it's very common these days to allege that So? The reason that's very common is the increase public understanding that this is often happening. There are

it's very common these days to allege that So? The reason that's very common is the increase public understanding that this is often happening. There are several reasons fo this, including: leaks like Wikileaks, opening of Soviet-block achieves (e.g. Stasi), transparency laws that force more transparency on lobbying, a massive increase in the amount of lobbying which means more and more people work in this domain, increasing sensitivity to such issues (e.g. Facebook, Cambridge Analytica). Anecdata, but I've personally been involved with an NGO that a big international oil company tried to use to get oil drilling right. Countries like Saudi Arabia have everything to loose from de-carbonification, and we've seen that they are not shy to undermine anything that threatens the affluence of the ruling families. against the Left So? Is the left immune from being used and sponsored? It's well know for example that Germany supported not only Lenin's Bolsheviks, but also socialist rivals (Leon Trotsky, then a Menshevik, who published antiwar articles in Paris and then New York City). During the Napoleonic wars, France aided Irish rebels to undermine Britain, and Polish nationalists against Russia. Britain, in turn, backed Spanish guerrillas fighting French occupation forces. See e.g. [1]. whiff of McCarthyism The funny thing is that the original McCarthyite accusations were (in some sense) not without evidence. Maybe McCarthy looked at the wrong people, but there was Soviet subversion, up to the highest levels of the US government (e.g. Harry Dexter White [2]) famous for tricking John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton Woods Conference. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/was-lenin-a-german-agent.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/was-lenin-a-germa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White