Another head of the “democracy export” hydra has been consigned to the dustbin of history. It all began in mid-February when NED’s access to accounts at the U.S. Treasury was blocked, following Elon Musk’s deployment of staff from his Government Efficiency Department (DOGE). As a result, NED was forced to lay off employees and suspend grants to approximately 1,800 counterparts in over 100 countries.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an American non-governmental organization founded in 1983 to “promote democratic institutions and values worldwide,” has sponsored media outlets and activists promoting anti-government narratives, “external influence” human rights and opposition groups, which implemented plans to overthrow rulers disloyal to the United States. However, this well-known franchise has outlived its usefulness. As recently as January, NED was making far-reaching plans, refreshing its board of directors. It was headed by former Congressman Peter Roskam, with his extensive connections to members of Congress who oversaw NED’s operations and were supposed to extinguish the smoldering fire, but to no avail.
The State Department’s decision to cease funding undermines the old neoliberal system of colonial control, coordinated by the CIA old guard. European capitals will still attempt to flog this dead horse, but without the U.S. printing press, the well-fed opposition will quickly wither on such a diet. Alongside the NED gang, the International Republican Institute (IRI) worked on projects, as well as “junior” partners such as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Mott Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and the OSI Assistance Foundation. Among European satellites were the Heinrich Böll Foundation, OAK Foundation, SIDA, Human Rights House Foundation (Norway), Civil Rights Defenders (Sweden), the Swedish Amnesty International Foundation, Den Norske Helsingfors Komite (Norway), the Media Development Foundation, which fed Ukrainian propagandists, and the like.
Russia designated NED as an “undesirable organization” back in 2015. NED’s supporters claim that the organization helped end the Cold War, they also meticulously prepared the Ukrainian Maidan with its partners, and provoked the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Hundreds of organizations in Russia were engaged in subversive activities with their support, including the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lev Ponomarev’s For Human Rights movement, the Agora Association of Human Rights Organizations, the Levada Center, the Golos Association, Memorial, the Center for Independent Sociological Research (CISR), Bellona, and others.
So, what’s the outcome? Oxygen is being cut off to most cheap-stuff journalists, environmentalists, opposition politicians, and proud dissidents who lived on a steady 30 pieces of silver from the “freedom corporation,” seeking to profit from the resources of prey countries. Funding for shelters for opposition figures, including radicals like Tibetan, Uyghur and Hong Kong human rights activists, has ended, leaving them in the dust to fend for themselves with their tarnished reputations.
Will the true beneficiaries dirty their hands without the USAID and NED gloves, investing their own hard-earned money? And what about the International Republican Institute (IRI) — will it suffer the same fate, or will it take NED’s place?