From top: Broadcaster Sean Moncrieff; Eamonn Kelly
There is no conclusive proof that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. In fact, every year we are offered more and more evidence that he actually does exist. If not, where are all those gifts coming from?
That, right there, is the stupidity of corporate climate denial that the mainstream media are selling on their behalf, and that people are willingly buying for fear of being seen as “negative” or a “downer”; despite the fact that their own children are already making life decisions in preparation for the coming apocalypse.
If you think that’s hyperbole, you haven’t been paying attention.
Propaganda Blitz
There was a book published by Pluto Press in 2018 called “Propaganda Blitz: How the corporate media distort reality”.
The book’s thesis was that mainstream liberal media was acting, either knowingly or unwittingly, as an information/propaganda arm of the corporate world, which is continuing to pursue the destructive logic of consumer capitalism, despite the fact that this economic system is responsible for ongoing and measurable planetary destruction.
We have since learned that there are maybe 200 hundred corporations in the world responsible for much of the damage of climate destruction, and we have also learned, by the admissions of lobbyist Keith McCoy, Exxon’s senior director of federal relations, caught on tape by Greenpeace, proudly describing the manner in which climate deniers undermine science and dupe politicians and the public, in order to continue maximising profits.
We know that the corporations are doing this by adopting strategies created by the tobacco industry to cast doubt on science. The book “Propaganda Blitz” argues that the mainstream media is facilitating this deception in a wrong-headed adherence to the idea of “balance”, perpetuating the mistaken idea that there is nothing to worry about with climate change.
Media Deception
Last week the BBC screened a report from Tennessee where an area had suffered flash floods. The report ended with the reporter declaring that while polls showed public opinion was “evolving” towards the belief that climate change is human induced, he “balanced” this with the stupid observation that “even climate scientists have a hard job connecting any one extreme weather event to a changing climate.” An observation which the BBC saw fit to broadcast.
In a sense the claim may be strictly true. You could for instance argue that such an event as a particular flooding or a particular wild fire would have occurred anyway, with or without climate change. But in the broader context of rampant wild-fires and flash floods, such as the floods that killed so many people in German recently, along with the plethora of casually questioned scientific reports, there can be little doubt that these events are manifestations of climate change.
And yet, here was the BBC, just last week, casting doubt on climate science, either in a mistaken gesture towards “balance”, or in a deliberate participation in the deception favoured by ExxonMobil lobbyists and other corporate lobbyists, intent on maximising profit to the bitter end, exactly as the book “Propaganda Blitz” described.
On Channel 4’s main evening news on August 25, a 25 second mention of a “new report” from the American meteorological society, said that Europe’s temperature in 2020 was the warmest on record by a “significant margin”, 2 degrees hotter than the average, and that despite lockdowns and travel restrictions, CO2 levels still reached record levels.
This 25 second mention was sandwiched between a report on the politics in Washington surrounding US efforts to airlift people from Afghanistan, and a report on the Paralympics, with the newsreader genuinely appearing to hurry past the climate item. Maybe they believe they are helping to ward off public panic by not mentioning the elephant in the room.
The Children See It
The same week, Irish media personality Sean Moncrieff, writing in the Irish Times, began with a warning that he may make some controversial statements. What manner of safe journalism is that? The whole point of journalism, in its ideal form, was to report the truth, no matter how many feathers might be ruffled. But now mainstream news walks on eggshells.
Moncrieff too was concerned about the findings of the IPCC report, particularly when he heard his own children say that they would not be having children, placing them into a world that was clearly eating itself up.
This, combined with the findings of the IPCC report, impelled Moncrieff to devote time to write a column warning of climate change. And yet his column was partly an apology for disturbing people’s economic illusions.
Lifestyles
You switch on TV, and between the programming and the advertisements, it streams a propaganda vision of the future that involves swish technology and personal transport, propelling smiling, positive people into a glowing future of equality and fair play.
