Champagne Circuit

Righteous, authentic, grassroots pro-democracy non-profits deserve our support, but the champagne circuit non-profits that pay lip service to democracy while undermining it deserve our ridicule. Perhaps the best examples of high-level hypocrisy by NGOs is illustrated in the 2016 article Smart Power and the Human Rights Industrial Complex by Patrick Henningsen. While this article focuses on warmongers at the Pentagon in bed with Amnesty International, the model applies to all areas of public conflict where the interests of Wall Street and the White House need to manufacture consent through deception.