Asking the Right Questions on Activist Transparency
A German CDU-CSU Inquiry Asked the Socialist-Green Government 551 Questions on NGO Funding and Transparency.
Environmental activists with an anti-capitalist agenda have relentlessly attacked industry funding, claiming cases of secret corporate lobbying. NGOs like US Right to Know and Corporate Europe Observatory have been created with the sole ambition of demanding transparency … on others, but not on themselves. But their hypocrisy is starting to bubble over.
Writers in the Firebreak often feel lonely reporting on non-transparent NGO funding, dark foundation underwriting of activist campaigns (often in the hundreds of millions of dollars) and journalists being bought off by anti-capitalist special interests via shadowy fiscal-sponsor created operations. At least one issue of the NGOs’ secretive money-train is finally getting attention: government funding of non-government organizations.
People are starting to ask these questions and demanding the same levels of scrutiny, but until now, the NGOs have been on the offensive in an attempt to protect their financials from public knowledge. There was a bit of public attention following a Dutch media report into how EU Life+ Programme NGO funding was awarded to groups to campaign (lobby) in favor of the European Commission’s Green Deal strategy. A recent vote in the European Parliament ENVI Committee to pause funding pending an investigation was strongly resisted by the NGOs. While the motion failed (by one vote), the question of NGO funding transparency is now being asked.
A German Parliamentary Inquiry
One situation to watch is the recent revelations in Germany on government funding of NGOs. A CDU-CSU Group in the German Bundestag recently filed 551 questions in a “minor” inquiry on recent government funding of NGOs who then used that money to campaign against the CDU, and other parties to the right of the Socialists and Greens, in the last election.
It should be noted the Socialists and the Green Party, then in power, ignored the inquiry, saying there were too questions many to answer. The reality, though, is that:
the German government did not know how much was given to how many NGOs with affiliations to either the Greens or Socialists.
The German government did not know what all of these activist groups were doing with the government funding.
The German government did not audit any of these donations to question whether the NGOs used the money outside of the grant conditions.
An English translation of the 551 Questions on NGO Funding prepared by the Firebreak is available here (see the German original here). In reading through them, it became clear that the CDU-CSU politicians (now the main party in power) had no idea of the depth of the government funding of left-wing activist groups. Many of their questions were general because they suspected the government also had no idea. The parliamentarians had noticed a large number of well-organized opposition events at CDU campaign gatherings sponsored by different NGOs who were all singing from the Socialist and Green Party campaign song sheet.
Grannies Against the Right in Germany?
NGOs can only receive government funding if their work is non-political (think Red Cross or food banks). One of the more bizarre cases of obvious political campaigning by an NGO receiving government funding is the Grannies Against the Right in Germany (Omas gegen Rechts Deutschland e.V.).
While there is no government site to track what funding was awarded to which NGOs, the Grannies themselves acknowledged the loot they received courtesy of German taxpayers. But it’s OK – you can trust your Gamy … even if there is no formal structure to the NGO and they exist only to protest right-wing political parties.
See the Monty Python skit on Hell’s Grannies for some context.
The questions the CDU-CSU politicians asked the German government were more fishing to see if the coalition partners themselves knew how their money was being spent. It is obvious the questioners knew.
46. Has the association "Grannies against the Right in Germany e.V." (Gamas gegen Rechts Deutschland e.V.) been warned or reprimanded in the past for party political activity?
52. Is there any evidence that the association "Grannies against the Right in Germany" is conducting targeted campaigns against specific parties or politicians?
67. Does the association " Grannies against the Right in Germany" deliberately discredit or defame political opponents? If so, which ones, and how does the Federal Government assess this in light of the funding?
(Note: all quotes preceded by numbers refer to the English translation of the parliamentary inquiry.)
If you are a left-wing political party (like the German Greens or Socialists), and a loose group of seniors called “Grannies Against the Right in Germany” asks you for money to act as a flanking tool in the next election campaign, what’s not to like about filling their coffers (… except that it is against German law).
Governments and Non-Governments Acting as One
When the German Green Party entered into the government coalition in 2021, they started to populate many government ministry positions with their cadres, activists and supporters. Some NGOs became, to use a baseball term, “farm systems” from which the largesse of regulatory positions was shared. These civil servants did not forget their roots continuing their activist campaigns as state secretaries. Such is the case with the NGO, Agora Agrar gGmbH.
