Abetz defends comparing climate sceptics ban to Nazis
Liberal Senator Eric Abetz has come under fire from the Anti-Defamation Commission for comments he made comparing a climate sceptics ban to the Nazis.
LIBERAL Senator Eric Abetz has defended comparing to the Nazis a publication that has declared it will no longer publish the views of climate-change sceptics.
The conservative Tasmanian senator, who challenges the idea of human-induced climate change, was incensed this month after Misha Ketchell – editor and executive director of The Conversation Australia, which offers online analysis of issues important to academia – stated the publication would no longer air the narratives of climate-change doubters.
In a September 17 editorial policy statement coinciding with global climate-change protests, The Conversation Australia declared, “Once upon a time, we might have viewed climate sceptics as merely frustrating. We relied on other commenters and authors to rebut sceptics and deniers, which often lead to endless back and forth. But it’s 2019, and now we know better.
“Climate change deniers, and those shamelessly peddling pseudoscience and misinformation, are perpetuating ideas that will ultimately destroy the planet. As a publisher, giving them a voice on our site contributes to a stalled public discourse.”
The statement urged readers to “please don’t engage with the climate change deniers. Dob them in and help us create a space where they don’t derail the conversation”.
In Parliament, Abetz retorted, “Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong couldn’t have put it better themselves. They’d be so proud. To so superciliously and arrogantly deny a voice to an alternative point of view is reminiscent of totalitarian regimes.”
However, when contacted by The AJN, Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) chair Dvir Abramovich emphasised that comparisons to Hitler are never appropriate.
“Senator Abetz is entitled to express strong opinions about the editorial policies of a magazine. But with this thoughtless remark he has not only coarsened an important debate which demands civility, but has done a great disservice to the memory of the millions of Jews and others that were murdered by the Nazis. Such analogies, rarely valid, cheapen and drain this unparalleled event of its true horrors, and distort young people’s understanding of this inhuman period,” Abramovich stated.
Abetz, who chairs the Australia-Israel Friendship Group, told The AJN he was puzzled the ADC found no objection to The Conversation’s use of the term “denier”, with its Holocaust revisionist overtones, to describe climate-change rejection, and the publication urging readers to “dob … in” dissenters, a hallmark of totalitarian regimes, yet took issue with his Hitler reference. “How does it all start? By denying anybody an alternate point of view … If anybody has taken offence, that was not meant … and I would apologise to them.
“It may be better neither side uses such parallels … Returning fire with fire to The Conversation should not and in fairness cannot be interpreted as diminishing the gross evils perpetrated by Hitler, Stalin and Mao,” he stated.
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