Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF) is a series of global conferences run by the New York–based non-profit Human Rights Foundation under the slogan “Challenging Power”. The forum aims to bring together notable people, including former heads of state, winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, prisoners of conscience, as well as of other public figures in order to network and exchange ideas about human rights and exposing dictatorships.

  • gnuhaut@lemmy.mlEnglish
    12·
    5 months ago

    https://electronicintifada.net/content/oslo-freedom-forum-founders-ties-islamophobes-who-inspired-mass-killer-anders-breivik/12451

    Who is Halvorssen? He is best known as the founder and CEO of the Human Rights Foundation, where he is listed as the lone staff member. The Oslo Freedom Forum is his brainchild, a confab he has sought to brand as “a Davos for human rights.”

    Founder and only staff member is this son of a Venezuelan oligarch. Sounds like a completely normal human rights group.

    The Electronic Intifada has obtained Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 990 forms filed by the Human Rights Foundation that include previously undisclosed information about its donors.

    The forms show that the Human Rights Foundation received approximately $600,000 in donations from the Donors Capital Fund from 2007 through 2011. Based in Northern Virginia, Donors Capital Fund is essentially a slush fund for the cadre of rightist donors who bankroll the conservative movement.

    Don’t disclose all their big donors. Kinda sus.

    “Since the fund handles money from multiple donors and donors names aren’t disclosed, contributions made through the Donors Capital Fund are difficult to trace,” the Center for American Progress noted in its 2011 landmark report “Fear, Inc.” “Potential donors are required to open a minimum $1 million account to utilize the fund’s services.”

    In 2009, Donors Capital Fund channeled $60 million to various conservative causes and from 2009 through 2011 a whopping $21,318,600 “to groups promoting Islamophobia,” according to the Center for American Progress.

    Peter Thiel is also one of the big donors.

    But a look at the early stages of Halvorssen’s career, which he spent as a conservative operative combating gay rights initiatives, feminism and multiculturalism on US college campuses, suggests otherwise.

    That checks out.

    • makeasnek@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      3·
      5 months ago

      Aah yes, the electronic intifada, such an excellent, neutral source for reporting.

      Don’t disclose all their big donors

      Peter Thiel is also one of the big donors.

      Many orgs don’t disclose donors, particularly those working on human rights. Imagine you are a rich person in a dictatorship who wants to improve human rights in your country, do you want your name listed on the donor registry for Amnesty International? Probably not. Amnesty, btw, sponsors the freedom forum as well alongside the city of Oslo. So Either Amnesty is in on this 4D chess you’re seeing where the far right is somehow using human rights as a cover to… give us all more privacy or something, or maybe Amnesty did their due diligence and concluded that this org is worth working with.

      The article states that “Who is Halvorssen? He is best known as the founder and CEO of the Human Rights Foundation, where he is listed as the lone staff member.”, yet their site lists over a dozen people. So that’s just a clearly factually inaccurate statement right there, makes me question the validity of the entire thing if they can’t get something that simple correct. https://hrf.org/about/team/

      “Halvorssen is the scion of an oligarchic Venezuelan family closely linked to the political opposition that formed against recently deceased former President Hugo Chavez”

      Hmm… I wonder if living under an autocrat might have made him care about human rights and free expression.

      Believe it or not, people on the “far right” can care about human rights too, and can donate to human rights organizations, and that’s ok. Human rights is an issue that cuts across many different political ideologies. And these organizations can build tools and infrastructure to support human rights all around the globe, and do. We shouldn’t be cancelling organizations just because they got money from somebody we disagree with or even detest. What they actually do with that money should be what matters, something your accusations against this org are completely devoid of because they are actually doing good things. What they’re actually doing is advancing the cause of human rights globally.

      • gnuhaut@lemmy.mlEnglish
        02·
        5 months ago

        So that’s just a clearly factually inaccurate statement right there, makes me question the validity of the entire thing if they can’t get something that simple correct.

        It is not. The article is from 2013. Back then, that linked worked and shows exactly what the article is saying: he’s the only staff member listed. That was 8 years after the founding btw.

        And since the guy is clearly rich and has lots of political connections, you’d figure he’d have sued EF by now if there was anything incorrect in that article.

        Oh you launched into a whole defense of working with the far-right. Figures.

        Believe it or not, people on the “far right” can care about human rights too

        Yeah they care about human rights when they can weaponize them to pressure or topple governments that resist exploitation. Which is what the Oslo Freedom Forum is all about.

        Hmm… I wonder if living under an autocrat might have made him care about human rights and free expression.

        That or he’s pissed that they took his father’s Telco empire, and now he wants to topple the Venezuelan government and get his “birthright” back. We may never know.

        Also you avoided the whole part of in the article about what he was up to before the HRF. That guy was clearly an activist conservative bigot at the very least, and so he naturally evolved into a Mr. Human Rights Guy. He doesn’t just take money from far-right dipshits, he himself is a reactionary.