The right's favorite Commie

Right-wingers are embracing a new film called The Great Global Warming Swindle, which claims that those evil, evil environmentalists have engaged in a massive conspiracy to hoodwink humanity. So far, they've managed to sucker in the world's scientists -- quite a trick.

Although the director of the film, Martin Durkin, engages in the sort of rhetoric we'd expect from a Murdochian dittohead, he claims to be a Marxist. Personally, I am not a Marxist. (Neither was Uncle Karl, by his own admission -- but that's a tale for another time.) I met a few examples of the breed back in college; they were odd and kind of annoying, and I am not anxious to meet more.

Here is some interesting background on Durkin:

In 1997 television producer Martin Durkin from the TV company Kugelblitz made a series for Channel 4 called Against Nature, which targeted environmentalists, presenting them as 'the new enemy of science' and as comparable to the Nazis. They were responsible, the series argued, for the deprivation and death of millions in the Third World. (Crimes against Nature , The Revolution Has Been Televised )

Channel Four had to broadcast a prime-time apology after Against Nature drew the wrath of the Independent Television Commission which ruled, 'Comparison of the unedited and edited transcripts confirmed that the editing of the interviews with [the environmentalists who contributed] had indeed distorted or misrepresented their known views. It was also found that the production company had misled them... as to the format, subject matter and purpose of these programs.'

He's your witness, my rightist friends. I wouldn't want him on my side!