Finding facts: the left often ignores the story to create its own narrative, by Chris Mitchell.
Where the left of politics used to be about a hand-up for the less privileged it is now often about a put-down by the privileged people who disagree with them. …
It is not just on race that the left shows disdain for the views of ordinary Australians. In climate change, the politics of President Donald Trump’s America, the UK Brexit vote, on organised Christian religion and on reporting the conservative side of federal politics, generally the left media loves to accuse those dissenting from fashionable views of being stupid.
People on social media do it to get “likes” from the other sheep on Twitter and Facebook. But for thought leaders in the left it is a deliberate tactic, known in politics and the media as de-legitimising. Don’t deal with facts that might prove hard to undermine, just try to damage the moral and intellectual standing of your opponent.
Why, for example, all the publicity for challengers to sitting Liberals at the next election? Many in the left media accept the idea former prime minister Tony Abbott, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Health Minister Greg Hunt are stupid because of their government’s position on climate change.
In this narrative, Abbott, who used to write editorials for this newspaper and is a former Rhodes Scholar, a volunteer lifesaver and Rural Fire Service member whose charity bike rides have raised millions for the Manly Women’s Shelter, is a poor local member because of his position on climate change.
But Zali Steggall, an Olympic bronze medal skier and lawyer with a restaurant named after her in Manly, now running against Abbott as a GetUp-backed independent, is the solution? …
Why did left commenters last week on the work of this newspaper’s environment editor Graham Lloyd and columnist Nick Cater resort to insults about both men’s intelligence when they simply pointed out the facts of power generation costs highlighted by last week’s grid response to two hot days in Victoria and South Australia? And why so little interest at the ABC and Nine/Fairfax in pursuing the reasons for the power costs blowout?
Don’t suppose the left will warmly welcome the good news that the world is not under threat from increasing carbon dioxide, and that the carbon dioxide theory of global warming is due to a modeling error made decades ago. Any reasonable due diligence would have uncovered that long ago — who will look stupid when this comes to light?
