Given the shameful pedophilia labels that were recently applied to climate skeptics by the Merchants of Hate Robyn Williams and Stephan Lewandowsky on Australia’s ABC radio, I thought this essay from the Chillicothe Gazette (Ohio) said something that needed to be said, so I’m repeating an excerpt here.
Jim Thompson writes:
As a global warming skeptic who never will be in a car pool van or AFV unless forced to do so by the government, it hit me that I now know what it was like to be a black citizen in the South during the height of Jim Crow laws.
You know, when because of your skin color, you were thought to be stupid, ignorant, lazy and dirty. You sat in the back of the bus, were not allowed to use any “whites only” facilities and were sent to segregated schools.
Today, if you do not bow to the global warming/climate change/carbon footprint gods, you are deemed stupid, ignorant, lazy and unenlightened. You don’t deserve to park next to the door, you should feel lucky we even let you in the parking garage. Additionally, there are certain lanes on the expressways in which you are not allowed to travel.
…
All is not lost, however. For by experiencing the discrimination of not swallowing the nonsense, I have been able, in some small way, to experience what it must have been like to have been an African-American in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. The ridicule, catcalls, unfair labeling and so forth that one experiences when they are on the wrong side of a mob’s beliefs are interesting. The only difference is the African-Americans were stuck with their skin color. All I would have to do is abandon all the science I was ever taught to be, once again, accepted.
Full essay here
h/t to Tom Nelson
Your article treads on thin ice. People are hypersensitive to comparisons like this, and they shouldn’t be. I don’t think the original author in any sense meant that he was *experiencing* actual Segregation, as much as that he was coming to a better understanding of what living on the wrong side of that kind of illogical bias and discrimination was like.
That said, I take a dim view of people using the “racism” label in situations where it doesn’t apply. Turning such a word into a generic takes away from the horror of it, and the people that suffer most from this are the people who are actually experiencing racial discrimination. That goes for people applying the “racist” term to others gratuitously, as well as those who use it to describe their particular non-racial discrimination situation.
Both racism and the treatment we skeptics experience *do* have the same roots, however — in hatred and intolerance. Sad, really, that a member of a group that rewrote history to gloss over their group’s enthusiastic participation in racial hatred would stoop to more hatred — sad, but entirely unsurprising. After all, there is truth to the Democratic Party statement that they were at the front of all of the Civil Rights battles — they *were* there, along with their State National Guard, water cannon, and dogs. Being on the wrong *side* of every battle is a minor detail they forget to mention, much like reams of contradictory data that refute their cause du jour.
Not news that unethical people are unethical. More amusing is the revelation that the first letters of one of their propaganda outlets, MS-NBC, stands for “Manure Spreader”-NBC.
davidmhoffer says:
November 25, 2012 at 10:02 am
Absolutely! Bravo, Bravo, Bravo. Well said, DMH.
I find it funny that people criticize Anthony for running the articles he chooses. The success of WUWT? clearly indicates that Anthony has a firm grasp on what should be posted here.
@Anthony, Fair enough–our opinions differ.
@Gail Combs; These are things I was aware of. This post talks about carpool lanes and preferential parking and compares them to Jim Crow laws. There is far more nuance to be examined here, but perhaps my “discomfort” with such a comparison is making it difficult to see where that nuance is in the post? Rhetorical question; I return to following in silence.
This was posted by Neil Craig over Bishop Hill but is worth repeating here.
Pastor Neimoller’s words clearly apply:
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
Anthony and Mods,
I would agree it is easy for critics of this venue to disclaim on both the appropriateness of this sensitive post and also the open discussion of this sensitive post. But critics can and do consistently show up here do the same on virtually every post here; it is a central virtue of this venue that critics do so. WUWT rocks.
What comes to mind is this stanza from Kipling’s poem ‘IF’ {emphasis mine}
John
Great article !
The Climate Liars equate me with holocaust denial by calling me a Climate Denier. They’ll be calling me a denier when they throw me into a concentration camp. They won’t even see the irony of their actions.
As more time passes and the CAGW position weakens, we will see more of the “denier” attacks and as their funding becomes threatened even desperate moves. Since this article involved concerns about racism, what more despicable attacks do we now see than charges of “racism” whenever the competence of a black politician is questioned. CAGW long ago moved from the science arena (if ever there) into the political arena and so expect the disgusting personal attacks to only increase in volume and insanity.
If I recall my history, the next step should be the Climate Inquisition, in which the Climate Police (such as the Green Helmets of the EPA) under the Grand Inquisitor (such as Lisa Jackson or her successor) enforces an equivalent of the Alhambra Decree expelling the Skeptics from Western Civilization.
