"[G]lobal warming brownshirts": Attacking Gore, Rosen again used Nazi comparison

On the October 18 broadcast of his Newsradio 850 KOA show, host Mike Rosen -- who has stated in the past that “gratuitous comparisons to Hitler and Nazis always annoy me” -- used a Nazi allusion to describe how some of those who believe in human-induced climate change describe those who do not, saying: “That term 'deniers' has been used by global warming brownshirts attempting to equate these dissenters with Holocaust deniers.”

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines “brownshirts” as “a paramilitary organization whose methods of violent intimidation played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power.”

Rosen made his remarks after criticizing former Vice President Al Gore, who was recently awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change, as “a politician looking for a new career and a new cause.” Rosen stated that his own “opinion” on global warming “has been shaped by scientists” and that "[t]here are many more of these dissenters than you've been led to believe by the liberal mass media, which have been driving the global warming bandwagon."

As Colorado Media Matters noted, Rosen stated on his August 3 show that “gratuitous comparisons to Hitler and Nazis always annoy me, because they trivialize the seriousness of what Nazism was all about.” That remark came only weeks after Rosen referenced Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl, director of the 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, by saying of Michael Moore's documentary Sicko: “If you admire propaganda of the Goebbels variety, of the Riefenstahl variety, then this ... is well-done propaganda, as long as we recognize it as that.”

From the October 18 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Mike Rosen Show:

ROSEN: Now, of course I'm no scientist, but neither is Al Gore. Al Gore is a politician looking for a new career and a new cause. My opinion on this has been shaped by scientists -- experts in the field who have refuted the alarmists point by point. There are many more of these dissenters than you've been led to believe by the liberal mass media, which have been driving the global warming bandwagon. There are qualified climatologists, meteorologists, astrophysicists who've had the courage to take on the so-called consensus -- just as Galileo and Copernicus took on the conventional wisdom of their day. And let's be clear: These are legitimate dissenters, not deniers.

That term “deniers” has been used by global warming brownshirts attempting to equate these dissenters with Holocaust deniers. That's the term we normally associate with deniers. People like [Iranian President] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who claim the Holocaust never happened. To deny the Holocaust is to deny a historical infamy that undoubtedly occurred, for which there are eyewitnesses and physical evidence. To disagree about the likelihood of highly debatable, alarmist forecasts of what might occur hundreds of years in the future is quite another matter. And the term “denier” simply doesn't apply here. “Skeptic,” “dissenter” -- that's a more accurate and a more fair term.