see previous discussion

important paragraphs from this latest piece:

it's basically a part of the US government

According to its financial report, in the fiscal year that ended in 2019, Freedom House raised $48 million. Of that, $45 million, or 94%, came from the American government. Its current President is Morton Abramowitz, a lifelong American diplomat. The Chair of the Board is Michael Chertoff, who was Secretary of Homeland Security under the second Bush.

Looking at the 12 members of the Executive Board, and just going off their bios on the Freedom House website, it appears that 6 have had jobs for the federal government, with at least one other appearing to have worked as a government contractor.

Has always supported US foreign policy

Freedom House has represented the American foreign policy establishment as long as it has existed. According to its own website, the organization at its founding in 1941 had among its leaders Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie, the Republican who lost to FDR in 1940. So imagine a “non-governmental organization” today being founded by an alliance of Jill Biden and Donald Trump.

After advocating for American entry into World War II, Freedom House supported the Cold War. Although the website mentions these facts, it tends to downplay or ignore its more recent history, which has involved cheerleading for disastrous wars in the Middle East.

The "science" of Freedom House is stupid

How does one make these more fine grained, largely subjective judgments? You perhaps won’t be surprised to learn that Freedom House’s democracy scores reflect the political views of its staff, who have created a system in which countries are punished for adopting conservative policy positions and being enemies of the United States, while ignoring America’s own domestic spying and prosecution of journalists. [assange]

Sweden, for example, is one of only three countries to receive a perfect score of 100. This is despite having hate speech laws, which have in the past been used to arrest Christian preachers for their interpretation of the Bible. Norway, another “perfect democracy,” in 2020 expanded its hate speech laws to cover gender identity, with punishments of up to three years in prison for violators.

s. Poland, for example, has tried to make judges appointed through elected officials, rather than having the judiciary in effect be a closed guild ... is arguably more “democratic” than the alternative.

Whatever else one can say about Hungary and Poland, you will in the last decade find fewer examples of people in those nations being arrested for speech alone than you will in countries like Sweden, France, and Germany. “Whether a country arrests people for speech” seems like it could be a clear criterion an organization interested in democracy can use, but Freedom House prefers a vague points system that allows it to penalize countries for everything it doesn’t like.