The point is really about segregation.
In the example given it was color. In the 30’s and early 40’s in Germany Jews were segregated and then persecuted. From the late 17th century onwards Huguenot’s suffered from violent discrimination and fled. More recently a pediatrician was forced to flee her home after she was intimidated by people who misunderstood her job title and believed her to be a pedophile.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/901723.stm
These are all warnings from history and there are many more. The emails show clearly the sly academic persecution of those who disagreed with The Team. Just try getting a job in climate science if you disagree with the ‘consensus’. The propaganda, corruption and flaws in climate science must be exposed and challenged.
I believe that one of the reasons that warmists are so certain in their beliefs is that they
mistakenly believe that all skeptics deny that any warming has occurred over the past 100
years or, if it has, mankind has had zero influence. The real issue, of course is “how much warming” and “how much influence.”. The first issue involves empirical data collected over the years,while the second involves one in theoretical models, etc and is much fuzzier and open to
dispute. One of the mysteries of our age is why those who want desperately to reduce carbon emissions have not fervently embraced nuclear power I’m not certain, but there seems to be
growing support amongst the warmist crowd for nuclear power using Thorium, and they also might embrace SMRs (small nuclear reactors) or fast neutron reactors, which can burn nuclear wastes.
I see this as something that would basically eliminate any reason for further concern and debate on the part of the public about global warming, a subject about which they know so very little..
This is a terrible analogy. I am embarrassed for WUWT.. Better to reach back to religious persecution examples.
Thanks Pamela G for your comment.
BargHumer says:
“As climate sceptics you know the science is on your side, just as the black people knew that they were fully human and not lesser animals, and no better or worse than white people.”
My experience of working with oppressed people is that they often take on the beliefs of the oppressors (whether cultural or political) and really do believe they are inferior while talking up the hopeful idea they are not. Secret belief or worry is hidden by the outward bravado. Positive action (not stopping the oppression) is required to overcome this internalised oppression (as it is properly termed).
The process of labelling an identifiable group with epithets, often caricatures with a tiny grain of truth or an oft-told story people think is true is quite common. This characterisation and demonisation is followed by escalating the mob to violent hatred and eventual extermination is called ‘Othering’. The purpose of othering is to get the majority mob to believe the minor group is deviate, dirty, a public danger to thinking ‘right thoughts’ and so on. The Government of Iran is practising this systematically on all of their minority religious populations, in particular the largest with a view to getting the general population to believe they are not really humans deserving of rights in the normal sense of the word. They have, for example, expelled all of them from government jobs, cancelled their pensions, expelled from the universities so they cannot get educated, shut down their home-schooling systems, arrested their volunteer professors, jailed their leadership, firebombed their businesses and harrowed up their cemeteries with bulldozers while simultaneously running hate propaganda articles in the government-controlled press on a daily basis. Hitler famously did this and more recently so did the Rwandans (who were successful in getting the public to knowingly tolerate and participate) and many other fanatics before and since. Witnessed what happened to the ‘othered’ Amerindians and you get the picture. In some countries one only needs to call the others ‘heathens’ to pass a publicly enforceable group death sentence.
In climate ‘science’ othering tries to get you to believe that ‘denialists’ are not worthy of consideration, especially if they are ‘scientists’ who have somehow become apostates deviating from the true Cause and have been ‘possessed’ by the ‘devil of big corporate misguidance’ into denying the ‘true beliefs of the faithful’. The punishment is similar: expulsion from jobs, denial of funding, demonisation in the press, threats to life and limb, misrepresentation of motive and calls from the margin (tacitly approved by the center) for death to the misbelievers who are creating such an intolerable risk for the whole community. The real motive of is course power and money.
The religious parallel is complete for the reason that the argument in favour of AGW is prepared on that basis. It is para-religious movement with para-clerics who define ‘what the words mean’ in any way they wish, even in contradiction of themselves. That is the very definition of priestcraft. SkS and RC are ‘priestly enterprises’. The faithful are always reminded of the perils of listening to the voice of the devilish who are the ever-present and subtle dangers leading to perdition.
