Guest essay by Eric Worrall
NYT have just noticed that not all climate activists are PC hippies, though they still seem blind to the possibility that some of their own political fellow travellers could be bad.
White Supremacy Goes Green
Why is the Far Right Suddenly Paying Attention to climate change?
By Beth Gardiner
As an environmental journalist, I’ve been covering the frightening acceleration of climate change for more than a decade. As a person who believes in the tenets of liberal democracy, I’ve watched the rise of white-supremacist, anti-immigrant and nationalistic ideologies with similar dread over the past few years.
But I always thought of those two trends “looming ecological dangers and the gathering strength of the far right” as unrelated, parallel crises in a turbulent time. Only recently have I begun to understand that they are deeply interconnected, an ugly pairing of forces drawing power from each other.
From France to Washington to New Zealand, angry voices on the hard right nationalists, populists and others beyond conventional conservatism are picking up old environmental tropes and adapting them to a moment charged with fears for the future. In doing so, they are giving potent new framing to a set of issues more typically associated with the left. Often, they emphasize what they see as the deep ties between a nation’s land and its people to exclude those they believe do not belong. Some twist scientific terms such as invasive species foreign plants or animals that spread unchecked in a new ecosystem to target immigrants and racial and ethnic minorities. And here’s what really frightens me: This dynamic is likely to intensify as climate change creates new stresses that could pit nations and groups against one another.
Although the pressures of a warming planet are new, the deployment of environmental language for racist, nativist and nationalistic ends has a long, dark history. Before environmentalism became a mainstream and progressive cause in the 1970s, many American conservationists were also white supremacists, who argued that those they saw as outsiders threatened the nation’s landscape or lacked the values to care for it properly. Such thinking was common in Europe, too. The Nazis embraced notions of a symbiotic connection between the German homeland and its people.
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Read more (paywalled): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/opinion/far-right-climate-change.html
Gee, who could have seen this coming?
Greens, traditional hippy greens, thought that by creating a fake climate crisis people they would recruit more people to their cause.
But this isn’t what is happening. Frightened believers are turning to whoever is closest, whoever offers the most immediate relief from their fear.
For many of the fearful, traditional greens, with their discredited hippy era economic and social ideas and their dismal multi-decade track record of political failure are not a credible source of comfort. Dangerous demagogues on both the left and the right are starting to displace traditional greens from a political stage they thought would be theirs.
I give NYT reporter Beth Gardiner half marks for this one. She might have noticed that dangerous right wing extremists are starting to hijack the climate movement, but she still seems blind to the crazies in her own political camp.
Color supremacists or diversitists (i.e. color blocs, color quotas, color judgments, affirmative discrimination, racism, sexism, denial of individual dignity). Left-wing/right-wing extremists or totalitarian/anarchist, the left-right nexus.
Proof #27,536 of the reality of the Political Horseshoe.
It’s more proof that the left defines anything they don’t like as being right wing.
Exactly!
In most respects the Nazis were “left-wing”, if we take “left-wing” to mean they believed that most of their society’s issues should be addressed via collectivist (ie, government-imposed) action.
Sure, they abandoned socialists’ traditional appeals to class identity in favour of nationalism and ethnicity, and they allowed some ownership of the means of production and distribution, but they sought to heavily regulate all of it, from small businesses to heavy industry. In fact, the economies of fascist Germany and Italy were more “left-wing” than all but a handful of today’s economies.
And when I say “abandoned”, I *mean* abandoned – Mussolini was the head of the Italian Socialist Party, until he realised the Red Terror in socialist Russia was putting off the ordinary Italians he needed to gain power.
The only “frightening acceleration” I see is the hypocrisy and rhetoric of the disciples
IanH February 28, 2020 at 10:30 pm
The only “frightening acceleration” I see is the hypocrisy and rhetoric of the disciples
Yes sir, Ian
This is exactly what Allen Jones had said on Sky News (australian tv )
https://youtu.be/hNBNp2sgPWA
i did a transcript of it
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/02/27/allenjonesrant/
She is definitely missing the Far More Dangerous and growing factions of the Left Wing Socialist and Anarchist Extremists of the Uber Green segment
Unfortunately, she sees them as neither dangerous or extreme. That’s the scary part.
