Note from Anthony: This opinion piece covers a very ugly subject. I gave it careful consideration before I decided to run it. One of the considerations I made is how many times “climate justice” proponents have said and spread terrible things about me, as well as others who stand up to the green tyranny that has pervaded society. As ugly as these comparisons obviously are, had I not experienced some of the hatred and death wishes personally, I’d think it was over the top. Just ask Marc Morano about hate speech and death wishes.
Foreword by Paul Dreissen
Nazi ethics were hopelessly and perversely conflicted and schizophrenic. People obviously occupied a lower niche than animals on the Nazi “moral and ethical” hierarchy – and millions of innocent people were sent to their deaths.
Sadly, the more rabid elements of modern environmentalism have similar “ethics” – and play a major role in perpetuating poverty, disease, misery, malnutrition and early death in poor countries. Ironically, in the name of “keeping fossil fuels in the ground” to “save the planet” from “dangerous manmade climate change,” radical green policies would also destroy the very habitats and wildlife they claim to care so deeply about.
Perverse, conflicted ethical systems
Radical environmentalists put people last, and destroy habitats and wildlife to end fossil fuels
Guest opinion by Paul Driessen
Third Reich Forest Minister Hermann Goering was an avid hiker and ecologist who once sent a man to a concentration camp for cutting up a frog for fish bait. In 1933 he and other Nazi Party leaders enacted anti-vivisection laws to stop what he called “unbearable torture and suffering in animal experiments.”
Intensely hostile to capitalism, the Nazis controlled all industries and envisioned large-scale wind turbine projects that would generate “huge amounts of cheap energy” and create millions of German jobs.
But as Luftwaffe commander, Goering planned and directed the 1939 terror bombing of Warsaw and the final obliteration of the city’s Jewish ghetto. Thousands were slaughtered, and survivors were sent to the Treblinka concentration camp, under “the final solution” that he helped mastermind – to send millions of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, “mentally deficient burdens” and other “sub-humans” to ovens and mass graves.
About the most charitable thing one can say about Nazi ethics is that they were perversely conflicted and schizophrenic. People clearly occupied a lower niche than animals on their “moral and ethical” hierarchy.
Sadly, the same observations apply to the more rabid elements of modern environmentalism. Ironically, in the name of “keeping fossil fuels in the ground” to “save the planet” from “dangerous manmade climate change” and other imagined calamities, radical greens also demand actions that would ultimately destroy the very habitats and wildlife they claim to love.
Their own words underscore their attitudes. Here are some examples.
“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically.” (Earth First! activist Judy Bari) “Loggers losing their jobs because of spotted owl legislation is no different than people being out of work after the furnaces of Dachau shut down.” (Friends of the Earth founder David Brower)
People have become “a cancer … a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” (National Park Service scientist David Graber) “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.” (Prince Philip of England)
“Even if animal research produced a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.” (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals president Ingrid Newkirk) “Six million people died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses.” (Newkirk again)
Banning DDT in Sri Lanka might well unleash a malaria epidemic, but “so what? People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this is as good a way as any.” Besides, in the United States, DDT substitutes “only kill farm workers, and most of them are Mexicans and Negroes.” (Environmental Defense Fund scientist Charles Wurster)
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” (Paul Ehrlich, who in 1968 predicted mass starvation and a collapse of civilization by the 1980s)
“It’s much cheaper for everybody in Africa to have electricity where they need it,” from little solar panels “on their huts.” (Actor Ed Begley, Jr.) People in developing countries “simply cannot expect to have the material lifestyle of the average American.” (Friends of the Earth president Brent Blackwelder)
These attitudes, policies and demands prevail today. Radical greens still advance the same irrational, intolerant views about pesticides to control insect-borne diseases; genetically modified crops to feed more people from less acreage with less water; and access to abundant, reliable, affordable energy required to power modern industrialized societies in Africa, Asia and other less developed regions.
The world’s poorest families still live unnecessarily squalid, miserable, diseased, malnourished, short lives. Billions still don’t even have electricity, clean water, light bulbs or a tiny refrigerator.
It’s awful enough that they were born into these places and conditions, and must endure corrupt, kleptocratic dictators. It is intolerable that their hopes and dreams are also stymied by unelected, unaccountable eco-imperialist activists and bureaucrats, who prance, preen and profess their commitment to “marginalized” people – but care about them only if they are “threatened” by capitalism or climate change. Not surprisingly, they brazenly ignore their own callous roles in this injustice.
