Demos

Demos was founded in 1993 by former Marxism Today editors Julia Middleton, Martin Jacques, and Geoff Mulgan. The organization promotes policies consistent with those of al-Qaeda and the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and encourages state suppression of all public opposition to these policies.

Membership

Founders

Demos was founded in 1993 by editors of Marxism Today and their supporters.

• Stephen B. Heintz - Founding president. President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a supporter of the BDS movement. Heintz is also a board member of the EastWest Institute and the Leadership Group on U.S.-Muslim Engagement and an attendee of the US-Islamic World Forum.
• Julia Middleton - Wife of Rupert Middleton of The Industrial Society. Co-founder of the Impetus Trust and member of the Media Standards Trust. Employed in the office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
• Martin Jacques
• Geoff Mulgan - first director. CEO of Nesta and board member of Labs for Systems Change.
• Ian Hargreaves - Member of the Runnymede Trust and the Media Standards Trust.

UK

Staff

• Polly Mackenzie - Chief Executive. Director of Policy to the Deputy Prime Minister from 2010-15.
• Maeve Thompson - Director of External Affairs.
• Alex Krasodomski-Jones - Director, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media
• Carl Miller - Research Director, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media. Member of Microsoft's Voices for Civility.
• Josh Smith - Senior Researcher, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media and Chief Technical Officer, Demos
• Laurence Cubbon - Chief of Staff & Senior Operations Officer
• Izzy Little - Digital Production and Events Officer
• Sacha Hilhorst - Senior Researcher
• Ben Glover - Senior Researcher
• Asli Atay - Researcher
• Elliot Jones - Researcher
• Ellen Judson - Researcher
• Rose Lasko-Skinner - Researcher
• Tessa van Rens - Researcher
• David Weir - Technology Director, CASM. Prof David Weir is a Professor of Computer Science and co-director of the Text Analysis Group (taglaboratory.org).
• Jeremy Reffin - Implementation Director, CASM. Jeremy is co-director of the Text Analysis Group (taglaboratory.org) at the University of Sussex. He was formerly a partner at Apax Partners
• Andrew Gloag - Research Assistant
• Bibi Nubir - Finance and Administrative Assistant
• Ava Berry - Research Assistant. Ava graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2017 with an MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation. Prior to joining Demos she worked in the childcare sector and interned for the International Drug Policy Consortium. She also volunteers for the 50:50 Parliament campaign
• Jamie Bartlett - Senior Fellow. He led the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos for 10 years until December 2018.
• Charles Seaford - Senior Fellow. Charles leads the Power and Institutions programme at Demos. He is a Co-Investigator at the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, an ESRC funded research consortium and a Director of Represent Us, a campaigning group.

Associates and Contributors

• Tom Pollard - Associate
• Rose Acton - Associate

Trustees:

• Dame Julie Mellor DBE - Chair of the Young Foundation and the Federation of Industry Sector Skills and Standards. She is a Trustee of Involve, the public participation charity.
• Alessandra Buonfino
• Ian Corfield - Chief Commercial Officer at New Day
• Nick Claydon - CEO of Teneo
• Matt Nixon
• Neil Sherlock

USA

Board:

• Heather McGhee - board member of Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Indivisible
• Amelia Warren Tyagi - chair
• Amy Hanauer - Vice chair
• Ruth Wooden - Treasurer
• Connie Cagampang Heller - Secretary. Runs the Groundswell Fund with Jonathan Heller of Center for Community Change.
• Mark Alexander
• Janet Dewart Bell of the Women's Media Center
• Rev Janet McCune Edwards
• Paul Egerman - member of American Bridge 21st Century and Barack Obama's inaugural committee
• Robert M. Franklin Jr.
• Joshua Fryday
• Gina Glantz - Vice president of Oxfam America Action Fund
• Van Jones - MIT Media Lab Director's Fellow. Co-founder of Color of Change. Member of Democracy Alliance.
• Mary Mountcastle
• Rashad Robinson - Co-founder of Color of Change
• Janet Shenk
• Joseph Dinorcia - VP Administration / CFO
• Brenda Wright - VP Legal Strategy
• Tamara Draught - VP Policy and Research
• Lucy Mayo - Senior VP Operations
• Tori O'Neal-McElrath - VP External Affairs. Director of institutional advancement at Center for Community Change.
• Jodeen Olguin-Tayler - VP Policy and Strategic Partnership
• Kalin Drzewiecki-Sezer - Dir Admin and Budget
• Lewis Daly - Dir Policy and Research
• Lucien Rothenstein - Deputy dir, political affairs and support strat
• Lisa Danetz - Legal dir

