UPDATE: 2/27 6:30AM PST It seems the person making the attack, Shelley Rose, is part of a climate activist group, see below.
UPDATE: 2/27 2:50PM PST, The ADL Atlanta website has deleted comments on the issue, and has closed the press release to further comments. See below.
Boy, this is ugly, and I hope this boils down to simply an error in judgement by a lower tier administrator because this is like some bizzaro-world episode; on one hand the Anti-Defamation League is coming down against the “…type of comparison diminishes and trivializes the Holocaust.“, while on another they are giving a “get out of jail free card” to the people who have repeatedly done that very thing over several years.
Two telephone calls and two emails today requesting comment from ADL’s Southeast Interim Regional Director Shelly Rose have gone unanswered. She’s aware of my calls. I asked for her directly, gave my name and affiliation, and after a pause on hold her assistant asked if it would be OK to “send you to voice mail”. Ms Rose did provide a copy of the press release below, after I queried the main organization in New York after receiving a tip about this release, but found no evidence of its existence on the ADL Press Center website. The press release below still isn’t on the website as of this writing at 6:15PM EST well after close of business there. All of my requests were done during normal business hours for both the Atlanta and NYC office.
I have to wonder if the main organization is endorsing this press release, or if this is some regional director who went rogue.
Here is the press release.
==============================================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Shelley Rose (404) 262-3470 work; 678-938-1399 cell
ADL Condemns Spencer’s Nazi Analogy
February 25, 2014, Atlanta, Georgia … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today denounced remarks by University of Alabama – Huntsville professor Roy Spencer who wrote on his blog that those who refer to him as a climate change “denier” should be called “global warming Nazis” and that they “are supporting policies that will kill far more people than the Nazis ever did — all in the name of what they consider to be a righteous cause.”
He also claims those who advocate for policies to slow global warming are “like the Nazis” in that they are fascist and anti-capitalist. The post is also accompanied by an image of a swastika.
Shelley Rose, ADL Southeast Interim Regional Director issued the following statement:
University of Alabama Professor Roy Spencer’s analogy of proponents of global warming to Nazis is outrageous and deeply offensive. This analogy is just the latest example of a troubling epidemic of comparisons to Hitler and the Holocaust.
It has become too common to use comparisons to the Holocaust and Nazi imagery to attack people with opposing views, whether the issue is global warming, immigration or stem-cell research.
The six million Jewish victims and millions of other victims of Hitler deserve better. Their deaths should not be used for political points or sloganeering. This type of comparison diminishes and trivializes the Holocaust. There is no place for it in civil discussions.
Shelley Rose |Interim Regional Director
Anti-Defamation League | 3490 Piedmont Road; Suite 610 | Atlanta, Georgia 30305
Phone: 404-262-3470 I Fax: 404-262-3548 I Cell: 678-938-1399 I srose@adl.org
ADL website I our blog I facebook I twitter I youtube I pinterest I google+ I linkedin
==============================================================
I queried Ms Rose for a comment on the last paragraph, asking:
Wouldn’t that also apply to the use of “denier” to denigrate people, including Dr. Spencer. whose research has nothing to do with the holocaust or denial of it?
I also asked her to comment on the “green light” as a working title, asking if it was an accurate representation of their position. It was clear to me from the lack of response to two emails and two telephone calls was ” no comment”.
From their website, apparently slurs in major league football rate higher in concern than comparing climate skeptics to holocaust deniers for the purpose of denigration:
ADL Welcomes NFL’s Willingness to Address Hate Speech
The League welcomed reports that the NFL is considering how to discourage the use of offensive slurs during the course of games and said that “the question of how to address offensive speech and the best ways to counter it on playing fields and in locker rooms is an important conversation.”
And that’s why I think this is bizarre. The selective hypocrisy is stunning. I’m hoping the main office in New York will come to their senses and disavow the press release from the “Interim Regional Director”. Surely they must see the ugly conundrum they’ve manufactured for themselves.