The world’s dark-skinned people remain at the bottom of the environmentalist ethical hierarchy – with millions dying every year from preventable diseases of poverty, perpetuated by callous environmentalists. Developed country loggers, miners, factory workers, ranchers, pensioners and poor minorities are not much higher up; farmers also get short shrift, unless they grow corn, soybeans or canola for biofuels.
The battle over fossil fuels has recently entered other dangerous territory, as “protesters” launch campaigns reminiscent of radicals putting spikes in trees so that sawmill blades would explode and injure workers – while comrades bombed GMO and animal testing labs, meat packing plants and even houses.
Their targets now are oil and natural gas transport systems – as a prelude to more rampant destruction – as Putin aides and cronies assist and finance other groups that are trying to block US energy production.
A new cadre of Earth Liberation Front anarchists has taken to closing the valves on pipelines – sabotage that could result in pipeline ruptures, oil spills, explosions, injuries and deaths. In one case, the “valve turners” called the Keystone pipeline operations center just minutes before closing the valve, causing the valve wheel and ground below the saboteurs’ feet to shake. They could have caused a disaster.
If caught, arrested and prosecuted, these extremists invoke the “necessity defense” – asserting that they were compelled to break the law, in order to prevent a greater harm: manmade climate cataclysms.
The eco-terror groups have issued a “Decisive Ecological Warfare” manifesto, urging like-minded criminal elements to commit sabotage against pipelines, transmission lines, oil tankers and refineries. As in the past, the militants want “more moderate” environmental groups to support the “necessity” defense, acts of sabotage, and the use of eco-terrorism to “disrupt and dismantle industrial civilization” and “remove the ability of the powerful to exploit the marginalized and destroy the planet.”
They want more “mainstream” pressure groups to promote the notion that sabotage is acceptable and normal where Earth’s future is at stake. Environmentalists have already persuaded Western institutions not to support pesticide use, fossil fuel power plant construction and other modern technologies in poor, disease-ridden, energy-deprived countries – so maybe this lunacy no longer so farfetched.
Several states have passed “critical infrastructure protection” bills, assessing criminal penalties on terrorists and organizations that conspire to trespass on or damage essential infrastructure sites. The bills also hold parties responsible for any resultant damages to property or persons; they should also penalize foundations and other financiers of eco-terror. All 50 states and Congress should enact similar bills.
The asserted justifications that drive perverse, conflicted environmentalist ethics are based on ideologies, assertions and computer models that label humans, capitalism and modern technologies as existential threats to our planet. They have given rise to a $1.5-trillion-per-year Climate Industrial Complex that is determined to expand its revenues and control people’s lives, livelihoods and living standards – while redistributing wealth mostly to those who would be in power and those who would keep them in power, while sending just enough to the world’s poorest families to improve their lives slightly at the margins.
Ironically, in the process, eco-activists will inflict far more damage on environmental values than do the technologies they despise. Their “solutions” to alleged ecological “problems” will turn billions of acres into wind and solar farms, biofuel plantations, hydroelectric projects, and mines for materials needed for wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and other “clean, green, renewable” energy alternatives.
The twentieth century revealed how thin the veneer of humanity, civilization and ethics can be, when propaganda, fear-mongering, hatred and emotions take over. We need to muster enough science, intellectual rigor and freedom of speech to prevent more deaths in the name of “environmental justice.”
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy and environmental policy.
I agree fully. Thanks for the article.
The NZ government has recently been captured by these irrational idealists–green, red and poisonous. Oil & gas exploration is to be terminated, Dairying is now deprecated and cow numbers are to be dictated by the govt. Water is to be required to be so pure an amoeba could bathe in it. Export is to be almost prohibited despite the enormous amounts that flow to the sea purified by an ageless rocky underground tour. A tram from downtown Auckland to the Airport will signal a gift to Gaia, be largely unused and put more pressure on road availability. That folly is to be paid for by taxes on petrol throughout NZ and consumer prices. Cycling is replace cars or at least cycleways are to steal precious road space with an increased gridlock assured. Feelings have out paced common sense. My breath is bated for further announcement from the wrecking ball.
The present govt is led by a young unmarried mum to be–a professed super communist. The unions have power of appointment rights of the leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party and must have concurred with her appointment. An elderly pre-senile NZ First Party leader got his party into power with only 7% of the vote and became kingmaker. The Green Party had about 8% of the vote and the three are now jointly in control.
