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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Nick Shaw – Mark Bray, a Lecturer at Dartmouth University, thinks it is wrong to caricature far left groups like Antifa as just another group of extremists, because only the far left groups can save the planet from climate change, by abolishing capitalism.
How Capitalism Stokes the Far Right and Climate Catastrophe
BY Mark Bray, Truthout
PUBLISHED October 30, 2018We are living in ominous times. Every week something new: white supremacist murders in Kentucky and Pittsburgh; the continued rise of the far right in Europe; Trump’s attack on transgender rights; the election of aspiring tyrant Jair Bolsonaro to the Brazilian presidency; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that climate catastrophe is likely only about 20 years away. What’s next?
At a time when we should be uniting globally to reorganize our way of life to stave off climate disaster, many parts of the world are instead veering to the right, rejecting internationalism and demonizing marginalized communities. How did we get here? How can we escape annihilation?
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More fundamentally, fascist and far right forces promote notions of ultra-nationalism and xenophobia that block the essential task of putting the interests of the planet and all of its inhabitants over those of any single group. Nationalism has fueled not only opposition to the European Union but also a rejection of the Paris Agreement and widespread climate denial among European far right parties like UKIP, Front National and the Sweden Democrats. The threat of the climate catastrophe is far more imminent and egregious in the global south, and white supremacy clearly discourages caring about most of the world. There are “ecofascists” who coopt the concept of bio-regionalism to advance their genocidal politics, but their views do not have significant sway in actual far-right policy and their “environmental” solution is not worthy of reasoned engagement.
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Centrist discourse has abstracted white supremacy and anti-Semitism into “hate,” depoliticized fascism and antifascism by caricaturizing them as mirror images of “extremism,” and ignored what should be one of the most important news stories: the fairly imminent destruction of the planet.
Debates about reformism vs. revolutionism have waged for generations on the left. But now we are on a deadline. Lesser-evilism among capitalist politicians may have some rationale when spending five minutes casting a ballot on Election Day, but we don’t have time for it to be a guiding strategical outlook. We need to organize movements to build popular power and shut down the industries that threaten our existence.
Fascism is ascendant. The world is on fire. This is no time to be patient. If we don’t abolish capitalism, capitalism will abolish us.
Read more: https://truthout.org/articles/how-capitalism-stokes-the-far-right-and-climate-catastrophe/
One gets the impression Mark is more an advocate of urgent revolution than gentle political debate. Sadly Mark was born about a hundred years too late to be a proper communist revolutionary. At the very least Mark will have to think of something more inspiring than a bunch of tired rehashed climate disaster claims. Global warming consistently rates last on people’s lists of priorities, somewhere behind watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island.
Socialism is a lot like unionism.
The only people who benefit from it, are those that run it.
Unions are a bit of a paradox.
If you have poor working conditions in a union environment then clearly the union isn’t doing a good job for it’s members. So why join it?
If you have great working conditions then why do you need a union?
Society is rarely a binary good/bad problem with binary good/bad answers, but I put to you that Capitalism is probably a better force for improving working conditions. The core of Capitalism is basically ‘I want more for me’ which is only a bad thing if you existing in a close equation (ie more for me equals less for you).
The best long term method of getting more for you is to better yourself. You better yourself and you become worth more. Better yourself as an employee and you can force your employer to offer you more in order to retain your better work. They hit their deadlines on time and get better profits (win) and you either work in a nicer office (win), take home more pay (win) or both (win).
The problems of course are that people who are unable or unwilling to make themselves ‘better’ can get left behind, which raises the moral question of when does it stop being ‘well just work harder’ and ‘these people are being unfairly disadvantaged’. Open question. Life isn’t good/bad.
Unions are of temporary benefit.
When working conditions are poor, joining together into a union in order to force improvements to those conditions makes sense. Once working conditions are no-longer poor, unions have outlived their usefulness. Unfortunately the union, once it has gotten a taste of power, has no desire to end once the conditions that cause it to form are taken care of. Power corrupts afterall.
Capitalism is based on the simple philosophy that no individual or entity can initiate force against the will of another.
Socialism is based upon the premise that governments MUST initiate force against the will of their citizens, backed by the barrel of a gun.
That’s why Socialist regimes killed over 100 million of their citizens in the 20th century.
Capitalism raised the standards of living, incomes and longevity for billions of people over the past 200+ years.
Socialism will always fail as its philosophical premise is evil.
BTW, the acronym “NAZI” means “National Socialist Party”…
The claims just get wilder and wilder.
Is this a spoof?
Dictionary definition.
Bray.
Verb: The sound made by an ass or donkey.
donkey = Democrat?
