by Paul Bedard
This week’s Liberal Media Scream features activist and Hollywood star Jane Fonda, who has been spending a lot of time in Washington recently protesting on climate change and even going to jail for her efforts.
Now, she wants energy executives and their political allies to be treated like Nazis and face a “Nuremberg” style trial similar to German dictator Adolf Hitler’s henchmen, who were often given the death penalty at the post-World War II trials.
She appeared on the debut of The Impeachment Show on the Viceland, where she said that there’s “literally a ticking time bomb over everything” because of climate change. She claimed “our government is being ruled by fossil fuel” and so “democracy is teetering on the edge of collapse.”
Charging that the “fossil fuel industry” has caused wars that have killed many Americans, she also charged oil executives and enabling politicians “should all be tried for crimes against humanity and nature.” Host Michael Moynihan said, “So, you want to see sort of a Nuremberg trial for climate criminals?” to which Fonda responded, “Yeah, I would.”
From the Nov. 7 debut of the weekly Thursday night program:
FONDA: “I’m only 81. But even if I was 200 years old, I know that I could have said, I’ve never seen this before, because humankind has never been in this situation where there is literally a ticking time bomb over everything. Everything is subsumed under that because healthcare, national security, the economy — it’s all going to go out the window if we can’t address the worsening of climate change. I think that democracy is teetering on the edge of collapse.”
MOYNIHAN: “You think so?”
FONDA: “Oh, I think so. Yes. That’s why we need to go into the streets. Our government is being ruled by fossil fuel, and that’s a fact that can be proven. The wars are being fought for oil. Our men and women are being killed and maimed, wounded psychologically and physically, because of oil. They should all be tried for crimes against humanity and nature.”
MOYNIHAN: “Who in particular?”
FONDA: “The people who run the fossil fuel industry. And I might add the politicians that they bought off who haven’t got the gumption to stand up to it.”
MOYNIHAN: “So, you want to see sort of a Nuremberg trial for climate criminals?”
FONDA: “Yeah, I would.”
MOYNIHAN: “You would support that?”
FONDA: “Yeah.”
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our weekly pick: “Fonda and her apocalyptic view of the world is indicative of how and why Democratic presidential candidates are being pushed so far to the Left. Rational policy options are dismissed in favor of radical proposals to stave off the end of the world, where putting people on trial for providing a product everyone uses, and which has allowed huge gains in living standards, is considered perfectly reasonable and not an ominous sign of Orwellian thinking.”
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— David Bird (@ScienceJerk1) November 12, 2019
Related Links:
Flashback 2006: GRIST’S DAVID ROBERTS CALLED FOR NUREMBERG-STYLE TRIALS FOR GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTICS
Excerpt: ‘As NASA climate scientist James Hansen has suggested, Nuremberg-style trials must be held for senior corporate (including corporate media) and political executives responsible for crimes against humanity and planet that almost defy belief. They must be held to account for their crimes. But much more importantly, of course, we must act – now – to save ourselves from utter disaster.’
Jacobin Mag: “The fossil industry’s behavior constitutes a Crime Against Humanity in the classical sense: “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack,” including murder and extermination. Unlike genocide, the UN clarifies, in the case of crimes against humanity, it is not necessary to prove that there is an overall specific intent. It suffices for there to be a simple intent to commit any of the acts listed…The perpetrator must also act with knowledge of the attack against the civilian population and that his/her action is part of that attack.”
On climate, the precedent set in Nuremberg offers other lessons as well. It’s hard to think of a problem more widely attributed to “abstract entities” than global warming, allegedly the product of some unquenchable, ubiquitous human thirst for new stuff. That old Pogo cartoon still holds sway in the popular imagination: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