How to wreck an economy in one easy lesson. Correct-speak is essential and aging whites (>30) are to be denied privileges. Pidgin Maori is to be pushed despite the language having been fossilized in 1840. The separate tribes never coalesced into a nation for further development after their mutual wars of retribution with muskets for inhuman eating practices following prior territorial takeover bids.
Ideology is running amuck and no foundation for action exists except “say-so”.
What is stated as fact above is not satirical.
I have to deal with this idiocy more than I care to mention. The meme spreads similar to an infection.
On the West coast, there are entire cities which have succumbed, all the way up to the legislative governing bodies. Even local law enforcement agencies have been compromised to the point where the rule of law is flagrantly ignored even by the highest officials. It seems that people are starting to react to this insanity, hopefully it is not too late.
This has been going on since Malthus. The Elites have always hated the ‘little people’ and the non-white most especially. Check out Merchants of Despair by Robert Zubrin https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Despair-Environmentalists-Pseudo-Scientists-Antihumanism/dp/159403737X
Certainly a provocative angle to take on the oppressive measures taken by the eco-Socialists against those who dare to question the operating political paradigm of our time, but also entirely logical and appropriate. Eco-Leftism pretends it is the little guy on the playground, bravely sticking up for all the little guys.
In reality, Eco-Socialism is the bully, feeling threatened by the incredible weakness of its demand to rule based on fatally flawed and utterly contrived science.
Like all governing paradigms past their “smell test” date, Eco-Socialism will hang on with ever increasing desperation and ruthlessness. The end is coming and it won’t be pretty.
A competent in-depth psychoanalysis of modern “greenery”, of Western societies in particular, is long overdue.
I have no general reason to harsh on psychologists right now, but instead of the above, we get Stefan Lewandowsky. Maybe there is indeed some great work that I am not aware of but I mean, seriously, Stefan Lewandowsky? WTF?
The whole subject of political environmentalism is a huge, rich vein, waiting to be mined. But where are the professional miners? I guess there must be no money in it, or something. Do psychologists never do any pro-bono work? That, in itself, tells a story.
It’s Stephan Lewandowsky. Please be polite and spell his name correctly. It’s easy to do if you just memorize the expression: “What Lysenko Spawned.” The letters in the latter can be rearranged to spell the former.
And yes, psychologists do a lot of pro-bozo work.
Racism and socialism were born together. Fascism wasn’t an aberration but in the mainstream of socialist “thought”.
Socialist Jack London hated both Asians and Africans, although a black woman raised him. He wanted them exterminated, to improve the lot of white working men.
The Fabian Socialists were imperialists, wanting to improve the lot of British working men so they could make better soldiers of Empire and subdue the lesser breeds without the Law.
Shouldn’t the Berkeley hoards then be invading downtown Oakland demanding that the Loft district be so formally named, that Jack London Square be reamed, that the pathetic little cabin be burned, and that the Jack London statue be removed from public view?
(the dog statue may also have to go … we’ll have to wait and see how the those that are in charge of the anarchists feel about it)
All the virtue signaling these ecotwits engage in will do them no good. if you didn’t know that the African continent on its east side is finally showing real time rifting and will split apart from Ethiopia south to Tanzania in the Great Rift Zone, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Not only is Erta Ale, the nastiest and most dangerous volcano on the planet finally spitting up through its now-full caldera and thinning the plate boundary where it sits, there is also a massive crevasse in Kenya, about 50 feet deep, right across a major highway in Kenya, which opened up earlier this month. It’s on a plate boundary in an active rift zone, part of several rift zones that have been actively moving apart for a few million years now.
This rifting is permanent. It will form a new continent. It will very likely interrupt the flow of current from the Indian Ocean northward to Saudi Arabia. It will permanently change the “climate” of that part of the world, but one can only speculate on how it will change.
I’d love to see how the lamebrained ecohippies plan to stop this from happening. I think they really are that dense. This process will take 50 million years to complete. Anyone think they’ll be around to do anything about it? Nah, me neither.
“This rifting is permanent. It will form a new continent. It will very likely interrupt the flow of current from the Indian Ocean northward to Saudi Arabia. It will permanently change the “climate” of that part of the world, but one can only speculate on how it will change. ”
and somehow the econuts will find a way to blame man’s emissions of the plant food known as CO2.
