Thread by @clim8resistance

Greens can't do debate, argument, democracy. So they use words like 'far right', 'denier' and set up smear websites -- lists of their enemies and their sins and their 'connections'. I hope the Green Party has some success, so their utter vacuity can be better exposed.

https://twitter.com/Tom___Scott/status/1128699465978740737

I am not now, and never have been any kind of conduit or linkage between Spiked and UKIP, or any other organisation. Neither have I been an 'acolyte'. I am an independent researcher and writer. I was not a member of UKIP. I have never been even an editorial member of Spiked.

The only work I ever did for any UKIP MEPs (I was never employed by UKIP) which was not to do with environment/energy was a short project on the burden that bureaucracy places on small businesses in the NE of England.

I guess that makes me 'far right'.

The idea that the smear site exposes any connection between Spiked and UKIP is absolutely hilarious.

I had written maybe 4 articles for Spiked by the time I was the 'link' between Spiked and UKIP. spiked-online.com/author/ben-pil…

At the time, I was a undergraduate student at York, which is where I met Godfrey Bloom.

York University, not Spiked, is the 'link'.

Bloom was giving a talk on the EU. He was one of the better regular speakers at events at the uni, and would always join the students for drinks afterwards. We got chatting.

That is the reality of the conspiratorial, climate change denying far-right networks!

Yes, folks, the far-right climate change-denying nexus was forged over a beer and a gasper in a student bar.

As for my connection to Spiked, I don't think I'd set foot in their office until 2013, and perhaps only once since, despite living just a couple of miles away. Pretty lame for an 'acolyte'.

I don't say it to distance myself from either organisation.

The point is simply that I am just not that important, and never have been, to either organisation.

But that fact would ruin the greens' narrative. And all they have is stories.

They need a Darth Vader.

I got picked up by the green demon hunters, because I'd written a few articles for Spiked, and because I got up the nose of a neomalthusian campaigner, and separately a particularly sh*t journalist at the Guardian.

I upset the neomalthusian because I discovered his organisation's relationship to *actual* white supremacists and *actual* racists. It's not very hard to discover such links between population-control environmentalists and very dark ideological movements.

In return, he grabbed all my Facebook data, and turned it into a conspiracy on Powerbase.

He claimed that my blog was a front organisation for the "LM Network", which he placed me at the centre of.

A blog!

powerbase.info/index.php/Ben_…

That was despite his own connections to very powerful people through the Optimum Population Trust - of which David Attenborough was a patron.

He hated the idea of the OPT being criticised. So rather than defending neomalthusian principles, he authored smears of his critics.

At the time, what is now Powerbase was called 'Spinwatch'. But they had a sinister agenda of their own.

spinwatchwatch.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/mor…

And it turned out that Spinwatch had its own dodgy connections to millionaires. spinwatchwatch.wordpress.com/millionaires-f…

Here's a long piece I wrote about it at the time. climate-resistance.org/2010/06/inner-…

Then in 2011 I got into an argument with Leo Hickman of the Guardian on twitter in 2011. Someone suggested we take it to email. Leo didn't want to talk arguments, though, he demanded I feed his intrigue about connections. UKIP. Spiked. That sort of thing.

I pointed out that while he was preoccupied with connections, he had lost sight of the actual debate. He kept demanding 'transparency': that I should name my clients in my blog posts, online comments and on Spiked articles.

The discussion didn't end well, but I though nothing more of it.

Then a year later, Hickman 'exposed' the 'connection', though all the information was in the public domain anyway, and published on UKIP/EFD websites. theguardian.com/environment/bl…

Evidence that Hickman had lost any sense of proportion is the fact that £2000/month was even then less than the average wage.

That was the magnitude of the crime.

Hickman had sent off a series of demands for information -- all of which he already had -- to the EU Parliament about my diary. But not being an official, and not being in a position of *any* power or influence, my information was not subject to transparency rules.

