Unless you lived in the UK in the 1950s, or have the frankly weird ability to visually detect sub-10 micron particulates, you'll know that modern diesels don't belch out clouds of black smoke. I know it's de rigeur in the US these days but over here, exaggerating the bejesus out of stuff to cement your own prejudiced opinion is considered rather bad form.
And the old 'the government made me...' thing is a bit lame too. Her Majesty's Government, contrary to popular rumour, never once 'pushed' people to buy diesels over petrol engined cars. Here, the tax levied on both fuels is exactly the same, with a small adjustment for the higher density of diesel which makes it slightly more expensive. The tax on the cars themselves is the same (it's slightly higher in absolute terms for diesels because diesels cost more). The yearly 'road tax' we pay was based on CO2/km emissions. In practice, this does favour the diesel engine because they're inherently more thermally efficient but if two cars, one diesel, the other petrol emit the same amount of CO2, they pay the same amount of road tax. Also, road tax, until very recently was peanuts (below 100 g/km you pay nothing).
Now did people suss out that modern diesels made fantastic sense because of their high torque, brilliant fuel economy & cheaper servicing? That I can agree with, which is why people bought them in droves. But that's very different to being some great conspirorial 'government push'!
Had it not been for the NOx issue & the fact that the public & governments everywhere were conned by the OEMs into believing they were very low when in reality, they were obscenely high, EVs wouldn't be as centre stage as they are today.