When I wrote recently about the ABC’s “fact-checker” almost admitting that a conservative prime minister was correct, I put it down to a new kid on that day, who didn’t know the iron rule of ABC “fact checks”. It turns out that I may have been wrong (it happens on occasion).
Instead, something very different is going on at the taxpayer-funded leftist propaganda unit masquerading as a ‘national broadcaster’. The ABC, which usually only – and grudgingly at that – allows conservatives politicians on its airwaves as punching-bags for stacked leftist panels and jeering audiences on QandA, appears to have discovered an inexplicable ability to cheer-squad the government.
At least, only insofar as the ABC is clamouring for the government to hold fast and not give in to pesky ‘civil liberty’ arguments for ending draconian lockdowns.
Because, like leftists and climate botherers around the world, the ABC has found that the oppressive over-reaction to the Chinese Virus is just the sort of dictatorial, jackbooted, impoverished world they’ve been fantasizing about for years.
Leftists have turned to alchemy to try to transform the Covid-19 pandemic into their fabled climate emergency. Former ABC journalist Quentin Dempster tweeted on Thursday: “Australia’s National Cabinet should stay on to coordinate decarbonising of energy/transport/manufacture to urgently mitigate climate change.”
Dempster isn’t the only green-left luvvie wanting to use the pandemic as a kind of Reichstag fire moment for ushering in their brave new world of green-brown, jackbooted environmentalism. The Guardian, surprise, surprise, is also cheerleading the lockdowns and fulminating against “right wing” protesters and Florida beachgoers.
It’s Rahm Emanuel’s principle in action: never let a crisis go to waste.
Gloomy environmental doomsdayers[…]imagine current restrictions on our freedom continuing after Covid-19, but this time in service of their grand green agenda.
Wednesday’s Sydney Morning Herald editorial was headed: “Scientific approach for Covid-19 must be applied to climate change”.
Of course, our “scientific approach to Covid-19” has been no more scientific than the approach to the great plague of 1666 – social distancing, face masks and an emphasis on personal hygiene – except that we have an app.
Certainly, environmentalists have learned some important lessons from the past two months:
- Just keep babbling about “computer modelling” (which is the same as saying “guessing”, but sounds a lot more fancy) and get a hand-waving sign language interpreter, just to show that you’re totally serious.
- Screech that a million, billion, kajillion people will die. Next week.
- Accuse anyone who disagrees, of being a heartless murderer who probably strangles puppies.
- Make up a catchy slogan, à la “Flatten the curve”.
- Keep people under the heel by constantly shifting the goalposts and never, ever giving a concrete goal for ending restrictions.
- Encourage people to snitch on anyone who doesn’t have solar panels or use the right recycling bin.
- Declare everyone not in an approved, “climate-friendly” occupation (you know: ABC journalist, teacher, Greens politician) to be a “non-environmental worker”.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that, just because they’re singularly immune to logic and evidence, that the Greens are incapable of learning anything.
French philosopher Bruno Latour, quoted in The Guardian last month, said: “We have learned that it is possible in a matter of weeks to slow the economy, which until now had been considered inconceivable.
“The incredible discovery is that there was in fact in the world economic system, hidden from all eyes, a bright red alarm signal, next to a large steel lever that each head of state could pull at once to stop ‘the progress train’ with a shrill screech of the brakes.”
As the threat of Covid-19 recedes and governments look to ease restrictions, watch as the environmentalists try to wrestle control of the lever for their beloved climate emergency.
If I’ve learned anything over the past two months, it’s that, if the government told people to cram into cattle trucks and be taken to special ‘virus isolation camps’, a great many of them would happily comply.
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