Holocaust – Climate Denial & DeSmogBlog

DeSmogBlogLogo.jpgEver heard the definition of chutzpah? It’s the man who murders his parents and asks for the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.

So it goes with Kevin Grandia, managing editor of the left-wing anti-skeptic website DeSmogBlog, who has taken issue with me on his own website, on the Huffington Post, on the Daily Kos, and on AlterNet because I mentioned the Holocaust

…by alluding to the fact that Kevin’s website refers to it.

You see, I noted in passing that DeSmogBlog has equated disbelief in the man-made global warming theory with denying the Holocaust.

DeSmogBlog does so by using the term “denier,” which is well-established in global warming circles as a slur intended to impugn the morality of global warming skeptics by equating them rhetorically with holocaust deniers.

In fact, according to Google, DeSmogBlog has chosen “denier” over the less-loaded term “skeptic” (or any other term) over 2,200 times.

DeSmogBlogDenierGoogle.jpg

How do we know the DeSmogBlog crew intends the phrase “denier” to imply a link to Holocaust denial?

It said so. Explicitly.

Here’s a screen shot of the text of a DeSmogBlog post by Jim Hoggan of Hoggan and Associates (a PR firm that runs DeSmogBlog, and employs Kevin), aka, the big boss:

DeSmogBlogHogganHolocaustClimateDenierHighlite120105.jpg

Innocuous as what I wrote was (“Kindness is not usually a term one associates with the anti-Holocaustglobal warming denier website DeSmogBlog, but its staff has made an exception today…”), Kevin has complained about it in a post on DeSmogBlog, another on the Huffington Post, another on AlterNet, and yet another on the Daily Kos, saying in part:

I sent an email to Ridenour [sic] assistant [sic], David Almasi, the other night asking for an explanation and also pointing out that in the four years I have been writing on climate issues I have never used a Nazi analogy in an attempt to bolster an argument or discredit an individual. So far they haven’t responded and I think they’re [sic] silence is telling.

Kevin added:

[Using a Nazi analogy] is a stupid and useless means of making a point that only creates division and hate.

I agree. Maybe now that DeSmogBlog’s staff has done this over 2,200 times, they might consider cutting it out.

Now that everyone’s been reminded that DeSmogBlog explicitly linked “denier” to “Holocaust” (as have others in the global warming alarmist community and mainstream press), if the DeSmogBlog staff continues to use the term “denier,” we’ll know they mean it double.

P.S. Kevin’s co-worker at both DeSmogBlog and Jim Hoggan and Associates, Richard Littlemore, chimed in on DeSmogBlog (curiously, Richard commented on Jan. 16 to a post by Kevinapparently published on Jan. 18 — perhaps Richard knew two days in advance what Kevin would post the same way he knows 100 years in advance what the climate will be?) with the defense that the word “holocaust” has never appeared in a DeSmogBlog post.

Littlemore011610Comment.jpg

I guess what Richard means is that the word “holocaust” didn’t appear except when it did, or…

…he’s referring to the fact that someone at DeSmogBlog went back to Jim Hoggan’s post, about a year after the denier-is-meant-to-refer-to-Holocaust-deniers phrase was posted, and snipped that politically-incorrect Holocaust reference right out of there.

In fact, if you go to Jim Hoggan’s Holocaust-referencing post now, the line in question looks like this…

DeSmogBloghogganremovesholocaustdeniers.jpg

…but the Internet Wayback machine does not lie.

(Background: Some months after the post was published, a contretemps emerged in several media outlets and websites about the use of the term “denier” being a de facto Holocaust-referencing slur (for instance, in this instance, and in another high-profile but later example, here), and Jim Hoggan’s post was being referred to in public by skeptics as proof that the Holocaust reference absolutely, positively was intended.

So Jim’s honesty was a but inconvenient for the global warming alarmists who were claiming the Holocaust implication was just something the paranoid “deniers” thought up on their own.

Coincidence or not, they snipped it out.)

P.P.S. DeSmogBlog’s Richard Littlemore also says DeSmogBlog does not accuse people of being corporate whores. He says they phrase it differently. Whatever.

Finally (I hope!), Richard says he doubts my word that the National Center for Public Policy Research has 100,000 donors. Mea culpa — I should have said over 100,000 recent donors (defined as within the last 18 months). If Richard genuinely doubts this as he says, he might familiarize himself with the way a great many, if not a strong majority, of U.S. conservative/free-market non-profits are financed (also he might acquaint himself with something called the “public support test” in U.S. tax law). Ordinarily I would not expect an employee of a Canadian PR firm to know much about public financial support for the U.S. conservative movement, but as Richard has written for years for a website that routinely accuses people in the movement (and many, many others) of doing the bidding of corporate paymasters (please note, Richard, I did not put that phrase in quotes), this is a subject he should have mastered long ago.


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