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I never could put my finger on what Libertas were until I heard reference to "Astroturfing".
See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
taken from the indymedia article that Edo referencedThe goal of such a campaign is to disguise the efforts of a political or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. Astroturfers attempt to orchestrate the actions of apparently diverse and geographically distributed individuals, by both overt ("outreach", "awareness", etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing may be undertaken by anything from an individual pushing one's own personal agenda through to highly organized professional groups with financial backing from large corporations, non-profits, or activist organizations.
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/87311
some favourite quotes
The Libertas Campaign
Now all of the above would be merely curious if it were not for the peculiar nature of the Libertas Campaign. It has all the appearances of what has come to be known as an astroturf campaign [23] - a manufactured grassroots movement, created for PR and marketing purposes.
Libertas appeared on the Irish political scene out of the blue in 2007. It did not have public meetings, membership drives, policy debates or any of the other stuff that real political movements do when they are in formation. It appeared fully-formed, complete with a fully-developed policy and communications strategy. It has concentrated heavily on attracting media attention through a barrage of sensationalist press releases and PR stunts and photo-opportunities. It has generally failed to participate in public debates, on one occasion even claiming that it was unwilling to share a stage with Sinn Fein [24].
Dodgy PostersBelatedly, Libertas has decided to talk to the people and is currently engaged in a National Tour [25]. It will hold 15 meetings in 5 days in 12 towns. However, rather than being public debates, these meetings are fully organised by Libertas with no opposition voices present. They are also organised at most peculiar times. Their meetings in Castlebar, Roscommon, Athlone and Drogheda all take place at 7.30 am. Their other scheduled meetings start at 1.15pm (Navan, Mullingar, Longford, Sligo) and 6.30pm on weekdays (Castleblaney, Letterkenny, Dundalk, Tallaght). If you were trying to get as small a crowd as possible, yet be able to claim that you had held public meetings, you would be hard-pressed to find better time-slots. Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe the good citizens of Roscommon were queuing down the road to hear about the Lisbon treaty on Tuesday morning at 7.30 am.
More Dodgy PostersAnother peculiar factor about the Lisbon Campaign is the relatively poor calibre of their material and personnel. Apart from Ganley and McEvaddy, the only people who seem to be involved with Libertas are a number of paid staffers who are employed to run the campaign. Most of these are themselves ex-members of the Freedom Institute, which was a right wing think tank set up by a number of neo-con sympathising students. The ex-freedom institutors on the Libertas staff include David Cochrane, who owns politics.ie and John McGuirk, a famously poor communicator, who has apparently been employed for his PR skills. Ganley and McEvaddy are themselves far from convincing media performers. Being business people, they are used to interviews that are sycophantic in the extreme and they seem completely incapable of appearing convincing when challenged. Their few personal appearances on serious current affairs shows, with experienced opponents or hosts have been very unconvincing to put it mildly.
By basing their staff on such an inexperienced group with no history of success in electoral campaigns, Libertas have got far less for their buck than one might expect. Their posters are amateurish, their slogans are inelegant and the general tone of their propaganda is far below what one would expect of a campaign backed by such resources. One might hazard a guess that they have been unable to attract major players with mainstream experience due to the fact that they are seen as politically poisonous and have had to make do with the help of a group of young-turks who are none too discerning about who they are working for. It is known that they have approached several more prominent political figures but have thus far failed to entice any of them aboard the good ship Libertas. In particular, their attempt to attract Michael McDowell ended in publicly humiliating failure [26].The Libertas Message
On close examination of the propaganda that Libertas has produced about the EU, it is impossible to avoid the impression that they don't really believe the stuff that they are saying.
Anti-Militarist Military ContractorsProbably the best example was their poster attacking Fine Gael's Lucinda Creighton for her support of an EU army [27]. This poster attempted to play on Irish fears about EU militarisation and the desire to retain Irish military neutrality. The idea that either Ganley or McEvaddy are anti-militarists is simply laughable, given the fact that their companies exist as devoted suppliers of the US military and intelligence services.
Another good example of the huge gap between what Libertas says and what Ganley and McEvaddy do relates to democracy and accountability. Both of them have focused on the so-called democratic deficit in the EU and the lack of accountability and transparency of its workings [28,29]. Now Libertas, unlike normal political groups, appears to have no members beyond the president Ganley, meaning that all policy is decided without any of the democratic and accountable elements that exist in ordinary political groups. It was formed, without any public participation, discussion or open meetings but with a policy that was already fully formed. Furthermore, Libertas has promised to spend 1.5 million [30] and it is obviously very well resourced as it has bought up billboards and advertising space across the country. Yet, nobody has any idea where the money is coming from and Libertas aren't saying. Campaign funding rules forbid any one individual donor from giving more than a few thousand euros.
Thus, we can not find even have the merest hint of internal democracy or transparency within Libertas and if you look at Ganley's and McEvaddy's companies, you find even less traces of democracy or accountability - they are purely private affairs, completely opaque to the public, without the merest whiff of democracy or accountability about them. Thus, it is simply impossible to take their new-found passion for transparency, democracy and accountability at face value.
One major argument that Libertas has raised throughout the campaign is the idea that Lisbon is bad for business [31], anti-competitive and likely to destroy Irish foreign direct investment by over-regulation and the harmonisation of EU tax rates [32]. The specific claims are based on what are quite frankly total nonsense about the details of the treaty, and the general argument is hugely undermined when one considers that both IBEC and the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland (which represents US multinationals here) are both unreservedly supportive of Lisbon [33,34] and directly contradict many of Libetas' claims [35].
Another bit of disingenuous campaigning by Libertas has been their 'all things to all people' scaremongering. In the midlands, they have pushed the idea that the Lisbon treaty might bring in abortion [36] (which is demonstrably false, by the way), elsewhere they have presented themselves as libertarian [37].
So, clearly, any examination of the positions of Libertas and Ganley and McEvaddy would lead us to conclude that there is very little chance that their arguments are honest. It seems very unlikely that they actually believe the things that they are advocating. So, what is their motive then?
Originally Posted by Larkinite