Dr. Roy Spencer responds:
Hypocrisy at the Anti-Defamation League?
He asks exactly what I was thinking; where was ADL all these years when such ugly and hateful comparisons were being made:
Ms. Rose, where was your organization when journalists, politicians, and even some scientists, chose to call us skeptics “deniers”?
We don’t deny either “global warming” or “climate change”. Yet, we are called “deniers”. Ms. Rose, do you have any inkling why the term “denier” (which is a lie) might be used against us, rather than the term “skeptic” (which is accurate)? I think you know why.
I’d really like to know how ADL can turn a blind eye the use of “denier” for the purpose of denigration while at the same time calling out a victim of the denigration for fighting back after years of abuse.
There’s also a newspaper article about it:
UAH climate expert Roy Spencer calls critics ‘global warming Nazis’; Anti-Defamation League objects
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2014/02/uah_climate_expert_roy_spencer.html
UPDATE: The PR is now posted on the Atlanta ADL website here
http://atlanta.adl.org/news/adl-condemns-spencers-nazi-analogy/
Comments are allowed there. Be civil if you leave comments please.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that this person simply doesn’t know the history, and committed a terrible error in judgment.
UPDATE2: 2/27 6:30AM PST It seems the person making the attack, Shelly Rose, is part of a climate activist group, see photo and caption.
The caption reads:
Congregations Caring for the Climate – Atlanta, GA
Bill Witherspoon, from Congregation Bet Haverim writes: This was taken Friday evening before Erev Shabbat Services. We had about three times this many for services eventually, but these were the ones who arrived in time for the photo. As part of our second week of the Omer to Honor the Earth, Shelley Rose (third from right, just right of our Torah scrolls) gave the d’var (sermon) on acting with awareness that we all breathe the same air, and Tovah Melaver (second from right) led a breathing meditation.
April 13, 2007
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stepitup2007/464126698/
You can read all about this organization at http://stepitup2007.org
Of note is the list of “Friends and Allies” which reads like a who’s who in climate activism.
This whole episode makes a lot more sense now.
UPDATE3: 2/27 2:50PM PST, The ADL Atlanta website has deleted many comments on the issue, and has closed the press release to further comments. About an hour ago, I noted 90 comments were posted, now it is down to 50. See below.
Meanwhile I’ve drafted and sent a letter by email and by fax to ADL National Director, ABRAHAM H. FOXMAN asking if ADL plans to comment on the issue, and to ask id they plan to apply their condemnation equally, along with examples of what climate skeptics have been subjected to over the years. I think they simply have been caught unaware in a conundrum created by their Atlanta Interim Director.
I ask that if anyone makes communications with this organization, please be factual and respectful – Anthony
FWIW I’m Jewish and those boys have gone off the rails.
jauntycyclist says at February 26, 2014 at 4:00 pm
I highlight this because it is perceptive and spot on right.
The use of the Holocaust as a description of your enemies intent should be very rare. It shouldn’t be cheapened by ubiquity. As most people that anyone disagrees with are just relatively wrong – not that bad.
Yet there is a selective judgement against those who are not “moving forward”. The Revolution must be defended for the greater good, don’t you know.
And that is why the ADL have lost perspective.
“Interim Regional Director”
Not for very long (interim that is); some ‘interimships’ can be shorter than others …
(Bolding mine above)
.
That press release is pretty much boiler plate material used when anyone makes an innapropriate comparison to the Holocaust. It is pretty much verbatim. I disagree strongly with the ADL position in this case. In their defense however, their entire existence revolves around a very narrow discourse regarding the Holocaust. I seriously doubt that they have anything but a vague knowledge of the climate debate in general, and none at all of the manner in which the deni*r term has been used to discredit skeptics.
Educating them on the other hand will be as much of a challenge as it would with any other group for whom the climate debate exists only on the edges of their consciousness.
