shows The network Correctiv, such as the US organization Heartland climate-disseminated Propaganda. Connections to Germany.
climate change conditional flood? As photo: Karsten Thielker
taz: Mrs Huth, Mr. Peters will help, only a Push, you have covered, researched, such as networks of climate change deniers are organized, specifically how the American lobby organization Heartland-funded, strategic disinformation disseminated, and also in Germany its Finger in the game has. What exactly have you found out?
Jean Peters: We were able to show that the international climate-change deniers would be willing to disguise donations from German companies from the automotive industry or the energy sector, to take on the German policy influence and to spread targeted with manipulative methods of false information. In addition, there are over Heartland, a connection to the German, as climate deniers club familiar Eike-Institute to the German Bundestag on the AfD.
What do you attribute this?
on Tuesday, the 4. February 2020, 21:00 in the broadcast Frontal 21 on ZDF broadcast. It is also published on the Website of Correctiv.
Katarina Huth: at The heart of our Research is to offer a written offer from the Heartland, in the us, against payment, in a very concrete measures for the dissemination of disinformation on climate issues. There is, for example, that the launch of even experts and former advisers to the White house scientifically-acting Fake-News-styled article, so-called In-depth Policy Papers, in a Livestream conference, German environment problems, “discuss”, or climate change, can think in terms of theses about a young AfD close YouTuberin spread.
How you approach this, this information?
Katarina Huth: Our cover story was that we were of a strategic public relations company with headquarters in Berlin, and for a customer from the German automotive industry EUR 500,000 in a campaign to anonymously want to invest. We have built a Website, business cards printed, and us second phones purchased. Actually we wanted in our rolls the money to the Eike-Institute donations, of which it is known that some of the members work for the AfD. But James Taylor, chief strategist at Heartland, this is a very tight one with the Eike-Institute, tried to persuade us to give it to dear to you directly. Ironically, sat a colleague from Eike Institute at a table nearby – for us it was amazing that even colleagues of a tight-knit scene, apparently also behind each other.
Where was this conversation and how it went?
Jean Peters : This was in the fall at the Heartland conference in Madrid, as a “counter-summit” to the COP25 understands. We were previously on a Eike Meeting in Munich, where we have also met with members of Heartland. A certain amount of trust in this good-bye so early. On our demand, as we could use the donation disguise, called Taylor, without further ADO, the Donors Trust in the United States. Our research shows that seems to be more and more money from the military-, coal-, Gas-, and Oil industries of the Heartland forward.
So he has confirmed is what was suspected for a long time.
Katarina Huth: That climate change is a fact of institutions in the United States from the fossil fuel industry Fund, can partly be pretty easy to reconstruct, because in the US, unlike in Germany, the donor must be published. The Donors Trust is an organization, the veiled sources of funding. The money comes from Mobil by Exxon, the Bradley Foundation, the Koch Brothers, or the Mercer Foundation, which has funded the Trump campaign, together with Cambridge Analytica. So all the people out of the libertarian spectrum, the interest in fossil energy use, and libertarian and right-wing currents have. The official amount of Donations in the last few years, while the Donors Trust next funds will increase in 2018, the $ 2.8 million paid to Heartland. Taylor has confirmed to us also that donations for the climate change denying, in the last few years the rise, and that meanwhile, two-thirds to three-quarters of the budget of about $ 6 million annually to make up. Previously, Heartland has not, by the way, far from being the only or largest Institution of its kind in the United States, but the most aggressive, especially by disinformation campaigns for tobacco companies such as Philip Morris deserves. Today, the Business is worth, apparently, with climate-Fake-News.
Jean Peters: in addition, Taylor has explained exactly how they make Fake News. Make sure, for example, whom you cite, and write articles like, “as it would be for the New York Times or other left magazines”. The Trick is that Opinion articles are not recognizable as such, but message are written. Even if the critical reader will see that a Text comes from the Heartland Institute, sounds the in fact, he explained to us. Such publications are purchased scientists, including self-created polls, which he offered to us also for Germany, to be then sent to politicians and other Policy Makers. Specifically, it was offered to us, for example, an article by John Dunn and Steven Milloy, in the diesel exhaust and coal-fired power plants as a health and ecologically unproblematic should be presented. Thus, a deep insight into the machinery of the climate deniers, we have never gotten.
young people And to reach those views on YouTube?
Katarina Huth: Yes, this is a new target group. This AfD-close-to-YouTube-opinion-maker is 19 years old, and in the written offer, a budget is listed in the post for you. The offer was that she makes a “series of vibrant and compelling Videos” for us. We asked Taylor if we can also write the texts for you – he promised that we can enter without problems key words and a direction.
It seems almost naive, as they all simply agreed.
Katarina Huth: Yes, this is really absurd. On our fictitious Website five different font types, the cover story is created under great time pressure. We can explain this only by the fact that they were sharp on the money.
Jean Peters: It is also reassuring that you don’t seem to be set up so professionally. In any case, this matter of course, also shows that it is a normal Business Taylor said, literally, that you are set for quite a lot of donor subjects.
do they really Believe that climate change exists, or is more of a commercial interest behind it?
Katarina Huth: This is difficult to answer, but with Taylor, it seemed more of a Business. But just at the Eike conference in Munich, we had the impression that many of the almost exclusively older men from the Fears out really believed in it. And it is not only black-and-white and evil motives, some may come from the industry and see your whole life’s work due to the demands of the climate movement threatened, because you can empathize as an empathic person, too. And different opinions are of course part of the political diversity and a functioning democracy. But Fake News at the latest, then dangerous, if you win on the Federal level, political influence.
Was the covert Search to be difficult, even dangerous?
Katarina Huth: Initially, it was almost entertaining, and critical questions came to be where I as a woman had it hard at all taken seriously. In Madrid it was difficult, a few Times we would have flown out there. Swallow we also had to, as at the dinner by all at the table of the Holocaust was put into perspective, or women in General have been vilified as “too emotional”.
now you Have the fear of personal hostility?
Jean Peters : This is almost normal on such topics. In Germany you have to expect as in the meantime, unfortunately, with rape or death threats. We have to protect us as good as possible and it must otherwise, in that now, as evidenced by these institutions to disguise donations, and the machinery of the climate denier industry to Germany.