Sitting at root of this mess are the same old boring ideologues with their ‘religion of irreligion’ barking up the same old boring trees. It is interesting that the subtitle of these anti-corporate statements is a belief they are fighting fascism which is a blend of state and corporate entities so each fatwa is phrased on that basis. They are fanatically opposed in the political realm by some who want a different sort of religio-economic paradigm of equal strangeness. The middle ground where sanity prevails is disappearing. There is nearly no difference between the two: both want to control the state, both want to demonise the other, both use ‘othering’ as a tactic to generate hate, both result in catastrophe for the whole community. The far Right and their inveterate enemies on the far Left both use the ‘othering’ tactic, let us be clear about that. Polarisation is the name of the game and both poles are making disastrous moves as they race to the moral bottom. We need a new paradigm.
Weird how the USA is still stuck in this race thing. I remember being astonished at the 2008 Obama election about how proud everyone was they were not racist, because see, we have a black president. As statements go you couldn’t get more racist then that.
Here in the article there is a comparison between the Jow Crow laws effects and the way skeptics are treated. Neutrally this comparison is valid.
What i see here a lot is emotionally charged comments as a result. Those who react emotionally should realize they are still being racist in their minds. Why else react emotionally to something that happened a long time ago?
It’s like harping on a current german for ww2. What did he do? What has a current black have to do with the Jow Crow laws? Do you inherit them or something? And do the whites inherit the guilt?
Get over it already.
Can anyone here honestly claim to have ever been refused use of a water fountain? Refused use of a toilet? Told you had to use the rear entrance of a hotel? Told you had to sit at the back of the bus? Only because of your position on AGW? Have any of your relatives been lynched? Have you had people shoot at your house while your family were eating dinner? Have you ever been awakened in the night to people burning a cross in your yard?
These are all very real actions that Black Americans faced in the 20th century. The author of the article clearly is not well read on what “black citizen in the South during the height of Jim Crow laws” actually faced.
This belittles the true challenges faced by Black Americans in this country during the Jim Crow era.
princessartemis;
There is far more nuance to be examined here, but perhaps my “discomfort” with such a comparison is making it difficult to see where that nuance is in the post?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The nuance may be more obvious I suppose to those of us who have been following the debate closely and for a long period of time. I draw your attention to:
The “10:10” video in which children were gleefully murdered for expressing skeptic views. Withdrawn in a storm of protest.
The GreenPeace editorial advocating violence against skeptics and threatening that “we know where you live, we know where you work”. Also withdrawn in a storm of protest.
Multiple psychology papers have been published suggested that skeptics are suffering from a mental defect.
Calls from noted scientists including David Suzuki and James Hansen for skeptic views to be criminalized and punished with jail time.
A recent seminar at a major research institute in…. (Boulder? I forget) asking “what to do with the skeptics”. How is this different than asking “what to do with the Jews”?
The use of the word “den*er” to associate skeptics with holocaust den*al, recent attempts to suggest that being skeptical is similar to advocating pedophilia…. the nuances are all around you, they are rooted in the precise same tactics that have been used before to justify atrocities and they will succeed again unless we stand up to them. Civilization is a very thin veneer.
Evil grows in the dark. Thank you to Anthony for shining some light on it.
Gene Doebley says:
November 25, 2012 at 10:07 am
“Yes, they call us names and denigrate our intelligence but I just don’t see the parallel to racism…”
Racism is just one expression of tribalism, the tendency to trust those that are like us and be willing to believe just about anything about “the others”. That it’s so deeply ingrained implies there were evolutionary advantages to fierce loyalty to one’s family, clan, or tribe.
The very worst of cynical politicians exploit this by demonizing “japs”, “huns”, “gooks”, serbs, “sand-n****rs”, whoever we are supposed to hate at the moment to further their agenda. Loyalty to the regime is in direct proportion to the contempt we feel for the perceived enemy; they are the two sides of the same coin. Importantly, it doesn’t matter which side you’re on when the appeal is to tribalism and not rational thought – defending your tribe trumps questions of who is right.
In my opinion, appealing to tribalistic instincts automatically puts one’s position in doubt and very likely makes it wrong. The success of WUWT is owed in large part to Anthony’s appeal to reason. Here he’s pointing out that the tactics employed by some abjure rational thought and rely on appeals to humanity’s baser instincts.
The concern trolls have been quick on the last few threads.
I sense a whole lotta itchin in the Force…
Jeremy says: (November 25, 2012 at 10:55 am )
“As in Germany, everyone’s freedom is slowly being whittled away and ultimately at stake here – not just “skeptics” – the skeptics are only those that have their eyes open the most and the great many who believe in catastrophic global warming are simply victims of state and U.N. sponsored propaganda.”
You’re absolutely right. The way things go at the moment, the grim agenda of the greens will only be questioned by the rest when it is too late. Unless their deceit gets exposed timely. But how? And by whom?