These advertisements are designed to mislead, created by manipulative hustlers telling you exactly what you want to hear. TV a forum where the latest messages of positivity and equality are cunningly baked into an attractive package, to act as lures to the unwary, to persuade them to continue buying products at a rate that suits the requirements of faceless salesmen, hoping perhaps to cash out early themselves and escape the burning building intact.
It is apparently easier to dupe adults than it is to dupe children. As Sean Moncrieff realised to his horror, children are more switched on to the stark realities of climate change than many adults still enthralled by the media message of fake positivity and Pollyanna confidence, in a future that many climate scientists now heartbreakingly agree will probably never come to pass.
Crimes
The reason why the majority of people so easily dismiss scientific findings is because science, unlike advertising, doesn’t do hyperbole. That’s often what makes the scientific prognosis all the more chilling: the cool understatement of what we are facing into with climate change, in contrast to the yelling can-do salesmanship of the corporate world and its media arm.
Sean Moncrieff’s hesitancy in even bringing up the subject, despite his high-profile media standing, was a demonstration of how the mainstream media is failing the public, by continuing to serve the corporate marketing bumpf, predicated on smiling positivity and endless supply, that is blindly leading civilisation to hell.
The corporations are knowingly and deliberately using strategies of deception, along with distorted versions of positive-thinking and social equality, to continue selling products that the planet simply can no longer afford.
Given what science is showing about climate change, and the manner in which corporate advertisers seek to undermine that science, the authors of “Propaganda Blitz” believe there is a very strong argument for such deceptions to be regarded as crimes against humanity.
Evil
In a Jordan Peterson YouTube clip on the question of Hitler’s evil, Peterson says that it is usually assumed that Hitler’s initial intentions were essentially good: that his goal was to make things better for Germany, but that he got it wrong and then there was a war and terrible things happened.
Peterson then asks, but what if that supposed initial good intention was a deception, and that his goal was simply destruction? This, if it is true, Peterson argues, is the epitome of evil, where the goal is darkness and destruction achieved by deceit.
In the same vein, what if the corporate entities ruling the world are not acting in a well-intentioned capitalist way to maximise profits for their shareholders, as they claim to be, and as they are generally understood to be acting? What if their goal is also destruction?
What if their financial dominance is not so much “success”, as understood in the capitalist model, but is rather the manifestation of a destructive force in a world that often seems weirdly shaped by supernatural forces of darkness and light?
What if, like Peterson’s theory of Nazi ideology, corporate dominance is actually evil in intent?
Eamonn Kelly is a Galway-based freelance Writer and Playwright. His weekly round-up appears here every Monday.
Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet
Pic: Newstalk
Interesting you bring up Jordan Peterson in your piece Eamonn.
Here’s his reply when asked if humanity would come together to solve the climate crisis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoOdYaT-U24
His point on saving the rest of the people starving in the world first is an interesting one alright.
Micko, Interesting you should pounce on my bringing up Peterson. Is that all you have to draw from this piece?
Honestly Eamonn it is a well written piece, but I don’t see any solutions in it.
As you say, Yes, there maybe 200 companies that collectively are responsible for most of the climate change, but we’re all probably still going to use them as part of our daily modern lives.
So, to paraphrase Peterson in that video – we’re not going to do a God damn thing about it.
Are you going to stop heating your home, driving your car, going on holiday or using your iPhone?
No, we’re not going to do any of those things.
We might force developing nations to do those things though.
We’re good at shafting them. Just look at the vaccine rollout. ;)
You do know that not doing things is a choice, right? We’ve had this discussion before – the solutions are known, and many and varied. Not implementing them, or implementing them slowly and in half-measures, is a choice.There’s nothing meaningful we can ‘force’ developing nations to do, because developing nations aren’t contributing to climate change the way ‘developed’ nations are and have. ‘Saving the rest of the people starving in the world first’ is such rubbish – you can literally do both, and if you don’t, the numbers of people starving are only going to grow.
