Policy advocates hurt their own cause when they easily pull out the Nazi analogy. Unless it is actually apt, calling your opponents “like the Nazis” is rightly seen by readers or listeners as a lazy slur. Alas, that’s what James Delingpole, the Telegraph’s warming skeptic (who I usually like) just did. Not good.
How does he get there? First, he quotes from a novel written by a former Nazi that contains a global warming plot. From there, he tries to erect a rickety bridge directly to Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and the gang. From his column, Why Do I Call Them Eco-Nazis–Because The ARE Eco-Nazis:”
You’ll note from that “whoulda thunk?” that I am not altogether surprised by the Nazi connections with the green movement and AGW theory. That’s because, during my research for Watermelons, I discovered how intimately they were bound. The Nazi obsession with “Blut und Boden” (”Blood and Soil”) and the quest for Lebensraum did not die with Hitler in his bunker in 1945: in only slightly changed form they continue to permeate green ideology, in everything from the worship of all things “organic” and the rejection of GM, artificial fertilisers, chemicals (and all the other hideous methods by which we keep the Third World from starving) to the fixation held by so many environmentalists from the Prince of Wales to John Holdren that there simply isn’t enough space on the earth to house and feed us all and that something must be done about population. (The only real difference between the Thirties Nazis and their modern eco counterparts is that they were a bit more honest as to exactly HOW they were going to deal with this population “problem”).
No. No. No. No. Rejecting GM foods is not the moral equivalent of death camps. Hitler’s “living space” concept was merely a pretext for invasion and seizing control of other nations, not an environmental policy.
Today’s Greens are not Nazis. They have authoritarian impulses, to be sure. Some want massive human depopulation–but that is more anti human talk–which isn’t good–than ever being really ready to engage in actual mass genocide. They do want an international technocracy to control our economies–a bureaucratic world state–but that would be a soft tyranny smothering us in stifling regulations, not the utter lawless brutality of a Nazi Germany that stands people up against the wall. The Nazis would shoot you for looking cross-eyed, they engaged in torture, they were imperialist, they were racist, they conducted cruel medical experiments on Jews in concentration camps, in short, they perpetrated some of the worst evils against humanity in recorded history.
Policies and movements don’t have to be Nazis to be wrong. Calling Greens Nazis defames them, discredits global warming skepticism, and worst of all, makes the true evil of Nazism seem banal. Stop it.
February 16th, 2011 | 11:25 am
“Winter for Poland and France,” I love it, hysterical, what a great movie! Best SHS intro piece ever.
February 16th, 2011 | 2:56 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Greengamma.com, Always American. Always American said: RT @standinthegap: BIOETHICS WATCH => Global Warming Hysteria: Anti Global Warming Hysteria Nazi… http://dlvr.it/Gllnp #912 #ocra … [...]
February 16th, 2011 | 11:15 pm
Is there any such thing as a “soft tyranny”. How
would dissent be tolerated?
What were the ideologies that underpinned the atitudes of the NAZIS that made the Holocoust possible?
Are there any similarites to the extreme militant ecnvironmentalists of today and if so what sets them apart from yesterdays NAZIS in terms of being more humane other than not being in a complete power vacuum bought about by national financial ruin?
mmmmm
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 16th, 2011 at 11:24 pm
Lyndon: Yes, I think dissent would be tolerated. It just wouldn’t be heeded.
February 17th, 2011 | 12:19 am
“They have authoritarian impulses, to be sure. Some want massive human depopulation–but that is more anti human talk–which isn’t good–than ever being really ready to engage in actual mass genocide. They do want an international technocracy to control our economies–a bureaucratic world state–but that would be a soft tyranny smothering us in stifling regulations, not the utter lawless brutality of a Nazi Germany…”
So the Greens are not like the Nazis, just almost like the Nazis.
Until 2009, the US Republican Party supported carbon cap-and-trade, the cornerstone of mainstream environmentalism and global warming “hawks”. Was the pre-2009 Republican Party akin to the Nazis?
Who are these environmental extremists, these Eco-demi-Nazis? Their opinions are not represented in the IPCC reports, or in Copenhagen, or Cancun, or Kyoto. Do they submit research articles? Do they write op-eds? The fact is the Eco-demi-Nazis that dominate the Limbaughs, Becks and Smiths don’t deserve all this attention.
It would be like liberals treating the radical rants of Michelle Bachmann, Jeff Sessions and Jim DeMint as representative of mainstream conservative thought. Oh.
