In May of this year, when Koch-y disinfo spreaders were fearmongering about the government supposedly mandating a "kill switch" in new cars, we noticed that one was using a new phrase, "freedom of movement." Appropriated from the real world where the phrase describes the right to enter or exit a country, Koch-sponsored, University of Kansas assistant teaching professor Levi Russell used it as a political tool to attack President Biden and the general need for electric vehicles by suggesting that they're really a conspiracy to enable DC elite to control your driving.
Despite the total debunking of the "kill switch" lie, premised on technology to save lives from drunk drivers, Russell stuck with the approach, and in late August published another RealClearEnergy piece attacking electric vehicles and then reiterating his propaganda that "the ultimate goal of the so-called 'transition' to EVs is to eliminate our freedom of movement."
Similarly, in response to the California decision to move towards electric vehicles and eventually stop selling new gasoline-powered cars, Fox's Laura Ingraham called it an attack on "the freedom of the open road, our freedom to travel as far as we want, whenever we want… a clear assault on its residents' basic freedom of movement."
Pretty ironic, coming from rabidly anti-immigrant, "Build The Wall" Fox News — especially in light of the GOP's efforts to aid states trying to criminalize interstate travel for medical care — , to be suddenly championing the right of peoples "to travel as far as we want, whenever we want!"
And then there was Katie Pavlich's oped in The Hill, where, like Russell, she ran through the litany of bad faith criticisms of EVs before concluding the "push for electric vehicles isn’t about saving or cleaning up the environment for future generations, it’s about controlling how people travel and their freedom of movement."
But without the "kill switch" concept, these pieces are really stretching to fearmonger about Democratic dreams of somehow controlling everyone's cars like playing Hot Wheels.
EVs — the argument goes — are simultaneously not going to be powerful enough for long trips, despite significant public and private investments in charging stations, but also vulnerable to a faceless government bureaucrat surveilling your movement (which your phone does already anyway) and shutting down your road trip even you you wouldn't be able to charge up anyway, because a renewable-powered and fossil-free grid won't be able to supply enough electricity.
Or something.
And this is the problem conspiracists run into. EVs are supposedly both somehow advanced secret surveillance tools of the Democratic deep state, and not advanced enough to actually work, meaning people will continue to use old gas-powered cars anyway instead of buying new EVs, rendering the monitoring scheme ineffective.
But hey, as long as you have a whole pseudo-media ecosystem to broadcast your EV disinfo, from RealClear to Fox News, it doesn't matter how stupid it is, your propaganda will have plenty of "freedom of movement."