World War 2 atrocity propaganda has been forced down my throat for 50 years, in newspapers, books, on television, radio, Hollywood movies, and at those mandatory brainwashing camps we call “schools.” The Western Allies are always portrayed as glorious, humanitarian heroes, like some cartoon fiction about super friends patrolling the planet to save weak and poor people from dastardly fiends.
(“All those who chose to oppose his shield must yield” – Captain America theme song, hammered into my brain during my 5th year of life)
And because war propaganda is a western religion, one isn’t permitted to question any of the alleged atrocities committed by the evil Germans, lest one be imprisoned, fined, or have one’s reputation destroyed by our armies of Thought Police. Sacrilege! Blasphemy! Throw that treasonous Doubting Thomas in prison!
“.. and millions of innocent people were sent to their deaths.”
http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/A-pile-of-bodies-awaits-cremation-after-the-bombing-of-Dresden-1945-1-595×422.jpg
a pile of our smouldering victims at Dresden.
By all accounts, the mass graves produced by the Allies by the end of the war were much larger than those produced by the Axis-of-Evil, but since we did all that “sacrificing” of human lives for a “noble cause,” there are no memorials or atrocity propaganda museums exploiting the dead to reinforce our humanist, philanthropic credentials.
Bush Snr’s “highway of death” in Iraq (carnage photos too gruesome to post here) alone exposes the true value of human life when seen thru a western military lens.
“perverse, conflicted, ethical systems” – and hypocrisy on steroids.
Khwarismi, you have a selective memory at least. Blaming the US and the UK for what the USSR did, which started WWII on the other side, is tendentious at best. As that is the only way your claim that that the Allies had a higher death total than the Axis, I would call you on being a NSDAP or Muhammad al Husseini apologist. (The Palestinian leader in the 1940’s was a wanted war criminal for collaboration with the NSDAP).
Khwarizmi May 6, 2018 at 7:19 pm
How perverted and twisted can one miseducated mind get?
Bush ended the war to liberate Kuwait from Saddam’s invasion with as little death as possible. Saddam OTOH killed a million in his Iran war, gassed his own subject peoples and stated that he needed only five million of the 20 million souls so unlucky as to be under his boot heel.
It is obscene to compare actions of the Western allies, who liberated the world from f@scism and militarism, with the atrocities committed by N@zi Germany and militaristic Japan, who slaughtered tens of millions. The USSR was indeed also guilty of terrible crimes against humanity, but was originally allied with H!tler, not the US and UK.
Bombing Dresden wasn’t necessary, but H!tler and S@lin started WWII in Europe, not the Western democracies, France, the UK and the US.
Felix, well said. H and S started the WWII very much as collaboration. USSR allied with Western powers, because it could get more lebensraum that way. The East Europe was physically and mentally destroyed in the process.
Remember what Stalin was, and never forget S and H had an agreement on how they’re going to divide Europe, an agreement neither of the parties was planning to keep. They were both large-scale aggressors with some huge human rights neglect, and it is only because the US took part in the war, Hitler was beaten and Stalin not.
Should Europe be glad of the result? If H had won, he had ruled some time a large portion of the Europe with willingness to murder a lot of people. He had written the history, so he’d be portrayed as a good person, who saved us from the bad people. How wicked is the writing of history. S won, so he ruled some time a large portion of he Europe with willingness to murder a lot of people. He wrote the history, so he is still portrayed as a hero, who saved USSR from the bad people. So wicked is the history. Be careful of people who call Stalin a great man. Be careful of people who imply USSR was allied and at the side of the good.
Argh. The H card and the S card end up in moderation.
“The world’s dark-skinned people remain at the bottom of the environmentalist ethical hierarchy – with millions dying every year from preventable diseases of poverty, perpetuated by callous environmentalists.” – Paul Driesen
“More recently Iranian proxy forces have been lobbing ballistic missiles from Yemen at Saudi population centres. If they upset enough people, eventually the rest of the world will stop feeding them. This is an option going forward.”
– David Middleton, WUWT guest post, December 12, 2017
Stahl: We have heard that HALF A MILLION CHILDREN have died. I mean, that’s more children than died at Hiroshima. And, and, you know, is the price worth it.?
Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.
Winston Churchill was first to gas the Kurds, and even complained that some people were squeamish about the use of poison gas on uncivilized tribes. But never let the truth get in the way of a good story about your super friends.
I don’t recall the German’s bragging about any of their mass graves, not even in the Hollywood versions of history.
