The Frank Furedi Fronts and Network — an insidious web of ‘pretend left’ and ‘contrarian’ organizations, media, and personalities, spawned by Frank Furedi and funded by far-right business and ethno-nationalist money
This is a re-jigged and updated Twitter thread from 2023 (so, apologies for any disjointedness), with information and links that indicate the operational strategies of, and connections between, various Furedi-spawned, or Furedi-adjacent ‘fronts’. While the introductory text below is not referenced, most of what is claimed within it is common knowledge and is backed up by the various links further on.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Then let’s begin…
Frank Furedi (I now like to refer to him as Dr Furedistein, since he has created so many monsters in, and from, his sociology ‘lab’ at the University of Kent) found prominence in the 1980s in the UK with a group called the Revolutionary Communist Party. This activist grouping was known for its strategy of “horizontal recruitment”, and it quickly became ‘contrarian’. Their magazine was ‘Living Marxism’, which became ‘LM’ magazine. The RCP and its magazine collapsed in 2000 when they were sued for libel by a big news organization. But they quickly resurfaced as the ‘LM Network’, which produced its first ‘Spiked’ magazine in 2001.
Spiked has formed the template for magazines such as Compact (the US one) and UnHerd. Indeed, one of the editors at UnHerd is the son of Frank Furedi, Jacob, and writers for both have various degrees of connection with the LM Network. Ashley A. Frawley, for example, is an ex-Phd student of Frank Furedi, and writes for both Compact and UnHerd and is central figure in ‘Sublation Magazine/Media’ (though I think she may have just quit that position to concentrate on more important outlets). Sublation (Douglas Lain) is a small ‘Marxist’ publisher and Internet presence that grew out of Zer0 Books, which was headed by Mark Fisher. Zer0 Books published various Furedi figures, such as George Hoare, and others, such as Nina Power.
Spiked, Compact, Damage, and UnHerd are all reactionary and conservative ‘contrarian’ publications, but they initially appealed to many on ‘the left’ due to the apparently ‘left’ writers they used, and their appeals on behalf of the ‘working class’. They also promote a conservative libertarian ‘free-speech’ agenda, something else that has appealed to those who think they are on ‘the left’. Some, like Ralph Leonard not a direct creature of Dr Furedistein, describe themselves as ‘conservative Marxist’.
Spiked
Read the Wikipedia page, and look at the referenced essays and information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiked_(magazine)
Compact
Nina Power, once a partner of Mark Fisher (who is deceased and who was mentored by Nick Land), and also Alberto Toscano (who now has nothing to do with her), was an editor at Compact until her nazi affiliations became known and she was sacked, although some Compact figures objected to her sacking. She was a speaker at the National Conservative Conference in the UK in 2023. After the ‘scandal,’ Power appeared on a www.theoryunderground.com (another stinking red-brown confusionist stew) podcast with ‘The Last Marxist,’ as he calls himself, Chris Cutrone, who is the leader of the Platypus Affiliated Society and does a lot of Internet work with far-right and conspiracy-minded figures, for example, his Furedi-ist friend Ashley A Frawley and her side-kick, Douglas Lain. Interestingly, his Marxism is Bordigist… If you look at another of my essays — on Jaques Camatte (not yet put together) — Bordigism is explained.
It appears that Compact Mag is funded by Peter Thiel (and others I guess) through a fake company — called Horseshoe Mag, Inc. (look up ‘horseshoe theory: for all the naive leftists who work with Compact, for example Ben Burgis, the joke is on them). Thiel gave Compact $686,500USD in 2024, as Julia Black (Twitter: @mjnblack) reports,
Read the Wikipedia page, and look at the referenced essays and information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_(American_magazine)
Damage Magazine
This is a kind of sub-Compact magazine, One of its editors is Alex Hochuli who has been a creature of Dr Furedistein for many years.
https://littlesis.org/person/348115-Alex_Hochuli
Another editor is long-time Furedi-ist and Brexiteer, George Hoare. Another is the red-brown confusionist, Catherine Liu.
Being relatively new Damage Magazine still presents itself as left-wing and in support of leftist working class interests, in this way it draws confused and naïve leftists into its orbit.
UnHerd
(Furedi’s son is an editor.)
