Op-Ed: The New Totalitarians Are Using a Fraudulent Threat to Subjugate Citizens
“No one must … underrate the power and efficiency of a totalitarian state.”
On Oct. 16, 1938, Winston Churchill, a member of Parliament and an opponent of the policy of appeasement concerning the aggression of Nazi Germany in Czechoslovakia, made the above statement in a radio broadcast from England directly to the American people.
He was warning the U.S. and the world about the impending dangers of the rise of Nazi Germany in Europe and Hitler’s totalitarian regime.
In September 2020, the newly elected governor of California, Gavin Newsom, issued an executive order banning the sale of new gas- and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035. In August, California’s Air Resources Board enacted rules requiring that 35 percent of new vehicles be electric- or hydrogen-powered by 2026 and outlawed the sale of fossil fuel-powered combustion engines in California by 2035.
There are several ways one can subjugate a people.
The traditional means has been the use of military force. However, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has demonstrated in Ukraine, military action is messy. Innocent people are killed and public opinion, both domestic and international, can often arise in opposition to the use of force on innocents.
Then there is the use of economic power to subjugate a people, such as the sanctions that the U.S. and the West have attempted to use against rogue nations such as Iran, North Korea and now Russia. Interestingly, Russia responded with its own brand of economic warfare, cutting off the vital supply of natural gas to Europe just as winter approached. Any politician in Europe who did not anticipate that response was just as naïve as Neville Chamberlain regarding the appeasement strategy toward Hitler.
However, the most effective means to subjugate a people is through psychological operations — “psyops” for short. Wikipedia defines “psyops” as the following: “operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.”
In order to be effective in employing psyops, a government needs to have a reason to pursue a course of action — an enemy and, preferably, a righteous cause. For Hitler, it was the Jews. For the U.S. in Vietnam, it was communism. For Putin in Ukraine, it is to “de-militarize and de-Nazify Ukraine” and prevent it from joining NATO.
For Newsom, it is global warming, now known by its more enlightened name, “climate change,” as a means to garner national attention and political support. Newsom purports to save Californians — and perhaps the world if elected president — from an existential threat.
This new enemy meets all the necessary criteria for a government to deploy an effective psyops campaign.
It permits the government to prey on the ignorance of the populace by conveying selected information about extreme weather events, extreme temperatures, and rising sea levels and blaming it all on global warming. In order to affect their emotions, it promotes the fear of the thermal destruction of the planet if the “average temperature” of the Earth (which has no meaning in science) increases by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
It impugns the motives of those who own SUVs (but not private planes): If you burn fossil fuels you are selfish and endanger the world. It assaults objective reasoning: How can you disagree with 97+ percent of the world’s scientists who believe that man-made CO2 emissions have caused global warming?
Finally, as is the case with the California Air Resources Board, governments, organizations, groups and individuals are forced to combat the enemy via rules and regulations. Everything possible must be done in the name of the common good to defeat the enemy — CO2 — such as outlawing fossil fuel combustion.
In my book “Global Warming: The Great Deception – The Triumph of Dollars and Politics Over Science and Why You Should Care,” I cite published, peer-reviewed scientific research, employing the first principles of the relevant scientific fields of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, atmospheric physics and spectroscopy, to prove that CO2 does not cause global warming. I use publicly available data from the world’s temperature databases to prove that there has been no significant warming of the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans or land mass.
In addition, I offer a warning to those who would be victims of this psyops campaign: “If one posits climate change as a crisis — an existential threat — it might arguably justify the idea that the government could dictate to Americans how electricity is generated in the U.S. or what type of fuel could be used in their businesses, homes, or automobiles, all in the cause to save the planet. In such a situation, science would be sacrificed on the altar of political opportunism.”
So, why should every American care about the scenario wherein money and politics win out over real science? I quote from my book: “If pseudo-science becomes the weapon of politicians and regulators and it is used to enact extreme policies, then civil liberties can and will be sacrificed under the false façade of the common good.”
Are Newsom, President Joe Biden, climate envoy John Kerry and others who promote the fraudulent global warming hypothesis sacrificing science on the altar of political opportunism? Sure looks like it. Will the result be an erosion of civil liberties and economic freedoms? Sure looks like it. Will their actions imperil the operation of the power grid and the U.S. economy and endanger the standard of living of all Americans? Sure looks like it.
The problem with totalitarianism is that it does not stop with just one action to subjugate the populace. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What will the next “existential crisis” be and who will define it? Will obesity be the next crisis and the eating of meat outlawed? Is the Electoral College an existential threat to democracy and the rule of the majority?
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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