Guest essay by Eric Worrall
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is planning new censorship laws, a harsh crack down on “fake news”, which according to President Obama seems to include any criticism of climate theory.
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“Something has changed — as globalization has marched on, [political] debate is taking place in a completely new media environment. Opinions aren’t formed the way they were 25 years ago,” she said Wednesday while addressing Germany’s Bundestag, or parliament. “Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls — things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms, and we have to learn to deal with them.”
Merkel indicated that she supported tougher measures to crack down on hate speech in its various forms and figure out new ways to regulate the complicated ecosystem of online information (and misinformation).
“I believe we should not underestimate what is happening in the context of the Internet and with digitalization; this is part of our reality,” Merkel said. “We have regulations that allow for our press freedom, including the requirement for due diligence from journalists. Today we have many that experience a media that is based on very different foundations and is much less regulated.”
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President Obama stating the problematic new media ecosystem includes “climate denial”
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The new media ecosystem “means everything is true and nothing is true,” Obama told me later. “An explanation of climate change from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist looks exactly the same on your Facebook page as the denial of climate change by somebody on the Koch brothers’ payroll. And the capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in wildly negative light without any rebuttal—that has accelerated in ways that much more sharply polarize the electorate and make it very difficult to have a common conversation.”
That marked a decisive change from previous political eras, he maintained. “Ideally, in a democracy, everybody would agree that climate change is the consequence of man-made behavior, because that’s what ninety-nine per cent of scientists tell us,” he said. “And then we would have a debate about how to fix it. That’s how, in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, you had Republicans supporting the Clean Air Act and you had a market-based fix for acid rain rather than a command-and-control approach. So you’d argue about means, but there was a baseline of facts that we could all work off of. And now we just don’t have that.”
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Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/28/obama-reckons-with-a-trump-presidency
Does Angela Merkel think criticism of climate science should be included in her crackdown? I haven’t found a direct quote where Merkel describes climate “denial” as “fake news”, but given how close she is to President Obama on this subject, this seems a reasonable assumption.
Under German Law, Merkel has the power to prosecute or imprison people who voice proscribed opinions. German Law, unlike the US Constitution, does not provide a guarantee of free speech. German law contains a broad and vaguely defined concept of Volksverhetzung, “incitement of the masses”.
Volksverhetzung, in English “incitement of the masses”, “instigation of the people” (the official English translation of the German Criminal Code uses “incitement to hatred”), is a concept in German criminal law that refers to incitement to hatred against segments of the population and refers to calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them, including assaults against the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of the population.
It is often applied to, though not limited to, trials relating to Holocaust denial in Germany. The criminal code (Strafgesetzbuch) Chapter 7 (Offences against public order), Paragraph 130 (Incitement to hatred) of the Federal Republic of Germany defines when a person is guilty of Volksverhetzung.
The concept draws criticism by press and legal scholars for not being defined with the necessary definiteness and violating the principle of clarity and definiteness (Bestimmtheitsgrundsatz) and thus is called an elastic clause (Gummiparagraph) allowing in theory to punish nearly any political statment made and violating the freedom of speech.
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Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
The only silver lining to this ghastly business is in order to legally persecute “climate deniers”, if this is Merkel’s intention, she will have to define what climate denial actually is. Defining climate “denial” is harder than it might seem, because there is a lot of agreement about the fundamental physics. A legal definition of climate “denial” would have to include ridiculously prescriptive clauses, such as “expressing a belief that equilibrium climate sensitivity may be less than 1.5c / doubling of CO2”.
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Did Obama just seriously refer to acid rain as a reason why sceptism is bad? The same acid rain that came from trees not the smoke stacks. He just proved our point.
“Ideally, in a democracy, everybody would agree that climate change is the consequence of man-made behavior, because that’s what ninety-nine per cent of scientists tell us,” he said.
Ninety-nine percent? It is worse than we thought.
I’m sure that was a mistake, Obama meant to say 199% of scientists tell us,
His teleprompter was on the fritz.
Watching him struggle along without it is downright painful.
President Obama has trained as a lawyer. He cites authorities to make his case. Lawyers do not investigate They do not make laws The authorities he cites are those he has been told are the correct authorities. Therfore he believes what they say.
He has not studied Science or History, judging by his pronouncements. Maybe lawyers should be required to take courses in scientific theory
Eric Worrall’s reasoning here is no better than that of Stephan Lewandowski/ By Worrall’s logic, just because Obama has linked “fake news” to climate, anyone who is concerned about fake news is also opposed to “climate deniers”
It is as sound as linking climate science deniers to moon shot conspiracists.
