Between them, these groups have backed armies of ultra-conservative lawyers and political activists, as well as so-called family values campaigns against LGBTQ rights, sex education and abortion—and a number appear to have increasing links with Europe’s far right.
They are spending money on a scale “not previously imagined,” according to lawmakers and human rights advocates, who have called openDemocracy’s findings “shocking.”
Among the biggest spenders is a group whose chief counsel is also Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow. Another organization has collaborated with a controversial Rome-based institute backed by Steve Bannon.
None of these American groups discloses who its donors are—though at least two have links to famous conservative billionaires, such as the Koch brothers (who helped bankroll the Tea Party movement) and the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.
‘Nobody should be in any doubt as to the insidious nature of these fundamentalist groups’
The increasing ties between some of these Christian conservative groups and the European far right will be on display this weekend at a summit of the World Congress of Families (WCF): a network of American, Russian and other ultra-conservative activists.
Right-wing politicians and their supporters from across Europe are expected to attend the event in Verona, Italy—including the Italian deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who has described the WCF as a showcase for “the Europe that we like.”
A cross-party group of more than 40 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) has called on the EU’s transparency tsar Frans Timmermans to look into the influence of “U.S. Christian fundamentalists… with the greatest urgency” ahead of May’s European Parliament elections.
In a letter reacting to openDemocracy’s findings, and copied to the presidents of the European Council, European Commission and European Parliament, the MEPs have demanded action to protect European democracy “against nefarious outside influences.”
Scottish National Party MEP Alyn Smith, who sits on the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and signed the letter, said on Wednesday: “This investigation by openDemocracy is extremely timely and shines a light on a major challenge facing democracy in Europe.”
OpenDemocracy’s findings “are highly alarming, and nobody should be in any doubt as to the insidious nature of these fundamentalist groups,” he continued. “No group of any kind should be able to use dark money to distort debate and to subvert democracy in Europe, least of all groups such as these whose causes are deeply regressive.”
[caption id="attachment_1473097" align="aligncenter" width="615"] (Credit: openDemocracy)[/caption]
‘The Europe we like’
OpenDemocracy has examined a decade of U.S. Christian organizations’ financial accounts and found that several of them appear to have significantly increased their spending in Europe over the past five years.
These findings come as far-right parties aim for big wins in the upcoming European Parliament elections in May, and show how large amounts of foreign money have supported the spread of their “traditional values” messages.
OpenDemocracy has reviewed hundreds of pages of financial filings for a dozen religious conservative groups that are registered as tax-exempt non-profit organizations, and thus are required to disclose some information about their foreign spending.
Some of these groups have been previously accused of supporting campaigns to criminalize homosexuality in Africa, “draconian” anti-abortion laws in Latin America and controversial projects to encourage gay people in the United States to “leave homosexuality.”
But the extent of their European activity has—until now—received little scrutiny. The new investigation reveals that some of these groups have:
- Sent teams of lobbyists to Brussels to influence EU officials
- Challenged laws against discrimination and hate speech in European courts
- Supported campaigns against LGBTQ rights in the Czech Republic and Romania
- Funded a network of seemingly grassroots anti-abortion campaigns in Italy and Spain
- Deployed ambulance-chasing evangelists after tragedies such as the Grenfell Tower fire, and in the wake of terrorist attacks
Five of the conservative groups have previously been listed as partners of the World Congress of Families (WCF) network, which is meeting in Verona this week.
It’s not just European politicians who are concerned about them: These groups are controversial in America too. The WCF itself has been described as an “anti-LGBT hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors extremist movements and tracks this network’s increasing connections with the far right.
The SPLC explains that “viewing homosexuality as unbiblical or simply opposing same-sex marriage” is not enough to be categorized as a “hate group.” Groups on this list go further—claiming that homosexuality is dangerous, linked to pedophilia, and should be criminalized, disseminating “disparaging ‘facts’ about LGBT people that are simply untrue.”
