Date: 27/05/19 Rainer Zitelmann, Tichys Einblick
The Greens have long been defining the cultural and political agenda in Germany. The more the other parties have been currying favour with them, the stronger the Green Party has become: voters now choose the original, not the imitators.
“On many issues today, the Greens are setting the direction, then the SPD follows and finally the Christian Democrats follow, lagging behind with a clear delaying effect … The Green Party’s impact goes far beyond their involvement at state government level and their successes documented in elections. More importantly, the Green Party succeeds time and time again in determining the political agenda and assuming opinion leadership in public debate. This can only happen, however, because they have an above-average number of sympathizers in the media and because the ranks of their natural challengers, i.e. the Christian Democrats (CDU), have softened and leading CDU politicians have adopted key positions of the Greens.”
I wrote these sentences not one or two years ago, but in 1995, 24 years ago (!), in my book “Where is our Republic drifting?” In this book, I tried to predict longer-term trajectories of political developments in the German Federal Republic. My findings from 1995 show that the developments that have led to the election success of 20.7 percent for the Green Party yesterday is the result of long developments. Of course, this result was not straightforward – in between the Green Party was sometimes so weak that some already predicted its demise.
People choose the original and not the copy
In response to the European elections we will see the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) claiming that they now need to do more about climate change. This, they will claim, is the real lesson of the European elections. This, of course, is rather absurd: It’s as if someone who took the wrong direction thinks he has to go faster now to reach the finish.
For years, both CDU/CSU and SPD have been implementing the Greens’ manifesto: shutting down nuclear power plants, phasing out coal, transforming Germany’s energy sector into a command and control economy, etc. Recently, they have begun to restructure the automotive industry in line with a planned economy – so-called “fleet targets” are imposed throughout the EU, defining which cars may be produced and which not. This strategy of cozying up to the Greens and taking over their key agenda, however, has not led to the weakening but to the strengthening of the Green Party: after all, voters prefer to pick the original, rather than the copy.
It’s never enough
The logic of the Green Party, on the other hand, is always: “It’s never enough”. Once you shut down all nuclear power plants coal-fired power plants become the next target. Like a doomsday sect, the imminent end of the world is being propagated. And despite the set phrase that “fear is not a good guide in politics” (which is the standard mantra in the immigration debate), scare-mongering about the end of the world is now their dominant sensation. It’s just like the “social justice” mantra which the Greens also propagate now: no matter what’s been done, it’s never enough and it always has to be much more and more radical.
The mainstream media, especially television, have long been in green hands, which we know from surveys about the party affinity of journalists. In the meantime, however, the Greens are also succeeding in cleverly using social media, as the video by Rezo and the initiative by 70 Youtubers recently showed.
The self-destruction of the economy
Germany’s social institutions have long been dominated by champions of the Greens – especially news media and education institutions, but also the main churches. That 36 percent of first-time voters meanwhile voted for the Green Party (in this electoral group the CDU is only two percentage points ahead of the left-wing comedy PARTY) is also a consequence of the fact that in schools green doctrines are propagated as certainties of modern school education.
This, however, only works because Germany’s industry and business community is opportunistic and does not oppose the green Zeitgeist. Big business has adapted cunningly, as it has always done. I still remember how Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche disguised himself as green campaigner to curry favour with the Green Party at their party conference. Or how VW CEO Herbert Diess explained how he intends to transform Volkswagen into a green company.
In the United States, there are still free marketeers among successful businesses and entrepreneurs who are opposed to the left-wing takeover in universities and the news media, especially by supporting libertarian and conservative think tanks. In Germany, there is hardly any of this: If you look at topics and programmes of the liberal Friedrich Naumann Foundation, you will realise that the dominant dogma is not challenged by anything appealing.
Read the full story in English here.
Read the original in German here.
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‘This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought.”
Ernst Lehmann, Biologischer Wille. Wege und Ziele biologischer Arbeit im neuen Reich, München, 1934
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism
Spot on. They never went away.
What they say is one thing.
What they do demonstrates what they really believe and it is usually counter to their professed beliefs.
“HYPOTHESIS: RADICAL GREENS ARE THE GREAT KILLERS OF OUR AGE”.