If 500,000 Iraqi children died from 1991-96, which they didn’t, it was entirely because of Saddam’s diverting money from the so-called Oil for Food program to his weapons projects. Had the mass murderer not been overthrown, he’d have bribed the UN to lift sanctions, would have revived his nuclear program and killed another million Iranians, whom you seem to care about.
So which is it? Was it bad for the UN to impose sanctions on Saddam, or for the US and its allies to liberate Iraq from his mass murderous regime? But not for Saddam to kill millions of his own and other peoples?
Is there no lie so foul that you don’t willingly swallow it? The British did not use poison gas in Mesopotamia in the 1920s, as you appear to have fallen for. But the Soviets did against Muslims in Central Asia.
And just whom do you think first used poison gas in war, then in the next war developed nerve agents? That’s right, your beloved Germans.
(Deleted the name calling) MOD
And then, of course, the Soviets later used gas against your fellow Muslims in Afghanistan and their puppet North Vietnam against hill tribes in SE Asia.
You can’t handle the truth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_British_use_of_chemical_weapons_in_Mesopotamia_in_1920
Churchill advocated using tear gas on rebels in Mesopotamia (Arabs, not Kurds), but his suggestion wasn’t taken up. But even had the Brits tear gassed people there, how does that equate with Saddam’s mass murder of thousands of Kurds with lethal nerve agent?
As I said, you are one sick puppy.
You must have missed all the movies that Germans shot of their mass murders, and how official N@zi propaganda extolled their racial purification.
You are totally divorced from reality and morality.
If 500K Iraqi children had died, that would have been all the children and more living in the country at the time.
It really is amazing the lies the left is willing to believe. They don’t even have to make sense for them to be believed and repeated.
Dunno about its structure in 1996, but Iraq’s population in 2014 was, as you’d expect, young.
Iraq has almost twice as many people now as in 1995, ie nearly 40 million vs. just over 20 million.
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/iraq-population/
If one third of its population in the ’90s was kids (under 18), then there would have been six to seven million.
But agree the 500K child deaths is surely exaggerated.
It really is fascinating how trolls apply standards to their enemies that they would never apply to themselves.
Until an army surrenders, attacking it is perfectly legitimate. A fleeing army is merely an army that is seeking a better place to fight from. Ignoring a fleeing army just means you will have to fight them later, at a time when they are better prepared and more likely to kill your soldiers.
The job of the military always has been and always will be, to kill people and destroy things.
So Prince Phillip wants to come back as a deadly virus, Prince Charles wants to live inside Camilla’s trousers as a tampon, the Duchess of York likes to stick her toes into the mouths of Texan Businessmen and Prince Harry likes to play strip billiards in Las Vegas with multiple women. Just what is it with theses Royals?
IMO the British would be well advised to rid themselves of this pestilential family of blood-sucking parasites. Parliament has the right to do so, since it passed over many more senior but Catholic claimants to the throne to inflict the Hanoverians on the UK, and got rid of Liz’ N@zi uncle.
Thus the principle of primogeniture has been shown to produce unwanted results. Better IMO simply to give the House of Lords something to do and elect one of its senior and most accomplished members as anointed sovereign for his or her life. This would allow all the tourism-promoting pomp and ceremony of monarchy to be retained.
Thus, instead of a N@zi pervert or inexperienced 25 year-old girl, the UK could have had such a distinguished character as Sir Robert Watson-Watt for its monarch from 1952-73, inventor of radar and thus responsible for victory in the Battle of Britain. Perhaps to be followed after his death by BoB Hurricane ace Ginger Lacey:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harry_Lacey#Postwar
Granted, Ginger Lacey was never knighted, but he and his young comrades from the RAF and their most courageous and skilled Royal Navy and British Army should have been.
Excellent article. The key extremely dangerous belief by the leadership that “the cause” is more important than ordinary humans. Another way of saying the end justifies the means. Once you have convinced enough of people in authority that your cause is paramount then any form of human cruelty becomes acceptable if it furthers the cause. All civilized societies and leaders always have utmost respect for individuals and individual rights and any goal has to be achieved while carefully maintaining and respecting those rights. This is what Paul correctly identifies as the fundamental problem with Nazi beliefs. Their nationalism and socialism was never a problem until they placed their goals as paramount and more important than human respect and fair treatment of all ordinary citizens. Pol pot had the same problem. At this point the administration becomes criminals and ultimately murderers and so does anyone who collaborates with them.
I think “the end justifies the means”, and “killing some/many/zillions people in the process” are very much a different thing.
