One of the sneakiest tools in the propagandist's playbook is to co-opt the opposition's language in order to mock it and render its key terms meaningless. This is what Trump did with "fake news," what electric utilities tried to do with "private solar," and what fossil fuel companies are doing when they tokenize Black and Indigenous people to "wokewash" their image.
Now, we've spotted a shiny new example of this.
In a disinfo-filled commentary piece published last week in Newsmax and republished in The Daily Signal, Fox News contributor Deroy Murdock argues that “Democrats’ Gasophobia Will Kill Americans.”
He starts off by raving about how “Neo-totalitarian, left-wing eco-extremists are banning new natural gas access in scores of locales.” That’s right: he is labeling even the most basic plans to transition to renewable energy as ‘extremism.’
It is hard to take Murdock’s argument seriously when he mentions real extremism in the same article. He writes, “Here is yet another reason why anti-gas prohibitionism is so pigheaded: Saboteurs keep striking electric equipment.” And he is right about that last point! Far-right domestic terrorism poses a serious threat to the US electric grid, with multiple white supremacist and homophobic attacks against electrical substations occurring in the past year. However, instead of advocating for an end to this domestic terrorism, Murdock argues that when an attack occurs, the best course of action is to huddle around gas stoves for warmth.
In other words, his best argument for the continued reliance on natural gas is that he thinks domestic terrorists are giving us no other choice.
But what's new and interesting in Murdock’s article is the key word that he uses multiple times: “gasophobia.” He's not describing a fear of gas infrastructure exploding your home and killing you and your neighbors, as it does pretty regularly. Instead, he is referring to the "enviro-know-it-alls" to whom "gas is like cyanide… because of 'climate.'"
If the ploy wasn’t so smirkingly obvious, one would wonder why Murdock would invoke a term so strangely similar to ‘homophobia’ when, as an openly gay man, he has first-hand experience with that particular form of discrimination. But since Murdock has aligned himself with a political party that is well known for its violent homophobia and transphobia, his attempt to turn the "-phobic" label on its head is too cute by half. After all, his intended audience of conservatives is probably not far off from proudly declaring themselves as “-phobes” of some kind in order to stand with those who have been ‘canceled’ by ‘woke’ accusations that they are homophobic and transphobic.
Indeed, disinformation outlets have recently published a whole slew of hateful articles related to one of the few gay Republicans, Representative-Elect George Santos.
Instead of reporting on something meaningful, like Santos’ lies about being "Jew-ish" or his dubious claims about developing carbon capture technology, The Washington Times instead published a hateful article in which Opinion Editor Charles Hurt sarcastically declares that Santos and his gay opponent Robert Zimmerman should “both be ‘Woman of the Year’!”
Similarly, the day after running Murdock's piece on gasophobia, The Daily Signal published a column calling Santos a "Child of Woke America" and blaming trans people and gay marriage for Santos’ lies.
Only time will tell if other fossil fuel industry cronies and disinfluencers will jump on the “gasophobia” bandwagon, but given that Republicans seem to grow more transphobic by the day, they might end up being confused about whether or not they should be “gasophobic” too.
