Article Analysis: On Greta, Right Wing Propaganda and "Conspiracies"

Editor's note: this article originally appeared September 26 on Facebook; for my latest piece "On "Left Wing" American Media and Class Tensions in the 2020 Democratic Party Nomination Contest" please click here. All analysis by Nina Illingworth unless otherwise indicated.

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Attacks on Greta Thunberg Are About More Than Anti-Environmentalism

In today's article analysis piece I'd like to take a look at a very important expose that was recently picked up in America by Teen Vogue - I'm sharing the original here out of solidarity for indie and activist media and because DesmogUK has a great graphic that shows all the companies and think tanks they're talking about in the article.

I happened to run across this important piece by Mat Hope while I was writing about the U.S. media's obscenely moronic coverage of Greta Thunberg's visit to the UN myself and I'm including it today so we can discuss it in a much broader perspective than just "stories about Greta."

In regards to Thunberg, I really don't see much point in debating the effectiveness of her activism and I frankly don't care whether or not you "trust her" because I can't really see why it matters.

You can tell me that she's just giving all those corrupt planet-murdering politicians a free photo-op and I'll agree with you readily enough. I will however also counter by asking you precisely what she was supposed to do - stay home? You can say that screaming at politicians on TV isn't going to solve the problem and that's absolutely correct, but I'll say at least she got to scream at them. I'd like to scream at them, wouldn't you? I think at the point that you were expecting a sixteen year old climate activist from Sweden to start the green socialist energy revolution we're going to need to actually save our species; you kind of already jumped the shark.

What I'd like to talk about instead is the network of oil-soaked think tanks, reactionary media organizations and talking head right wing pundits this piece exposes and what you can extrapolate about the larger western media environment from its re-posting on Teen Vogue.

At this point I don't really think it's "breaking news" to most observers on the left that there is a massive, billionaire and corporate funded climate catastrophe disinformation network operating on the right (and even in the center) of the American political class - including donors, politicians and the various corporate media factions. This is now an established fact even in milquetoast mainstream liberal circles - although not necessarily among the "liberal" elite who have a vested interest in climate science denial no matter how much they pretend otherwise.

Okay so why is that? After all, when independent media first exposed the Koch Industries connection to the anti-climate science wing of the larger American "Tea Party" (also a Koch funded astroturf operation, with lots of help from Wall Street oddly enough) it was immediately derided as a "conspiracy theory" by all the usual suspects.

So what's different about this "conspiracy theory" and say the Bernie Sanders media blackout; what makes this now widely-accepted story a proven "conspiracy" while the American left's direct quotation of Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" to explain the Washington Post's bias against grassroots organizing and the larger (and diverse) labor class is merely a "conspiracy theory?" It certainly can't be a question of sources or proof - roughly seventy-five percent of Manufacturing Consent is raw data that demonstrates corporate media really does have an implicit and inescapable bias towards establishment power.

The simple answer is that due to factionalism and divergent interests in the upper classes of American establishment power, this issue was reported on fairly and extensively in the mainstream corporate media; albeit primarily by "liberal" outlets. I could write a whole essay about precisely why the "liberal" media corporations (who are still very much tied into oil, or at least the economy built entirely around it) chose to run with this story instead of all the other stories but the long and short of it is that the Koch network attacks on bog standard center-right Democrats were more painful than losing some fossil fuel executive donors and thus the "liberal" establishment fought back - by letting their in-pocket media lapdogs actually do some journalism for once.

So while the idea that a bunch of right wing nutjob billionaires have brought together political parties, think tanks, media organizations and puppet scientists to lie about murdering the planet for profit is on its face shocking and scandalous - the fact is you can buy books about the subject in mainstream book stores and you'll read about it in mainstream "left-leaning liberal" publications on a fairly regular basis. That in a nutshell is why everyone knows about this "conspiracy" and nobody except disingenuous right wing propagandists calls you "crazy" for talking about it.

If you take a step back and look at the larger political and class warfare picture however, the exposure of this right wing pro-fossil fuel industry propaganda network lying in plain sight does bring up a number of interesting, if not disturbing questions.

If a network of right wing elites can literally up and buy a revolution to protect Wall Street, promote climate science denial and smear left wing activists at will in the public sphere, what else might rich people with ulterior motives be capable of? If the reason the vast majority of people have ever even heard of the Koch Network behind this propaganda machine is pretty much entirely because they broke class solidarity and attacked their "liberal" peers in the media, what happens when the mass murdering billionaire liars *don't* break class solidarity and both "sides" of the mainstream media agree that the proles don't need to know?

If this group of right wing billionaires can deploy a whole disinformation campaign to drown Greta's words out in waves of angry bullsh*t in a matter of days, what might *other* groups of wealthy, powerful and influential people be doing with their time and money that you never, or rarely ever hear about?

Could the Democratic Party, elite donors and dozens of friendly in-pocket media puppets come together to smear the burgeoning American labor class left and rig a nomination contest for a crooked rich white lady? Could the editorial staff at the Washington Post meet and agree they were only going to print stories that portrayed left wing American politicians and activists working against Jeff Bezo's class interests in a negative light? Could an influential "liberal" think tank bring together a coalition of elite party officials, media figures, wealthy donors and even 2020 Dem Primary candidates to plot how to stop a seemingly imminent Bernie Sanders presidency? Could a secret liberal media Slack channel be used to quickly disseminate a fake Iowa poll and create a narrative of inevitability for Liz Warren? Could that same media Slack channel and preexisting relationships with a variety of liberal "activist" organizations be used to recycle a 2008 smear campaign against Obama supporters and widely promote the idea that working class leftists who won't vote for neoliberals are secretly racist, sexist Bernie Bro scum who're really a lot like the fascist right except in some ways worse?

The answer to all of these questions is of course yes and if you've been reading independent media or writers who openly support Sanders, you've heard about every single one of these real stories - even if the vast majority of liberals and labor class folks who aren't plugged into politics have not. This is of course a huge part of the problem but the honest truth here is that it's only the tip of the iceberg because you *can* still read about these demonstrably true, real life plots against left wing, labor class voters *someplace* on the internet.

What should really keep you up at night frankly, is the realization that there are almost certainly thousands if not an infinite number of horrifying and impossible to comprehend plots against the labor class that you have never even heard of - no matter how plugged in you are. After all the only real requirements involved here are money, access to a public megaphone of some type and a seething animus for people who ask you to share some of your ill-gotten wealth with the poorest members of society; and almost every rich person in the western world is all stocked up on those three key ingredients.

In a society where the difference between a conspiracy theory and a conspiracy fact pretty much comes down to whether or not the truth damages the ruling class in some manner, it's the rich man's open conspiracies that you *don't* know about or are never reminded about, that represent the greatest threats to us all.


- nina illingworth





Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

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