I started interviewing climate scientists 15 years ago, who were being harassed and threatened after their research showed the need to end dependence on fossil fuels.
In the past year, while interviewing farmers in the midwest, who wanted to site clean energy on their land, I heard accounts of abuse that reminded me very much like those of the scientists.
Now, it’s Congress people in the US House on the receiving end.
Common thread? At bottom, it’s the serious threat to the power of the fossil fuel industry.
Get it now?
Shortly after Representative Nick LaLota, a first-term Republican from New York, voted against Representative Jim Jordan’s bid for speaker, the threats began pouring in.
“If I see your face, I will whip all the hair out of your head you scumbag,” read one expletive-laden email.
The wife of Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska has begun sleeping with a loaded gun after receiving increasingly menacing anonymous calls and texts. Representative Drew Ferguson of Georgia on Thursday joined a growing cadre of holdouts against Mr. Jordan’s candidacy who said they had received death threats — and added that members of his family had become targets as well.
We know that the very same organizations that targeted scientists a decade ago, have been involved organizing the threats against farmers and landowners today.
In 2012, The Guardian published documents describing a conference in Washington DC that brought together right wing activists from across the country, and trained them in a set of tactics to deploy against clean energy in their communities.
The conference organizer, then known as the American Traditions Institute, had been active in harassing and persecuting climate scientists. ATI has since been rebranded as “E & E Legal”. One of the leading organizers of anti clean energy activity in the midwest, Kevon Martis, was one of the original trainees, and continues to be extremely active in this space. Mr Martis had made legal threats against me and several others I know who have had the temerity to question him.
Susan Goldenberg in the Guardian, 2012:
A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama’s energy agenda.
A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.
Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using “subversion” to build a national movement of wind farm protesters.
The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project.
ATI is part of a loose coalition of ultra-conservative thinktanks and networks united by their efforts to discredit climate science and their close connections to the oil and gas industry, including the Koch family. Those groups include the Heartland Institute, the John Locke Foundation, and Americans for Prosperity, the organising arm of the Tea Party movement.
ATI is a relatively new entrant, coming to national attention only last year when it filed lawsuits against climate scientists including Michael Mann and James Hansen.
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This paragraph jumped out at me from the New York Times account, –
“The lawmakers and their aides say that a majority of the messages are not coming from their constituents, but from voters across the country.“
One of the striking commonalities with the Farmer’s experience is the swarming behavior of the “anti” forces – without exception Farmers describe meetings with large contingents of loud, angry individuals from outside the community.
The threats and abuse are coming from a core group of activists who organize on Facebook, and exhibit a cult-like intensity in their fight against what they view as a “globalist conspiracy”.