The US is overly tolerant of violent behavior, no matter which poor excuse is used. As long as the behavior is tolerated without significant consequence, it will only continue to grow.
But of course, such things do not grow without bound. However the reaction could be as bad as the driving behavior if it isn’t arrested early enough.
Antifa promotes fascism.
“If we don’t abolish capitalism, capitalism will abolish us. “
Well, at least we know that Mark Bray is not actually worried about the Climate — it’s politics all the way down.
It’s never been about the climate, but always about destroying capitalism. Bray can’t stand the fact that people have individual freedom.
He can’t stand that other people have individual freedom.
As for himself, he resents that his actions are limited by the amount of money he has, so he wants government to give him some of ours so that his freedom will no longer be limited.
Fascism is joined with the right wing? Since when? And how come there is only a far right and apparently no such thing as a far left? All this idiot is demonstrating is there are too many people lacking the proper intellectual capacity going to college these days. Judge Smails was right when he told Spaulding the world needs ditch diggers too.
Another case of ideological possession.
Seems to me that the “Antifa” is simply a modern manifestation of Al Capp’s SWINE, Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything.
The abolishment of Capitalism has always worked well, wherever it was tried. Which model for a new economy will Antifa latch on to? I am sure this group will succeed in growing their own crops and generating electricity somehow. Their banners and rhetoric have equipped them well for the new world order.
ANTIFA’s extremism is nothing more than the muscle of the progressive movement – they are nihilistic gutter-punks acting out with the blessings of their local government – can you say ‘brownshirts’?
They actually have the nerve to call themselves ‘anti-fascist’ – and you could not get a more perfect example of the progressive left embodying what they claim they are against.
Two comments:
1) Climate is considered the average of a 30 year period and change is so slow it is hardly detectable, yet we are doomed in 20 years. I guess we should expect a crap load of change.
2) What does climate change have to do with how voters political views are changing? Does putting a tick in one box or another really cause climate change?
“climate change” is entirely political and has nothing to do with climate or changes to climate. Like much words used by the left (progressive has nothing to do with progress, social justice has nothing to do with justice) the words as they use them don’t mean what the dictionary definition would lead you to think they mean. They’re just the modern day equivalent of orwell’s double-think.
“many parts of the world are instead veering to the right, rejecting internationalism and demonizing marginalized communities.”
I believe he misspelled “communism”.
Or, less politely, his article is a prime example of raving-commie word salad.
someone wants a civil war.
they will not like it, nor the results of it. the survivors of it, that is.
one would hope they were more careful what they ask for.
I can play at this game.
Socialism has killed 100 million people. Whatever level of violence is required to oppose Socialism, it is easily justified.
Destroy capitalism and all the nice things we have disappear. We will then have energy shortages, food shortages, rampant disease, and more. Nice future they want, too bad they won’t realize this until too late.
I’ve heard it all now: violence in the streets will combat climate change.
He’s being unintentionally ironic when he says “fascism is ascendant” because he is perfectly describing Antifa, which is fascist to the core.
The photo shows clearly that the protesters are themselves the greater ‘Climate Disaster’ in terms of mental evolution.
Why doesn’t Bray go and live in Nicaragua where he will find like-minded individuals and enjoy the fruits of an alternative to capitalism.
Or Venezuela? Oh, wait. They’re almost on the verge of collapse, as an inevitable result of decades of socialist misrule. He wouldn’t want to go somewhere that disproved his pet theories, would he?
Attended an interesting talk by retired US general and former SACEUR on “21st Century Warfare”. In the Q&A section he was asked to rank the threats facing us. His response:
#1 Our budget and deficit problems.
#2 Russia
#3 China
#4 everything else
He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. Far from being far right, fascists are somewhere between socialists and communists. Hitler’s NAZI party was the socialist party of Germany.
Funny world it is. Antifas: never had a productive day in their life. Living of handouts, which are financed by the despised capitalist system.
From the article: “If we don’t abolish capitalism, capitalism will abolish us.”
Presumably, the reason capitalism (Free Enterprise) will abolish the people of Earth is because capitalism is powered by fossil fuels which produce CO2 that goes into the atmosphere where it will cause catastrophic changes, according to the Alarmists.
But there is no need to destroy capitalism to reduce CO2. All we have to do is substitute nuclear powerplants for fossil-fuel-using powerplants and since nuclear powerplants don’t inject CO2 into the atmosphere, we can solve your “excess” CO2 problem while still being able to provide sufficient electrical power for society’s needs.
That’s one problem with radical Leftists: They always want to tear things down as their solution to a problem.
There’s no need to tear things down. All we need to do is look at things from a little different perspective.
ANTIFA = Absolutely No Toilet-Paper in Future America