PA Government Official Compares Oscar-nominated Film ‘Gasland’ to Nazi Propaganda

By Josh Fox, AlterNet

Printed on March 24, 2011
Crosspost with http://www.alternet.org/story/150279/

GASLAND to Nazi propaganda stating “Goebbels would be proud.” The slander was the latest in a series of smears and misinformation about the film and character attacks on me.

slanderous mudslinginghas no place in any rational or adult debate on any topic, let alone the most important issue facing the state in decades — natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.

When one speaks violence, he degrades himself and his fellow man. When that person represents the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he violates the fabric of our civic trust, delegitimizes the government he represents and opens the door to madness. The Corbett administration has thrown the dialogue on Marcellus drilling into the gutter and it is it up to the Corbett administration to get it out.

The film GASLAND has been thoroughly vetted, fact checked, verified and backed up by true journalistic review and science and we stand behind it and the incredibly brave Americans in it 100%.

But instead of engaging in a real dialogue on the issues, the Pennsylvania government and the gas industry have mounted successive attacks against the honest journalism of the film. I and my team have been branded terrorists, extremists, communists, traitors, liars and now, Nazis. NAZIS!!!!!!

The state deserves better.

If the Corbett administration fails to fire Borawski and fails to begin a real assessment of the effects of gas drilling on the state, then certainly the Corbett administration has lost all credibility and legitimacy.

Is there any excuse for employing this kind of hate speech?

Calling people Nazis has no place in our civic dialogue whatsoever. What we need is a real scientific review of the harmful effects of gas drilling on the state and a statewide moratorium on new drilling, leasing, permitting and fracking until all of the problems can be addressed, not race baiting remarks.

Is it impossible to imagine that the Corbett administration could engage in a serious rational debate on the issue? Corbett could call for a substantive independent cost-benefit analysis of what this much drilling would mean to our state. Corbett could pay attention to the fact that both the U.S. Congress AND the U.S. EPA are now investigating Hydraulic Fracturing due to the massive public outcry across the nation. Could the state legislature investigate the possible collusion between the state DEP and DCNR and the gas industry?

I was born into a mixed religious family. My father is Jewish and my Italian mother was raised Roman Catholic. My father and his parents were survivors of the holocaust. Everyone in his extended family was killed by the Nazis except for his two brothers and his mother and father and a few distant cousins. He grew up with the shadow of the Nazi genocide hanging over his head for his whole life. The first place the family went after fleeing Europe just after the war, was Pittsburgh. In my family, we know what this kind of rhetoric can do, if left unchecked and unpunished.

It is up to the Corbett administration to try to put this genie back in the bottle, fire Borawski and begin to entertain a rational dialogue on the issue. If Corbett fails to dismiss Borawski and put and end to the nose dive his administration seems hell bent on, we must conclude that he condones and indeed promotes this kind of behavior. If he fails to address this, we will be forced to acknowledge that this act of thuggery, bullying and despicable insensitivity is a hallmark of his approach to those who challenge his positions.

Josh Fox
GASLAND
Milanville, Pennsylvania
3/16/11

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