“Heterodox” is one of UnHerd’s favourite words, and it strives valiantly to live up to its brief. Contributors range from rightwing ideologues like Douglas Murray and Eric Kaufmann to leftwing thinkers like Helen Thompson and Yanis Varoufakis. Both Terry Eagleton, a Marxist literary critic, and Kathleen Stock, a controversial feminist philosopher revered by conservatives, are columnists. Irvine Welsh and David Hockney have published pieces recently. Perhaps no other publication can boast such an eclectic range. But beneath UnHerd’s claims to nonpartisanship lie Conservative-friendly foundations and a range of rightwing interests, for which the site’s “heterodox” range of writers appear to offer convenient cover.
The Guardian, October 28, 2023.
The whole article is a ‘must read’:
These magazines are, to various degrees, what is known as ‘red-brown confusionist’. This term describes a person or organization that appears to promote leftist (red) ideals, but in fact is reactionary, conservative and even fascist (brown). They work to confuse things so that the dominant narrative actually becomes one of reaction in service to the right-wing and far-right. These personalities and organizations are usually funded, directly or indirectly, and usually as secretly as possible, by wealthy conservative donors, such as Koch, Inc., through various subsidiaries and lobby groups. Another, more recent, funder is Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, who is admired by, and is friends with, Donald Trump.
Since 2021, Frank Furedi has been the Director of MCC Brussels, a ‘think tank’ (George Monbiot refers to such phenomenon as ‘junk tanks’) set up by Orbán, as part of his Mathias Corvinus Collegium, to promote his ethno-nationalist ideology and to attack and destabilize the European Union. Ashley A. Frawley is a ‘Resident Fellow’ at MCC Brussels. Both of them, indeed the whole LM Network, were Brexiteers, and are ideologically close to Nigel Farage. Ashley A. Frawley claims, for example, on her Sublation Magazine/Media (also Marxist) appearances to be a Marxist. Indeed, many Furedi drones claim to be Marxist. So, while Dr Furedistein may now make no bones about not being, or no longer being a Marxist, his peripheral drones still do.
Other phenomenon, for example, that have direct connections with Furedi through figures who have been taught by him at Kent University, or have been longtime LM Network people, or have been nurtured by Spiked magazine, are things like…
Bungacast
This is a podcast curated three LM Network Furedi drones: Alex Hochuli, Philip Cunliffe, and George Hoare.
@BungaCast (Twitter)
…and the climate-confuser:
Breakthrough Institute
Read the Wikipedia page, and look at the referenced essays and information:
These things, along with Sublation Media, are purely ‘red-brown confusionist’. They operate, via their supposedly left and far-left, or Marxist, credentials, to draw in naive people on the actual left and far-left So, for example, one of the ‘stars’ of Sublation Media is Chris Cutrone, of the Platypus Affiliated Society, who is a far-left — Bordigist — Marxist. Ashley A Frawley claims to be a Marxist scholar who teaches people about Marxism through her own podcasts and podcasts with Doug Lain — another Marxist — on Sublation Media. And several ultra-left, or communizing figures flit about the edges of these phenomena.
These groupings are insidious and very damaging for the left that gives them a platform. Naïve figures such as Ben Burgis have enthusiastically written for Compact, for example. One leftist (the @ChrisCWright1, who, like Burgis, has issues with ‘wokeness’ and approaches ‘cancel culture’ from the same perspective as the right) wrote an essay for Compact and told me publicly on Twitter that he did it partly for ‘the reach’ and partly for the money he was paid…
Maybe people who claim to have certain principles should not take money from outfits that deliberately do red-brown confusionism? There is a significant difference between being published in niche publications such as UnHerd or Compact (phenomenon that actively try to get leftists to submit essays to them) to managing to get published in a general-public right-wing newspaper.
Dr Furedistein and his adorable minions have long been “flooding the zone [the discourse] with shit” as Steve Bannon famously put it, and their strategy, funded by conservative and fascist business, has worked very well for them. As you will see below, this strategy was pioneered in the modern day by Alain de Benoist and his far-right Nouvelle Droite, he also leads the ethno-nationalist think tank GRECE. The term “flooding the zone”, by-the-way, is also known as ‘distributive amplification’ — a term coined by the Technology and Social Change Project (2019–23) in 2020 to name how “the Plandemic covid-19 hoax documentary was spread online”.
