The video above from 2010 is relevant to the current debate because in it, I featured clips from Trump crush “Obama is a demon” Alex Jones, who was already an internet star focusing on right wing conspiracies and climate denial.
It’s clear with the benefit of hindsight that today’s “alt-right” crypto fascist faction of the Republican party was birthed, at least in part, in the fossil fuel funded fever swamps of climate change denial.
A relevant example in current news is the way the right wing is making use of emails hacked from the Democratic party and Clinton campaign staffers.
Conservative media outlets are fabricating the claim that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “hates everyday Americans” based on a blatant misinterpretation of a leaked email.
Citing a hacked email from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta that was released by WikiLeaks, conservative outlets like Infowars, the Drudge Report, WND, and Gateway Pundit claimed to have proof that Clinton “hates everyday Americans,” when the email in question is clearly about the phrase “everyday Americans,” not actual people. Infowars has since seemingly deleted its article, and Drudge, who was originally linking to the grossly inaccurate Infowars story, is now instead linking to a Daily Caller story that makes clear the discussion was about the cliche “everyday Americans.”
Rush Limbaugh ran with the story on his radio show claiming that in the email Podesta was “admitting that Hillary Clinton has begun to hate everyday Americans.
Indeed, the email in question is very plainly a reference to the “everyday Americans” slogan and theme used by Clinton at the launch of her presidential campaign in 2015. It reads in full: “I know she has begun to hate everyday Americans, but I think we should use it once the first time she says I’m running for president because you and everyday Americans need a champion. I think if she doesn’t say it once, people will notice and say we false started in Iowa.”
The original story at Infowars (still available at sister site Prison Planet), which is the website run by Trump ally and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, originally breathlessly reported on the email as “bombshell” and a “shocking admission.” The article, by Infowars writer Paul Joseph Watson, concluded with the ridiculous question, “Will everyday Americans be more outraged by Donald Trump’s lewd comments in a tape from 11 years ago, or by the Clinton campaign’s own admission that Hillary literally hates them.”
Other conservative journalists are even pointing out that the story being circulated is false. David Martosko of the Daily Mail wrote on Twitter, “She’s saying Hillary hated the PHRASE ‘everyday Americans’ … We should all be better than this.”
For Climate scientists, hacking and then distorting phrases from emails is not news, this was one of the most successful tactics perfected by climate deniers, and now weaponized against the US constitutional electoral process.
Below, my wrap-up of the email “scandal” showed that the climate denial included elements of the same white supremacists and neo-nazis who are now part of the Republican/Trump coalition – and using the same “stochastic terrorism” tactics we are seeing this year.
It was once thought and hoped for that the power of the internet to widely and quickly deliver and share information, could make us all better informed and educated.
Of course the agents of disinformation also saw the opportunities.
I use to naively think that all you had to do to win an argument over something factual, was to actually direct people to the facts. The war about AGW has proved me so wrong, and this election has doubled down on my wrongness.
Just judging from my social media pages, and interviews with Tump voters by various news outlets, the dynamic seems to be that actual dishonest (purposeful liars) concoct their propaganda, and their consumers that buy into it are merely intellectually (lying to themselves) dishonest dupes.
It’s not a new tactic (probably as old as humans), but it has been turbo charged by the modern world of technology.
Yep, you get it. Imagine what WW2 would have been like if all the sides were able to bombard the world with BS via an internet—-so many people would have been spinning in circles that they would have been too dizzy to pick up rifles, and just as with AGW, that might have delayed the taking of decisive action (which might or might not have been a good thing back then).
Regarding interviews, the ones that disturb me most are those with high school and college age folks—-they seem to be VERY confused and unable to wade through the false equivalencies that are fed to them.
Those younger folks at least have an (partial) excuse. They haven’t been around long enough to see how the world works. I probably was duped by many things at that age too.
The ones that freak me out are the people my age who seem to have gone over 60 years without learning a goddamn thing about the world.
Reblogged this on AGR Daily News Service.