This is, says SPLC, “no different to how white supremacists and nativist extremists propagate lies about black people and immigrants to make these communities seem like a danger to society.”
Joseph Grabowski, a WCF spokesperson, told openDemocracy: “We dispute entirely the premise [of the ‘hate group’ designation]... It’s an unfortunate slight for the countless Americans and the people around the world who hold the same views as we do on marriage, the nature of family and the right to life, that are part of the fabric of Christianity and also other traditional points of view,” he said.
The WCF is a project of the International Organization for the Family and the Illinois-based Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, whose directors include an ultra-conservative Spanish activist linked to the leader of the far-right Vox party.
Other directors include a close associate of a Russian oligarch who sponsored a 2014 “secret meeting” in Vienna with key French and Austrian far-right leaders—and an Italian politician facing corruption charges in his country.
Over the last decade, the WCF has hosted at least seven major meetings in Europe, attended by hundreds of religious right activists and a growing list of far-right politicians. Its 2017 meeting in Budapest was opened by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán.
Among the conveners of this week’s event in Verona is an Italian anti-abortion group linked to the neo-fascist Forza Nuova party, whose leader is also expected to attend the WCF.
Trump, the far-right and the Christian ‘legal army’
Two of the Trump-linked groups examined by openDemocracy are Christian-right legal powerhouses: Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the American Center for Law and Justice. Together, they have spent more than $20 million in Europe since 2008.
They don’t disclose their funders, but journalists have previously traced at least $1 million in grants to ADF from a foundation controlled by the billionaire family of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education secretary, and Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater mercenary firm.
ADF was co-founded by Alan Sears, a Christian-right leader who co-authored a book against “the homosexual agenda.” It is increasingly active internationally, including in Latin America. It supported a 2016 law in Belize making gay sex punishable with 10 years in jail.
This group tripled its annual spending in Europe between 2012 and 2016, to more than $2.6 million a year. It now has offices in Belgium, France, Austria, Switzerland and the UK, and spends hundreds of thousands of euros lobbying EU officials, according to separate transparency data.
Among its European projects, the group supported the defense of a notorious German activist who compared abortion to the Holocaust and accused specific doctors of murder.
This year, ADF International also co-hosted an event with the French group La Manif Pour Tous, which has been previously been linked to the far-right party Front National.
Ahead of the last European Parliament elections in 2014, La Manif Pour Tous launched a “Europe for Family” campaign that got 230 French candidates to sign a pledge opposing marriage equality, trans rights and sex education.
Speaking to openDemocracy, a spokesperson for ADF International said they are “exclusively privately funded by people from all over the world, who care about human rights” and that their activities include “advocating for freedom of speech in Europe.”
Asked for more detail about whom the group gives its money to, they said: “Since our advocacy involves court cases in countries where people are harassed, stigmatized, and even killed because of their religious convictions, it is our general policy not to disclose any recipients of funding in order to protect their personal safety and livelihoods.”
The second of the two Trump-linked groups, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), also operates through the courts. It was founded in 1990 by American televangelist Pat Robertson to oppose the American Civil Liberties Union.
The group’s current chief counsel is Jay Sekulow, a conservative talk-show host who has been described as “the top lawyer” on Donald Trump’s legal team in the Mueller inquiry.
This group has had an office in Strasbourg, France—home of the European Court of Human Rights—for more than 20 years, from where it has intervened in numerous cases on issues including same-sex marriage, abortion rights and artificial insemination.
The director of its Strasbourg outfit has also represented the Holy See at the Council of Europe, while its Moscow center has praised Putin’s laws banning “gay propaganda.”
Trump, Franklin Graham and U.S.-sanctioned Kremlin officials
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is another major spender. It is led by the famous evangelical preacher’s son, Franklin Graham, who said Satan is the architect of same-sex marriage and described Islam as an “evil and very wicked religion.”
Franklin Graham, who has supported Trump as someone who “defends the faith,” was in Russia earlier this month meeting with Kremlin officials under U.S. sanctions, on a trip that he said was personally signed off on by Vice President Michael Pence.
