So it seems we are all in agreement (FLORY?) that, as Phila approvingly cites, "the struggle within any specific social field is to establish the dominant definition of legitimate discourse."
Phila connects this Frenchified assertion with this remarkable document
emanating from the United States Senate Committee on Environment and
Public Works, a body currently (for about two more weeks, anyhow) chaired by Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe
(pictured). The purpose of the release is to provoke gasps of horror that a magazine beloved of Bill Moyers and Al Gore was so gauche as to call for "Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming."
See, on Grist magazine's blog, David Roberts wrote:
When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.
Which is, you know, pretty reasonable, all things considered. The well-heeled global warming denialist industry-funded industry really should have to face some severe consequences if even a third of the most reasonable predictions of mainstream climate scientists come true. But of course what happened was the predictable shitstorm of whining about "the anti-free-speech incivility of the Left." (Though I note in passing that the sniveling about Roberts' remark has now been overtaken in Technorati by blogs referring to this story about how the Alps ain't getting any colder.)
Now, if you think Sen. Inhofe and the cretinous scumbag wingnut lackey who wrote the Senate committee release were just shocked, shocked! at Roberts' single blog post referencing Nuremberg (a post written, ha ha, in the context of this amusing little article), and that their response stems from their offended sense of decorum -- well, if you really think that, you're pretty damn stupid, a sap, or willfully self-deluded. No. What the wingnut in question was playing for was the potential for granting a false legitimacy to a fraudulent and very dangerous political grouping, the climate change denialists, essentially by invoking Godwin's Law. And the fun thing about Godwin's Law that nobody ever cares to remember is that it really has nothing to do with right or wrong, or even Naziism, but rather with inventing a cheap way of determining who has won an argument.
This is really the essential point. In the case Phila cites, what is most emphatically NOT at stake is science. Or morality. Or the Nazis. Or war crimes trials. Or the first amendment. Or my left nut.
What is at stake is winning in the cultural field, or in other words establishing a monopoly over the terms in which global warming can be discussed. Or else, since the denialists' near monopoly over the debate now seems to have evaporated, the aim is to permit those whose actual arguments lack scientific credibility to at least attain rhetorical credibility, by pretending to be the aggrieved party in a case of civility. When you're losing on the facts, pound the table; when that doesn't work, start to cry like a total weenie about that great big mean bully, uh, Al Gore. And if you can't really pass him off as a bully (he's not in fact all that vicious-looking, I gotta concede), find some stray blog post that mentions NAZI GERMANY and hope you fling enough shit that some splats on his tie.
The cynicism of the ploy should I hope be apparent. Beyind that though, marvel at its desperation: here we have basically the Chair of a Senate Committee hoping to score points by cherrypicking a quote from a fucking blog. What that shows to me is that far from having a monopoly over the discourse, something I think they were ironically closer to having when Al Gore held a powerful political office, the denialists are desperately scrambling for loose change like a drunk hoping to find enough pennies and nickels to buy just one more quart of Olde Horsepiss.
Indeed, this is a pretty neat example of the thesis that a Bad Word ("Nuremberg") can be made to matter chiefly for its immediate political utility. In this example, morality or ethics have fuck all to do with it.