With Think Tanks, Latin America was key to the expansion of the ultra right
Founded and presided by the writer, FIL was emerges in 2002 to, according to its own site, “defend and promote the principles of freedom, democracy and rule of law, adopting strategies designed to fight, in the field of ideas, against those who threaten these values.”
Gimenez’s book reveals that Fil had the support of the Spanish elite and became a representative of European interests in Latin America. The acting occurred in tune with the US, articulating intellectuals, businessmen, ex-mandates, journalists, academics, writers, activists and others Think Tanks. The US acted as main actors in the privatization process among neighbors, making Spain the country more benefited in this process, with companies in the area of oil, banks, energy, among others.
In Brazil, according to the author, the Think tanks, They related Lula to President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela. “Which definitely wasn’t the same, but it was an attempt to identify the red danger,” he says. But at the same time, “Prouni was part of the complexity that represented the Lula government to this right. For them, Prouni is a voucher of education that should be implemented as a policy of education,” he says.
Think Tanks operate in network
The way the Thinks tanks They act is almost imperceptible, says the author. According to Gimenez, organizations “They are not media, but they create content to be consumed in the media. They are not universities, but they work with economics schools. (…) They are not political parties, but they work with the parties and create opinion polls, bills. That is, they have political acting without being a political organization, as if it were a multilateral association. “
A series of studies shows that the Atlas Network, created in the US in 1981, had (and still has) a very important role internationally in the constellation of Think Tanks liberals, supporting the creation of others and unifying the defense guidelines of liberalism. According to the British newspaper The Guardianthe network is “a global coordinating body that promotes in general terms the same political and economic package everywhere where it operates.”
