Thor Halvorssen

Thor Halvorssen  link Facebook Twitter (Regime change,activist,spook?)
Born	March 9, 1976 Venezuela
Nationality	Venezuelan
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania
Venezuelan regime change political activist

Thor Halvorssen is a Venezuela-born political activist resident in Norway. He is best known as the founder and CEO of the Human Rights Foundation, where he is listed as the lone staff member. The Oslo Freedom Forum is also his brainchild, which he has sought to brand as “a Davos for human rights.”

Halvorssen is a right-wing activist, film producer and scion of Venezuela’s moneyed elite whose years of involvement in ultra-conservative politics enabled him to corral a small coterie of mostly far-right moneymen into bankrolling his Human Rights Foundation.

Secret funding

In 2010, the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen investigated what it referred to as Thor Halvorssen’s “secret funding,” which it suspected was “associated with the right side of the United States.” Halvorssen told reporter Sarah Sorheim: “I receive money from a variety of different people and environments. But that does not mean I necessarily support their political views.”

In 2013, the Electronic Intifada obtained Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 990 forms filed by the Human Rights Foundation that include previously undisclosed information about its donors.

The forms show that the Human Rights Foundation received approximately $600,000 in donations from the Donors Capital Fund from 2007 through 2011. Based in Northern Virginia, Donors Capital Fund is essentially a slush fund for the cadre of rightist donors who bankroll the conservative movement.

The Electronic Intifada’s analysis of IRS filings by Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust shows that the Human Rights Foundation received $764,950 from 2005 through 2011 from Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust, all but about $5,000 coming through the Donors Capital Fund.

Other US donors to Halvorssen's groups were revealed to include Richard Mellon Scaife and Peter Thiel.

"Smear campaign"

In July 2017, Halvorssen testified to the US Senate Judiciary Committee that he was the target of a "smear campaign" by Fusion GPS.

2025 Nobel Peace Prize

On 17 December 2025, The Grayzone reported:

The awarding of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to a figure as clearly unqualified as Maria Corina Machado – and in apparent violation of Swedish law – raised questions about whether the Nobel Committee had been influenced by powerful outside interests. Machado’s nomination for the prize by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had an undeniable impact on the decision, as the Nobel ceremony serves as a central channel of Norwegian soft power. But inside Oslo, a political powerbroker determined to return to power in his family’s native Venezuela may have also played a role in swinging votes for Machado.

He is Thor Halvorssen Jr., the son of a CIA asset and wealthy Venezuelan aristocrat who held positions in neoliberal Venezuelan governments before the election of Hugo Chavez. Halvorssen is also the first cousin of Leopoldo Lopez, the author of several military coups against Chavez and Maduro, and the founder of the US government-sponsored 'Popular Will' party which has traditionally led the way for the radical opposition.

As the founder of the Oslo Freedom Forum, a self-proclaimed human rights group which openly advocates for toppling governments targeted by the West, Halvorssen presides over a network of Western-backed regime change activists. At the 2024 Oslo Freedom Forum, Halvorssen played host to Machado, who clamoured for Maduro’s removal through a video link-up from Venezuela, where she was supposedly “in hiding.” This year’s Forum featured Machado’s top advisor, the Spain-based Pedro Uchuruttu, as well as her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa. When the Nobel Committee awarded Machado with its peace prize in October, the Oslo Freedom Forum issued a press release celebrating the decision for “changing the dynamics” in Venezuela.