In 2018, his group organized festivals in England and Scotland amid protests from Muslim and LGBT rights groups. It also supports “rapid response chaplains” that target crises and have been accused of “chasing ambulances” and “exploiting tragedy.”
Its filings disclose more than $23 million spent in Europe through two different U.S. entities between 2008 and 2014—making it the largest spender in this region, of the American groups analyzed by openDemocracy.
However, 2014 is the latest year for which openDemocracy was able to find public documents for this group, which has offices in the UK, Germany, France and Spain, so the true extent of its influence in the region is not yet known.
Training Europeans, on the ‘front lines of the Culture War’
A number of groups spending smaller amounts of money appear to have increased their activities in Europe in recent years.
The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, which combines a conservative Christian worldview with free-market economics, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Koch family foundations.
This group spent more than $1.7 million in Europe since 2008, with its spending in the region rising in recent years (from around $166,000 in 2008 to almost $240,000 in 2017).
In Italy, it has collaborated with the Dignitatis Humanae Institute—of which Steve Bannon is a trustee—that has locally controversial plans to use a monastery outside Rome as a “gladiator school for culture warriors.”
Also on the list is the U.S. branch of the Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), an ultra-conservative transnational Catholic movement that says it’s “on the front lines of the Culture War, peacefully defending the values of tradition, family and private ownership.”
This group said it spent about $100,000 in Europe since 2010. Its filings don’t detail where this money went, but the TFP has been linked to a controversial think tank in Poland that has helped develop policies for far-right Law and Justice (PiS) politicians.
A ‘wake-up call’ to prevent ‘foreign interference’
Under U.S. law, the groups analyzed by openDemocracy are required to publicly disclose some information about their foreign spending, but not the names of their overseas recipients, details of what activities they fund—or the identities of their own funders.
The $50 million figure drawn from openDemocracy’s analysis is also a likely underestimation of the resources that U.S. conservatives have channeled into Europe in recent years.
Data for 2018 is not yet available; meanwhile, there are some important loopholes. Religious organizations registered as churches, for example, don’t need to file the same disclosures.
A number of other U.S. Christian conservative groups appear to be spending money in Europe, but do not disclose this on their U.S. filings—including the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, which has coordinated the WCF network.
Reacting to openDemocracy’s findings, German Green MEP Terry Reintke, who sits on equality-related committees at the European Parliament, said: “This extreme extent of financial support flooding the EU is shocking—especially with the European elections ahead of us.”
The SNP MEP Alyn Smith has said he and his fellow parliamentarians who signed Wednesday’s letter have called for the mobilization of “EU institutions and member states in preventing malign actors such as those identified in the investigation from interfering in the European Parliament elections in May—and beyond.”
Caroline Hickson, regional director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s European Network, said: “The scale of this meddling by U.S. extremists is shocking, but sadly no surprise to us. Every day European societies face concerted attacks by outside forces seeking to impose reproductive coercion… This is utterly at odds with the European values of democracy and human rights.”
“This is dark money coming into Europe to threaten human rights, and we’re not doing anything about it,” warned Neil Datta, secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development, describing the amounts of money involved as “staggering.”
“It took the Christian right 30 years to get to where they are now in the White House,” he said. “We knew a similar effort was happening in Europe, but this should be a wake-up call that this is happening even faster and on a grander scale than many experts could have ever imagined.”
This article was produced by openDemocracy in partnership with the Independent Media Institute.
Claire Provost is editor of openDemocracy 50.50 covering gender, sexuality and social justice. Previously she worked at the Guardian and was a fellow at the Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of London, Goldsmiths. Find her on Twitter: @claireprovost.
Mary Fitzgerald is editor-in-chief of openDemocracy. Before joining oD she worked for Avaaz, the global campaigning organization, and is a former senior editor of Prospect Magazine. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, New Statesman and others. Follow her on Twitter: @maryftz.
Additional reporting by Peter Geoghegan.
