News bits: What Carlson was thinking on 1/6; Anti-climate change propaganda tactics

I've avoided posting about a lot of the noise surrounding Tucker Carlson in the wake of his firing by Faux Lies Corp. But what the NYT reports today is, in my opinion, revealing about how most of America's radical right feels about the left.

Tucker Carlson’s Text to a Producer

 

For years, Mr. Carlson espoused views on his show that amplified the ideology of white nationalism. But the text message revealed more about his views on racial superiority.

According to the NYT article, that text is a significant part of why Faux fired Tucker.

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Propaganda tactics to deceive, disinform and divide the public do not change much over time. The Guardian writes about what the American beef industry is doing to disinform Americans in its effort to deflect public attention away from its climate impacts: 

Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: 

confuse, defend and downplay

The US beef industry is creating an army of influencers and citizen activists to help amplify a message that will be key to its future success: that you shouldn’t be too worried about the growing attention around the environmental impacts of its production.

It definitely does not want you to read scientific papers showing wealthy nations must reduce meat consumption to keep below the average global temperature rise of 2C, a threshold to stop systems collapse, mass extinctions, fatal heat waves, drought and famine, water shortages and flooded cities.

I know about these industry priorities as I am one of more than 21,000 graduates of a free, by-admission-only, online training course created by the US beef industry called the Masters of Beef Advocacy (MBA) program.

In addition, the average steer consumes several metric tons of forage and feed in its life, which means they need a lot of room to roam. But there’s not enough native grasslands on earth to feed all the cows that humans want to eat. So raising cattle often means cutting down forests or displacing other ecosystems to make room for bovines and their food.

“Since at least 2006 … the industry has been borrowing tactics from the fossil fuel playbook,” Jennifer Jacquet wrote in a 2021 Washington Post op-ed [entitled The meat industry is doing exactly what Big Oil does to fight climate action]. “While meat and dairy producers have not claimed that climate change is a liberal hoax, as oil and gas producers did starting in the 1990s, companies have been downplaying the industry’s environmental footprint and undermining climate policy.”

These deceive, divide and persuade tactics go way back in time. One can trace disinformation and spin tactics back to the 1920s, when the master propagandist Edward Bernays wrote his little masterpiece on the art of persuasion, Crystallizing Public Opinion. Bernays coined the phrase public relations to disguise the fact that this kind of persuasion was special interest propaganda intended to deceive and persuade. In other words, it was and still is dark free speech designed to persuade by deceit and irrational emotional manipulation, not honest speech designed to persuade on the merits.

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A federal judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has granted The Satanic Temple's (TST) lawsuit to use public school facilities for an after school satanic club. The grant is based on free speech grounds. The public's response to the TST application to use school facilities included death threats and moral outrage that scared school administrators into blocking TST's attempt to establish a club there. 

The judge's 37 page ruling includes this:

MEMORANDUM OPINION 

GALLAGHER, J.                                                                                                         May 1, 2023 

I. OVERVIEW

When confronted with a challenge to free speech, the government’s first instinct must be to forward expression rather than quash it. Particularly when the content is controversial or inconvenient.1 Nothing less is consistent with the expressed purpose of American government to secure the core, innate rights of its people.


Here, although The Satanic Temple, Inc.’s objectors may challenge the sanctity of this controversially named organization, the sanctity of the First Amendment’s protections must prevail. Indeed, it is the First Amendment that enumerates our freedoms to practice religion and express our viewpoints on religion and all the topics we consider sacred. Though the “First Amendment is often inconvenient” depending on one’s perspective, or responsibilities, this inconvenience “does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.” Int’l Soc’y for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672, 701 (1992) (Kennedy, J., concurring). “Even in the school setting, a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint is not enough to justify the suppression of speech.” Child Evangelism Fellowship of N.J. v. Stafford Twp. Sch. Dist., 386 F.3d 514, 528 (3d Cir. 2004) (quoting Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393, U.S. 503, 509 (1969)) (emphasis added, internal quotations omitted).

V. CONCLUSION 

For the foregoing reasons, TST’s Motion for Temporary Restraining Order And/Or Preliminary Injunction [ECF No. 19] is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART as follows: Plaintiff’s Motion to require Defendant to permit the After School Satan Club to meet at the times and on the days previously approved by Defendant is GRANTED. Defendant is ORDERED to permit the After School Satan Club to meet on the three dates and at the location previously stipulated to by the parties at ECF No. 23. Plaintiff’s Motion to require Defendant to distribute After School Satan Club permission slips for students to take home is DENIED. An appropriate order follows.

BY THE COURT: 

/s/ John M. Gallagher   

JOHN M. GALLAGHER 

United States District Court Judge