Marc Sheppard did some useful history in November 2007 in Global Warmists Exploit the Holocaust, including the David Roberts article linked to by Martin. In the BH thread Mann vents in July 2010 Hilary Ostrov quoted David Evans' definition of holocaust denial and others supplied some useful further material and examples. Watts Up With That listed a vast number of Examples of “Inappropriate Comparisons [That] Trivialize the Holocaust” in March 2014. The original 'poisoner of the well' was clearly Al Gore with An Ecological Kristallnacht in the New York Times in March 1989. But the nine year gap between that and Deborah Tannen on Jim Lehrer's Newshour in 1998, which is the first time I know of that those that question 'consensus' on global warming were explicitly compared with holocaust deniers, as discussed by Sheppard, is an interesting matter.

As for the Geoff Chambers redraft of Martin Niemöller, I am wholly in agreement (if this is the intended message) that we should resist anyone being called 'denier', however much we disagree with their science. In other words I would never be happy with 'slayers' or other forms of greenhouse doubters being called deniers, because of the clear, and prior, application of the holocaust analogy in the climate field. It's far too great a weight to put on any scientific difference. This was something I was planning to say in Denying the science. It's a danger I see with the approach adopted by J Curry and A Montford, amongst others. I prefer Spencer's recent, much more robust response or Lindzen's highly sarcastic one. But I may have misinterpreted what Geoff was meaning in any case.

Barry:

throughtout the 90's there was much talk of global warming denial amongst politicians..

I haven't seen one example of that Barry. Are you sure you mean the actual phrase 'global warming denial' or criticism of things that today they would call that? References?

Good point stewg. So many use it, nobody wants to own it.

Skip: Certainly she did. And I think it was in 2007 that 'denier' really broke through, because of such people. It's infected a crucial public policy debate ever since. What a terrible thing to have on one's resume.

Geoff, allow me a fisk of the friendly variety:

Tracing the history of the different strands of CAGW belief is very useful I think.

Me too.

Besides the excellent work done by Skiphil on the UNFCCC thread …

Yep, that's a very important thread. I haven't got involved not because I don't have an opinion (quelle surprise) but because it's a big subject and I've been a bit busy. I don't think I can say much more on this one either for a while.

… there's a parallel investigation to be done on popular sentiment – how the mood of the times gave legitimacy to what was happening in the corridors of power.
The above wasn't just about the D-word, but about something wider and vaguer – how we're marginalised and dehumanised by the refusal of warmists to engage in serious discussion.

I strongly agree. In an important sense the marginalisation and dehumanisation are far more important than mere words. Yet apparently puny, often silly words frequently seem to accompany such destructive behaviour.

I'm not suggesting that warmists are Nazis, of course …

Oh go on :) Early stage Nazis will surely do fine. We never mean the cowardly and defeated rump in 1945, do we? (Read Ian Kershaw's The End, his brilliant account of how they insisted on the German people fighting to the end yet so often were busy saving their own skins.) Spencer's calculated insult was always time-dependent and the whole point, for me, was to look at the 20s and early 30s as a warning not to continue and cause destruction on the same scale.

Apart from that controversial point I think everything you say is of the utmost importance. I won't quibble further.

TinyCO2:

Climate change denier probably did start from the claim that we are in denial.

I'm not sure I would put it like that, though I learned something from anonym in August 2010 on the early 'in denial' campaign. Those references were just from anonym's googling then.

I should also correct my statement yesterday that Hilary Ostrov (hro001) quoted David Evans on holocaust denial in that thread. I meant the historian Richard Evans, as cited by the judge in the David Irving/Deborah Lipstadt libel case. Later in that page ex-BH contributor Don Pablo de la Sierra made a crucial distinction:

I am a psychologist, and the term "denier" is not a psychological term. It first came into use in the late 1960's in relation to the WWII Holocaust. As hro001 demonstrated above, it is an emotion-packed term. And as he [sic] points out, it generally means "politically motivated falsifaction [sic] of history"…

The term "denial" as in "he is in denial" is a psychological term. I have no idea who used it first, but it is very, very old. I think Freud used it …

I see the move from 'in denial' - tendentious though that was - to 'deniers', meaning morally and intellectually equivalent to holocaust deniers, as a massive step change in climate propaganda. It was in no way inevitable but a evil choice by some key individuals. Here's hoping it won't have all the evil consequences any sensitive student of history can imagine.

TinyCO2:

Don't get me wrong, I know that it is used as an insult but it gained popularity in other areas, not just climate change and they now use it so freely because it upsets you so much.

Cool theory. So why don't racists use 'nigger' more? It really upsets black people, after all. I would say they're right to be upset and they're right to have changed the culture so it's considered unacceptable. Are you saying they're wrong to have made all that fuss?

And how come you've not mentioned the explicit equivalence made with holocaust deniers, again and again, since 1998 and especially from around 2006? That colours every other use of denier and isn't present with 'AIDS denier' and the rest (even if that term is used - I think it's very rare).

If influential people like Nick Cohen and Graham Linehan are continuing to make such extreme statements relating their certainty about our wrongness to holocaust denial we should meet that with the contempt and non-acceptance it deserves - and, crucially, this resistance will persuade more and more of the unaligned to join our side. That's the result I'm after.

However, the adoption of denier, as Laurence Solomon did in his excellent book The Deniers way back, is I agree an excellent move. Just as Lindzen has. Both men are Jewish. It's a fantastic way for them to show their contempt for the phrase. But there should be no criticism, in my view, for those that express the same contempt in other ways.

You risk the derision of the undecided by trying to identify with the offences to real oppressed minorities.

I'm not doing that and I resent that slur. I think 'denier' is just as offensive as 'nigger' but that's not the same as saying they're identical. There's a different arc historically for sure. I think the analogy is fair in that we know we would never blame the victim for making a fuss in the second case and you shouldn't be getting bothered about my support for Roy Spencer's recent response to the first - which is where this stream of debate began.

We agree that 'denier' is dumb. Properly exposed it completely shoots to pieces the alarmist claim to the moral high ground. That's a big reason I make no apology for attacking it and mocking it - and supporting those that do the same, short of physical violence.