History records that when Johannes Gutenberg used his printing press to produce a copy of the bible in the 15th century it was a hinge of history. Printed in Europe using mass-produced metal movable type, Gutenberg’s bible made information accessible in something other than a manuscript or hand-written codex. Hosanna!

But the printing press freaked out the mitred heads at the Vatican. Why? Because it allowed common people to read the bible without an intermediary, a priest or bishop, censoring the uncomfortable bits. The printing press undermined their absolute authority and left people free to make their own “heretical” conclusions. What they read, in part, sparked the Reformation. And 500 years of war as the Church tried to reinforce its power.

Now, elites controlling the legacy media flow are freaked out because impertinent social media threatens their control over the high religion of climate change.  Like the cardinals who tried to stop Gutenberg’s press, the high priests of climate have been lapped by technology. The formative years of the “crisis” occurred pre-social media sites such as Twitter (now X), Facebook and Tik Tok. Their fantastical climate modelling and doomsday predictions were made in the hermetically sealed world of purchased journalists, cloistered academics and progressive reporting.

Prince (now King) Charles and Al Gore could rattle off outlandish predictions about an ice-free Arctic and decimation of glaciers without fear of contradiction. Coca Cola’s claim of a polar bear wipeout became gospel. Cranks like authors Michael Chrichton or James Delingpole could be safely quarantined away from public opinion by the TV news departments.

Academics who dared demur were defunded and ridiculed. The DC court system created a kangaroo court so Michael Mann could successfully take over a decade to sue Mark Steyn for mocking his wonky science. Silence was golden for the priests of climate.

Soon, climate belief achieved a religious fervour among the secular progressive left, a default belief system to replace the religions of their youth. Like classic religions, climate worship required a “leap of faith” where converts transcended the rational and embraced the mystical. Armed with this faith, the gormless media proclaimed “hottest summer ever” and “rising ocean levels” wholeheartedly, declaring it would not print any material that might contradict the received wisdom of the IPCC or NAOO.

Governments complied totally. Hollywood? You need to ask? The people succumbed.

But by the late 1990s, social media raised its insubordinate head. First with cheeky new academic and research sources. Later, the modern equivalent of Gutenberg’s press allowed common people to access news— without the political and media intermediaries— and to make their own conclusions. The purchase of Twitter by iconoclast Elon Musk provided a further counter-argument to the hysterics in control at legacy media.

It sparked a Reformation, allying itself with populist movements across the West. When the usual suspects brayed about unprecedented heat in 2024 requiring government regulation, online voices countered, Not So Fast. It turns out that maximum U.S. summertime temps have not increased in 30 years and are cooler than 90 years ago.

Ditto the “loss” of the Great Barrier Reef, which has, during the lifetime of climate alarmism, gone from near-death to suddenly revived and restored. Even when climate cultists at BBC acknowledged the doomsday stuff was bogus, “The new coral is particularly vulnerable – meaning the progress could be quickly undone by climate change and other threats, officials say.” Officials say. (Translation: Someone chasing grant money is nervous).

It’s getting so the public ho-hums even when CNN’s Dana Bash grills the presidential candidates about their plans for the “climate crisis”. Polls show climate is down the list of items the public cares about, far behind the economy. They don’t see it in their own lives, so why worry? Adding to the panic among alarmists was the recent SCOTUS “Chevron decision” which transfers policy making back to elected officials and the courts, and away from the vast administrative bureaucracies in government created to protect the radical gospels. From now on unelected bureaucrats will not be deciding American scientific policies. A death blow to the Swamp’s power in the U.S.

Try as they might, the Apostles of Apocalypse can no loner count on exclusive ownership of “Science” (Translation: chasing grant money) or the U.S. Supreme Court. So friends of greening in government (see: Justin Trudeau) are now proposing draconian censorship laws in hopes of suppressing the “greenwashing” insubordination.

In February, NDP (read cultist) MP Charlie Angus tabled a federal private members bill that would ban “misleading fossil fuel advertising”, similar to the restrictions on tobacco advertising implemented in the 1990s. “The B.C. Greens tabled their own anti-greenwashing bill in the B.C. legislature in April. If passed, the law would prevent businesses from making misleading statements in advertising materials, about greenhouse gas emissions associated with their practices.

“It would also target claims about the effectiveness of their climate efforts and require them to back their sustainability claims on a public website. Corporations that fail to adhere to the measures could face fines of up to $1 million per day if the false representation continues to be published.” The defending The Science would carry no such burden.

In short, dispute the entrenched Greenist autocrats in government and media at your peril.  Where this censorship battle to suppress independent thought leads is unknown. For instance, conservatives worried about the suburban female vote remain restrained in denying the green manifesto. (No one scares more easily than the suburban female demo.)

