#1452: Alan Caruba

Alan Caruba is a wingnut crank associated with Tea PartyNation and head of the “Caruba Organization,” a PR firm, and the “National Anxiety Center”, a, well, think tank publishing materials Caruba has obtained from places and figures like the Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and James Delingpole (actual science he avoids like the plague, even though the questions he is writing about often concerns science). The National Anxiety Center’s mission is “to debunk the many claims made by environmental and consumer organizations that were engaged in deliberately false, media-driven scare campaigns. Since purposefully raising fear and anxiety over various issues is the main weapon used by various special interest groups, the Center was named for this practice and exists to refute it.” In other words, it is a hub for total environmental denialism: The DDT scare is a hoax, and we need more (Rachel Carson was an environmental Hitler); acid rain and holes in the ozone layer are environmentalist conspiracies, and endangered species? Caruba points out that species went extinct before humans even existed, so that’s all that needs to be said about that. And of course, global warming is a hoax. Of perhaps particular note is Caruba’s attack on open access publishing, which he claims is bad because it gives people easier access to the science. The argument is … contrived. Essentially, his problem seems to be that easier access to scientific publications makes it easier to double check the false claims Caruba and global warming denialists make, but he doesn’t quite put it like that.

As for peak oil, Caruba claims it’s a myth because abiotic oil.

While denying environmentalism as fear-mongering and paranoia, Caruba is a heavy promoter of batshit paranoia, fear-mongering and conspiracies about more or less every other issue. Global warming itself is for instance a hoax perpetuated by the UN in their wicked plot to institute communism everywhere. Public education is apparently part of the same plot. Good examples of the UN plot at work are Mexicans and Muslims: According to Caruba, the US needs to secure the border before illegally immigrated Mexicans destroy and UN-enabled Islamofascism is imposed on America. And he has said that the US might have to invade the entire continent of Africa, because of its high Muslim population.

And in addition, there is the homosexual agenda (which will “doom America”): “I like to think of myself as a tolerant person,” says Caruba; “I have, however, one prejudice that is based on biology and history … being gay is not normal,” hence “anyone with a handful of functioning brain cells” opposes legalizing same-sex marriage. Also, the military and shools are being “used by gay and lesbian advocacy groups as a petri dish to force social change” to help people who have an orientation that is a “sexual aberration”. Needless to say, that you “like to think” of yourself as “a tolerant person” doesn’t make you one.

Not quite content with that, Caruba is also a follower of the pseudoscientific catastrophism of Robert W. Felix, and many of his rants are cross-posted to Felix’s Ice Age Now site (yes, while denouncing global warming as an alarmist hoax, he is himself predicting an imminent, apocalyptic ice age).

He also dabbles in pseudolaw, claiming for instance that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because his father was not a natural-born citizen. At least “Obama has made it nearly impossible for a black American to be elected President for a generation or two,” concluded Caruba before the 2012 elections, which he didn’t think Obama had any chance of winning (think for a moment about what the observation says about Caruba's views race). Here is a fine example of the level at which his Obama criticisms are pitched.

Diagnosis: As a delusional conspiracy nutter, Caruba does enjoy some influence on the fringe (his views have been promoted for instance by the Moonie times), even though grammar only distinguishes it from the stuff pushed over at whale.to.