That Guy The Atlantic Hired Who Wants Death Penalty For Abortions? Also A Climate Liar (Bonus!)

[hatrack]

EDIT

In response to the initial criticism, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg defended the hire in a staff memo (obtained by Slate). In it, he acknowledged that Williamson’s tweets have been pretty bad. “I don’t think that taking a person’s worst tweets, or assertions, in isolation is the best journalistic practice,” he says, later adding that he’d prefer “to give people second chances and the opportunity to change.”

So what does Williamson do with his second chance? He immediately goes back to trolling Democrats with a phony smear, claiming “they are dreaming up excuses to sue or jail people for their views on climate change, and the United States is for the moment left with two authoritarian populist parties” — referring to both the Republicans and Democrats. Most of the piece focuses on arguing that the GOP is “authoritarian” for embracing Trump. The only example Williamson offers, however, for his false equivalency that the Democrats are also “authoritarian” is his false claim about the climate lawsuits.

EDIT

The other lawsuits getting a lot of attention right now are kids suing the Trump Administration, claiming the federal government is endangering the plaintiffs’ right to a livable climate. But Williamson and the Atlantic don’t mention these actual lawsuits at all, perhaps because they aren’t about trying to “sue or jail people for their views on climate change.” Instead, they offer two hyperlinks, one for the word “jail” and one for the rest of the sentence — as this screenshot of the HTML code shows.

?w=1072&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C298px&ssl=1

The hyperlink attached to “jail” goes to a 4-year-old piece by Gawker (which shut down 2 years ago). In it, a Gawker blogger does propose charging and punishing people who are paid to spread misinformation on climate change. He quotes an assistant philosophy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. It isn’t by a Democratic politician, and it doesn’t cite any, so it does not provide any support for Williamson’s charge.

EDIT

Nonetheless, on the very thin reed of these two links — one irrelevant and one innocuous — Williamson and the Atlantic smear Democrats with a false charge and paint the entire party as “authoritarian.” This is called trolling. It’s what Williamson has done for a very long time. He is way past second or third or tenth chances.

EDIT/END

https://thinkprogress.org/atlantic-right-wing-columnist-promotes-climate-misinformation-481b1ec1757e/

[sharedvalues]

1. Thats what right wing intellectuals do. Push propaganda talking points

Remember, only 4% of hard scientists are Republicans— because smart people who are trained to form their own opinions realize the GOP is a party full of lies and propaganda.



So the remaining GOP “intellectuals” end up being mostly feeble minded compared to left wing intellectuals like Krugman or Foer or Beutler or Goldberg, to name just a few.


The GOP “intellectuals “ end up with half assed whataboutism, or pushing the right wing talking point of the week, not adding any new insight. Look at the WSJ Ed page. Look at Megan McArdle. Ben Shapiro. Peggy Noonan. These people are more wrong than cult members are. And when they actually drop the talking points to make new arguments, their arguments are dumb. The GOP is the party of stupid people.