The Alleged "Blamelessness" of Humanity.
I recently engaged in a Twitter debate (any such debate is always a mistake, I find) with a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for the West Country, who is also a livestock farmer. I should stress that my remarks are not just addressed to her, but against all who share her views on this subject. An interlocutor in our discussion had voiced his disgust at humanity, given our record of pollution, destruction of the environment and other species, and anthropogenic climate change. I pointed out that our species was responsible for the current Sixth Extinction, and had been responsible for the extinction of very many other forms of life on this planet since our ancestors exterminated the Pleistocene megafauna. At this point, the Liberal Democrat farmer told me it was wrong to blame humans, that this led to "dehumanisation", and this is what the Nazis had done. I pointed out, in reply, that the Nazis were engaged in separating humans into distinct groups - some labelled "