Journalists ain’t bright, and they’re not scientists. When did they start thinking their own useless opinions are more important than facts?
Chaswarnertoo, it looks like they value their opinions due to the statement “As a person who believes in the tenants of liberal democracy”, which is a version of actual democracy. The USA is a Constitutional Republic, where democracy determines many things but does not infringe on personal rights. Liberal Democracy? Sounds like the slide into socialism.
“Liberal Democracy? Sounds like the slide into socialism.”
Google says: “A liberal democracy is a representative democracy with protection for individual liberty and property by rule of law.”
Google is also FOS
Google epitomizes Orwellian doublespeak.
@Ron, Fresh, Pop – Actually, the Google definition is correct for liberal democracy.
However, “liberal” like “progressive” is a word that has been appropriated by people that are no such thing. (As is “green” when you look at what they actually do.)
The Left is impossible to characterize with a simple one word description. The Left is socially libertine, economically oligarchic, and politically fascist.
Ho hum, it’s like a re run of 1920s Germany. Everyone who looks up the History of the Nazis comes across their preoccupation with nature.
Starting to ?? Where has she been for the last 20 or 30 years?!
I was one of the those “traditional greens” in the 80s. I would not want to be associated with that word today. The fake and alarmist “green” claims are just a red scarf trick to advance a very different extreme agenda.
It’s the no enemies on the left attitude that most socialists adopt.
Definition of “Right Wing” as used by our Progressive comrades?
Any one who doubts their “superior wisdom”.
Or people who laugh at their numerical illiteracy and mocks their totalitarian demands?
Right wing seems to mean;”Can do maths”.
Now that gang Green has come out into the open and proudly claimed their civilization destroying lunacy,the push back is going to burn.
So sad too bad.
Did any one of them ever think that their tactics of “naming and Shaming” Denigration and shouting people down.
Banning free speech as hate Speech and openly seeking to silence their questioners..
Did they really not realize their will be pushback and retribution?
Gang Green is a natural home for fools and bandits, we did not attack them.
They attacked us,seeking to destroy our high tech luxurious living..in the name of some extraordinary speculation about a trace gas,essential to plant life.
Well you savagely attack people,abuse and threaten them and cost them serious financial losses.What would you expect?
that they will thank you profusely and shower you with wealth?
Or that they might come to consider you a clueless and useless parasite on productive society.?
Hmm?
I guess we will call it Evolution in Action.
Exactly, John!
N.B. the author’s rebranding “nationalists”, “populists” and other unspecified “beyond conventional conservatism” as “far right”.
“Nationalists”, as in ‘national socialists’ are far left.
“Populists”, are far left.
I suspect that what the author claims are people “beyond conventional conservatism” are actually far left activists.
Another article where the author invents a false strawman “red herring”, to allow the author plenty of latitude in their unicorn fantasies.
Newton’s third law is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Applies to social engineering attempts on humans.
So Unless you’re Lenin/Stalin/Mao/PolPot/Hitler/Tojo or any of a dozen other 20th Century butchers willing to exterminate the counter-opposite reactions…
And Today’s 21st Century Green extremists are getting there if their leaders are able to seize power.
A problem socialists have is that while people may agree with the lofty goals, when it comes down to minor infringement of what they selfishly consider their personal rights, the masses resist. This unfortunately forces the leadership to employ other measures to ensure the common good.
People support socialism only so long as it is limited to taking other people’s money and giving it to them.
When the socialists come for their stuff, then the socialists have gone to far.
MarkW
February 29, 2020 at 6:58 am
People support socialism only so long as ….
———
Mark, history clearly tells us that;
“People support socialism only so long as ….”
—- populist wholesale illiteracy and dire disaster economical standards on the life and reality of the populations or nations concerned, rules the day….
What history clearly tells and states!
Other than that, in the modern history, the rule and success of tyranny was accommodated and achieved through fascism in the developed modern literally excelling world…
So the main concern of developed first world nations there, the literally excelling ones, shall and should be fascism… first and foremost.
cheers
Actually I like the fact the W Supremacists have joined the Greens giving the alarmists such a damning association. Not only that, they are not so far apart with their fascism and totalitarian designs. Goons are an essential component of totalitarian governance. There is no good reason for them not to be friends.