His statement: “I haven’t found a direct quote where Merkel describes climate “denial” as “fake news” ” cleary means that there isn’t one.
Yes, followed by “I haven’t found a direct quote where Merkel describes climate “denial” as “fake news”, but given how close she is to President Obama on this subject, this seems a reasonable assumption.” In other words, Eric provides no proof whatsoever, but it’s probably true because Merkel and Obama both agree that AGW is real and requires action.
thank you Andy and Chris,
you just have destroyed my belief that WUWT commenters are not able to see that this is a constructed story about Merkel and us Germans.
In fact, I cannot remember to have heard anything from Merkel about climate change, but surely she never said anyhing like Obama about that topic.
Calling her a communist, just because she lived in the GDR/DDR and was in the FDJ is the same nonsense. If one did not participate, the acess to higher education was denied.
My father was in the Hitlerjugend. With 12 years he had no other chioce. Everybody had to go there.
Last evening the BBC had a long piece about the bleaching of the Northern part of the Great Barrier Reef. What is the truth?
97% of the reef is in perfect condition as it has been well before humans and fossil fuels. Any damage is largely due to run off and the crown starfish. Climate change and ocean acidification are not drivers.
And yet the evidence shows that it is suffering worst recorded coral die off:
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/28/asia/great-barrier-reef-coral-death/
Blatant garbage. But that what you post…
Giff, ignore the MSM. Come and see the Great Barrier Reef. It is beautiful. The fish, the birds, the turtles as well as the coral.
Griff — They H-Bombed the reefs around Bikini Island. It took only 6 years for them to recover. And you are worried about a tiny (perhaps even unreal) rise in water temperature? Return to planet earth, Griff.
Eugene WR Gallun
Coral bleaching is NOT DEAD CORAL nor even dying coral. It is simply coral that has temporarily shed its symbiotic algae partner because it got too warm. It is surely under stress, but is not dead.
When the warm water sloshes our way in the southern oscillation some coral spit out their symbiants and appear to bleach before repopulating with new symbiants to continue growing when conditions permit. Thus the bleaching is a lifecycle element caused by El Nino that human beings have absolutely no control over. There is sweet FA that anyone can do about bleaching.
“What is the truth?” Don’t worry about it. That’s now nature makes corral islands.
Griff, How long have they been “recording” coral die off? 1980? 1982?
Are you sure it never happened before that? Or Wasn’t it just “not recorded”? Was it even noticed?
Let falsehood and truth compete in the marketplace.
If there is any role for government in that competition it may be in requiring sources to honestly identify themselves so that readers can judge truth both by content and by the history of the source.
Where it is difficult or impossible to judge falsehood from truth it could be because the facts are not yet known and the outcome depends on some future discovery.
For a government, or any authority, to pick a side in a debate and declare the opposition argument to be unlawful moves us in the direction of a new dark ages.
Merkel is a new age socialist nazi.
socialist nazi. That’s redundant.
Just like ‘climate science’, I suspect.
socialist n a z i is redundant
She was reared in East Germany under the Stasi….why do her opinions not surprise me?
And fake news generated by the enviro-alarmists can even fool the IPCC into including it in their report. (Re: Himalayan Glaciers melting in 30 years by Greenpeace.)
In retrospect the fake news method was introduced and perfected by Greenpeace and their ilk many many years ago.
do check on the Bolivian situation where retreat of glaciers has caused water supplies to dry up and a national drought…
Do check the IPCC reports that claim all Himalayan glaciers will be all gone by 2035. Ooops!
Yup, they’re saying it’s the worst drought in 25 years…must be since the last time the Glaciers melted?
And how would advancing glaciers supply water? Weather patterns and precipitation are the key factors.
Bolivia had huge flooding rains early in the year and La Paz Bolivia has had below normal temperatures basically all year long.
Griff gets his news from the Guardian which is about as Fake as it gets.
All kinds of states of emergency are declared in countries where a socialist leader is trying to hold onto power despite the term limit in the constitution.
http://en.mercopress.com/2016/11/15/bolivia-evo-morales-admits-he-is-not-ready-to-go-home-in-2019
We don’t use glaciers as water supplies. We use dams.
Using glaciers would be as bad as using windmills or solar panels for grid electricity generation.
Griff I think that is a really good example – I was about to post something on that myself.
The CBC has it that the Bolivian lakes are drying up because of the melting (back) of the glaciers. This is right up there with the stories punted by Monbiot which hold that the great rivers of Asia will dry up if the Himalayan glaciers disappear. In short, that the rain will stop falling all over Eastern Asia if the glaciers are not there to catch it, or some such.