Operational strategies and analysis:
1
Draw in the leftists and Marxists who are unaware of where the individuals who have set up or ‘taken over’ these phenomenon come from:
2
Then become more outspokenly reactionary in the hope they can bring the crowd they have accrued with them; the photo below shows Frank Furedi and Claire Fox at one of their, obviously very tedious, ‘Battle of Ideas’ events.
3
The strategy is useful for building up a base and a credibility that enables Furedi Inc. to gain a far wider reach when they do begin to more obviously reveal their true colors…
4
This is essentially the same model utilized by Furedi’s RCP/LM in the UK in the 80s and 90s. Note: The RCP folded in 1997, but continued as ‘Living Marxism’ magazine (becoming the LM Network). The magazine ceased in 2000 (see below). LM launched again, as ‘Spiked’ in 2001.
“ITN in £375,000 libel victory
ITN and war reporters win libel victory against magazine”:
https://amp.theguardian.com/uk/2000/mar/15/medialaw.media2
5
Read this, and also make sure you know who Munira Mirza is:
Fox Breaks Cover — from Revolutionary Communist to Farage’s Right Hand Woman
From Byline Times.
6
This is a Guardian article by George Monbiot on the funding from Koch, Inc. for Spiked:
This, is from Desmog.com, it forms the background of George Monbiot’s 2018 Guardian piece on the funding of Dr Furedistein:
Revealed: US Oil Billionaire Charles Koch Funds UK Anti-Environment Spiked Network
7
Two essays ESSENTIAL for understanding National Conservatism and it’s links with ex-Marxists (eg Furedi and Power) and those who still claim to be Marxists (eg Frawley/Ralph Leonard/Chris Cutrone/Doug Lain/Alex Hochuli/Theory Underground etc etc)
…and an indication of the vast amounts of money that fund them:
and
“Among the speakers at NatCon London was Frank Furedi, the former leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party who currently heads the Brussels branch of a private Hungarian college [MCC] that has received billions of forints from Orbán’s government.” :
8
How the same tactics and strategies have been used by the Nouvelle Droite (Alain de Benoist) since the late 1960s, and how, thru Orbán, the projects of Furedi and de Benoist combine:
This essay (Variant mag, 2005) is an insightful curation of facts concerning Furedi/LM/RCP/Spiked, etc. It also indicates a proximity to Alain de Benoist (Nouvelle Droite, founder of the think tank/entryist ‘meta-political’ group GRECE).
on GRECE:
The far-right cultural vision of GRECE is echoed and being actuated within Europe by ethno-nationalist, Viktor Orbán who, as we know, employs Furedi as Director of his MCC Brussels think tank. Ashley A Frawley is a proud ‘Fellow’ at MCC Brussels, as she attests on her Twitter and Bluesky profiles:
Here is their boss:
9
I knew of the Furedi’s Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) in the 1980s, but knew nothing of Furedi. I had nothing to do with this weird cult-like ‘revolutionary’ organization, but it was a common and well-known joke that they were known for their strategy of horizontal recruitment.
The LM Network and its various recruiting tentacles, such as Battle of Ideas, the Institute of Ideas, the Academy of Ideas, Ideas Matter, Living Freedom, are conference-type phenomenon that bring people together to further various agendas, such as ‘free speech’. In the case of the the Living Freedom Summer School there is a creepy emphasis on recruiting young people.
This is a screenshot of the Twitter advert for the 2023 Living Freedom Summer School held in the UK:
“Are you 18–30 years?” OMG deja vu!
This is a screenshot list of the far-right speakers at the conference who would all be speaking to the young people:
Let’s just look up on Wikipedia one speaker one might not have heard of, eg Inaya Folarin Iman:
And here is a screenshot from the conditions of entry for the Living Freedom Summer School… The 18–30 year olds are encouraged to stay overnight in the accommodation provided and which they have to pay for in the fee anyway… NOT CREEPY AT ALL!
I don’t know, and I’m suggesting nothing, I am sure everything is above board and horizontal recruitment was just a misinterpretation of the dynamic and shiny phenomenon of the RCP… not at all a long march through the bedsheets… but it all just makes me think about Furedi’s weird book on Jimmy Saville from 2013…
This, from Suzanne Moore:
There is so much more on all this. And there are new developments all the time.
Mickey Moosenhauer, 9th Jan 2023
Bluesky: @mickeymoosenhauer.bsky.social
Twitter: Mickey Moosenhauer — @nihil_evadere
