Recently, several liberal media and educational organizations, including NowThis, Vox, and TED Talks, quietly partnered with the Qatari government to produce a debate series aimed at Americans called “Doha Debates.” The series, featuring panel discussions filmed before a live audience in a slickly appointed studio and promoted online, is funded by the regime-controlled Qatar Foundation.
The debate series is presented as highbrow intellectual engagement with matters of deep concern to westerners, such as the future of capitalism and democracy. But its real mission is to help create a smokescreen that the Qatari government hopes will obscure some of the most anti-progressive domestic and foreign policies in the world. Doha Debates is the latest cunning public relations move by an illiberal regime that has been able to ingratiate itself to Western liberal elites with remarkable ease.