If it is warmer in Bolivia up at the top of the mountains, why would it stop precipitating? If the melting of the glaciers is caused by ‘global warming’ then it is supposed to be rainier, not dryer. The rain would flow down in torrents into the dry plans, right? It appears they believe glaciers make it rain. If that is the case, watch out Antarctica!
The CBC didn’t punt the stupid arguments about rain stopping because the glaciers were smaller, they concentrated on the glaciers melting (which creates rivers). Huh – melt a glacier and the river stops running. There’s logic for you. The more water you melt away, the smaller the rivers get.
So, Griff, as the glacier melting argument is about the stupidest ever floated about why there is a drought in Bolivia or anywhere else, what are we to do with the people promoting this fake news? If the rain stopped and the glaciers melted, the rivers would continue to be there. If the glaciers were stable, the rivers would exactly equal the rain and melted snowfall volume. If the glaciers are extending, logically the only reason would be that the precipitation exceeded the seasonal melt. I wonder where the CBC thinks the glaciers mass come from.
The CBC had on a snowflake lady who said that the shrinking of the glaciers in Bolivia was caused by ‘the El Nino’. That part she got right. Then she said that the El Nino was caused by climate change. No kidding. You just can’t fix stupid. Even the most shill alarmist doesn’t think that the ENSO is ’caused by global warming’, do they? I have seen hundreds of stupid and unsupportable, illogical, false and faked things said by CAGW alarmists but not once have they said something like that – at least they have a modicum of understanding of the phenomenon. No so, the CBC or its carefully selected interviewees. They have unearthed at the bottom of Pit of Credulity a new level of ignorance about the weather. Only in Canada, eh?
Of course the drought in Bolivia is caused by the El Nino – just like last time! A whole 25 years ago. Gee. The world is going to end tomorrow. Not.
Something rather more pertinent is that the average global temperature dropped 1.0 C in the past 5 months. Put that in your glacier and melt it, Bolivia.
And they corrected that mistake, Patrick, so why do you keep bringing it up? Nice deflection.
That they made the mistake in the first place is news. Why do you want a different standard depending on whether or not you agree with the source?
Chris November 29, 2016 at 8:07 am says;
“Nice deflection.”
It is quite funny that you say that, since Griff, Seaice, and Gareth have studiously avoided the subject of the post. So sick of deluded fools who cannot even see their own hypocritical tap dancing around any subject that shows how dangerous their lack of understanding is. Stick to the thread topic, if you dare.
Probably caused the toilet paper shortage in Venezuela too.
Retreat of glaciers cause a national drought? Isn’t that labeling a symptom as the malady? Glaciers are merely slow moving rivers. One doesn’t blame the creek drying up as the cause for the drought. One might think that drought might be the reason the glaciers are receding, not the other way round.
I don’t feel I have any need to incite to hatred against segments of the population, however, I find it increasingly uneasy how conveniently the “segment of population” may be defined and re-defined to exclude segments like meat-eaters or republicans – and at the same time, the definition of incitement can include, at worst, important and plainly factual statements should they be condemning.
If incitement means purposefully or carelessly making people incited to a level they attack people or their property (Kristallnacht, lynching, etc..) I’m strongly for criminal law criminalizing that. The problem is in the details how careless writing and re-writing such a law may cause significant practical limitations to important free speech.
One such example can be taken from Finland where purposefully testing the law – and a named attorney general – by rhetorically calling a historical child rapist as a paedophile was considered hurting religious rights which are protected by the law. Historically the bill criminalized blasphemy.
How come we are entertaining such laws is beyond unbelievable. The attorney general who took this to the court, is of course, a known progressive cause activist. The careless member of the public was punished by the Highest Court. The member of the public got some good bad publicity and is now a member of the European Parlament.
There is nothing more regressive than progressives.
“concept in German criminal law that refers to incitement to hatred against segments of the population”
Jesse Jackson and Lewis Farrakan, and Al Sharpton and Obama better steer clear of Germany then. They incite hatred against whites and conservatives all the time. Al has his own tv show he can do it on. Better stay in the U.S., Al. I guess they cut Obama some slack over there since he and Merkel are on the same page.
They must have polled three million scientists to cover the 31000 American sceptics. Never noticed.
They didn’t poll anyone. They invited responses from anyone in the USA that called themselves a scientist and did not count anyone who disagreed. So you could say they polled 6.2 million scientists.
seaice1
If what you say is correct (and I have no reason to doubt it) then they invited 6.2m and they polled those who showed up. Obviously grifters should have been concerned enough to do so.
I don’t know why so many people are concerned about the numbers. It only takes one perspicacious observer to prove a that multitude has misunderstood something.
Crispin, you are correct. My language was imprecise.
