The other day, denier Tony Heller, who believes climate scientists all over the world are secretly acting in an open conspiracy to distort the temperature record, but gets mad (or grateful?) when you refer to him as a conspiracy theorist, tweeted that “One of the big problems which many conservatives have is that they are unable or simply refuse to believe how dishonest, corrupt and evil their opposition is.”
Yes, apparently the problem with some conservatives, who routinely claimed President Obama was the Anti-Christ and who have welcomed into their ranks of reputable policymakers someone who believes Democrats stage school shootings and eat babies in a satanic ritual to achieve immortality, are actually in denial about the evil inherent in their political opponents.
To be more specific, because that could refer to any number of conservative pundits and quite a few elected Republicans, we’re referring to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. In response to Greene’s comparison of a mask mandate in Congress to the Holocaust, columnist Karen Tumulty suggested Dr. Frankenstein would recognize Kevin McCarthy’s situation of having to watch “his party’s own creation careen across the political landscape, leaving wreckage and mayhem at every turn.” Apparently Greene’s antics are causing headaches for the GOP, who would prefer she use the pollster-approved euphemisms about free markets to advance their Anglo-Saxon agenda.
With a career spent defending fossil fuels and tobacco, Steve Milloy knows a loser when he sees one, and rode to Greene’s aid. He tweeted a screenshot of the headline, “the GOP’s Frankenstein creation” and claimed Tumulty “dehumanizes Republican congresswoman as ‘Frankenstein.’” (Committing the cardinal sin of confusing Dr. Frankenstein and his creation.)
He then went on to complain about how a December political cartoon of “all the Republican rats” was “Nazi imagery” and ended the tweet with “If you oppose Democrats, you are subhuman.”
Now this sort of pearl-clutching is only good for rolling your eyes at anyway, but it’s particularly ironic coming from Milloy, because he’s constantly engaging in exactly the behavior at which he’s taking umbrage.
Just the day before, Milloy, per his telling, “read the riot act to ExxonMobil management over climate at the annual meeting. I called for real (vs. fake) shareholders to fire the climate communist-appeasing CEO and board.”
But he wasn’t exactly persuasive, and in a follow-up tweet Milloy conceded defeat, acknowledging “Two climate activists elected to ExxonMobil board,” and — like anyone truly concerned about the dangers of dehumanizing language — declared that “climate activism is a deadly cancer on our society.”
Because comparing people to a disease that needs to be eradicated from body politic is totally not a Nazi-like dehumanization at all.
In addition to his absolute obsession with the phrase “climate bedwetter,” Milloy also recently tweeted about Pope Francis’s green initiative, saying “Red Pope bucks God” in one of his frequent tweets with a “climate communists” bent.
Prior to that he referred to Gina McCarthy as “Biden climate fuhrer,” so at least he’s committed to both sides: calling people communists, and calling them Nazis!
And then there was Monday, when Milloy tweeted a link to “Greta the Climate Puppet” in Reuters saying “if we don’t change we are f*cked.” Milloy told her to “stay in school and class it up, honey!”
Both patronizing and misogynist, and literally dehumanizing, all at once. That’s why he gets the big bucks!
