Religious astroturfing

Astroturfing is the attempt to create an impression of widespread grassroots support for a policy, individual, or product, where such support is not common. This is often manifest online and can take the form of multiple identities and, occasionally, fake pressure groups or organisations. These are used to mislead the public into believing that the position of the astroturfer is the commonly held view¹. A common practice of the astroturfer is to set up a front organisation that is purported to represent one agenda whereas in reality it serves another party or interest group. The latter party or group is often completely hidden or is rarely mentioned².

As you would expect, organisations like the CIA use front organisations to hide their activities². In Australia we have several organisations who act as fronts for political organisations. The Australian Environment Foundation is a front group for the Institute of Public Affairs³, a climate change denying organisation funded by big mining companies and overseas climate change denying companies and organisations; much of their funding is secret. The Bennelong Society is named after “a famous Indigenous Australian — one of the Wangal people — who had a close relationship with the early colonists”, and despite being named after an Aboriginal, the organisation is against land rights and self-determination for Aboriginal people⁴. Timber Communities Australia is a national front group funded by logging companies and the lobbying organisation the National Association of Forest Industries. When it was originally formed the organisation had the gall to call itself the ‘Forest Protection Society’. It apparently decided this might be going a bit too far⁵.

There are numerous religious organisations who use fronts as well. The church of Scientology uses the Citizens Commission on Human Rights to hammer the psychiatry profession. The Family Council of Queensland is a lobbying organisation which promotes “family values” and aims to “strengthen marriage and the family unit in society”. Of course, all of its members are religious organisations, and include the Australian Family Association, Salvation Army, the Catholic Church and funnily, the Endeavour Forum, which was set up to counter feminism⁶. The Australian Family Association (AFA) itself is a front group for the ultra-conservative National Civic Council, and acts as a lobby group for social conservatism. Like many of these front groups AFA claim that they represent the interests of the majority of Australian families. This is largely equine ordure as it has been estimated that its membership runs to less than 3,000⁷.

In Australia you can bet that when an organisation has the word ‘family’ in it, it is backed by one or more churches or other religious organisations. This is true of Family Voice Australia. Up until 2008, they were known as the Festival of Light. They are a conservative Christian association, opposed to same-sex marriage, voluntary euthanasia, decriminalisation of marijuana, decriminalisation of sex work, decriminalisation of abortion, and just about any other advance in society. They recently spat the dummy over the full frontal male nudity in Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell satirical show on the ABC on Wednesday, June 2, 2021. The show started with a warning that there would be coarse language and nudity, and the offending section was a skit about defamation laws and censorship. Yet Family Voice Australia stated, under the heading “ABC is now morally bankrupt”, that “The TV show Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell surprised viewers last night with a glimpse of male nudity”. How could you be surprised, when there was a warning at the beginning of the show? Then bizarrely they claimed “Despite the episode’s rating as M, with a warning for coarse language and nudity, it does nothing for families with children watching the show in good faith and expecting a standard of viewing that is acceptable to all mum [sic] and dads”⁸. Given that there was a nudity warning, one wonders what people were thinking if they were so outraged at nudity, when they decided to watch it. Was it so that they could be outraged?

It is funny that these religious nutters are outraged by the sight of a todger, trouser snake, or bed flute, when almost half the population has one, while they campaign for the religious freedom bill which would entrench religious bigotry^9,10, campaign for immunity from vilification law suits¹⁰, campaign against voluntary euthanasia¹⁰, against hormone treatment for children who require it¹⁰, and against abortion. However, you never hear them speak up about the mistreatment of asylum seekers, the aged, or the disabled. I have never heard groups like Family Voice Australia speak out against the over three years of incarceration of two little girls on Christmas Island. The youngest, Tharunicaa, is almost four and has spent the vast majority of her life in immigration detention, while her elder sister Kopika has spent over half her life there¹¹. These religious sex-obsessed people complain about seeing a bloke’s dick on television, but not about the treatment of these little girls. That epitomises the sickening priorities of the religious and makes me long for the complete disappearance of religion from the planet. 

Sources

1. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/what-is-astroturfing
2. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Front_groups
3. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Australian_Environment_Foundation
4. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bennelong_Society
5. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Timber_Communities_Australia
6. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Family_Council_of_Queensland
7. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Australian_Family_Association
8. https://www.facebook.com/familyvoiceaustralia/
9. https://blotreport.com/2019/09/16/entrenching-religious-privilege/
10. https://familyvoice.org.au/campaigns
11. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/these-two-children-have-now-been-in-australian-immigration-detention-for-three-years