Significant payments:

• $327k to Third Sector New England
• $156k to SKDKnickerbocker LLC

Others of note

• Jonathan Birdwell - Head of Policy and Research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue since September 2015. Previously head of the Citizenship and Political Participation program at Demos.
• Spencer Overton - Member of the National Advisory Committee of The Democracy Fund of Pierre Omidyar. Former board member of Demos, Common Cause, The Center for Responsive Politics, and the American Constitution Society of the Israel Policy Forum's David Halperin, son of Morton Halperin.
• Sarah Campbell Kennedy - Head of Operations at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue since March 2015. Head of Partnerships & Events at Demos from October 2010 - January 2012.
• Tom Bentley - Executive director of Demos as of 2003.

Common Purpose

Common Purpose was founded by Demos co-founder Julia Middleton. Sir David Bell formerly served as chairman.

Leadership:

• Julia Middleton of Demos
• Charles Manby of Goldman Sachs
• Anthony Salz of NM Rothschild, vice chair of the BBC Board of Governors, and board member of the Department for Education
• David Loyn of the BBC
• Sir Brandon Gough - Chancellor of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Chair of the Common Purpose Charitable Trust

Supporters include:

• Robert Peston, business editor of BBC News
• Cressida Dick of the London Metropolitan Police
• Baroness Zahida Mansoor was a Regional Director for Common Purpose from 1990-1996.

Max Farquar names the "Common Purpose Rogues Gallery" as also including:

• Tony Blair, Prime Minister 1997-2007
• Gordon Brown, Prime Minister 2007-2010
• David Cameron, Prime Minister 2010-2016
• John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister 1997-2007
• Lord Peter Mandelson, Lord President of the Council 2009-2010 and member of TerraMar
• Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister 2010-2015 and Lord President of the Council 2010-2015
• Caroline Duckworth, managing director of Common Purpose
• Suzi Leather of the Charity Commission
• Mark Thompson of the British Broadcasting Corporation
• Robert Peston, business editor of BBC News
• Brandon Gough
• Hugh Orde, President of Association of Chief Police Officers
• Francis Maude

Graduates are alleged to include:

• David Cameron
• Nick Clegg
• Gordon Brown
• Jonathan Porritt - chairman of Forum for the Future
• Barack Obama

Media Standards Trust

The Media Standards Trust tried to usurp and replace the authority of the Press Complaints Commission as the governing body of all media in the UK by using a bogus research report and fake news reports in the Guardian to buff up their credentials. They were given unusually favorable coverage by the BBC.

• David Bell - chairman of the Financial Times, chair of the steering committee for the National Equality Standard
• Julia Middleton - of Demos, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Common Purpose
• Helena Kennedy - President of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and board member of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue
• Albert Scardino - Executive editor of The Guardian 2002-2004

Activities

Suppressing criticism of Islam

Runnymede Trust

Ian Hargreaves was a member of the Runnymede Trust which called for opposition to Islamophobia, a term developed by an American branch of al-Qaeda, the International Institute for Islamic Thought, to refer to all opposition to al-Qaeda.

National Security and Human Rights Campaign

Demos is among the participants in the Open Society Institute's National Security and Human Rights (NSHR) Campaign, a project of the George Soros organization and Muslim Advocates to reduce public support for fighting al-Qaeda.

International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence

Jonathan Birdwell of Demos was among the speakers at the release of the report A Neo-Nationalist Movement: The English Defense League and Europe's Counter-Jihad Movement which describes all opposition to Muslim jihad as "violent" and "right-wing", along with all support for British law and culture.