We know what is necessary to restore the environment.
We saw how the environment started to recover during lockdown – initially at least
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/could-covid-lockdown-have-helped-save-the-planet
We know what needs to be done and everything else you have proposed before wont come close.
We need to stop almost everything to “save” the planet.
And you and I and everyone else won’t do that.
Besides, as a very insightful man once said – “The planet is fine – the people are f*&**d”
No. No you don’t have to ‘stop everything.’ I promise you, you don’t, and that the ‘covid dividend’ for nature is more like a dead cat bounce. Everything that needs to be done requires proactive engagement. Take street pedestrianisation and the increase in people cycling. Are they ‘doing nothing?’ NO. Those are positive, active changes for the better. These are things that can happen, but they are being stopped. By whom? Well, that’s always the question, and that’s where attention needs to be focused. (DCC for a start – not the councillors, the unelected CEO and civil servants who have the real power. The frigging OPW who love to cut down trees and cover waterways with concrete. GAH.) We’re not this way because we want to be, we’re this way because of dysfunctional, corrupt, co-opted systems, and they’re what need to be changed.
Micko, I genuinely believe you missed the point of the piece. We are all in it together in that we are all buying into the same destructive system. There is no solution or positive spin to be put on it.
Which is the problem with almost every article about the climate change
“Can’t someone else do it” H J Simpson
“it is usually assumed that Hitler’s initial intentions were essentially good”.
No, it certainly is not.
“but that he got it wrong and then there was a war and terrible things happened.”
He invaded the rest of Europe and killed 6million jews. “Terrible things happened” is an appalling use of the passive voice.
You’re wrong George. It is generally assumed that Hitler’s intentions were good. This is generally a view taken by good people who can’t imagine evil. If you’re critiquing the manner in which I chose to collapse the holocaust into a throwaway line, that’s just a matter of taste. If you’re offended by that type of thing you have your work cut out taking the tabloid press to task. So, go to it.
It is generally understood that Hitler’s intention was to remove Jews from Germany. What you’ve written is a disgrace.
We buy into a collectively destructive world. Good times, consumption of superfluous goods, faraway sunshine holidays with cheap booze, sedation and distraction (false consciousness) of entertainment and infotainment. Baby let the good times roll until oblivion or a few philosophers stop us and ask: What’s it all about?
I almost like the flex of involkng Jordan Petersen to make your argument in favour of action on climate change and not sugar-coating the message, though as George pointed out nobody, but nobody, assumes that Hitler’s inentions were ever good, so maybe Petersen isn’t all that suitable for providing an intellectual framework.
Twenty corporations are responsible for most of the world’s carbon, and they do try to make climate change an issue of personal responsibility rather than collective action (hence ‘carbon footprint’) but at the same time, the change isn’t going to come from them, it comes from national populations electing governments that regulate them into better behaviour, or even break them up as monopolies, all actions long overdue.
Nigel, we must be reading different historians, because when Hitler came to power he was regarded as having good intentions. He was man of the year on Time magazine sometime in the 30s.
Contemporaneously, sure, he had people who agreed with his goals and thought fascism was neat and the best way to oppose Communism and Germany got a raw deal at Versaille and he was only telling it like it is about the Jews. I’m not sure I’d class the people who thought he had good intentions as well-intentioned themselves, though, all things considered.
But maybe we should out a pin in that and agree to disagree and focus on climate change.
Sorry Eamon you are wrong.