I have to disagree with equating denigration of skeptics with racism. People can’t disguise or change their race, and at least so far, discrimination against skeptics is not institutionalized. Their are parallels to the purpose of denigration of skeptics and denigration of racial minorities, but it ends their. Both are denigrated because one side fears the ideas of the other, or needs a scapegoat for their own feelings of inadequacy.
Some warmists have advocated for laws against skeptics, some even saying that skepticism should be a felony. That is more akin to religious persecution than racism, and that I think is the real parallel. Warmists would like to see skeptics treated as religious heretics, which fits well with the idea that AGW is a religion. I see parallels to the dark ages witch hunts, persecution of Protestants by Catholics, etc.
While I certainly wouldn’t say I’m offended by the comparison, I think the suppression of genetics in Russia circa 1940’s makes for a far better comparison. An obvious difference is that one can’t look at me and tell I’m a skeptic. I also can’t claim any discrimination in my field (Electrochemistry) even though I’m known to be skeptic; actually, most chemists, engineers, mathematicians, and biologists that I regularly work with are also skeptics (probably on the order of 97%). I suspect that unless you’re a climatologist, a meteorologist, or at least someone doing research/publishing in the field that you’ve probably not been touched by much discrimination aside from a few internet name calling incidents, perhaps a headache or two from constant eye rolling while taking you’re son/daughter to the local science museum, and the constant threat of high blood pressure arising from the frustration of charlatans who seem to always get away with saying anything (and omitting anything) to promote their pocket lining, control grabbing, economy busting agenda.
“The term “Lysenkoism” denote a very dangerous phenomenon: an effort to suppress and/or outlaw a field of research or opinions when they conflict with a dominant political agenda.”
http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/lysenkoism.shtml
Jim Thompson didn’t dig far enough into his somewhat sensitive observation. There are many more parallels between the modern CAGW extremist ideology and the emergence of racial segregation if one digs a bit into the topic.
In part, racial segregation in the US was viewed as socially acceptable and even desirable because it had a “legitimate scientific” basis: Eugenics. For decades academic, political and social progressive elites promoted the disgusting “science” of eugenics and its aims of “genetic purity”. They built a virtual “consensus” around the flawed science that permeated businesses, schools, government and almost all social institutions. The common man was taught to believe that a Black man was fundamentally inferior to a Caucasian.
Is any of this sounding familiar?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay6text.html
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/10/04/the-final-solution-to-the-global-warming-skeptic-question/
Maybe not the best simile at the present time, but still apt. I do agree with Jeremy, however, that the rise of the NSDAP is a better analogy. Except that until 1934, the NSDAP got more bad press than AGW proponents ever have.
Never, ever forget the 10-10 video. It shows most accurately what is in the minds and hearts of AGW activists.
Leaving a scalding reply on the ABC complaint line was particularly enjoyable,even if only their dog reads it. This kind of dehumanizing done so well by the Nazis is now being done by the CAGW crowd. My main complaint about the majority of skeptics and their tactics, including yours, Anthony, is that you think( pls. correct me if I am wrong) this argument is about science. Though science is what we argue about, the people funding the 24/7 propaganda assault that has been going on for nearly 20 years are not interested in science per se; their goal is mass manipulation, leading to a complete reorganization of life on earth. A laughable idea you may say, but isn’t it those ideas which are laughable to majority which usually come back and bite them on the ass.
It also means a severe population reduction.
I recommend everyone watches the ‘Century of the Self’ by Adam Curtis on YouTube.
There you will see what’s really going on and how it is being done. Edward Bernays, one of the most significant men of the 20th century, was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, the founder of Psychoanalysis. Bernays invented PR. His books were prominent on the bookshelves of every horrible tyrant of the last 80 years, from Hitler to Stalin to Mao. Quite a triple play! There is no doubt at all that his book is on all the CAGW big cheeses bookshelves as well. Who are the elites behind this. I won’t say here in a vain attempt to avoid being labeled a conspiracy theorist, but a brief look at the personal backgrounds of Al Gore and Obama’s science guy, Holdren, will tell you who it is. In this instance and at this time, who is less important than how. Forewarned is forearmed, they say..
davidmhoffer includes in the list of victims of trait antagonism (call it “racism” or “class struggle” — no difference — the same animal instinct at work):
“20 million Russians and eastern Europeans sent to their death in the Gulags for being against Communism.”
To be precise, of the 20 million killed, very few were against communism or ever cared to know what it was. Calling somebody “anti-communist” or “the enemy of the people” or a “traitor” was the most expedient way of eliminating a competitor or somebody you didn’t like.