But it does explains the mania of elites to stifle anyone not approved by the powerful from having a voice. And how far they will go, having been exposed by the internet, to keep the whip hand over a disbelieving public.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

We are watching the national anthem played as Canada’s mens soccer team advances to the second round of the Copa America tournament. It’s Canada Day weekend, which always stirs up sentimental patriotism, even when the mid-wits in the PMO change the words to O Canada. But something feels different.

This team, of course, looks nothing like Team Canada in the 1972 showdown with the Soviets, for instance. Demographically they’re Trudeau’s wet dream of races, ethnicities and languages. Fair enough. They made it through qualifying. Props.

But having changed the look of Canada to the world, just what remains of the nation that was gripped by the 1972 Canada/ Russia series, games so existential that Canadians felt a loss meant the death of a culture? What does today’s Canada stand for anymore to them? And why are elite politicians pushing so hard on a policy that has little support?

A recent Ipsos poll asked “Do you agree or disagree that ‘Canada is broken’?” The result? Conservatives: 96%/PPC: 86%/ Greens: 63%/ BQ: 58%/ NDP: 57%/ Liberals: 34%. Understand that what has changed for Conservatives is very different from the Bloc or NDP. But they are all adrift in Trudeau’s Canada.

As the players sang along to O Canada in Orlando it’s clear that Canada right now is not a nation. It’s a brand. One constructed by politicians, not the people of the country. Liberals apparently like it that way, but getting a lump in the throat from remembering our war dead or the creation of single-payer healthcare is so yesterday for the PMO posse. Governments like Canada’s have chucked their independence in deference to world governments deciding financial, health and military policy.

One friend says all that binds this new Canadian brand is hockey and equalization payments. With polling numbers such as these it’s fair to ask why the political class continues to push this aggressive WEF branding when so much of the nation prefers the old homegrown model? While immigration is a laudable goal, fire-hose immigration like Canada is seeing is kefafta.

It’s not just a Canada thing. No, this is a branding exercise writ globally. Look at the lineup for Chile that faced Canada on Saturday. Names such as Igor Lishnovsky, Erick Pulgar and Benjamin Kusevic hardly stir up the traditional profile of a South American nation. The Euro 2024 championships running simultaneously have cultural shocks to those who have not being paying attention.

The lineups of England, France, Belgium, Germany and even Italy feature players who are black, brown or Arab, reflecting the imperial reach of those countries a century ago. If the goal is to emulate the Jackie Robinson model of integrating through sport then this would seem to be a success. If it is, then why do banners around the pitch still rage about ending racism? Or is the real goal coercion? Do the Brussels bunch (as well as Canada’s elite) just like to lecture people about their faults so they can be re-structured?

There are holdouts to this movement. Hungary, Poland and the Balkan nations remain largely homogeneous culturally (while being threatened by the EU for not accepting more of the world’s wandering population). So do Asian nations like Japan. (You’re supposed to ignore them.) But it would be disingenuous to suggest that there is a simple way to reverse the course of this forced march, to protect the cultures that have existed in Europe for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years.

The Marseillaise has gone from a stirring revolutionary call to the tricoleure to sentimental background music for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Like Edith Piaf. All facilitated by the willing loss of cultural sovereignty in the Western world.

Not for nothing is Israel a rogue state for defying the WEF and the UN demands for a ceasefire as they avenge the heinous October 7 massacres by Hamas. Through its zombie president Joe Biden, the American power elite is telling Israel that they’re hurting energy rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East. Be more like Ukraine, they say, and sacrifice a generation of your young men to keep natural gas domination out of the hands of Gasprom, Vladimir Putin’s piggyback.

Less Bibi Netanyahu and more Vladimir Zelensky, the plucky kleptocrat in Ché Guevara fatigues. Succumb, bitch.

Sometimes the message is subtle. Sometimes not so much. UFC star Connor MacGregor suggested that perhaps immigration was behind the anger of Irish protesters who rioted after an immigrant murdered five people. He was quickly  upraised by Taioseach hack Pauline O’Connell:  “If your views on other people’s identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”

How did this brand-management happen? There is an old quote that goes, ‘For my friend everything. For my enemies the law.’ Indeed, the law has been used (or misused) to bring the unruly like MacGregor to heel. New “hate speech” laws have been enacted to trip up those who, like Michael Richards of Seinfeld fame, are made to disappear for upsetting audience members unhinged by comedy. It doesn’t stop there. New Canadian laws talk about multi-million dollar fines for denying the climate ruse.

As we predicted in November of 2023, “Next speech regulation is silence. Or non-speech. Under the new rules, silence will be no defence when the mob orders you to “wear the ribbon”. UC Berkeley Law Professor Savala Trepczynski gave away the game, saying that “White silence is incredibly powerful … It’s not neutral. It acts like a weapon.” Writes legal specialist Jonathan Turley, “In a world where silence is violence and civility is complicity, there is little room for true free speech.”

So sing out loud and proud when O Canada plays at this summer’s Olympics. Talk about sea to sea to sea. But don’t get any ideas about old Canada. Brand loyalty is the coming thing.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.