Climate change backlash exploited by right-wing deniers shows need to win popular support for green policies – Joyce McMillan

Governments need to be much more serious about the profound political and social transformations required to bring about a low-carbon economy

They call it DARVO, and it works a treat. It’s a term originally used in criminal psychology to describe the behaviour of some wrongdoers when accused. They first deny (D) that they did any such thing, then begin to attack (A) those accusing them; and finally start a process of reversing victim and offender (RVO), in which the perpetrators of crime somehow become victims, and those accusing them are framed as powerful oppressors, backed by dark elite forces.

And if all of that sounds familiar, in the age of Donald Trump, then it’s hardly surprising; because DARVO is not only the continuing leitmotif of Trump’s narcissistic personality, but also, increasingly. the chosen modus operandi of the global political right, which has had an iron grip on global economic policy for more than a generation, and is now – as Liz Truss’s bizarre speech at the recent CPAC conference in Maryland vividly demonstrated – in profound and aggressive denial about the human, environmental and economic damage those policies have inflicted.

As I write, there are three arenas where this right-wing hegemony and the attitudes it spawns are being challenged, or exposed for what they are. There is Ukraine, where the armed forces are trying to defend some kind of European liberal democracy against the brutal aggression of an oil-fuelled Russian Federation. There is Gaza, and the horrific slaughter and destruction now being wrought there by a far-right Israeli government.

Politicians who impose top-down green policies risk sparking a backlash like the protests by farmers in Wales, who have won support from Rishi Sunak (Picture: Peter Byrne/PA)

And there are the city streets, in the West and beyond, where people of all races and creeds have turned out in millions to march for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza/Israel conflict; and where mainly young climate activists try to find ways of expressing their horror at the “business as usual” complacency that is destroying the natural world on which we all depend, sometimes even halting the sacred motor car in its tracks.

Get our weekly opinion newsletter for expert analysis from The Scotsman’s team of columnists

Not, though, for much longer, if governments like the current Westminster administration have their way; because now, political DARVO is in full swing on all of these issues, with assorted politicians – including, sadly, Britain’s Prime Minister – conspiring to smear millions who have marched peacefully for a ceasefire in Gaza as in some way linked to political violence, and to dangerous threats against politicians. In an inflammatory and frankly ridiculous speech on Wednesday, Mr Sunak even claimed – without a shred of evidence, and despite a sceptical response from senior police officers – that there was now a “growing consensus” that Britain is “descending into mob rule”; a development which would, of course, necessitate further repressive measures against all kinds of protest.

Russian propaganda

The effects of DARVO are now becoming particularly heartbreaking and terrifying, though, for those who care about the future of the planet on which our lives depend. Across Europe and beyond, policies designed to meet the challenge of climate change – and those who support them – have now become one of the main “culture war” targets of the political right, ranging from the “Net Zero Research” group within the parliamentary Tory party to the Russian bots using online propaganda to persuade Polish farmers angered by falling global prices that their real enemies are the Ukrainian people, and EU environmental policies.

In the age of the internet, it would be naive to imagine that the farmers who have come out to protest in other European capitals recently are not also seeing the same online ideas and memes, all suggesting a top-down green conspiracy by governments against farmers and food production. This week the PM – abruptly losing his aversion to disruptive street protests, when they serve this side of the argument – even turned out in Cardiff to back Welsh farmers protesting against Welsh government green policy proposals which they say will break them; although perhaps, as it turns out, not quite as much as Westminster policies will break farmers in England.

In the case of climate change policy – and the vital issue of food security – these political movements should act as a double wake-up call to administrations seeking to deal with 21st-century realities. First, those governments should never underestimate the sheer financial and political might of the forces still trying to defend existing food and energy systems, and how adept some of their political allies have become in using online propaganda and organisation to obstruct change.

Democratic renewal

Then secondly, those governments need to become much more serious about the profound political and social transformations needed to support a transition to a low-carbon economy. To put it bluntly, no such transition will be achieved unless communities at the grass roots feel a strong sense of ownership of the policies involved, and are motivated to implement them in full; and that is as true in Scotland as anywhere, where numerous well-intentioned and necessary green measures have been applied in such a top-down manner, with so little buy-in from key stakeholders, that they have become nothing more than political footballs, and in some cases ramps for the worst kinds of anti-green propaganda and outright climate change denial.

The resistance to climate-related policies, in other words, represents not only a massive political opportunity for those who oppose all progressive change, but also a profound challenge to Western and other governments who imagine that change on this scale can be achieved through 1990s-style methods of top-down management, imposed on an apathetic or hostile public. The economic transformation we need to see will go hand in hand with democratic renewal, and with the re-empowerment of local communities, or it will not happen. And far more than the future of any one nation may therefore depend on the skill and wisdom of politicians committed to that viable future, in re-engineering their politics to meet the challenges of the times, and enabling and supporting the new age of citizen empowerment that will be necessary to deliver a liveable future, for us all.