Adorno and climate science denial: Lies that sound like truth.

Climate science denial is serious. It facilitates political procrastination and brings us ever closer to a world beset by growing food insecurity, heatwaves, floods, storms, fires and extensive losses to biodiversity. Numerous studies have unmasked the private agendas and corporate links behind organized denial, yet the question of how deniers find traction with democratic publics has received comparatively little attention. Empirical surveys demonstrate a connection between people who are susceptible to the contrarian voices of denial and those inclined towards right-wing authoritarianism. In this essay, I bring Adorno's mid-20th-century studies of right-wing authoritarian tendencies in American democracy to bear upon climate science denial. Adorno directs us away from a sole focus on how deniers manufacture doubt so as to give the impression that the science is not settled. He examines the ways that agitators not only spread misinformation but also foster emotional connections with people who seem to want to be conned. I locate organized denial within a strain of cultural life that Adorno describes as unserious. In late 1940s America, Adorno discerned a new shape of political subjectivity, which has become highly resonant today: a formally free individual who takes pleasure in lies that sound like truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]