By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/
Excerpt:
8. Why are the radical greens so anti-environmental?
Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder and Past-President of Greenpeace, provided the answer decades ago. Moore observed that Eco-Extremism is the new “false-front” for economic Marxists, who were discredited after the fall of the Soviet Union circa 1990 and took over the Green movement to further their political objectives. This is described in Moore’s essay, “Hard Choices for the Environmental Movement” written in 1994 – note especially “The Rise of Eco-Extremism”, at
http://ecosense.me/2012/12/30/key-environmental-issues-4/
For radical greens, it was never about the environment – the environment was a smokescreen for their extreme-left totalitarian political objectives.
To better understand radical green objectives, see http://www.green-agenda.com/, excerpted below:
· “The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
– Club of Rome, premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations
· “We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
– Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
· “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
· “The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”
– Christopher Manes, Earth First!
· “A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
– Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies
· “One American burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say. In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.”
– Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier
· “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
· “I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
– John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
· “We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
· “The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival or millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth – social and environmental.”
– Ingrid Newkirk, former President of PETA
· “The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.”
– David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club, founder of Friends of the Earth
9. Conclusion
The evidence strongly supports my hypothesis that “Radical Greens are the Great Killers of Our Age”.
The number of deaths and shattered lives caused by radical-green activism since ~1970 rivals the death tolls of the great killers of the 20th Century – Stalin, Hitler and Mao – they advocate similar extreme-left totalitarian policies and are indifferent to the resulting environmental damage and human suffering.
People are starting to explicitly criticize the postmodern Marxist SJWs who have infested our universities and are starting to infest our legal system and teacher colleges. In particular, Jordan Peterson and Stephen Hicks are eloquent critics of the problem. Here’s a link to a conversation between them.
Postmodernism is a false flag for Marxism. Everywhere Marxism has been tried it has turned into a blood bath.
Postmodernists have their favorite tactic in common with CAGW alarmists.
The postmodernists point out all the flaws of our current system. Then they point out that their imagined utopia is better.
The CAGW alarmists argue that there is no good explanation of the climate and then insist that proves that CO2 is the thermostat.
In both cases, it looks like an argument from ignorance. In other words, “Your thing is defective, therefore my thing must be true because it hasn’t been proven false (yet).”
Those who are heavily involved in environmental activism have to recognize the participation of Marxists in their movement, but they’ve seemingly made peace with it due to the contribution they perceive they are making.
Actual green fascists are UK’s British National Party.. Their platform is like a racist version of UK Green Party. They want to:
* encourage an extensive and rapid switchover to organic and low fossil fuel farming techniques
* develop alternative transport fuels such as bio-diesel and hydrogen
* develop renewable energy sources such as off-shore wind farms, wave, tidal and solar energy
On the other hand, they also want fast-breeder reactors, magnetic levitation for intercity trains, and new London airport on reclaimed land in the Thames estuary! So actual fascists are schizoid: more organic farming, but also better, more efficient nuclear power! So I guess green fascists are not as bad as greens; as I actually agree with some of their techo policies.
Fascinating, and so much of this could be written about the UK Greens and their control over large parts of the media (especially the BBC). All this despite the Green Party’s pretty extreme politics which Britain’s voters would normally steer well clear of in any numbers.
Such backseat driving is going to end up in the ditch with enough wrong turns on policy.
I agree that the Greens resemble a doomsday cult, and that their desires are inconsistent with industrial society.The hard core seems to want an Arcadian Socialism, as they hate technology as much as they despise people.
How one can compromise with a nihilist Luddite is beyond my imagination.
People & governments compromised with single minded German leadership in the past … it can be done.
It’s just that it won’t work out in your favor, or they won’t keep up their end of the deal
If the Greens have their way, Germany will end up as a cross between the former East Germany and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
Massive continuous global warming propaganda spending !
German industry was doing the same thing in certain “brown” era! This will end just as nicely for them…
All ideology-driven systems destroy themselves.
As soon as Germany becomes noncompetitive with the rest of the world, especially Asia, the Greens will be shown the door.
Of course, energy poverty may do the trick rather sooner. Populist movements are an angry beast; just ask France.
