Every year, the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), Germany’s version of the Heartland Institute, holds its annual climate denial conference. Like its US counterpart, at this point no one pays it much mind--it’s little more than angry old men yelling at one another about liberal snowflake climate communists.
This year was different. EIKE’s alignment with Germany’s far-right AfD party gives it some relevance. But a small group of activists also protested the event, which forced it to relocate to a new secret location and milk that drama for all it’s worth.
Apparently an anti-capitalists climate facebook group with fewer than 250 likes joined with some Antifa activists to visit the Munich hotel that was hosting the group of some 200 deniers. The combined 20 or so people went to the lobby and “sang songs and distributed leaflets,” according to a Google-translated report from Donaukurier.
Combined with an open letter condemning EIKE’s dangerous denial, the protest was enough for the hotel to cancel EIKE’s reservation, which a court upheld on the grounds that the hotel wasn’t sufficiently prepared to ensure the health and safety of everyone involved. Instead, EIKE moved the event to a new, undisclosed location, and carried on in secrecy.
Deniers, predictably, used this as an excuse to complain about their persecution. Whining about it in TownHall, Heartland’s James Taylor laments how the “street thugs allied with the German government force free speech, academic freedom, and disfavored political views into hiding.”
And as for Antifa, Taylor apparently feels that fighting fascists is bad. He describes it as “a violent hate group” that only avoids critical media coverage because “the establishment media approve the extremist Antifa agenda” (probably true--we hope the establishment media is opposed to facisism).
But Taylor’s argument is painfully ironic in criticizing the German government’s refusal to use the police to crack down on a peaceful protest of less than two dozen people. Apparently allowing a peaceful protest means that “the German government is condoning...fascist thuggery.” As supposed proof of the thuggery, Taylor’s Townhall piece and other deniers use pictures of Antifa protests from various other events, with faces covered in black bandanas; photos from the activist demonstration show that no one had their face covered or otherwise appeared in any way threatening.
Overwrought allegations of Germany being facsist for not shutting down anti-fascist political protests aside, Taylor’s telling of the story is hilarious. It starts by saying that “more than 200 people, including dozens of scientists, are in hiding right now in Germany. I am one of them.”
It ends with how Taylor is “proud to join” the event at its secret location, “even if [he] must also be in hiding between now and then.”
Because if there’s anything that 200 deniers fear more than being exposed as fossil fuel-funded liars for hire, it’s some 20 protestors singing and handing out pamphlets.
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