For all their bluster about climate alarmism supposedly scaring the public into a communist complacency, and their mockery of supposedly easily-triggered Gen-Z snowflakes, right-wing disinfo outlets rely heavily on scaring their audience about the perceived perils of public policies to address market failures like pollution.
So in honor of Halloween, here's three fun examples of things that scare the biggest snowflakes in the world: conservative pundits.
We'll start with the Daily Wire. The outlet is generally a fracker-backed social media click-factory; it usually focuses on letting Ben Shapiro live out his failed dreams of Hollywood stardom versus coverage of the environment, but they still carry plenty of propaganda presented as news. For example, this week, it ran coverage of a Milwaukee County resolution granting "Rights of Nature". Oh no! Not providing legal protections to nonhuman entities like animals, plants, and rivers to enable their protection from exploitation and pollution! Terrifying!
Another thing that’s not actually scary, but apparently strikes fear into the hearts of the right: Jobs! Yes, the one thing every single politician since the dawn of time has promised to bring to their constituents, is, apparently, a bad thing now!
"Biden is deploying 20,000 climate activists," warns a recent op-ed headline by Grover Norquist in Fox News, "and making you pay for it." Yes, the industry-backed anti-tax advocate thinks that "1.5 million potential climate activists is one of the scariest things this Halloween.” According to Norquist, it's bad for the government to create jobs protecting public lands.
"So, what will the climate youth do all day?" Norquist asks rhetorically, dreaming up the scariest slippery slope he can think of: "Perhaps they’ll knock on your door wielding a clipboard and ask about your air conditioner or gas stove." Oh my heavens! Not a clipboard!?
He doesn't stop there. "Maybe they'll walk around and identify 'gaps in tree canopy coverage' as called for in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act." The horror!!
But Norquist's anti-jobs hysteria is calm and collected compared to his comrades over at the Wall Street Journal.
There, Journal editorial page writer Barton Swaim recently enjoyed the privilege of getting to write for one of the most-read newspapers on the planet to unironically complain about being triggered by Halloween decorations his neighbors put up.
"Down With Halloween's Ironic Death Cult" cries the headline of the piece in which Swaim apologizes for his "Puritan sensibility" and his "own hidebound premodern Calvinist outlook, in which death is no laughing matter and necromancy is forbidden by God," to call "Big Halloween," a phrase he uses in earnest, "a kind of industrial cartoon death cult."
So enjoy Halloween, dear readers, and maybe add another dab of blood to that zombie costume, if for no other reason than to scare Wall Street Journal editorial board writers.