Electricity costs are 30 cents per KwH for residences but 15 cents for business in Germany.
I am amazed the German tolerate this.
Up to 0.33c per KwH for Kiwis.
It keeps the businesses from moving out.
Germans understand that.
But there are also a lot of hidden electric costs in the taxes that pay for wind, biofuel, and solar subsidies.
Even Cal’s Democrat’s understand that.
Cal’s residential electric rate average: 15.34¢/kWh
Cal’s commercial electric rate average: 13.41¢/kWh
Cal’s industrial electric rate average: 10.49¢/kWh.
The only reason Cal has been able to get away with its rates and retain its businesses is
– The climate. The mild climate attracts and keeps people who like the ocean, nearby mountains and deserts for recreation and decent weather. The generally mild weather also keeps heating and cooling bills minimal compared to most of the other states. For example, Hawaii has the mildest weather of all the states, but by far the highest electricity costs.
No commercial business will startup in Hawaii unless it is providing a service unique to Hawaiians due to the costs.
Why are Greens so strong in Germany? I think it goes back to the fascist traditions and mental framework of the country. The Greens are fundamentally a lefto-fascist party, employing fascist methods in politics and propaganda, and Germans are highly vulnerable to brain-washing.
The Greens have far less following in other EU countries, e.g., Italy, Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Spain, Finland, Greece, and hardly any presence in the Arab world, Latin America, India, China, Russia, Japan. In the US, Greens fold into the left wing of the Democratic Party as they’d have no real electoral presence on their own, but they are harmful enough as it is.
Back to the EU, and further back into the past, the split between countries that are obsessed with “being green” and that don’t care very much may have something to do with the split between Protestant and Catholic Europe. It is easy to see that Europe’s Catholics are far less obsessed with “being green” and with the imminent end to the world as we know it because of our sinful lifestyles. They’re also more eager to don yellow vests and rebel against green impositions of an uncaring government.
CAGW gives them their power. The observations unequivocally support the assertion that CAGW is complete incorrect.
If it is a fact that CAGW does not exist, what Germany is doing is a completely waste of money, job killing, and it not even purposeful for their paradigm.
With fake news pushing CAGW 24/7 and almost no news coverage of China taking over the commercial world and the loss of jobs it is like living in a group dream.
It’s the same in Australia the greens are a noisy 10% (mostly inner city yuppies) that seems to get disproportionate representation in news because of the leftist media. They always seem to have great ideas on how everyone else should pay for there great ideas and beliefs.
I think there is still a lot of guilt being played on the Germans from WW2 atrocities against their neighbors.
Heck, even Barack Obama masterfully played the white-guilt card to re-election here in the US 147 years after slavery was abolished. Guilt is powerful tool against the weak mind. And the Left, by taking over the educational institutions, is ensuring a plentiful supply of weak minds to be guilt-ed into submission and led like sheep.
Gus as a card carrying Catholic I must disagree with you.
Just this week the man in the chair of St Peter virtually said we must stop breathing out (carbon dioxide) or else the world will end in ten or twelve years. Now normally I would expect my leader to have some inside knowledge being closer to God than my humble self, about forecasting the weather, but then I thought he was supposed to give me religious guidance and let the global warming cultists deal with climate.
Then his attack dog Cardinal Turksen came out with the same garbage which leads me to believe they are protesting too much. Do they know something to which we are not privy?
Is the fraud about to be exposed and are they getting their final desperate fusilade in first ?
The current Pope is a Jesuit.
We can only pray that the next Pope is not a Jesuit.
Surely the recent surge in green voters in Germany was largely due to the SPD being in the coalition govt, i.e. forced to be grown-ups, hence the adolescent SPD voters (of all ages) look elsewhere.
History repeating itself. Recognize that behind the green veneer, the agenda is total control of individuals lives. In other words, Communism. We’re going to lose our liberty if we allow these control freaks to win this war.
Les,
Communism it is, indeed. The Russians have been involved in infiltrating Germany and numerous other western countries for 100 years. It’s what their trolls in Moscow now do …. quite well under former KGBer, Comrade Putin. The Russians are full supporters of German Greens and Greens everywhere. Anything the Russians can do to weaken foreign economies is just A-OK.