Well, those who “voice proscribed opinions” definitely comprise a “segment of population”, so Angela Merkel, by prosecuting or imprisoning them, surely commits Volksverhetzung, in fact, a bit more than that, because she does not merely calls for action, but acts. Therefore she should prosecute or imprison herself as soon as practicable, shouldn’t she?
Thank God we are holding the Trump card.
“Thank God we are holding the Trump card.”
Ain’t it the truth!
Merkel returning Germany and Europe to its Nazi roots. Didn’t take too long did it?
she will go down in history as a destroyer of Germany
“she will go down in history as a destroyer of Germany”
Maybe the whole of Europe, if they don’t watch out. Merkel has brought the enemy into the camp in overwhelming numbers.
“Maybe the whole of Europe”
Certainly the EU. Merkel’s Migrant Millions are the motivation behind the sudden rediscovery of nationalism across Europe, and one of the motivations for Trump’s election. Inviting them in to Germany will probably down in history as a decision as stupid as Hilter’s invasion of Russia.
“hate speech” = political and social opinions, and inconvenient facts, unapproved of by the establishment.
The notion that journalists meet standards of due diligence would be hysterically funny if her sentiments weren’t so blatantly fascist. It seems that the Establishment has come to realise that they can no longer control the narrative using broadcast media, as populations are voting the wrong way.
“It seems that the Establishment has come to realise that they can no longer control the narrative using broadcast media, as populations are voting the wrong way.”
I think that is the explanation. They think they are the natural leaders and when they see their socialist ideology voted out of office, they can’t admit it is their fault, so they try to find fault elsewhere, and free speech becomes their target.
They think free speech has distorted their record, but it has actually revealed their record and that’s why they are losing, on their record, not because their record was exposed.
there was a baseline of facts that we could all work off of.
==============
only thing was, the facts were later shown to be wrong.
The “facts” on any subject are limited by what we know today. If we learn something new tomorrow that contradicts what we know today, these “new” facts will always be false facts under Obama’s criteria, no matter how true they actually are.
ask yourself for example why there is a civil war in Syria. Why was the US so keen to remove Assad from power? Why is Russia so keen to prevent this? Is this really a struggle about good and evil, or is it a struggle about who controls the oil and gas pipelines to Europe, and thus controls Europe?
One persons truth is the other persons propaganda.
The winners always write history in their own truth. That is why one must always be on the winning side.
Do you really believe that Obama started that war in order to build a pipeline through Syria? Despite the fact that he has done everything in his power to prevent pipelines from being built in the US.
The west will collapse because the people who are successful at grabbing the wheel have never bothered to learn how to navigate….and icebergs are forecast…
Censorship is coming.
The Socialists tried to bring this in to Australia under the Labor party – I suspect they will try again next time they get voted in.
History is littered with “disobedience”, the English under French rule for instance. Oppression never wins.
Oppression never wins.
Yes it does. Ask the millions who are/were tortured and murdered throughout history. There’s no technical difference between “winning” and “predominating.” Freedom is just a tiny island in an ocean of oppression, historically and right now.
It may not win, but millions can still die in while the conflict is being decided.
I wrote a comment comparing the logic of this article to that of Stephan Lewandowski – and not in a good way.
My comment never appeared. I really hope that this is because of some problem my side (e.g. maybe use of the cons-acy word) rather than it being actively blocked
“rather than it being actively blocked”
I don’t think you are being actively blocked. You probably used a word that causes your post to go into moderation. And the website does seem to be having a few glitches around posting. There seem to have been a lot more complaints over the last few weeks than is normal.
They are not picking on you. 🙂
Signs of communism.
You’re already restricted to have an opinion in Germany anyway.
“You’re already restricted to have an opinion in Germany anyway.”
I’m reminded of the trouble a German comedian got into by making fun of Erdogan, the leader of Turkey. The Germans were thinking about prosecuting the guy. That’s a pretty severe restriction on a person’s speech, when a comedian can’t even make fun of a foreign leader. Erdogan didn’t like it, and I guess that’s all that mattered to the German authorities.
Free speech is in serious trouble in all of Europe.
You can take the Chancellor out of East Germany but you can’t take East Germany out of the Chancellor.
When will the Ministry of Truth be set up?
Merkel is living proof that Germans are political morons – still as dumb as when they supported
Hitler.
Zero chance of this happening, literally none, not least because there’s also a very real chance Merkel will be gone this time next year. Change is in the air.
Perhaps we should collect all of the “fake news” over the years about what evils global warming had or was going to bring upon the world.
I think we ought to compare lists of fake news. The Leftists can generate their list, and then we can generate our list. I’m thinking our list will be several orders of magnitude greater than their list. 🙂