Nafeez Ahmed reports on the background of the controversial broadcaster whose think tank has been funded by pro-Donald Trump donors
LBC radio host Maajid Nawaz, chairman of the counter-extremism think tank, the Quilliam Foundation, is increasingly steeping himself in pro-Donald Trump conspiracy theories circulated by far-right and white nationalist groups – including supporters of the baseless QAnon.
But, while many have expressed surprise at how a former counter-extremism advisor to David Cameron could end up falling for the increasingly deranged ramblings of the alt-right, Nawaz’s embrace of its ethos was entirely predictable given that, for most of the past decade, the Quilliam Foundation has been supported by pro-Trump Republican donors through whom it has received some $3 million of ‘dark money’.
In the US, ‘dark money’ refers to funds donated legally to politically-active non-profit organisations which are not required by law to disclose their donors. ‘Dark money’ is not illegal money but its sources and channels are opaque.
From David Icke to Mein Kampf
Nawaz’s latest ‘shock jock’ move was to join Monaco-based millionaire Simon Dolan and others as a signatory to an open letter to the FBI and MI5 titled ‘The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Lockdown Fraud’.
Dolan, whose lawsuit against the lockdown was thrown out of the High Court and Court of Appeal, is the executive producer of Renegade, a feature film promoting its co-producer – the notorious conspiracy theorist David Icke.
A co-signatory to the letter, Stacey Rudin, writes for the American Institute for Economic Research, the Koch-funded think tank which sponsored the discredited ‘herd immunity’ Great Barrington Declaration on the Coronavirus pandemic. In December, she approvingly tweeted out an extract on “the big lie” from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
In response, one of her followers tweeted: “A teacher at school told me he when he was on an exchange visit to Germany after WW2 the lady said even then ‘but there must have been some problem with the Jews… otherwise they would not have persecuted them…’”
Political Patronage
Perhaps Maajid Nawaz would argue that he had no idea of Rudin’s seeming admiration for Hitler – Byline Times contacted him, but he did not respond to any requests for comment.
Regardless, his descent into the murky pit of alt-right conspiracy theory does not come out of the blue. Nawaz’s Quilliam Foundation receives the bulk of its funding through a corporate vehicle in the US, controlled by Republican Party surrogates and donors since 2011. Corporate records examined by Byline Times confirm that this patronage continues until today, revealing that Quilliam operates under the influence of the pro-Trump lobby – through which the think tank has been funded to the tune of some $2.9 million up to 2017.
In 2011, the Quilliam Foundation established a US non-profit entity based out of the same office as Gen Next Inc. – a non-profit in California which runs a political action committee that donates primarily to the Republican Party. One of Maajid Nawaz’s founding co-directors of Quilliam’s US branch was Chad Sweet, a former presidential campaign chair for Senator Ted Cruz – who has been among the loudest proponents of pro-Trump election conspiracy theories.
Sweet left Quilliam in 2013, but Gen Next CEO Michael Davidson remains a director with Nawaz himself as principal officer.
Davidson is a former political director of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County who previously served as co-chair of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Statewide Leadership Committee when he was California Governor. When Davidson stood as a candidate for chairman of the College Republican National Convention, he was endorsed by notorious racist and anti-Semite Ann Coulter, who hailed him as a pioneer of “the new McCarthyism”.
Gen Next Inc.’s board of directors also includes long-time Republican donor Yuri Vanetik, the national finance co-chair of the Republican Party of New York, who has held key financial leadership positions with the Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee, Republican Governors Association and the California GOP.
Vanetik has direct ties to the Trump administration. In 2016, he was listed as a major donor on the Great America political action committee, the largest ‘super PAC’ in support of Trump’s presidential candidacy.
Previously, Vanetik served as the California co-chair and all American vice chair for the presidential campaign of Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani – who spearheaded Trump’s failed legal challenges to Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Vanetik has a murky background as a lobbyist for foreign interests. When he first registered as a foreign agent, he had identified himself as vice president of Medowood Management, LLC. According to Washington news agency McClatchy DC, Medowood had made payments totalling $25,000 to sub-contractor Potomac International Partners, a Washington lobby run by Mark Cowan, a member of the Trump transition team and former CIA officer. Potomac’s own filings indicated that its lobbying