‘DENIALIST’: THE RIGHT-WING BECOMES CONFUSED AND DISORIENTATED OVER THE USE OF THE WORD.

Robert Manne recently said that scepticism is a good thing whereas ‘denialism’, as in Holocaust denial for example, is unhealthy. Manne made the remark in order to demonstrate that those that deny ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ should more appropriately be called ‘climate change denialists’ or ‘global warming denialists’ rather than ‘climate change sceptics’ and so on.

Tim Blair, a climate change denialist himself, has taken offence to this. Apart from denying he’s a denialist, Blair writes:

This seems a rather clumsy and emotional shame-by-illogic tactic from someone who claims to base his arguments on science and reason. Disagree with Manne about future weather patterns? Well, that means you're an apologist for the Third Reich, or as bad as one.

Interesting attempt at duckspeak is this. Blair is almost, but not quite, trying to imply that Manne reckons if you deny climate change then you’re denying the Holocaust. Blair scrapes out of it by adding the rider; ‘or as bad as one’.

In terms of analogy, Manne is quite right to say that ‘climate change denialism’ is like being a Holocaust denier, but, of course, they are not the same as Blair attempts to imply – being one does not necessarily mean your are the other as well.

The problem stems from the fact that, while most ‘climate change’ denialists like Blair, et al, are not Holocaust deniers; it does seem that most Holocaust deniers are also climate change denialists. And, naturally, the likes of Blair and co would want to be lumped in with them.

Their way out of the conundrum is simply to accuse Manne of smearing the victims of the Holocaust – an ignorant and tasteless insult considering that Manne had lost his own grandparents to the Holocaust.

But, such tasteless ignorance merely demonstrates the depths to which the climate deniers will go in order to peddle their denialist nonsense.