“the Man of the Year — now Person of the Year — was not an honor but instead should be a distinction applied to the newsmaker who most influenced world events for better or worse. In case that second criterion was lost on readers, the issue that named Hitler dispensed with the portrait treatment that cover subjects typically got. Instead he was depicted as a tiny figure with his back to the viewer, playing a massive organ with his murdered victims spinning on a St. Catherine’s wheel. Underneath the stark, black-and-white illustration was the caption, “From the unholy organist, a hymn of hate.”
https://time.com/5573720/hitler-world-influence/
Likely his promise to lead Germany from the poverty of ww1 and provide new markets was what positioned him as man of the year. . That and guilt over what had been done to Germany … Neither is a vindication of his actions yet to come so much as an acknowledgement all too late of the devastation suffered by a nation’s ppl… supposing adolf hitler’s intentions were good or j peterson was a reasonable judge… or even those who conceive the world in terms of good and evil.. the climate is not into such binary assessment.. Having read propaganda blitz I am certain that this question does not inform the writers of that book either. . Fascinating journalism but as they point out themselves it’s actually all laura keunesberg’s fault .. perhaps like hitler she is not either good or evil but simply difficult to love
The whole “there are maybe 200 hundred [sic] corporations in the world responsible for much of the damage of climate destruction” is misleading.
These 200 companies include most oil/gas extraction companies. If you ‘blame’ them for all the CO2 emissions from the fuels they extract then you are absolving everyone that drives (or flys or won’t put insulation in their home and runs the heating too much).
A fair point, yes, BUT consider that oil and gas companies began colluding to ignore, then supress, then counter with disinformation, the truth about climate change as far back as 1969. Consider that the association of oil extraction with colonial violence and conflict and the destabilisation of undeveloped regions which has lead to war and terrorism and opression and injustice, to say nothing of pollution, waste and carbon emissions, has stained the industry as profoundly immoral, arguably depraved, and that it survives on vast wealth and corruption, and that by making us complicit in their immoral actions it tries to deny us the ethical authority for change. Basically, it’s gaslighting us to blame ourselves as individuals or groups for their actions. But if those corporations are a feature of our actions, and we want to change, then we should be allowed and empowered to change both them and us. Thing is we literally do not have a choice about this.
+1
Cian, is it up to the consumer to boycott the companies (however many there may be), or is it up to the companies to take realistic action on climate change? And how do you factor in the whole drive by these companies to deny the findings of science, as evidenced by the Exxon lobbyist? Does the public take the blame for this behavior too?
This is neo-lib rubbish that just enables corporations to continue to avoid regulation.
While I don’t mind the idea of putting people on trial for ecocide, setting ‘blame’ aside, the problem is oil extraction and dependency, and weaning the world off them. That’s not going to happen from the top down, or it would have happened by now. People have to act, and while it’s great and even vital when they do so on the personal and local level, it’s national and international groups and movements that need to keep screaming their bloody heads off.
We can’t “boycott the companies” since they are primary producers. We generally don’t deal with them directly.
If I buy anything (say) a pair of runners – there are dirty fingerprints from the top 100 polluting companies all over them; from the raw materials, the electricity to run the machines to make them, the metal in the machines themselves, the transport to Ireland; the building of roads, the shop otself. Practically *everything* is (indirectly) linked back to those 100 polluting companies.
We can, and should, blame them for the misinformation and problems they have helped create.
We’re so inured to capitalism putting us at three degrees remove from acts of horrific and brutal exploitation that we accept it as normal and that we are powerless to change it, so the twisted logic of cosuming our way to global destruction is already built in as inevitable. Consumerism is built on suffering, so of course, sooner or later the suffering will be ours, and we’ll deserve it.
Blaming the “100 companies” keeps us at three degrees remove;
I can blame those dirty companies while I fly off on my 3rd foreign holiday;
I don’t disagree. People need to be deprogrammed from this sort of thinking.
I presume you will all be down to Ennis to protest against the Data centre?
Surely you have all read how the 1.2 trillion will be spent over the next 10 years?
What did you all think of the CAP reform?
I hate to tell you all, but we’re fecked… we’ve gone too far, damaged our environment to extensively and as a society, we’re not gonna do anything drastic to solve the situation…
Human kind are in trouble… the Earth will just follow a new path of evolution.