328. Is the Federal Government aware of the following article (www.agrarheute.com/politik/bundesregierung-finanziert-lobbyisten-fuer-energie-agrarwende-609558), and how does the Federal Government assess the influence of Agora Agrar gGmbH on political decisions in the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture?
The article cited in the question drew attention to how four high-level German government officials remained on Agora boards after taking their positions in the coalition.
Silvia Bender, Jochen Flasbarth, Dr. Christiane Rohleder and Stefan Tidow all have two things in common: They are State Secretaries of the Federal Government and they are board members of one of the think tanks: Agora Agrar, Agora Energiewende or Agora Verkehrswende.
Apparently, according to the German government, state officials keeping their activist roles is not a conflict of interest if they were not receiving government funding (although employing your best man does qualify as a COI). What was not revealed in the inquiry is that these Agora brands are not independent bodies but, rather, affiliates of the lobby organization, SEFEP (Smart Energy for Europe Platform). They also failed to mention that SEFEP received three million euros in 2022 from two Green Party-run ministries in the German government. The lobby platform does not have a website so for more information, see the SEFEP German Registry Lobbying Declaration.
In 2022, when one third of the German population was suffering from energy poverty as the gas was cut off, the Greens still had enough money to quietly help their activist friends with an unnecessary three milllion euro grant. This is reason enough to never allow Green Party militants to ever again enter into government coalitions.
It should also be noted that more than half of SEFEP’s budget, what the lobbying firm uses to run the Agora “think tank” brands, comes from two American tech billionaire foundations (more than €20 million in 2022). As they don’t fit the parameters of a normal NGO and clearly did not need the funding, SEFEP should return the three million euros to the German public.
More than One Way to Skin a Cat
It is not just funding grannies to swarm on CDU election campaign events, paying left-wing journalists to smear CDU leaders or stacking activist NGO boards with government officials (and funds) that are egregious transgressions of the German NGO funding law. The last German Socialist-Green coalition also elevated the status of certain activists, empowering them on the international stage.
The CDU-CSU parliamentary inquiry asked a trick question that the government was wise enough not to answer.
393. Are there direct connections between Greenpeace e.V. and specific parties or political actors?
The American activist, Jennifer Morgan, was the executive director of Greenpeace International until 2022 when the German Green Party leader, Annalena Baerbock, named Morgan to a newly created position as the “State Secretary and Special Envoy for International Climate Action” for the German federal government. The American activist, soon to be a naturalized German, was then named Head of the German Delegation to COP27 in Egypt (as well as the following COP climate meetings), while her post at the head of Greenpeace International remained “vacant” … for two years.
Morgan, in her perfect American twang, told a Bloomberg journalist during the COP 27 that her role representing the German government at the high-level climate negotiations gave her much more power to advance the interests she had been working for at Greenpeace.
The hypocrisy of the German green activists in government at that time was embarrassing. For example, there was a campaign called Kick Big Polluters Out to protest industry stakeholder engagement in the COP 27 political process. The anti-capitalist NGO censorship campaign was funded by a German government ministry led, again, by the German Green Party.
Greenpeace, of course, will say they do not accept government funding. But that does not mean they cannot operate within governments or have their board members directly influencing policy.
Likewise a group like Foodwatch, which also claims to not accept government funding, can have politicians or influential political figures on their board or in governments. This would enable leading figures in the NGO to mobilize its members to support particular parties during an election campaign.
229. Do any board members or executives of Foodwatch hold political offices or have close ties to political parties?
Many NGOs have strict rules against political affiliations of directors and board members. The left-wing media-funding NGO, Correctiv, responded to the CDU-CSU inquiry with just the right mix of hyperbole and hypocrisy. The re-granting NGO claims categorically that their statutes forbid management and board members from having any close ties to political parties. But then, almost in the same breath, Correctiv admits they take money from and work with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (and many of these groups have close ties with political parties.
24. Are there any collaborations between CORRECTIV gGmbH and party-affiliated foundations such as the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, or the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation?
