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Climate McCarthyism, Part I: Joe Romm's Intimidation Campaign
...These days especially, journalists are an easy mark. Journalists are perhaps the most insecure professionals in America. Reporters fear for their future, and with good reason. Bureaus are closing, journalists and editors are getting laid off, and whole newspapers and magazines are going under. Reporters who are insecure for their futures are easy prey for bullies like Romm, whose attacks are aimed at having a chilling effect on the entire national press corps.

What are the warning signs that one is dealing with a bully? Wiki names, "Quickness to anger and use of force, addiction to aggressive behaviors, mistaking others' actions as hostile, concern with preserving self image, and engaging in obsessive or rigid actions." Bullies, Wiki notes, "will even create blogs to intimidate victims worldwide."

The character assassination, the bullying, the psychological projection -- it all adds up to Climate McCarthyism, and Joe Romm is Climate McCarthyite-in-chief. Joe Romm's "Global Warming Deniers and Delayers" play the same role as Joe McCarthy's "Communists and Communist sympathizers." While Romm built a loyal liberal and environmentalist following for attacking right-wing "global warming deniers" -- a designation meant to invoke "Holocaust denier" -- he spends much of his time attacking well-meaning journalists (e.g. here, here, and here), academics (here and here) and activists (here, here and here) who take the issue of global warming seriously, accept climate science, and support immediate action to address it. His aim is to intimidate and prevent increasing numbers of people from questioning climate policy orthodoxy, and especially Democratic efforts to pass cap and trade climate legislation.

And make no mistake, Joe Romm's political agenda is as mainstream among liberals today as Joe McCarthy's was among conservatives in 1953. Romm is held up by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, UC Berkeley's Brad DeLong,The New Republic's Brad Plumer, Grist's Dave Roberts, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as an inspiration. He works for John Podesta, Obama's transition director and head of Center for American Progress. And he is the leading spokesperson for Waxman Markey climate legislation that passed the House, and Kerry-Boxer legislation in the Senate.

Think about it: If you're an ambitious young Democratic Hill staffer, a liberal policy analyst, or a struggling young reporter, why would you ever stand up to a guy who is famous for first trashing people to their editors, employers and funders in private emails, and then, if that doesn't work, in public blogs? Why would you challenge someone who seems to have so much of the liberal establishment on his side?...

...In the end, the purpose of bullying is not simply to victimize individuals, it's to intimidate the bystanders. What most bystanders want is to not be attacked by the bully. It ruins your day and threatens your career. So if you are a reporter you hew to the climate orthodoxy because, well, after all, look at what Romm did to Keith Kloor.

This is the state of liberal debate about climate change. Those who question apocalyptic predictions are treated as global warming deniers or traitors or worse. Those who advocate solutions other than cap-and-trade have their characters assassinated. Those who stand up to Joe Romm find themselves turned into projection screens by an angry and vindictive bully.

Joe McCarthy, like Romm, was compulsive in projecting his own dark side onto others. In 1943 McCarthy defeated Senator Robert LaFollette by claiming that LaFollette was a war profiteer because he had made $47,000 in stock market profits during the war; it turned out that McCarthy himself had made $42,000 doing the same thing. McCarthy also lied about his war record in order to construct an identify for himself as a war hero.

Joe Romm, like Joe McCarthy, is full of rage -- one of the most salient characteristics of bullies. McCarthy was defended in his day as being full of passion. Likewise, Romm's excesses are often excused by his admirers as well-intentioned and a reflection of his deep passion for his cause. Both defend their bullying as necessary. "McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled," McCarthy said in 1952.

While McCarthy had a disturbingly long run, he was eventually challenged for his tactics, most famously by the Army's chief legal counsel who said, during Senate hearings, "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" at which point the audience in the hearing room broke into applause.

Another key turning point was when CBS Newsman Edward Murrow directly challenged McCarthy in a series of nationwide television broadcasts. Some now point out that Murrow waited until the worm had already turned, with many smaller reporters doing the spadework exposing McCarthy's bad deeds. But what it finally took was establishment leaders standing up to the bully. ...