And, of course, there is always China …….
Like a watermelon… green on the outside, red (Marxist) on the inside.
China clearly has German industry in its sights. That’s what “Made in China 2025” is all about. If the Germans don’t wake up, the German industrial heartland is going to look downright apocalyptic in a few years time.
That will also spell the end of German EU leadership. Hey, Germany, wake up before it’s too late.
One other thing. The US is defending its interests as regards Chinese encroachment into higher value manufacturing. The Germans, as far as I can tell, are not.
The US has some interest in preserving German industry, if only to provide a counterweight to China. However, in the end, the Chinese are going to see that German industry is really the “low hanging fruit.” It’s going to be an absolute bloodbath for Germany.
And President Trump stands alone in countering China rapaciousness. Screw the EU if they won’t join in.
Agreed.
Nah. They want to die. Let them go.
After the current Germany goes, it will be just another historical point ignored by people in the future. How many even knows there was a East Germany and how it died? The Soviet Union? Hell, people can’t even comprehend Venezuela!
Once people realize their socialist masters can’t kill all of them, the socialist masters are gone. It just takes a couple of generations. Meanwhile, the gullible believe there is a free lunch.
That’s what comes of one-upping other political parties on “green” issues: you are then always at the mercy of the latest wacko idea that comes from the green party itself, who are usually not just communists but also frequently bordering on the insane.
In the UK, Thatcher started that ball rolling and it seems that no politician since has had the courage to actually challenge some of the worst “green” statements and ideas.
Rant:
Yesterday I was reminded again that there are no good chemicals licensed for use on grubs destroying the lawn (though in this case, I think the edict came from the EU, not the UK).
Humans function as the reproductive organs of Earth. If we return Earth to its pristine “natural” state, it will forever be doomed to utter destruction in 5 billion years, and very close to that in 1 billion years as the oceans evaporate under a hotter Sun. Just like Mars, UV will split water, and hydrogen gas will pass into space, lost forever. H2O will decrease and the proportion of HDO will increase.
Earth life can thrive on other worlds, and perhaps nearby star systems. Who know how far humans will go? We’ve done well since Dec 17, 1903. But the most important travelers on our journey will be bacteria and simple organisms like euglena. These may interact in new ways with indigenous life on other worlds, potentially evolving into symbiotic forms capable of doing things neither biochemical process would be able to perform alone.
But no, sorry, got it wrong. Greens called it: everything must remain pure and all life eventually goes completely extinct as each star remarkable forms of life orbit becomes a nova and dies out.
Sure German big business, with well padded layer clubs, pragmatic, opportunistic, got into bed with the Greens instead of fighting when there was a chance, fiddled diesel emissions, and, heck, actually got caught.
Germany, Auto AG, is paying dearly for this “clever” “opportunism”, and now has their erstwhile bedfellow greens schrieking NOx!
Lie down with dingos, get up with fleas.
Yet it runs deeper than that. Why do churches, serious businesses, parties, actually choose such irrationality?
Heinrich Heine’s Religion and Philosophy in Germany, written in 1834 (yes, Victoria, not 1934) shows exactly why.
https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp/religionandphilo011616mbp_djvu.txt
Unabridged (all other sources drop sections), very disturbing to any serious researcher.
German Employer’s Association Op Ed: No Expert Politician In Berlin Believes In Switch To Green Energies Any More
https://notrickszone.com/2019/05/14/german-employers-association-op-ed-no-expert-politician-in-berlin-believes-in-switch-to-green-energies-any-more/
Berlin Experts being drowned out by a youth mob, 80% of which voted green.
There are quotes direct from the Ur-Green Martin Heidegger from the 1950’s :
See there the very good link https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06/the-reason-renewables-cant-power-modern-civilization-is-because-they-were-never-meant-to/#34600967ea2b
Omitted there is the fact that “leftie” Hanna Arendt, mistress to Heidegger, placed all his works in US and English Universities.
So the Romantic School of Kant, as Heine foresaw, has spread an attack on scientific creative reason all accross the transatlantic – witness extinction rebellion London, or the fight to dump the Paris Accords in the US, not forgetting Macron’s Carbon tax and Yellow Vest rebellion, nor Sweden’s icon Greta.