The similarities are quite striking when you think about it. The Greens are pretty much all whites. And it is the lefty part of the same demographic that created what they call ‘diversity’, a scrabbleboard of genders, PC, and it is they who run it all. They deny Africans a right to cheap reliable energy and prosperity. Hell, in Canada this group set up the national blockage of the railways protesting an oil pipeline on behalf of a British Columbia First Nations tribe that want the pipeline and the deals and jobs that go with it!
If the leadership of any major corporation was as white as the leadership of most socialists groups, the socialist groups would be out in front of the corporation protesting.
“Hell, in Canada”
I think that’s a fairly accurate assessment at the moment, Gary.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/canada-a-dead-country-walking/
The New York Times article appears to open and not paywalled perhaps for only the first story, so was able to read the paywalled article from above.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/opinion/far-right-climate-change.html
Touchy subject… perhaps some right wing white-supremacist are getting on the climate bandwagon, but I haven’t seen or heard of this much, at least as it relates to the science of dangerous CO2 induced warming and imposing socialism and carbon taxes to change the weather. That is pure fantasy and a power/tax grab. Maybe they will see the opportunity that exists for those that do want to seize control and co-opt the movement. Nature abhors a vacuum.
Perhaps more like she said in the article where she said that plastic pollution/garbage dumping at sea but that is sort of a fact. It isn’t any secret that New York City used to dump garbage at sea 50 years ago. I know some Philippine seaman who work on ships for various shipping companies who pick up garbage from countries (more like private companies) that take unrecyclable garbage out to sea and dump it for whatever country/company was paid to take the garbage, collect the valuable scrap and burn the rest, or haul it out to sea and dump it. There was some discussion here a few days ago about that, and some say that doesn’t happen but I believe these sailors who say how corrupt some of the SE Asia countries and China are, (or at least the private companies that operate there) that they are telling the truth. I think that was what Trump was talking about, but if you tell the truth, you get labeled a racist. How else would garbage from Europe, Canada and the USA all wind up floating around in the same general area in the Pacific ocean 500 miles off shore of these areas. And not in some ocean gyre. Of course, that is a result of our Western ‘recycling’ issues and us sending them our garbage. The plastic garbage floating out of the mainly Asian countries via rivers are Asian plastic and labeled as such if identifiable. And this is just the garbage.
So I guess I am a white-supremacist then, because I have travelled to many of these undeveloped nations, and some live in filth and disease. This, and a combination of unsanitary cultural living conditions with wet markets with dead and live animals all sharing the same space, and then we wonder why COVID-19 pops up out of no where. I am probably up shite creek now, so I will stop before I am in worse trouble.
All the author is claiming its that Climate Change ™ is going to intensify existing nationalist movements. Basically just bluster with absolutely zero basis in reality as far as I can see.
Typical Climate Change ™ rhetoric, in other words.
That’s a bingo.
The murderer in New Zealand, blamed population increase for climate change & targeted Muslims as they bred faster.
By Beth Gardiner
As an environmental journalist, I’ve been covering the frightening acceleration of climate change for more than a decade.
Is this the “frightening acceleration” you are referring to Beth?
The voices in her head are telling her that.
It’s just that she learned all her science from politicians.
Gee, more than a decade! I’ve got boots older than that, young lady.
Ms. Beth Gardiner-you haven’t witnessed the “frightening acceleration of climate change for more than a decade”.
You’ve witnessed the frightening acceleration of climate change PROPAGANDA and CATASTROPHISM for 10 years. You are at a microphone with the gain turned up and can’t think for the shriek from the speakers.
As usual, missing the point that these guys were National Socialists. For anyone (and there are many) claiming otherwise, just look at the ‘People’s Car’ (Volkswagen). Does that seem socialist to you? It does to me.
Seeing “Green” really means “Control” I would not be surprised if any number of groups are interested in buying in and influencing directions. As always, follow the money.
how do you assess the quantitative ecological effect of any human action?? “how green is my choice?”
you canif there is one dimension..but there are many…
so..it is extremely rare you can compare two human actions and conclude this one is better than this one except if it is better in all dimension!!!
so “green” means “my choices are better than yours”, “my taste is better than yours”..and eventually i am better than you.
Green -> pale Green -> beyond-the-pale Green.
But you don’t need white supremacists to know it is already there.