I think if somebody is dead, the end is usually not justified. It can only be justified by comparison, so necessarily killing some people is better than killing a lot more of people, but even then, it is not that simple. Let’s imagine we shoot a random speeding driver once a while publicly in order to stop accidents resulting from speeding. Let’s assume this measure works, people drive less, and accidents happen less often. Would they say “the end justified the means”, or would they say “we killed some innocent people”?
It has to be the last resort, and it is very difficult to say what is a last resort. Greens believe the end is nigh, so they do think they’re planning to do the last resort. The haste alarmists spread, can turn into some serious violence, so spreading false alarm should be criminalized. And it is, in the crowded threatre. But not in a more abstract level, as in ‘I’m going to die from climate change” (source https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donna-brazile-democratic-national-committee_us_5824cb95e4b0ddd4fe7954e8 )
Unrelated, but, US or the EEC never wanted to stop Pol Pot. Why? Because he was fighting against the communists of Vietnam. So stupid.
thanks, anthony great post and useful information
First of all,no matter what the ‘truth’ of the situation, top marks for lifting the lid on a very dark and unpleasant subject.
I have as regular readers will know, always held that the issue of climate change is not one of science – that is settled, and CO2 is exonerated of all but minor guilt – but one of human perception – worldview.
To clarify, consider the proposition: “The physical world responds to the laws of nature. Human beings respond to the laws of psychology”
Or ” the world evolves according to what is, human society evolves according to what it thinks, is”
The lesson of N@zism is fundamentally one of the capturing of the human imagination en masse and the terrible destruction that passionately held ideas can cause. If the individuals within a society are educated to be content to follow the diktats of their government.
It is the story of a struggle for cultural identity as well. German Nationalism was a reaction against infiltration of its culture by other ideas alien to it – and in fact communism and Bolshevism was one of those.
It is also the story of a humiliated culture reasserting itself.
It seems to me that human cultures are prone to mass group think: this is at one level conducive to survival. Group think and myths form a cultural bedrock and morality that allows large civilisations to flourish without conflict. Until one of two things happens – the culture comes up against another one with equally strongly held views and better at war, or the natural world creates a situation that cannot be adequately addressed by the cultural spectacles of the society that faces it.
This leaves me ambivalent towards such myths (and climate change and greenism is such, I believe) . On the one hand to unite people in shared ideas and ideals is conducive to a stable consensus in society, but on the other hand when the consensus indulges in activities that are counter productive to the survival of that society (renewable energy) .
That is such group myths are good for society so long as they do NOT lead to aberrant action with respect to that part of our world that is not affected by what we believe – namely the physical world.
Christianity was very careful to restrict its pronouncements as far as possible to conduct that would affect humanities relationships with an utterly non physical realm. And its Romanized version was little more than ‘play nice, or else’.
It is the insistence by Marx and the Marxists that their group myths are based on actual material and scientific principles that has led to the present mess: Just as the National socialists did. This leads them to take moral action in a physical world,and the windmills dominating German landscapes are the epitome of this.
And yet it only takes a second to realise that physics and indeed all science has no morality. If the sun went supernova tomorrow because physical laws dictated that it must, where would we and our morality be?
Marx and the Left have striven to reintroduce a moral dimension into a material world using the tools and language of a science which denies the existence of morality as an abstract principle in the Universe at large.
And this is, I believe, where the aberration involved in environmentalism is revealed: as a cultural myth it is actually destructive of humanity: Greens are bent on action that will remove them from the face of the planet.
City dwellers who believe that they can fly and who live in tower blocks are a rarity…
Greens are deniers who deny the data and the evidence of the science they purport to esteem.
Marxism and Environmentalism are essentially the atavistic attempt to reintroduce the social political and physical existence of a hunter gatherer society,
“All property is theft” – just take what you need from the environment.
“protect the environment” so there are still berry trees left for next year.
It is all atavistic yearning for a simpler life. Unfortunately a shorter and nastier one as well, and one that very few can indulge in.
So we need our cultural myths – our convenient lies. Just not these ones. Not if we want to survive anyway.
Devils advocate: N@zism and cultural genocide created the low population monoculture that allowed post war Germany to become the most influential country in Europe Whilst rejecting N@zism completely, West Germany remained post war a country run by ex N@zis and benefiting mightily from its results. The European union is essentially a spin on the third Reich created to dominate and control and unify Europe.
Was N@zism so bad for Germany?
