The fascists are still trying to gas us

Recently a shocking crime was unmasked. Billions of dollars were stolen and thousands of people were killed.

I'm talking about the VW Emissions Scandal aka Dieselgate. "Oh that," you say, clicking on another link, "I thought you were going to talk about something important". Which makes you part of the problem.

Champions of the Big Lie, then and now

[Yes, this is an egregious Godwin, and moreover unfairly associates a great car with a couple of utter scumbags, but I think it's worth pointing out the history of this evil corporation.]

This is not merely a case of a company concealing facts to cover for some embarrassing or expensive stuff-up, but systematically engineering a system to break the law. How is this any less criminal than planning and then committing a straight-out robbery?

Then there are the deaths.

Clearly, any estimates of mortality in a case like this are only going to be very rough, but consider this: Many European countries have failed to meet targets for reducing NO_x pollution. In the UK alone, 23,500 premature deaths per year are estimated to be caused by NO_x pollution. Transport accounts for nearly half of all NO_x emissions. The hacked VWs were putting out up to 35 times the legal limits of NO_x. VW is Europe's largest car manufacturer, and this scandal has been ongoing for many years.

You do the maths: Whatever way you calculate it, there are thousands of deaths attributable to this hack. And that's not counting illnesses and environmental damage.

Why does no one seem to be upset about this? It's barely being reported on-line, and when it is, it attracts comments like:

"Meh, they all do it"

"I don't care, I didn't buy my car based on the NO_x emissions"

"This is the result of environmental agencies being too strict"

"I still trust VW to give me adequate compensation"

and even

"I admire their skill in pulling something like this off"

[These are paraphrased, but genuinely reflect comments I've read.]

Business Insider tells us why they think this scandal is "so annoying": apparently entirely because it will cause VW to lose market share in the US!

Not one word suggesting it's a bad thing to deliberately and cynically break the law, to steal billions of dollars, and knowingly kill people in the process. Presumably these things are just par for the course in Big Business.

Yet imagine if a criminal had committed a bank heist, and cold-bloodedly gunned down some bystanders in the process (that is to say stole 1000 times less money and caused 1000 times fewer fatalities) or, worse still, was a welfare recipient who had ripped off a few thousand; those same commentators would screech like their balls were caught in a rabbit trap and they'd demand that the perpetrator be hung, flogged, and then hung again.

Let us get angry at this. Let us demand that the board of this evil corporation have their heads put on pikes as a warning to others.