Did this NGO, in taking money from political-party-affiliated foundations, not understand that they were being bought? Didn’t they know that the money they regranted to journalists to write on political issues was tied to political interest groups and ultimately to political parties? Just because they agree with the political dogma of the funders does not make it right (or legal).
Correctiv is not a legitimate NGO and should return all of the “project-related” taxpayer funds it has received (but declined to enumerate as it was on a “project by project” basis). Another left-wing journalist funding group, Netzwerk Recherche, also objected to the parliamentary inquiry into more transparency with the same mix of hyperbole and hypocrisy.
Missing the Forest for the Activist Lobbyists
Politically-driven foundation funding is, in fact, the key point that the CDU-CSU parliamentary group largely missed in their inquiry. The increasing role of foundations and billionaires in influencing political processes and policy issues around the world is largely unmonitored and non-transparent. The Firebreak has been exposing how foundation funding of NGOs and the media (often in the hundreds of millions of dollars) via dark donor-advised funds and creation of fiscal sponsors to run campaigns has been controlling the narrative, leading policy and impacting election outcomes (from the shadows).
See our translation of a French investigation into how the European Climate Foundation has been spending hundreds of millions buying off almost every climate-oriented NGO to command an activist policy armada from behind the scenes. By the way, remember above, the German lobbying platform, SEFEP, that loaded its Agora boards with state officials and took in three million euros in German government funding in 2022? That same year, besides over ten million from two American tech billionaire foundations, the lobbyists (who don’t even have a website) also received €1,580,000 from the European Climate Foundation. … Of course they did.
In other words, the German parliamentary inquiry into NGO funding and transparency, with its 551 questions, was barely scratching the surface on dark NGO funding.
The Firebreak would have more than 551 questions to ask about how non-transparent foundations are influencing the NGOs making an impact on democratic elections. The environmental NGOs do what they are programmed to do (run campaigns and protest against the capitalist system) but the foundations (with their billions in reserve) are the ones pulling the strings from the shadows with campaign-oriented funding.
The CDU-CSU parties, now in power in Germany, should open an investigation, not into the NGOs (they are merely the useful idiots), but the foundations acting as the puppet-masters. Correctiv, Greenpeace, Foodwatch… are not even aware of how they are being played. More transparency? Yes please, but not just at the surface.
There are so many other issues the CDU-CSU parliamentary inquiry raised, but now that they are in power, I assume they will faithfully enforce transparency and control the funding of activist groups. Fortunately Germany has a Freedom of Information Act so that the public can also monitor the misappropriation of government funds. (…?)
It Gets Deeper
The CDU-CSU parliamentary inquiry started as a reaction to the NGO-driven political protests against the CDU during the most recent election campaign. According to the German tax code, no non-profit group receiving public funding is allowed to participate in political activities. But environmental NGOs like BUND (Friends of the Earth) or animal rights campaigners like PeTA (both factoring in the parliamentary inquiry) are political by nature. The inquiry also revealed how the Socialist-Green German government was funding NGOs that regrant funds for investigative journalism and economic research that invariable slants to the left of the political spectrum.
In the brief introduction to the 551 questions, the parliamentarians suggested that something more sinister is going on. They quote an article in Die Welt arguing that governments that are funding non-governmental entities to carry out their objectives are creating a type of deep state. It is not a deep state as conspiracy theorists like RFK Jr (a.k.a. “Q”) claim exists, but rather quasi-government operatives in large NGOs determining policies below the surface.
While this is a remarkable assertion for members of a government to make, via a German newspaper article, seeing how these activist groups have amassed power and influence via non-transparent means, I would have to agree. Coalitions of foundations organized under fiscal sponsors, like the European Climate Foundation, that then have unlimited funds (€275 million in their last annual declaration) can buy off a flotilla of NGOs to control policy, politics and the media. All of this is undeclared by the fiscal sponsor and its foundations and left to the discretion of the NGOs on whether to be transparent.
Of course the NGOs were outraged by these 551 Questions and, to no surprise, fought back via their funding networks. They even launched the traditional petition so other activists can show their strength (while making the ritual comparison of the CDU to Donald Trump). An article, written by a Correctiv member (thus funded by the former German Government), even claimed that the Grannies Against the Right in Germany “make an essential contribution to democracy”.
Now I’ve heard everything.