The Propaganda of Climate Change

Propaganda is the mass dissemination of lies; it is a weapon much used by dictators and politicians wishing to achieve or retain power and mastery over their fellow human beings. Every nation has a different style of propaganda; one nation’s propaganda may seem crass to another. A campaign to persuade people that a particular thing is good or bad is no different from any other propaganda campaign; people may be moved by catchy slogans and they may behave in ways that the slogans dictate, but eventually the slogans lose their effectiveness.

In the Second World War the German people were regularly given tonnage of allied vessels sunk; the problem was that the monthly tonnage of vessels sunk, according to the propaganda, ended up being more than the total tonnage of allied shipping. It is quite a feat if you can sink more ships that actually exist and do that each month. Similarly in the same period the RAF, the British were told, downed significantly more German planes than they actually did.

If you tell a big truth loudly enough and long enough eventually it will be disbelieved.

I doubt if the British will respond to a new propaganda campaign by the European Union “Worldulike”. In fact, the concept of the campaign is so crass that I doubt if anyone will respond to it positively and it may very well end up doing more harm than good.

The EU’s campaign is supposed to show how “positive solutions” to the problem of climate change is making the world a better place. They will make us all happier and healthier. Hooray. We will learn that cycling to work will make us fitter and healthier (unless a car knocks us off our bike or unless our bike runs over a pedestrian by going through a red traffic light) and it will tell us how the green economy has created 100,000 jobs in the United Kingdom.

Yes, according to Connie Hedegaard the EU Climate Commissioner, the green economy has created 100,000 UK jobs. Now that is classic propaganda. I have some connection with the green economy and I find that figure astonishing. Perhaps it depends when you started counting. Perhaps if you counted from say 1918 the green economy may have created 100,000 jobs, but that depends on how you define the green economy.

So “Worldulike” will end up making a series of unsupportable claims and will be treated by most as propaganda.

Now the campaign (conducted at the expense of the European tax payer) is supposed to show how much better life will be if we adopt anti-climate change policies. It will not persuade those that do not think that climate change is happening and it may well persuade those you have yet to make up their minds that if this propaganda is necessary the rationale for it may be untrue.

Filed under: climate change, global warming Tagged: environment, mass dissemination, prpoaganda