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We humans are creatures of habit. Actually, all animals, I believe, are creatures of habit, only we have more of these because of those big brains of ours. Here on this Substack, for instance, we — and I mean the collective we, not the royal we, obviously — are in the habit of poking fun at certain people who excel at things we tend to find just a tiny little bit distasteful and annoying.
Yet habits can get tedious with time, and it is therefore with great excitement that I must announce we won’t be having fun at Fatih Birol’s expense today. This week added another hero to my personal Hall of Obscene Fame and that hero is none other than the European Union’s Internal Markets Commissioner, Thierry Breton.
(Pause for applause).
Mr. Breton this week made a spectacle of himself by issuing a stern warning to Elon Musk ahead of the latter’s interview with Donald Trump on X. Perhaps Mr. Breton had one too many at lunch that day. Perhaps he had a heat stroke, what with all this extreme summer weather during the summer. In any case, the EU’s Internal Markets Commissioner, who is also in charge of the bloc’s digital police, apparently, told Musk to be careful with that interview because it might produce disinformation.
The letter that Breton posted on X is a real work of art and that art would be the art of not too thinly veiled threatening. Breton was promptly thrashed by the X community for trying to censor two Americans on an American social media platform but that’s the less funny part. The truly hilarious part was when the commissioner got — indirectly — thrashed by his own, the Commission. Because it turned out he hadn’t coordinated his attack on Musk with the high command.
“Thierry has his own mind and way of working and thinking,” the FT quoted a wisely unnamed EC official as saying. This is a really delicate way of saying the Internal Markets Commissioner of the EU had basically lost his mind and gone full-dictator on one of the world’s largest social media platforms. Velvet glove off, iron fist out. Pig iron. And that shouldn’t have happened, at least not so soon — not before we all got used to the total censorship and it turned into just another part of life in the Garden of Europe, per Josep Borrell.
Now, why am I wasting your time with Thierry Breton’s fit of censoring insanity on such a lovely day? Well, that would be because that fit is actually good news for all of us. The EU’s push against “disinformation” doesn’t cover American politics only. It targets all information that EU bureaucrats consider dangerous because it goes against their oh so not very carefully constructed narrative — including the climate change story.
The reason it’s good news is that it clearly inflamed a lot of people both in Europe and abroad, demonstrating that try as they might to control all narratives, the EU crowd keep underestimating their target audiences. Amazingly, despite mounting evidence of this consistent underestimation, as the Musk Gag Order Attempt shows, the crowd keeps doing the same thing — pushing propaganda, pushing censorship and thinking this time we’ll believe them. Which is exactly why I support the stupidity hypothesis on climate change and the transition as opposed to the evil hypothesis.
Speaking of climate change and the transition, people are really starting to get fed up with the whole thing — and that’s because the transition crowd never stops talking about it, trying to scare us all into submission to the new and improved rules of life. There is only so much fear-mongering radiation most of us can take without rebelling.
Somewhat surprisingly, the UN has sensed something is not quite right, not only in its secretary-general’s head but in the real world as well. To remedy matters and keep the plebs on track to a glorious transitionary future, the UN is sharing tips on discussing climate change with family and friends. I cannot recommend this text enough, it is simply adorable. A little annoying, too, but mostly adorable.
The tips include this little gem: “For example, you may share your concerns with a statement like, “I’m really scared about my future. I’m not sure I should have kids on a planet that may not be safe for them to inhabit, which is really sad and frightening. That’s why it’s so important to me that I do something.”
Or how about this one: “For example, you might mention the 6 million people that joined 2019’s global climate strike—showing just how many people are willing to take action against climate change.”
Okay, one more and I’ll stop, I promise: “If you’re talking to your parents, for example, ask them if they want their grandkids to live in a world without access to clean water—which could happen within the next few years if action isn’t taken against climate change.”
It is a literal and extremely crude guide to manipulating the emotions and consequently thoughts of our nearest and dearest — for the greater good, of course, so that’s all right and we shouldn’t call it manipulation. I imagine calling it manipulation violates Thierry Breton’s Digital Services Act and he’ll be mad.
Speaking of mad commissioners, Breton was not alone in his frustration with people he tries but cannot control. Bulgaria’s parliament this week shockingly went and made international news by voting for a bill seeking to ban alphabet soup identity propaganda at schools and kindergartens. I was stunned at this extremely rare demonstration of sound sense — and so was the EU Commissioner for Human Rights, apparently. But in a bad way.
The gentleman called on our president to not sign the bill into law, so dozens of NGOs could keep getting their funding and spread identitarian propaganda among the most vulnerable members of society. In response, well, dozens of my fellow Bulgarians gave him as proper a thrashing as Americans gave Breton. I couldn’t be prouder.
The green propaganda is currently circling the same drain, because its devotees simply don’t know when to stop pushing. Perhaps even worse — for them, that is — many appear to believe that the more and harder they push, the greater chance of success they stand to indoctrinate everyone with their climate catastrophism. And to think there are psychologists among them.
It’s a boring fact of life that most of us don’t want to be pushed too hard. If you want to change people’s minds, do it slowly and insidiously. Push too hard and you’ve lost them forever. Luckily for us, the pushers are genuine catastrophists and this makes them nervous and impatient — and highly ineffective. It’s been a good week for normality.
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