I seem to recall a report that Greta’s people photoshopped a Nigerian protester out of a group picture. This is a case of someone in the pot calling the kettle black.
Another dig on Trump and his supporters. Fu*k you, Beth Gardiner.
Hi Eric, I was amused seeing picture I took above your story. Damn it really looks like opposite of green.
Supremacists, white, black or green all believe the other groups will destroy society as they know it. They are conservative in the deepest meaning. Weve seen Eco-fascists attacking people lately, El Paso, Christchurch. But even Hitler was somewhat of that leaning, a great admirer and promotor of nature and outdoor activities and vegetarianism. Greta is very fascistic in her rethoric. Eco conservatism is as far right as you can go by todays vague right left paradigm, it is full circle.
And just recently the Hanau killer – very like the Christchurch manifesto.
Eugenics is not new, just look what the British Eugenics Society proposed over centuries. That societies treasurer, Lord Maynard Keynes, published his Theory in Hitler’s Germany with a preface that only a Total State could implement it. Keynes war rightly rejected by FDR at the Breton Woods Conference.
And note Hitler’s economics minister, Hjalmar Schacht, founder of the Bank of International Settlements, started the labor camps (on the Boer War model) – and the rest is history.
So it is no surprise whatsoever that the UN GND, and various EU, British “green deals” are in financial lockstep.
And just recently the Hanau attacker– very like the Christchurch manifesto.
Eugenics is not new, just look what the British Eugenics Society proposed over centuries. That societies treasurer, Lord Maynard Keynes, published his Theory in Hitler’s Germany with a preface that only a Total State could implement it. Keynes was rightly rejected by FDR at the Breton Woods Conference.
And note Hitler’s economics minister, Hjalmar Schacht, founder of the Bank of International Settlements, started the labor camps (on the Boer War model) – and the rest is history.
So it is no surprise whatsoever that the UN GND, and various EU, British “green deals” are in financial lockstep.
The Anglo – Boer war concentration camps only killed people by accident or neglect – not deliberately! As a South African, I just need to make this point.
The far righ tis minuscule, the eco-fascist left is not. As for Beth Gardiner (BA History, Yale) she declares on Twitter that “Bill McKibben is one of the important thinkers and writers on climate change.” Good grief.
“The far righ tis minuscule”
Yes, it is. Claiming it has any influence on the larger society is just fake news.
This is just the sort of insight and think-outside-the-box analysis we’ve come to expect from NYT. White supremacist deplorables moving into green groups? Top journalists can spot a trend before the first movement. Well, makin’ it up has gotta be better (better as in, bad for Tru… ooh, don’t say that name!) than covering real stories.
I do advise fellow posters to avoid saying “well, I must be a wh*te s*premacist then”. I get it, but it’ll get taken out of context so easily by those who attack this site. Mark Steyn likes “neo-colonialist”, but calling myself a “deplorable” should get some bile rising up the throat of those who thought Hillary was a great campaigner.
Last word- that man-made influence on climate too small to measure? NYT influence has become too small to measure.
” NYT influence has become too small to measure.”
This is a good thing becasue the public is starting to see through all the New York Times lies. The bad thing is the Washington DC beltway swamp is still inspired by the New York Times.
What part of racism puts all racists on the “right wing”?
The vast majority of racists that I have read about, support big government and want to use government to enforce their personal beliefs. That’s the provenance of the left.
Racism, like beauty, is ‘in the eye of the beholder’ and relies upon the current social consensus to define its attributes.
Considering how effectively the Progressive green economic agenda will squash the economic growth of non-white populations out of poverty and into economic and political parity, it makes sense that white supremacists would support it. In fact, it brings into focus just who the real white supremacists really are.
From the article: “As an environmental journalist, I’ve been covering the frightening acceleration of climate change for more than a decade.”
That’s funny. What she is really talking about is the accelerating hyperbole about [Human-caused] climate change from alarmists, such as herself.
The human-caused climate change doomsday rhetoric has certainly accelerated but the rest is just weather.
I think the main difference between skeptics and alarmists is skeptics can tell the difference between speculation and evidence. And you don’t have to be a scientist to figure it out. All you need is a little common sense and logic.
