Woman Says People Need to Eat Babies Because of Climate Change

For many years, I take defendant conservatives of interim in bad faith on climatic change.

I take accused Republican leaders of knowingly spreading misinformation in guild to delay climate action and maximize profits to the fossil fuel industry.

Once, I fifty-fifty wrote that the Republican Party would "never be part of the solution," and that information technology was time for Democrats to stop hoping its politicians might become good-faith partners in tackling the climate crunch.

I at present see the mistake of my ways. Because I have heard the latest conservative-led argument confronting climate action. And unlike all the others before it, it demands seriousness.

Ready for it? Here information technology is:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez supports eating babies.

Happy Mon and welcome to HEATED, a newsletter for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis.

Today'due south result is nigh a existent, not-fictional argument being circulated widely correct now by the mainstream correct: That Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman to ever serve in the United States Congress, supports consuming the flesh of living human children every bit a climate solution.

This is obviously an insane argument—and the fact that this is American conservatives' master ammunition against climate action should tell you a lot about where they're at right at present.

Just I'g writing about the baby-eating argument today because I want to bear witness you three things.

1. How conservative media personalities and the president piece of work together to spread misinformation about the climate crunch;

2. How effective their misinformation campaign continues to exist;

3. How the complacency of everyone effectually them ensures that misinformation continues.

Some light stuff for a Mon, yes?

The baby-eating backstory

On Thursday nighttime, Ocasio-Cortez held a town hall for her district constituents in Queens. During the question and answer portion, a woman demanded the congresswoman support cannibalism as a climate solution. It was a existent yikes situation:

Nosotros but have a few months left. I beloved that you back up the New Light-green Bargain, but information technology's not getting rid of fossil fuels. It's not going to solve the problem fast enough. A Swedish professor has suggested eating dead people, simply that's not fast enough. And then I think your new campaign slogan should exist this: We have to start eating babies. … We have to get rid of the babies. That's a large trouble, merely stopping having babies. That'southward not plenty. We need to consume the babies!

If you've spent time communicating climate scientific discipline, you might recognize the wait of business on Ocasio-Cortez'southward face. Communicating this crisis tin provoke farthermost despair and low in people—and that despair can manifest in scary ways for people suffering from metal illness.

So Ocasio-Cortez deescalated. She validated the woman's concern, but pivoted to "positive" solutions:

Nosotros demand to treat the climate crisis with the urgency that information technology does present. Luckily we take more than a few months. We do need to hitting net cipher in several years. But I think nosotros all need to empathize that there are a lot of solutions that we have that nosotros can pursue, and if nosotros act in a positive way, there's space for hope. We are never beyond promise.

Because Ocasio-Cortez did not explicitly state that she does not condone eating human children, however, a bunch of influential people on the correct suggested Ocasio-Cortez condones eating human children. These influential people also suggested this was a normal position held past some of Ocasio-Cortez's supporters and constituents. These people include:

• Regular Fox News and National Review contributor Kat Timpf

• Conservative media strategist Caleb Hull

• Donald Trump'due south son

• Donald Trump

How climate misinformation spreads

It's crazy, in hindsight, how speedily this thing blew up on Thursday. Accept a wait at the timeline.

The adult female made her comments at about 7:30pm EST. By 7:57pm, bourgeois Daily Wire reporter Ryan Saavedra had tweeted out the clip, calling the woman an "AOC constituent."

At 8:16pm, Saavedra's tweet was quoted past Don Jr., who called the adult female a "normal AOC supporter."

A little before 9pm, Tucker Carlson played the clip on his Trick News show, and speculated that the woman might be "someone who believes the rhetoric of the left."

At 9:27pm, President Trump quote-tweeted his son's tweet of Saavedra'due south video, and called Ocasio-Cortez a "Wack chore."

The information reached millions of people in that two-hr time frame. Carlson'southward Thursday prove had 3.2 million viewers, co-ordinate to Adweek. Saavedra's clip now has more than 11 million views.

But 9 minutes subsequently Trump's tweet—at 9:36pm—a correct-wing PAC that supports Trump admitted that they staged the event, and planted the adult female in the oversupply. So the adult female was not a "constituent," or a "supporter," or "someone who believes the rhetoric of the left."

And yet none of the people cited above ever corrected their claims most the woman's identity.

Isn't that, like, totally weird?

It'south not weird

To epitomize, a Trump-supporting PAC hired a woman to pretend she wanted to consume babies for climate action; planted that woman in a congresswoman's town hall; and didn't become public almost information technology until both Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump told millions of people she might be a real climate activist.

This is not an accident. This is office of the climate right's longstanding campaign to make climate action expect like a crazy ploy to take away your hamburgers and cars and plastic straws, instead of a good-organized religion effort to prevent millions of deaths, millions of species extinctions, and trillions of dollars in climate-related economic losses.

It doesn't affair, and has never mattered, that this campaign is based on lies. Because when it comes to climate change, mainstream Republicans keep to show they are perfectly fine with lying. That's why Trump'south 2020 presidential press secretary Kayleigh McEnany falsely characterized the woman as an "AOC supporter" on Twitter on Fri, later it was well-known that the woman was a Trump-supporting plant. McEnany besides wrote, "Yous really can't make this stuff up," even though Trump supporters literally fabricated it up.

The are no adults in the room

As of Monday morning, no major Republican politician has spoken out to defend Ocasio-Cortez against claims past the president and his son that she might back up eating babies. Nor has whatever Republican politico spoken out against the idea, proliferated by Tucker Carlson and the president, that eating babies represents a totally normal thing that liberals would similar to do.

I looked around to find sane voices on the correct that might exist pushing back confronting these things. I found exactly one thing: a piece from Washington Examiner commentary author Brad Polumbo. His was the only one I could find from a bourgeois writer who seemed upset with his colleagues for implying that Ocasio-Cortez might back up eating babies:

Come on, he wrote. Seriously?

Any conservative who isn't operating in pure bad faith must give their intellectual opponents, at blank minimum, the benefit of the doubt to assume they practice not supportcannibalism. When some conservatives fail to exercise so, it undermines all of our efforts to brand the case against Ocasio-Cortez's radical policy bureau.

Yeah. It sure does.

OK, that'south all for today—thanks for reading HEATED!

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See you side by side week in Colorado!

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Source: https://heated.world/p/the-climate-right-has-gone-baby-crazy

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