The ADL, they seem to protect their own ilk. But is this not what humans and in fact all life does?
We skeptics defend lives and the environment in our way. We don’t want human population control to hypothetically avoid a possible warming of the Earth.
We tend to fear cooling more than warming.
We look at real data and use models as computational devices that intend to show what we programed them to show. This gets so complicated and oversimplified that they mostly fail.
Models do not produce real data; when working well, they help us look at the data in meaningful ways.
And yes, the Earth warmed about 1°C from 1910 to 2002, but we think it was mostly from natural causes.
We know that CO2 in the atmosphere warms the surface of the Earth. We know CO2 content is increasing, but we don’t know the causes. We think climate sensitivity is less than 2°C.
We know that around 2001 the warming stopped, but we don’t know the causes.
And we know the whole thing is possibly too complicated to know well enough to model long-range.
Brings one’s thoughts to the local constabulary who will ‘write tickets’ (nowadays decidedly for revenue purposes) on the generally harmless public, but will not clamp down on the ‘rolling nuisances’ (gang-bangers) that can be heard ‘booming’ through walls and over nearby TV and/or radio audio; it is the weak and easily intimidated they ‘prey’ on, not those who might give them some measure of stiff opposition …
.
The problem is that the connection with “holocaust denial” is implied, when the word “denier” is used, whereas calling someone a “Nazi”, even if qualified by adjectives, is explicit.
However, I think describing some (a small hardcore group) warmists as Nazis is entirely appropriate but certainly not all as Rose claimed Spencer did. But I can understand Spencer’s anger. This “denier” label has been used for years and has been adopted by obtuse or deliberately manipulative mainstream media. It is the kind of word-game (rename and “reframe the narrative”) that “progressives” have been playing for years.
I have my suspicions about who started and promoted this meme. I would like to trace it back to its origin.
As for the ADL, it is a shadow of a once admirable organization.
At some point we need to go beyond the excellent science and discourse which ordinarily is presented here as Anthony, Roy, and Willis have recently. If you ever get a chance to go to the Holocost Museum in Berlin you will find reference to hundreds of individuals who stood up to Nazi tyranny with ‘locical’ arguments only to end up dead. Time to get some attention by comparing this most recent effort.at minimizing and persecuting a group of valuable individuals to Nazism, which it is. Time to continue posting this latest effort here!
Respectfully
Eric
This looks to be a result of something like this: some helpful nasty little soul sends Ms Rose excerpts from Roy Spencer’s piece…not the part where he complains about skeptics being labelled deniers and denialists and how this slur intentionally reeks to high heaven with shades of Holocaust denial…thus might justify returning fire with the Nazi charge (which I personally do not think is ever ever justified in fact).
I suspect Anthony’s query either pointed to the full Spencer article or prompted Rose to seek it out, and now has her and her organization in the quandary Watts suggests. This is the most likely scenario, IMHO.
Time will tell.
Some deformation is more equal than other deformation
Nope, can’t offhand think of .. wait – CWD – Community Waste Disposal – the garbage pickup folks here in del norte central Tejas are still fairly focused on their original goal and purposes. They may be the ONLY exception …
Don’t know if there is any ‘organized crime’ influence either.
/mild sarc
.
Dr Roy appears to have hit a sore spot.
It has got their attention at any rate.
“Global warming Nazis” it is then…
[snip – over the top – mod]
The ADL is a very one-sided polemic organization with a narrow self interested agenda. They want to reserve the word “Nazi” for their own discretionary use. Their opinion (Abraham Foxman’s I think) is no moral sign post for social discourse in general. They have one agenda. The defense of jews, which is ok with me and they have every right to do so. They are hardly competent or interested in applying an even hand wrt attacks on groups other than those within their sphere of concern. Their opinion on this matter needs to be consider through an appropriate filter.