Here’s a little CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) logic: What does it mean when a skeptic requests evidence of CAGW from the alarmists, and all the skeptic gets back is silence? Logically, you would have to assume that since the alarmists did not support their claim with any evidence, then they must not have any evidence to supply.
You can confirm this logic because there won’t be a single reply to this post supplying any evidence of CAGW. Watch and see. And it’s not because alarmists are not seeing this challenge. They just don’t have the answer.
From the article: As a person who believes in the tenets of liberal democracy, I’ve watched the rise of white-supremacist, anti-immigrant and nationalistic ideologies with similar dread over the past few years.”
“The rise of white-supremacists”. Where? How ridiculous! Name two White Supremacists. The only one I can think of is David Duke. David Duke doesn’t have any support in the Republcian Party, nor do any White Supremacists. A typical leftwing, racist smear of the Right.
“Anti-immigrant”? Where? Please get it correct, it is “anti-illegal immigrant”. There’s difference and it is predicated on whether a person is behaving legally or illegally, not on race, which is the implication. Illegal immigrants make up all races, so it’s not discrimination to deport all of them equally.
Nationalism? Well, maybe that’s not such a bad thing considering our current situation with coronavirus, with all our medical eggs in one basket: China.
This author is another radical leftist disguised as a reporter.
From the article: “I give NYT reporter Beth Gardiner half marks for this one. She might have noticed that dangerous right wing extremists are starting to hijack the climate movement,”
Really? Are there any examples of this?
Beth Gardiner: “As an environmental journalist, I’ve been covering the frightening acceleration of climate change/strong> for more than a decade.”
An environmental journalist who has clearly never investigated the environment.
What “frightening acceleration of climate change“? There haven’t been any.
Beth Gardiner: intelligent; mindless.
For a journalist who has been covering climate for more than a decade it seems incomprehensible that she would not have stumbled onto a website like Judith curry’s or the numerous other web sites that provide a distinctly opposite viewpoint. And report about it. IMHO this by itself disqualifies her for a title of journalist
Anyone working for the NYT these days is a propagandist and anything they write should be read as such.
Centrist journalism can only exist outside of the MSM due to monetary constraints imposed by the owners of said mass-media.
That is why Obama so ardently wanted to censor the internet.
How did Mr. Obama become so wealthy, by the way, as to suddenly afford a 15 million $ ocean-side mansion? Anyone know?
Obama wrote a book and recieved a nice paycheck from the publishing house.
Other than that, I don’t know where Obama made his money.
Is the far-right actually weaponizing climate change?
I see no reference to actual facts in Beth Gardiner’s left-leaning opus, only claims and opinions, backed by virtue signaling.
Journalism is descending to new depths of degradation.
“Is the far-right actually weaponizing climate change?”
No. I don’t know where this originated but there’s no evidence for it. Of course, I don’t keep up too much with the “far-right”, nor does anyone else.
The “far-right” is a very small minority in the United States. In Europe, everyone to the right of a communist is decribed as “far-right” by the far-left,
Marine Le Pen, French “far right”, is essentially aligned on the French Communist Party of the 80ties.
She wants to re-nationalize industries. Worked so well under state control (not).
Looks like the ‘far right’ is really far left and this is the next scene of their production.
If you go far enough west, you’ll find you’ve arrived in the east.
Too far right and you end up on the left.
An airplane can’t be flown from either wing, proper flight is only possible when the pilot is located in the center.
Benign government is rooted in centrism. The press would do well to recognize that also.
Rabid diversitists, including color supremacists, are pure as Green, as Black, as White, as Yellow, as Brown, and sometimes for other low information attributes altogether. In the best case, they want to be left alone. In the worst case, they want to force redistribute or retributive change.
“This dynamic is likely to intensify as [the politics of the false emergency of] climate change creates new stresses that could pit nations and groups against one another.
Now the statement is more accurate.
Sigh.
Okay NYT, pay attention.
Nationalism – a love of the country you are a citizen of and pride in your nation’s achievements.
Nationalising – a Left form of government where the elite decide that private industry cannot be trusted to do the ‘right thing’ for the country and that everything would be better if only they were in charge.
So waving your nation’s flag is pride in your nation.
Wanting to nationalise healthcare is socialism.
Is Beth Gardiner a pseudonym for Jussie Smollett? Were these KKK-ers running around in sheets on a cold night in Chicago? Just asking…