February 17th, 2011 | 1:28 am
Yes but in managing the reaction to a complete restructuring of the world economy not to mention the disentegration of democratic representation in the first world, (which would be neccessary in a bureaucratic world state) wouldnt they have to use extreme force to quell dissent? Or are you saying instead that they would gradually monopolize and control in both political and economic spheres thereby incrementally imposing financial dependance on their world citizens?
February 17th, 2011 | 10:32 am
The problem with Nazi comparisons is that we are too generous with people who make false comparisons, and too rough with people who make accurate comparisons.
Either way, there is no way to make a direct Nazi comparison – not if the point of the communication is to actually make someone understand something in a way they did not before, anyway.
We need to stop thinking of using Nazi comparisons as “bringing out the heavy guns” and recognize it more as a cliché that has worn out its value. The correct way then to make a real comparison with the Nazi regime is to be more particular about singling out, in exactly what way the one is comparable with the other – and even then it probably will have to be softened, because the reader’s mind will fill in the blanks and jump to the conclusion as if you’ve said it.
So it’s probably better to use some other analogy when possible, and use “the least necessary force” when necessary -
February 17th, 2011 | 3:27 pm
If that ugly chapter in human history serves any purpose it should be to examine how it was possible to foster widespread ignorance that made such brutality possible.
To think of the NAZIS as somehow different from ourselves and with naturally more capability for such inhumanity would be to assume some natural superiority in ones compassion – a racist assumption. Therefore we should all consider ourselves capable of being NAZI’s and examine our own thinking and atitudes but also in relation to our environment, the prevailing social and popular culture and educationally derived ideologies.
This is particularly important light of the cultural and political dominance of environmentalism with the roots and origins of both movements being revolutionary in their thinking and their motives.
The brownshirts were a revolutionary rabble similar to the extreme greens who advocate civil disobedience to achieve their ends.
What worries me is that when people are led to believe that the survival of the human race is at stake then in their minds almost any action including genocide could possibly be justified to achieve their ends (though that is maybe somewhat of an extrapolation in the occurence of extreme events)
February 19th, 2011 | 10:07 am
Also, it should be pointed out that what Mr. Musser was saying in his American Thinker piece was not that Nazis invented Global Warming theory but that an Austrian Nazi named Guenther Schwab wrote a novel called “Dance with the Devil” in 1958, a novel that has profoundly influenced the tenor of the debate. Global Warming theory was, in Roger Revelle’s opinion, something of a curiosity; he expected a temperature rise of about 2* and that was it. It was Schwab’s romanticism of the notion that has taken hold of the Environmentalists, who portray a Green version of the Apocalypse resulting from Climate Change (or is it Climate Disruption? Climate Flatulence?)
Musser isn’t claiming the Nazis are culpable for the science – just that a Nazi was culpable for the propogandizing and romanticizing of this issue.
It still doesn’t change the fact that Nazis were Green as Leprechauns; Musser chronicles that in his book.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 19th, 2011 at 11:01 am
Timothy: Their crematoria sure added to the world’s carbon load. Their wars were environmentally catastrophic, in addition to their human toll. Doesn’t fly.
February 20th, 2011 | 3:13 pm
Wesley we know that literature influences movements and events; The China Syndrome was a movie that ended the U.S. nuclear energy industry. Nazism itself was born when Rosenberg read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a rework of a satirical piece of fiction by a Frenchman named Maurice Joly called The Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Russian secret police plagarized this, creating Protocols. The 1949 novel Earth Abides was the impetus for much of the population crisis movement.
Bear in mind that the Nazi Germany predated the big rise in CO2 emissions. Schwab, an EX Nazi, wrote his novel in 1958, with 10 years of hindsight during the postwar industrial boom.
By your reasoning we must say that Charles Martel and the Franks could not be Christian since they killed Muslims in violation of the Christian faith; there was a greater good to be served by the Franks, and the Nazis doubtlessly saw war as for the greater good, too. Sometimes you have conflicting priorities.
Sometimes calling someone a Nazi is accurate.
Cheers!
February 20th, 2011 | 8:00 pm
It’s become a meme for conservatives that liberals are communists, fascists or Nazis. Please listen to the language used by movement leaders such as Limbaugh, Beck, Goldberg, O’Reilly and Coulter. Is there any doubt what a President Limbaugh would do with liberal citizens?
Kudos to Smith for downgrading the Greens to just demi-Nazis, having only authoritarian tendencies and a desire for genocide to protect Mother Earth!
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 20th, 2011 at 8:29 pm
Jeffrey: According to union activists, WI Gov. Walker is Hitler. I guess you missed that.
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