Speakers

• James Brokenshire MP, Home Office Minister for Crime and Security - delivered keynote speech
• Ian Bradshaw, Tackling Extremism & Hate Crime Division, DCLG,
• Matthew Collins, Hope not Hate
• Roger Griffin, Oxford Brookes University
• Jonathan Birdwell, Demos
• Maria Margaronis, The Nation
• Magnus Ranstorp, Swedish National Defence College
• Vidhya Ramalingam, Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Moderators:

• Professor Peter Neumann
• Dr. John Bew of ICSR.

Partners:

• Community Security Trust (CST)
• the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies (CATS)
• Swedish National Defence College

City of London

Demos works for the mayor of London to identify social media users who have negative opinions about Islam.

Anti-Islamic Content on Twitter

This analysis was presented at the Mayor of London's Policing and Crime Summit on Monday 24 April, 2017.

Over a year, Demos' researchers detected 143,920 Tweets sent from the UK considered to be derogatory and anti-Islamic - this is about 393 a day. These Tweets were sent from over 47,000 different users, and fell into a number of different categories - from directed insults to broader political statements.

Association with Qatar

Former Common Purpose chairman Sir David Bell is a trustee of Silatech, a project of Sheikha Moza bint Nasser of Qatar and one of the two Civil Society partners of the UN Alliance of Civilizations

Association with Russia

Demos trustee Nick Claydon is CEO of Teneo which operates Techsnabexport as a joint venture with the Russian state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom. George Webb describes Techsnabexport, also known as TENEX, as "Basically, ex-KGB agents..."

Copyright claim abuse

In 2009 Common Purpose accused critical website CPExposed.com of copyright infringement to persuade Hostgator to disable the site.

#ReclaimTheInternet

Demos provided research to support the #ReclaimTheInternet campaign promoted by Yvette Cooper, Maria Miller, Stella Creasy, Jo Swinson and Jess Phillips.

Firing of Matt Bruenig

Demos fired political analyst Matt Bruenig for insulting Neera Tanden, the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress.

Five-Alarm Fire letter

Heather McGhee and Rashad Robinson were among 22 organizations of the Five-Alarm Fire letter denouncing Donald Trump. Co-signatories included Linda Sarsour.

Social Transformation Project

Demos is among the members of the Social Transformation Project.

Indivisible

• Bill Dempsey - Chief Financial Officer, SEIU
• Christie George - Director, New Media Ventures
• Leah Greenberg - Co-Executive Director, Indivisible Project
• Marielena Hincapié - Executive Director, National Immigration Law Center
• Ezra Levin - Co-Executive Director, Indivisible Project
• Heather McGhee - President, Demos
• Tom Perriello - CEO of Win Virginia and board member of Avaaz

Starbucks

The Starbucks coffee chain hired Demos, the Anti-Defamation League, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the NAACP to give mandatory racial bias training to all employees.

Fabian Society, Tavistock, and Chatham House

James Higham associates Demos with the Tavistock Institute, the Fabian Society, and Chatham House, alleges that "The Fabian Society literally controls the European Union", and notes that early Fabian Society members Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb were Soviet agents.

Arab Spring

Avaaz provided propaganda support for the NATO invasion of Libya in 2011 and the Islamist side of the civil war in Syria.

Suspicious Deaths

David Hawkins of Hawk's Cafe accused Cressida Dick of using Crown Agents' Sisters and ADT Security to assassinate Gareth Williams in 2010.

A member of Friends of the Earth assassinated Pim Fortuyn in 2002 for opposing Muslim immigration into Europe. Friends of the Earth participated in the 2004 Critical Lawyers Conference where Helena Kennedy of the Media Standards Trust was a speaker, and has published an essay by Nidhi Tandon of Networked Intelligence who wrote in support of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development during a trip to the United Nations by Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian.

Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Trustees as of 2016

• Steven C. Rockefeller
• Anne Bartley
• Vali Nasr
• R. Nicholas Burns - member of Council on Foreign Relations and National Security Action, board member of Belfer Center at Harvard University, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President George W. Bush
• Valerie Rockefeller
• Joseph A. Pierson
• Miranda M. Kaiser
• Wendy Gordon Rockefeller
• Justin Rockefeller
• Arlene Shuler
• Marsha Simms
• Kavita Ramdas of Women Have Wings and the Ford Foundation
• Daniel Levy - Co-founder of J Street, co-director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation
• Peter O'Neill
• Hugh Lawson
• Majorie Pillsbury
• Jennifer Nolan
• Ryan Crocker
• Heather McGhee
• Wyatt Rockefeller

Officers:

• Stephen Heintz
• Elizabeth C. Campbell
• Geraldine Watson
• Nancy Muirhead
• Judy A. Clark

Highest paid employees

• Michael Northrup
• Ben Rodriguez-Cubenas
• Shenyu Belsky
• Haki Abazi - director of the Kosovo office of the East West Management Institute
• Ariadne Papagapitos

Highest paid contractors

• Perella Weinberg Partners
• Greenrock Corporation
• Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler
• Investure, LLC
• Ventucom, LLC

Major donors

• David Rockefeller - $1.388m
• Climateworks Foundation - $1m

People of Note

• Judy Belk - President and CEO of the California Wellness Foundation, Director of Public Affairs for the Association of Bay Area Governments, board member of Surdna Foundation, Ms. Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union, and the California Endowment.

Muslim migration

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is among the backers of the European Stability Initiative, a project to promote mass Muslim migration to Europe as in the strategic war plan of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad of al-Qaeda.

Radical Feminism

Hollywood director Aaron Russo claims that Nick Rockefeller took credit for inventing the Women's Liberation movement.

Rockefeller also told Russo that he would see soldiers looking in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan for Osama bin Laden and that there would be an "Endless war on terror where there's no real enemy and the whole thing is a giant hoax," so that "the government could take over the American people," according to Russo, who said that Rockefeller was cynically laughing and joking as he made the astounding prediction.

In a later conversation, Rockefeller asked Russo what he thought women's liberation was about. Russo's response that he thought it was about the right to work and receive equal pay as men, just as they had won the right to vote, caused Rockefeller to laughingly retort, "You're an idiot! Let me tell you what that was about, we the Rockefeller's funded that, we funded women's lib, we're the one's who got all of the newspapers and television - the Rockefeller Foundation."

Rockefeller told Russo of two primary reasons why the elite bankrolled women's lib, one because before women's lib the bankers couldn't tax half the population and two because it allowed them to get children in school at an earlier age, enabling them to be indoctrinated into accepting the state as the primary family, breaking up the traditional family model.

Media Relationships

BBC

• Anthony Salz - the vice chair of the BBC Board of Governors, among the leaders of Common Purpose
• David Loyn - BBC foreign correspondant, among the leaders of Common Purpose
• Robert Peston - business editor of BBC News, alleged supporter of Common Purpose

The Guardian

The Guardian's former executive editor Albert Scardino (2002-2004) is a member of Media Standards Trust.

The Economist

Albert Scardino's wife Marjorie Scardino was President of The Economist from 1997-2002.

Financial Times

Financial Times chairman David Bell is a member of the Media Standards Trust.

Pearson

Marjorie Scardino was CEO of Pearson from 1997-2002.

Buzzfeed

Rockefeller Brothers Fund vice president Adam Wolfensohn is on the board of the Harmony Institute with Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti. The Harmony Institute is hosted at Eyebeam which was hosted at The New School.

Huffington Post

Jonah Peretti is a co-founder of the Huffington Post with Ken Lerer and Eric Hippeau of Lerer Ventures.

4chan

Lerer Ventures hired 4chan owner Christopher Poole in 2010.

Al Jazeera

The Arabic edition of Huffington Post is managed by Wadah Khanfar, the former manager of Qatar state television Al Jazeera and a member of the International Crisis Group.

MacArthur Foundation

Marjorie Scardino is chair of the MacArthur Foundation which hosts the Data+Society Research Group of Joi Ito, director of MIT Media Lab.

New York Times

Joi Ito is a member of the board of the New York Times.

Sony

Joi Ito is a member of the board of Sony.

Wikipedia

Joi Ito's sister Mimi Ito is on the board of Wikipedia.

Twitter

Marjorie Scardino is a board member of Twitter.

Multimedia