Nazis were equal opportunity murderers, of Jews, Polish Nationals, Catholics, Russians, Gypsys, physically deformed people, the mentally “subnormal”, etc etc etc. Had they not been stopped, the death toll would have been 10 X worse.
Humanity as a whole has inherited the right to condemn the tactics of the German National Socialists and defend ourselves from people and groups who employ thier corrosive methods. There are modern Nazis. The ADL , as a consequence of their self-interested position regarding AGW-Nazi-esque tactics, has damaged their own credibility. No Mr Foxman. You don’t have the final word on this.
First they came for the Conservatives,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Conservative.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Liberals,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Liberal.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
Anthony – If I can be of service in explaining the matter to the ADL, please feel free to call on me. Also, I recommend you provide them with links to issues around the use of the term in this debate for their education, but one story in particular. That is in regard to the musicologist who called for skeptics to be placed in re-education camps and to be potentially exterminated if they cannot be re-educated. That is a meme which the ADL will recognize immediately for what it is. The meme, the way the skeptic community reacted to it, and the general intent of the denier smear need to be made plain to them.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/23/beyond-bizarre-university-of-graz-music-professor-calls-for-skeptic-death-sentences/
Hath Not a Jew Eyes?
http://www.steynonline.com/6101/hath-not-a-jew-eyes
While it is odd that they didn’t care about the ‘denier’ lable for the last few years, it is very understandable that they reacted to the “Global warming Nazis” lable. Dr Roy should have expected this.
I wonder if he did expect this and was hoping it could be used to force the issue?
Found it on the Atlanta region website here: http://atlanta.adl.org/
– – – – – – – –
NEWS
ADL Condemns Spencer’s Nazi Analogy
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today denounced remarks by University of Alabama – Huntsville professor Roy Spencer who wrote on his blog that those who refer to him as a climate change “denier” should be called “global warming Nazis” and that they “are supporting policies that will kill far more people than the Nazis ever did…
– – – – – – – –
The “Read more” link leads here:
. . http://atlanta.adl.org/news/adl-condemns-spencers-nazi-analogy/
No ‘comments’ on the above webpage yet either.
.
Oops – comment hung up in the ‘ol spam bin.
why name call when you have the evidence?
Well, Shelley Rose, ADL Southeast Interim Regional Director, in the name of the Atlanta branch of the organization has apparently joined the ranks of climate parasites.
Unless she swiftly condemns Mark Lynas, George Monbiot, Margo Kingston and their ilk as well. See: The garden of good and evil.
And there are more, many more of this will-o’-the-wisp kind since then. Ms. Shelley Rose can no longer claim she was not warned. In fact I am a bit baffled it is the first time she has crashed into this issue. Is she living on another planet, or what?
Widespread use of the foul fallacy, Reductio ad Hitlerum in the climate debate “diminishes and trivializes the Holocaust” indeed, which is intolerable. The fact it was almost exclusively used by climate parasites so far, does not make it any better. I am not happy with Dr. Roy Spencer’s unprecedented move either, but if it was instrumental in giving center stage to this abominable practice and forces ADL to take a stand against it in no uncertain terms, it was a venial hack, I’d say.
P.S. Also carried/intro’d on their “press release” webpage:
http://atlanta.adl.org/news_type/press-releases/
ADL Condemns Spencer’s Na zi Analogy
February 26, 2014
.
Is it just me? I didn’t see anywhere in the press reliese that “gave the green light” for anything. Only the Red light for Dr Roy’s labling of warmies.
Shelley Rose needs to get to the roots of the problem ASAP. This is no analogy, it’s the real thing. Click and read about the green roots of the Nasti Party.
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html
If it is “outrageous and deeply offensive” then please take a look back at the CAGW debate and see the number of times the use of the word “denier” has been used? Do you think the people who use this word are NOT using an analogy of sceptics of dangerous global warming to Nazis? Wake up and smell the coffee maaaam.
I think we’ve reached a turning point in the climate science wars, we’ve read Alinsky.