How many native Americans were exterminated to allow ‘western civilisation’ ( = agriculture) – to pervade central USA?
It behoves us to examine ourselves and our moralities and see the blood stains on all of our hands. We are the descendants of the successful peoples of the world who essentially killed raped or enslaved the less successful.
An inconvenient truth.
I am considered right wing, because I can accept and face that truth.Yes, I might too have been a concentration camp guard. I am grateful I never had to make that choice.
Those in denial of that truth, are the childlike denizens of the Left. They cannot face their collective guilt in knowing that it must have been people just like them who did the gassing and the machine gunning and blithely talked about the ‘Jewish problem’ …because that was what was going on around them, just as ‘climate change’ is today.
It is the strident denial of reality that makes them project all the aspects of themselves they are ashamed of, onto other people.
The world is, and we are more than we think we are. We should not deny that. Once religion reminded us of that, but we dont do that any more.
if this site doesn’t introduce an ‘edit after post’ facilty I think I give up on it
Leo, I believe that Anthony would love to do just that … but WordPress doesn’t offer it as an option. Perhaps someday …
w.
Would’t it be a more accurate approach to realize that there are many common elements in human behaviour? Of course there are similarities in everything we do. So , of course there are similarities between Nazi practises and whatever. However I feel that comparing todays activists with the most cruel period in human history is more like framing and does not add to any understanding.
One of the strongest human emotions is fear. In particular the fear for resource depletion and energy shortage. Therefore elites want to lower the consumption and prosperity of the masses. Elites fear freedom of the people. Elites want to control innovation, Communism was the revolt of a new elite (propaganda made labourors believe they were liberated instead of lining up for bread) Mao’s cultural revolution, Pol Pot in Cambodia..The environmental movements are activists in reality ….again their desire is control based on fear. They advocate an energy system (sun and wind) which will create poverty and serfdom . So we notice common human behaviour. History is one chain of elites that sponge on the people.
When the environmentalists succeed we are heading for a new feudal system with little rich (financials: bankers etc) and many poor ,their servants , all being ligitimated by the green church.
The Ingrid Newkirk quote is know as, according to Wikipedia (which is probably very accurate in this case), as following (as I mentally said holy shit when I saw this)
“Even if animal experiments did result in a cure for AIDS,[..] I’d be against it” would be fairly accurate,
Compare.
“Even if animal research produced a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”
It is possible, that Newkirk has said this as well. The two formulations are very near to each other. She’s factually racist, as AIDS is very much a problem of another race (not Newkirk’s). In my opinion, Newkirk is also wrong. There are high hopes a cure will be found eventually, and animal experiments are an integral part of modern medicine despite these lunatics, that rather let others die. I think they don’t deserve modern medicine, as it depends so heavily on information from animal research.
This is not to mean animal suffering should be minimized. Yes of course. But these people are mad(wo)men.
David Attenborough made the statement “Humans are a plague” in 2013 in he Radio Times
(see:- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/9815862/Humans-are-plague-on-Earth-Attenborough.html)
I regard that statement as so sick as to be deeply worrying. What kind of person could think of every living human they they were a plague?
To say of all of humanity that it is a plague is to say that Black people AND Gays AND Jews AND Women are a plague.
The statement is Racist AND Homophobic AND Anti-Semitic AND Misogynist all in one go, and yet no one is allowed to challenge it.
Attenborough is not just Homophobic, Racist and Anti-Semitic he is a liar as is evidenced by
“BBC withdraws Human Planet series after whale hunt scenes exposed as more fakery ”
see:-
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/26/bbc-withdraws-human-planet-series-whale-hunt-scenes-exposed/
The environmental movement is far more nazi than the nazis ever were. And far more powerful.
How dare you compare the greens to the Nazis!!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lbw90JPZq6Q/U3B9roVxLAI/AAAAAAAABJ4/swCjiaMzqFk/s1600/Herr+Cook.gif
Getting back to my “pictures” thought on the other thread, …. if we want to put a dent in the reputation of environmental terrorist, we need to publicize the pictures of the results of their actions and policies. Show the pictures of mill workers killed or injured by environmental sabotage, shoe the picture like in Willis post that show the environmental destruction of biofuels, show the pictures of dying children with Malaria …. etc.
When you show a picture of dead Jews …. emphasize Socialist, …. as that was what the Nazis were. Pictures pictures pictures. ….. will destroy the leftist environmentalist.
