Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Above, “comedy” video from the “Media Research Center – Your one-stop-shop for the best conservative videos!”

The punch line here, apparently, is that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is saying some more or less sensible things about climate change.
Get it?

Salon:

Climate change may not seem like a gendered issue, but leave it to conservatives to inject sexism into everything they do.
That much was made evident on Thursday, when the right-wing Media Research Center tweeted out a video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., talking about the need for rapid decarbonization to prevent catastrophic environmental changes due to climate change. The video is labeled “Shallow Thoughts” and treacly music is played behind it, in order to indicate how viewers are meant to read this video, which is as an indictment of Ocasio-Cortez’s intelligence.

Despite the heavy-handed presentation, if a viewer actually listens to what Ocasio-Cortez is saying, it’s quite clear she’s making a cogent and intelligent case, and understands the actual scientific evidence far better than her detractors.
It’s equally clear that Media Research Center doesn’t expect its conservative audience to actually listen to what she’s saying. Instead, sexist stereotypes are doing the heavy lifting here. Ocasio-Cortez is young, female and pretty, and as such, the target audience for this video is predisposed  to think of her as a bimbo, and is ready to write off anything she says as dumb lady yapping, without bothering to absorb the actual contents of her speech.
Ocasio-Cortez, always good at using social media, seized on this gap between the sexist assumptions of conservatives and the reality of her actual intelligence, and tweeted out the video herself.

I love everything about this GOP attack ad.

Republicans underestimate my intelligence bc I invite people into my home & talk about policy in plain English instead of DC jargon.

They think that’s dumb, so they end up paying for ads that spread & explain our policy positions. 🤣 https://t.co/6XC1YdyKDU

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 29, 2019

Earlier this week, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out a warm welcome to Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, who arrived in New York Wednesday for a speech at the United Nations.
Unfortunately, Thunberg was also greeted by a wave of misogynist nastiness, largely coming from allegedly grown men in both Europe and the United States. The attacks on Thunberg were in the same vein as those on Ocasio-Cortez, accusing her of being too stupid to know what she’s talking about and denying that her voice is one worth honoring. A writer for the conservative Washington Examiner claimed that Thunberg is a victim of “child abuse” and that her mother “pimps their kid out,” explicitly drawing a line between forced sex work and climate activism. 

These kinds attacks have no basis in fact. Thunberg’s views on climate change align with those of better than 97% of climate scientists. Thunberg is no helpless puppet, but a sharp and remarkably passionate young person who has sparked an international youth movement of climate activism with millions of participants. In order to give weight to these attacks, these critics rely on stereotypes painting women, especially young women, as infantile and idiotic. Without this kind of misogyny, they’d have nothing.
“While these examples might feel like mere coincidence to some,”  Martin Gelin at the New Republic argues, “the idea that white men would lead the attacks on Greta Thunberg is consistent with a growing body of research linking gender reactionaries to climate-denialism.”

Indeed, the evidence Gelin cites shows that sexism is probably fueling climate denialism. Researchers Jonas Anshelm and Martin Hultman of Chalmers found that sexists saw climate change activism as part of a larger group of social changes — including feminism — that threatens “a certain kind of modern industrial society built and dominated by their form of masculinity.”
Other research shows that American men find environmentalism to be inherently feminine and therefore emasculating, and view being deliberately anti-environmental as a way to feel more masculine.

Tell them, Greta.

When people try to mock you personally instead of engaging the substance of your advocacy, it’s because they know how powerful you are, and that the truth is on your side.

Keep inspiring and organizing.

We’re going to save the planet.
All of us, together. 🌎 https://t.co/eRgvMYy2uh

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 31, 2019

For men who are allegedly so “proud” of being straight, they seem to show real incompetence at attracting women to their event.

Seems more like a “I-Struggle-With-Masculinity” parade to me. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Hope they grow enough over the next year to support / join LGBTQ fam next #Pride! 🏳️‍🌈 https://t.co/DUb52ktWOP

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 31, 2019

This is how Bushmaster marketed the AR-15 in America. It’s no coincidence that men are now using it during mass shootings to kill Americans.

Toxic masculinity exists in every country, but only the United States gives these men easy access to arsenals and bulk ammunition. pic.twitter.com/j1WmoKurLT

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) September 1, 2019

Watching the pathetic displays of Incel and Neo-nazi half-men parading, tweeting, and occasionally shooting up malls, made me want to review a few clips from “Fury Road”, the latest over the top entry in the dystopian “mad max” series of movies. Director George Miller got the tone right portraying a sadly shriveled patriarchal hells cape of shaven headed man-boys desperate to be “witnessed” by an elder, or their peers.

The movie was panned by conservatives as having a feminist bias.

The men’s movement of the 80s and 90s had some ridiculous and absurd excesses, but they were putting their finger on something real that is missing in the way we rear and nurture our young men.
Might be good to figure out what that is before a man-child, say, gets his finger on the nuclear buttons…