"Greenest Gov. Ever" - George Osborne Refers To Activists As "Environmental Taliban" - Guardian

[hatrack]

George Osborne is said by the Independent to be referring to green campaigners both inside and outside his party as "the environmental Taliban". His office denies it, but the insult fits in with the way Conservatives and rightwing politicians around the world now regularly denigrate greens.

In 2009, Roger Evans, a Conservative member of the London assembly, wrote in a blog that people fighting the expansion of the London City airport were "the climate change Taliban". He was was slapped down by the prime minister, David Cameron, and the mayor, Boris Johnson. He eventually apologised profusely.

The Taliban slur has since been widely used in Australia and in the US along with more regular putdowns of environmentalists as "Nazis", "subversives", "militants" and "watermelons" (green on the outside, red on the inside).

EDIT

But the insults keep coming. Only this week, Steve Uncles, a rightwing police commissioner candidate in Kent representing the English Democrats, called the Kent Green party chairman a "dictatorial Nazi". A blog on Uncles's website showed a mocked-up picture of Stuart Jeffery wearing a swastika. Uncles has so far refused to take the post off his website despite threats of legal action. And on Thursday, environmentalists at a Stop Climate Chaos demonstration at the Treasury were met with Nazi salutes by an even smaller counter-protest organised by a group called Repeal the Act. In later email correspondence, Repeal the Act referred to the protesters as "Nazis".

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/oct/19/environmental-taliban-george-osborne

[AverageJoe90]

1. George Osborne can go fuck himself with a poker iron.

"Climate Change Taliban"? Is this jerk-off for fucking REAL?!?

I have come across a few people on our side over the years whose opinions are somewhat on the fringe, and I do find myself in disagreement with them many times,(mostly over their lack of hard facts to back up their assertions, such as the belief that humanity will inevitably go the way of the dodo because of AGW alone or that Earth will turn into Venus II, in some cases, for example) but they don't deserve to be called the "Taliban", and certainly, neither do the rest of us, either.

This is symptomatic of a terrible malady that's infested the Western right in recent years. What's next? Are video game players or independent film makers Nazis too? Fuck Osborne, Uncles and their ilk.