During my years as a professional philosopher (I am now retired, I published a book, an anthology, and many articles on environmental philosophy. In the 1980s, I defended a version of Deep Ecology. Gradually, however, I grew concerned about possible similarities between Deep Ecology (and some other radical environmentalisms) and the “green” dimension of National Socialism. Here is the link to an essay I published in 1995, “The Threat of Ecofascism.” https://www.academia.edu/34885755/The_Threat_of_Ecofascism
Another version of this essay appeared in the fourth edition of my anthology, “Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology.”
The similarities between some radical ecological discourse and that of authoritarian regimes like National Socialism are disturbing, but should be handled with care. Education about mid-20th century European history might discourage some of the authoritarian rhetoric at work in Green pronouncements about alleged anthropogenic climate change.
In response to the (strange) quote:
“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically.”
Try this,
https://www.prageru.com/videos/rich-get-richer-poor-get-richer
Most parents can’t comprehend those stories of someone killing their child. But some do. Other atrocities that one person does to another are equally incomprehensible to the rest of us.
Yet there are people who commit such acts.
WAKE UP!
“Wise as serpents, harmless as doves.”
Unfortunately America has had a long and disgusting affair with Eugenics, read https://listverse.com/2014/02/05/10-things-youve-never-heard-about-american-eugenics/ .
As Edmund Burke said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing … ”
Judgemental certainty, and ego driven hubris allows this kind of thinking.
Moral people know that there are lesser and greater people than themselves, and that lesser people, however YOU define ‘lesser’, do not deserve a lesser life. Truly moral people know that everyone, including themselves, make mistakes and that punishment for those mistakes is not the same as vengeance.
Uncertainty and doubt tempered with the with reason, courage, and energy to seek out the truth are the real drivers of verifiable science. The courage to understand that in trying you may fail, when failing you understand that you are not a failure — you are just human.
The real failure is with those who unquestioningly accept the status quo, those who fear being different from the crowd, those who fear to try because they fear to fail.
Driessen claims the Nazis were intensely “hostile to capitalism,” then conflates this supposed hostility with Nazi environmentalism. I don’t have a beef with the idea that Nazi environmentalism boiled down to “more planet for white people, no planet for the rest,” but I don’t think they were anti-capitalist even if they claimed they were: the Nazis referred to their movement as the “Third Way,” different from both capitalism and communism. Nevertheless, under Hitler, German industry continued to be owned by the wealthy few (subject to non-negotiable diktats from the gov’t). Boiled down, their so-called National Socialism was neither: rather it was internationalist in outlook and profoundly anti-socialist; it was a form of feudalism in which the Nazi state replaced the monarchy, the ruling elite comprised petite bourgeois like Himmler and industrial pirates like Krupp and Flick, and everybody else was simply cannon fodder.
Forgive me if this has been mentioned before on wattsupwiththat. This article reminds me of a science fiction trilogy called The Park Service, by Ryan Winfield. In the future, the earth is a garden-like paradise that is maintained by a group that uses robotic drones to hunt down and kill the few humans who survived the disease the environmentalists had released. The final kicker is that the group plans to commit suicide once they are certain no other people remain.
U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie green-lighted the invasion of Kuwait to give George Bush Snr an excuse to slaughter Arabs by the million. The U.S. put Saddam Hussein in power in the first place.
The French supplied Hussein with Mirage jets and the air defense system, which they had to disable prior to the western gang rape of the country, since western military always prefers to disarm their targets before they start slaughtering people and destroying infrastructure, including hospitals, bridges and roads.
The destruction of the largest water treatment plant on Earth–in Iraq–by western serial killers dressed in military drag (lets not hide murder behind euphemisms) was a war crime designed to maximize civilian deaths. The declassified military confession is available for all to see:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-the-us-deliberately-destroyed-iraq-s-water-supply/31011
All the virtue-signalling about how much y’all care about the poor makes we want to puke.
Why, just a few days ago, Felix was referring to poor Americans with metal problems as “sub-humans”
Oh, good grief. Not that hoary old conspiracy theory again.
No, Ambassador Glaspie did not “green-light” Saddam’s invastion of Kuwait.
Here’s Ambassador Glaspie’s cable to Washington, DC, reporting on her meeting with Saddam Hussein:
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/90BAGHDAD4237_a.html
Please, Khwarizmi, for the sake of your mental health, stay away from conspiracy crackpots sites like the GlobalResearch, which bills itself as “a major news source on the New World Order…”