EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 2021

‘Digital Dictatorship’ Can Make Us Tolerate Destruction of Civilization—Defeat It!

March 1, 2021 (EIRNS)—A social media ban has been clamped down on criticisms of the Nov. 3, 2020 “perfect” U.S. general election. The next target is emerging: stating the wrong conclusions about “climate” and energy technologies.

A Feb. 23 article in the Washington Post amplified an attempt by the German Marshall Fund in Washington to call out for censorship, any statements that the failure of frozen-up wind turbines in Texas triggered the calamitous loss of power and heat by 10 million people and 40 deaths in the state.

The Fund hooked up with the Post to identify, in particular, Fox News’ Feb. 17 interview of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who said that the failure of nearly all the wind power in the state caused the blackouts to begin. Like other elected officials in the parts of the country most affected by the polar vortex, Abbott called for more coal-fired power plants. This, the think-tank found, was widely followed and approved on Facebook and YouTube. The paper complained: “The recent explosion of falsehoods related to the Texas power outages highlights how climate science and related topics like renewable energy are a ripe target for online propaganda. Tech companies have not been aggressive in stepping up their defenses against climate disinformation, despite increasing public pressure from environmental activists to do more.”

The Marshall Fund speech police and the Post bluntly advertised their completely political motives front and center: “Researchers [from the think-tank] are especially concerned about the wind turbine claims because they weren’t completely fabricated.[!] Instead, they were manipulated to serve the political goal of undermining Democrats’ efforts to fund renewable energy sources.[!!] ‘This kind of manipulative content can be even more pernicious because it maintains an element of truth,’ ” wrote Adrienne Goldstein and Eli Weiner of the Fund.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was quoted threatening Facebook for allowing such statements as Abbott’s: “The future of our planet is at stake, and there should be no company too big, too powerful and too opaque to be held accountable for its role in the climate crisis. Facebook is no exception.”

In an astonishing slip, the Washington Post published a chart two days later—“Source, Energy Information Administration”—which showed, day by day, what happened to electricity generation in Texas from Feb. 8-20. They were exactly the facts the paper had just demanded be censored on social media as “climate disinformation” when uttered by elected officials or others. Those facts were also presented in the Feb. 23 EIR Alert Service and are in the March 5 EIR. The EIA chart, “Power Generation on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Grid,” shows nuclear and coal-fired power (GW-hours/day) essentially constant for the entire period; wind power dropping away to near zero from late on Feb. 14th through the 15th—when the blackouts began—and remaining there until the 17th; gas power ramping up on the 14th and part of the 15th to replace the missing wind power, then dropping sharply through the 17th. The disappearance of wind turbine power triggered the Texas disaster; no other conclusion is possible from this chart, or from the one like it (from a private data analysis firm) described in the Feb. 23 EIR Daily Alert.

Will we, then, soon learn that we cannot repeat these facts or present anyone else stating them, without losing access to social media communication? There is already a comprehensive ban on any questioning of the conduct or results of the 2020 general election. Will this be extended to reasoned debate on energy and other carbon-based technologies—the very basis of modern agro-industrial economy and civilization—so that opponents of the Green New Deal are banned from public speech on that subject as well?

No, the entire double standard of the media, social media, and some governments, which accuse their political opponents of doing precisely what they themselves are doing, must be exposed and reversed. At issue is not only stopping the “Great Reset” or “Green Deal”; the vilification of Russia and China and the threat of global war which comes with it are based on this “double-speak.” Will the words “Belt and Road Initiative” be banned from British and U.S. media?

The Schiller Institute will take this on as a major target of its full-day conference March 20, otherwise presenting cooperation for development among nations as the unique road to peace.