It is not about “green”, it is simply socialism. Germany has become a socialist dictatorship. Whether “Linke”, Greens, SPD or CDU/CSU, they all have the same socialist agenda. You can only pick in which color you want your socialism, but it will be the same content. Even the “conservative” CSU will execute the same policies as the Green party, they have just totally opposing rhethorics, similar to the AfD. Strangely however the CSU has no problems making a coalition with the Green party, while the AfD is totally off limit.
Talking about AfD.. well you can oppose the dictatorship like they try to do. But then state security is after you. What a nice “Democracy”, isn’t it?
Of course one might object this was not socialism at all, because it is certainly not social. For instance the Coalition of SPD and Greens carried out some of the harshest austerity measures which impoverished millions of Germans, specifically old people, but also children. But the socialist agenda has never been about improving anyones life anyhow. That is just another lie, as socialism is all about lies.
The only objective is the utter destruction of Germany, for its capitalism, its economy, its racism and so on. Socialism lives from its enemy stereotypes and Germany has been picked as a favorite target. The justification for all that of course is based on history. The reference to the Nazi past of Germany is not only justifying whatever, it is intentionally used as standard for modern day politics.
If a mother wants to justify her not so good cooking with the words “elsewhere people starve”, it is the same idea. Lowering expectations to zero will give you the freedom to execute whatever policies you like. National socialism has been totally instrumentalized by the international socialists.
Well, always look for the silver lining. If Germany goes deep green, the resultant economic implosion will show other countries that going green produces the same result as going socialist. Different name and goals, ostensibly, but they employ the same economic solutions. We need an occasional Venezuela to remind the world how not to do things.
At the same time, the EU will fall apart without a strong (some would say, dictating) Germany.
So it won’t be all bad, except for the people of Germany.
Venezuela doesn’t seem to have had a salutary effect on the memory of the world when it comes to socialism.
That’s because Venezuelan leaders blame the “Evil Americans”, and the”American Left” (AOC clowns) are more than happy to agree…
The Greens are simply a rebranding of Marxism under a more palatable name and fake veneer. Germany will either ween itself from the Greens or become a second class country. If Germany wants them then let it be. The real problem is containing the party to Germany and stifling its’ spread to the rest of the world.
Does this mean blame for failures will go to the originators instead of the go betweens?
What western societies need is more direct cause and effect assessment….without biased media distractions or deflections.
I think we have seen this movie before.
The rise of a powerful emotion driven cult?
Perhaps if we understood why Germany went mad in the 1930s we might understand the populations attraction to Gang Green.
As noted,the emotional attachment to an idealized “natural world” has remained common through the decades.
Perhaps when you have pacified Nature in your area,you can forget Nature will kill you.
North America remains pretty wild,inattention or stupidity can get you dead,very quickly in so many places.
-40 has no mercy.
Who will run the next great German cheating scheme after diesel?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/vw-reshuffle-56-billion-battery-085951657.html
Virtue signaling in a stampeding herd to a dream utopia. Just one stray impure thought can ruin the great cattle drive to paradise for everyone.
Germany has elected it’s butchers.
The decline of the German export machine is going to hurt Germans and the EU while other events in weaker members continues.
The success of the Greens can partly be attributed to the collapse of the more mainstream leftist parties. When many on the left see a mainstream left wing party getting into trouble over corruption scandals they will shift their votes to what they perceive to be a corruption alternative free left wing party. Because the Greens rarely hold power except in coalitions they rarely get into the same trouble as the mainstream parties, they have this underdog appeal.
If anyone can make Green work it will be the Germans.
All it takes is some well run German cheating like with diesel.
[Snipped. A tasteless allegory. Mod]
“Green” explicitly requires economically neutering one’s nation and industry via energy poverty.
But any reading of history and the human condition tells anyone who is honest about humanity,
we are not naturally a peaceful, live and let live species. Adherence to treaties and respecting of borders and sovereignty has always come through mutual respect of the other’s power and strength.
So Green “works” until someone stronger, as in someone who didn’t buy into the green nonsense, comes along and decides it wants your stuff and can take it.