Murat Altuglu

In one of my classes, I teach how the masses are manipulated and directed through propaganda. There are excellent studies for this, such as Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion, Edward Bernays’ Propaganda, as Jacques Ellul’s work with the same title. For a concrete example for how the misleading of the public works, one just has to look at the German mainstream media.

This week, a climate conference began in Paris. You probably have heard about it in the news. This event is of course a golden opportunity for the leftist media to scare the folks out there with climate change. Simple minded propaganda, of course. But it works. 

Take this: The anchor informs the viewer that the folks gathering in Paris want to reduce the emission of so called greenhouse gases, to prevent global warming. Then he goes on to read from the prompter that the “immediate effects” of CO2 emission can be “directly felt” in Beijing. “With the approach of winter, air pollution has increased dramatically.”

Then, the viewers see a news clip of the dystopian smog in Beijing, which blackens out the sun at noontime. People are shown who suffer under the horrendous air pollution. And why do people suffer? Why is the viewer (ie. the German voter) scared into supporting a policy that is allegedly protecting him from a future as it is graphically depicted to him on the TV screen?

The answer is simple, and it is given to the viewer several times in the news-reel. Carbon dioxide is the culprit. The subliminal message is to continue to support a policy that lowers his standard of life, costs him his hard earned money, and transfers wealth from the developed countries to the Third World. Ergo, continue to support the “Mutti,” aka Angela Merkel and her policy.

This is clearly terrible. And this is clearly fooling the German viewer, who has to pay for this propagandist junk eight billion Euros a year, too. Thus injury is added to insult, to redesign a metaphor.

The perversity of this propaganda newsreel is that CO2 is not only not a pollutant, as the viewers are made to believe, but CO2 is as important to life on earth as is oxygen. It is a clean as oxygen. CO2 is necessary for photosynthesis and plant growth. (Which increases due to the higher saturation of air with CO2.) Without CO2, there would be no Chinese that would be bothered by smog in the first place.

Even if – for argument’s sake – the CO2 concentration in the air would be three times as high in Beijing (thus 1200ppm instead of 400ppm), it would have no effect on air pollution. It is simply idiotic to conjoin CO2 with air pollution. Air pollution are harmful micro particulates that kill indeed. But CO2 has no effect on the human body in the concentration mentioned above. One breaths it in, and then out. A reader can correct me if I am wrong.

On the contrary. CO2 at these levels is an immense booster for plant growth. If indeed, such concentration levels would be reached, the planet would be greener! But to manipulate the viewer, scare tactics have to be used. Since the climate conference will not reduce air pollution anywhere on earth by one harmful – truly harmful and not in the imaginary world of the German media – pollutant, the pseudo-journalists simply make it up.

The lack of intellectual rigor and want of knowledge evident among people who have an important and responsible task – the informing of the masses, ie. the voters – is simply flabbergasting.