population. Yet, some of its attacks on the green entrepreneurs were well placed. What was more interesting was The Grayzone's investigation of the people doing the attacking such Bill McKibben of 350.og and his biofuel solution to energy problems. As the Grayzone team explained, that film got some things right too . (https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/).
Locally, I have just found the remarkable existence of an outfit called The Katoomba Group with links to USAID, the State Dept and the World Bank. 28 conferences in16 countries between 2000-2024. Billionaires everywhere using our town's name to make their money but none of the people or their money ever touch our town aside from making visits every 25 years (see .
https://warrenross.substack.com/p/katoomba-the-us-state-department). Meanwhile, our Council s zealously committed to the SDGs and their implications.
Thanks for your excellent work.
Michael! As promised, I meant to circle back here after dropping a comment in late Jan and reading your welcome reply in early February. I’m clearly late, but still have thoughts I’d like to convey.
Again, many thanks for taking an interest in my TIMN efforts and finding them useful. In 1996, I did indeed forecast hopefully, based on the TIMN framework, that NGOs would gain increasing strenghth from the rise of new network forms of organization and technolgy (networks being N in TIMN), and that actors in health, education, and environmental areas might benefit a lot. I’ve moved further in that direction by speculating per TIMN that our currently triform societies (civil society + governmment + market economy) will eventually go through a major evolutioanry transition to add a fourth realm, a network-based realm that will become the new home for all those health, education, welfare, and environmental actors and actvities. If you’ve not seen those posts in recent years, they’re at my site here on Substack.
It’s been a rocky 30 years since I first wrote about this. Along the way, I too watched as the Gramscian “networked hegemony” you and Morningstar illuminated gained a grip on many matters as a "non-profit industrial complex” emerged and grew ever stronger, largely working in tandem with corporate actors. Nowadays I’m particularly sensitive to its grip on health and education matters, since it blocks emergence of the care-centric fourth-sector evolution I’ve awaited.
In the past few months, I’ve become equally concerned about a new manifestation of networked hegemony: the “network state” movement that's growing in right-wing ultra-wealthy high-tech circles. It’s protagonnists believe, I gather, that being neo-reactioanry is a good post-modern way to go. It looks to me more like an effort to create a free-floating network of quasi-aristocratic quasi-feudal principalities whose constituents think and act mainly in terms of TIMN’s first two forms: tribes and hierarchies — the core of medieval and neo-medieval ideologies. So now there are two areas of “networked hegemony” to worry about.
Nonetheless, I meanwhile agree with your point in your comment in February: "It seems to me that networks have the capacity to shift narrative focus with more agility than institutions fixed to a purpose."
Onward.