Hickman was convinced that there was a conspiracy. But he failed to uncover it. So he told his story as an adventure, in which he tried to seek information -- all of which he already had because I had told him, and it was in the public domain.

He kept on pressing until he met a refusal. I said I would not provide him with my diary: 1. because it did not exist; 2. because compiling it from records would take weeks; 3. because he was not entitled to have it. He said this meant that the EU Parl was hiding something.

It is important here to understand why there aren't transparency rules for researchers.

They are not politicians. They are not decision-makers. They are not even civil servants.

If researchers kept diaries of their work, they would look like this:

1. Got breakfast & papers.
2. Opened emails from constituents.
3. Collected dry cleaning.

My work was more interesting, generally. And I enjoyed it. But it wasn't decision-making.

Ultimately, Hickman used the resources of a newspaper to settle a score he had with someone who had disagreed with him on Twitter, and who had got the better of him on Twitter and in an email exchange.

He invented a conspiracy because he, like many greens who find themselves in positions well above their abilities, cannot debate.

And this is the point.

Despite having the resources of an entire newspaper, despite earning far more than I did, despite his own, undisclosed connections to wealthy people, political interests and organisations, Hickman was not able to explain how anything I had ever written was wrong.

Not once.

Hickman believed that it was sufficient to identify that I was wrong by my 'connections', and that by reaching the end of mine (and the EU Parliament's) patience in his demands for transparency he had proved there was something to hide.

Barely a day passes without someone posting links to either the Powerbase article or Hickman's desperate hatchet job, despite both being nearly a decade old.

They think it answers my argument, that it somehow prove that what I have said is not true.

This is why I point out that environmentalism has no culture of debate, and no intellectual coherence whatsoever. It is a mediocracy. It elevates dull, uninquiring minds like Hickman's to positions far above their competence.

Virtue-signalling is the necessary course of action for anyone elevated above their abilities. Faced with criticism about the substance of their claim to virtue, the over-elevated must find nefarious conspiracies. And if they can't find them, they must fabricate them.

In the end, Hickman left the Guardian to work for WWF.

The Graun, Hickman and the zombies that share his work make much of UKIP's 'links' to the 'far right' and 'racism'.

But what of the WWF?

The WWF now stand accused of funding the forced sterilisation, violent illegal evictions, beatings, torture, rape enslavement and murder of some of the world poorest people in the world. They are behind mercenaries and shoot-to-kill policies, and the taking of other peoples' land

That is not merely racism. That is the actual assertion of racial dominance: eco-colonialism.

Had Hickman actually read anything I had written, rather than been preoccupied by who I was hanging out with, he might have understood how he was now himself linked to a deeply racist, violent, and dangerous organisation.

The WWF is able to assert itself over the world's poorest people through its extraordinary privilege and connections to the most powerful people in the world, including the Royal Family. It has a budget of hundreds of $millions.

I was one of few people pointing out. On £2k/month

The £2k/month was more interesting to Hickman than what the $billions per year are doing, going in the other direction.

Hickman really doesn't want to look that way...

After Hickman's spell at WWF, he went to work for the Carbon Brief.

The Carbon Brief is funded entirely by the European Climate Foundation (ECF).

ECF in turn is funded directly and indirectly by US philanthropic funds, through the Climateworks foundation.

In the interests of transparency, I asked the ECF, who funds them, how much, and which organisations they fund and how much.

Leo Hickman would surely approve.

They refused to tell me. They said they are not obliged to tell me.

Transparency for thee...

According to analysts in the 'third sector' -- i.e. their own side -- almost all (>75%) funding for climate campaigning organisations in the world comes from just 6 "philanthropists" -- billionaires.

It is a political campaign, to change society, in the interests of those funds.

Hickman isn't going to be asking any questions about that "transparency".

Neither is the Guardian.

Neither are the greens.

They will instead invent smears and conspiracy theories.