After it became known that Spiked, so named because it should have been long ago, had been paid $300,000 by the Charles Koch Foundation, a front for the Koch Brothers, who are the most wilful and blatant of climate change deniers, the thought entered that this money might not be just about staging live events next year across the USA. And right on cue, the evidence has come running this morning.
Brendan O’Neill, alleged contrarian, but in reality a purveyor of systematic dishonesty and corporate shill of no discernible shame, has shown the world in the pages of the Murdoch Sun exactly what the Kochs were buying. “Vive la revolting French for a lesson from the barricades … Protesters, stormed Paris at the weekend to rage against Emmanuel Macron and his treatment of them with aloof, technocratic disdain – and that's why the leftists in Britain and the US have been largely silent about this people’s revolt” is the headline.
So what is this about, apart from demonstrating that O’Neill and the Sun’s headline writers are ignorant of languages other than English? The first line of the article proper confirms it: “AT last, a people’s revolt against the tyranny of environmentalism”. Dishonesty - and shilling for the Koch Brothers. And there is more. Rather a lot more.
And after the usual flat-out lie - “leftists in Britain and the US have been largely silent about this people’s revolt” (the Guardian, Staggers, Novara Media, the Mirror and Skwawkbox have all featured it, thanks Bren) - O’Neill gets down to a little serious Koch worship.
“Most strikingly, this is a rebellion against the onerous consequences of climate-change policy, against the politics of environmentalism and its tendency to punish the little people for daring to live relatively modern, fossil-fuelled lives”. Climate change policy is “onerous”, looking to improve the environment is “punishing”, continuing to burn fossil fuels is “modern”. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Perhaps this is a mere slip, and O’Neill isn’t really a Koch Brothers tribute act? Think again: “We are witnessing perhaps the first mass uprising against eco-elitism, which is part of the broader populist revolt that has been sweeping Europe for a few years now”. Newspeak. And on he drones: “the EU’s commitment to cutting carbon emissions …a kind of penance for the eco-crime of driving diesel-fuelled cars”. Newspeak indeed.
And on: “no modern orthodoxy is safe from the populist fightback. Not even the environmentalist one … anyone who dares to bristle against eco-orthodoxy deserves to be cast out of polite society … the hitherto unquestionable religious-style diktat that says we must all drive less, shop less and do less in order to ‘save the planet’ … it is not an accident climate-change policies were, in the French case, the spark”. And on.
“Environmentalism has always been a central feature of the new elitism, a means through which a self-styled virtuous political class could demonstrate its eco-awareness by shaming and punishing those who drive to work, or work in polluting industries or fail to recycle rubbish”. He must have wanked himself senseless thinking that one up.
Did the Koch Foundation give Spiked $300,000 just to stage live events in the USA? Did it heck. Brendan O’Neill’s Sun column confirms it. And, as he got paid to write it, he scored two paydays at once. Double trebles all round!
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