Bishop Hill The greens and the fascists
Dec 27, 2015 Greens 
Taking a few days off from the blog has at least given me a chance to finish reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. This book (buy here) was a bit of an eye-opener for me, setting out in mind-boggling detail the links - both historical and philosophical - between fascism and the ideas espoused by modern day liberals and progressives. The sheer weight of evidence is extraordinary - from welfare, to land reform, to greenery, to the worship of the state it's hard to find any other areas of public policy in which the two have so much in common. (Goldberg points out that anti-semitism was part of the Nazi creed, but not that of the Italian or Spanish fascists, and was therefore a policy of Hitlerism, but not really of fascism.)
But what struck me about the book was how often I noticed that there are also clear parallels between fascism and environmentalism. At a high level, both are alt-religions, which their adherents seek to impose on society with Jesuit fervour, spurred on by fear of impending disaster. Both are openly totalitarian, in the original sense of the word: in other words the creed is supposed to apply in every aspect of life, in every area of policy, and in the private sphere as much as in the public.
The methods are often the same too. Where fascists tried to generate an almost permanent sense of crisis in order to unite their country (Mussolini) or their volk (Hitler) around a share sense of national purpose, environmentalists try to create a permanent sense of ecological breakdown in order to unite society around their programme.
But at a detailed policy level too, the parallels are remarkable. From attempts to change diets, to the hijacking of the education system, it's the same thing. And the methods have remarkable similarities too, with guilt used as a tool, the language abused in service of political ends and the use of cod-psychologists to target dissenters. And even more sinister are the common history of fascism, environmentalism, population concerns and eugenics.
Goldberg is keen to point out that the liberal and progressive left of today do not share the violent tendencies of their fascist forebears: theirs is a gentler totalitarianism (again in the original sense of the word). The same case can be made for the greens. At least for now; it is hard to avoid observing that their rhetoric is becoming steadily more violent and the calls for unmistakably fascist policy measures are ever more common.
Watch with care.
Reader Comments (216)
Ah yes, you say liberals are fascists
Or you say liberals are communists
But of course then you claim to be classical liberals
There is a small problem with convenient incoherence here
Dec 27, 2015 at 7:01 PM | Eli Rabett
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Not at all. Anybody with a brain knows that the term "Liberal" has been debased, so much so that in reality it now means "Anything BUT Liberal". (I should add - anyone with a brain also knows that Utopian enterprises often end with appalling bloodshed)
A Spanish eco village.
This woman strikes me as being a tough nut.
She does not sugar coat efforts to escape the demonic scarcity engine located below.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=91pBFyLWIx4
Also commentators on the (flawed) romantic vision of nature do not put it into context.
This was the age of the satanic mill.
Of brutal demeaning work , of constantly declining mean living standards.
People talk of the Spanish wars without context.
Just to repeat it was London that was behind the curtain.
Certainly pulling the strings of the Spanish modernistic liberal government during the Car list war period.
Spanish lowland medieval structure was destroyed in the 19th century.
Franco finished the job in the mountains.
We can say now this "modern" transition was in reality merely a replacement of ownership.
From equity feudal ownership to a debt based system of "growth"
Dork,
Your anti-capitalism obsession is as boring as it is ignorant.
Troll on,
Cheers.
@Hunter
Richard Tol hinted that capitalism is a idea.
It is much more then that.
It is a system , a wage slave system that you and I are locked inside.
My definition of capitalism is near Bellocs rather then Marx , it may cause some confusion.
Read this - the world needs to hear of a different perspective..
A hybrid distributism / social credit philosophy perhaps.
http://www.socred.org/index.php/blogs/view/subsidiarity-distributism-and-social-credit-or-three-acres-and-a-cow
" Under the current arrangements of Finance Capitalism, all the chips in Life’s Casino are issued by the Casino and are repayable with increase to the Casino. Every punter who gets ahead (has a credit balance) does so because the rest of the punters collectively are in debt over and above their amount of credits, and to this exact amount.
The only things that can pay off the punter’s collective debt, are chips issued as a credit, free and gratis to our punters, but the Casino is disinclined to embrace this form of distributism. The punters don’t want to think about this too much as it makes their head hurt. Their intellectuals think they could make it better by giving out land and cows, but the Casino says “Piss off, we only accept our chips in repayment for our chips which you have borrowed from us.”
Since all values are designated in chips and the Casino has created all the chips that exist, and has the privilege of doing so costlessly, all things that chips can buy are owned by the Casino to the full extent that the Casino wants them. Yes, they will lend you some chips to buy cows, but only on the basis that these cows can be sold later for more chips that you borrowed, and that you share this increase with the Casino.
Subsidiarity demands that what a lesser entity can do should not be usurped by a higher one. Does this mean that higher structures should not exercise a choice where persons as individuals are capable of making that choice? Surely it does."
Btw Mein Kampf is online
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch02.html
quote...
"In this period my eyes were opened to two menaces of which I had previously scarcely known the names, and whose terrible importance for the existence of the German people I certainly did not understand: Marxism and......
Up to that time I had known the Social Democratic Party only as an onlooker at a few mass demonstrations, without possessing even the slightest insight into the mentality of its adherents or the nature of its doctrine; but now, at one stroke, I came into contact with the products of its education and 'philosophy.' And in a few months I obtained what might otherwise have required decades: an understanding of a pestilential whore,l cloaking herself as social virtue and brotherly love, from which I hope humanity will rid this earth with the greatest dispatch, since otherwise the earth might well become rid of humanity."
unquote...
Gee but he sounds an awful lot like some of the regular commentators here.
So it is easily and firmly established that German and Spanish fascists were anti-socialist (or anti-left) regardless of how much they seemed to love the countryside. And of course that is why everyone thinks they are right wing. In reality the political spectrum is not as simple as a straight line from left to right.
Historical revisionism is vile from whatever source! This has been merely a test of who is really skeptical versus those who are just ardent wingnuts.
JamesG: 'So it is easily and firmly established that German and Spanish fascists were anti-socialist (or anti-left) '
Would that it were that simple. The Monty Python skit on the sundry Fronts of Judea is funny because of the schismatic nature of socialists and socialism. But here is a taster for a more scholarly analysis which touches on that, and more emphatically on the main topic of this thread:
Source: a study by John J. Ray
JamesG
Hitler indeed hated traditional international socialists. He turned against HIS brand of National Socialism when he was offered the chancellorship.
"Night of the Long Knives (1934)
"Leading figures of the left-wing Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), along with its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were murdered ...
Hitler was uncomfortable with Röhm's outspoken support for a "second revolution" to redistribute wealth (in Röhm's view, President Hindenburg's appointing of Hitler as German Chancellor on January 30, 1933 had accomplished the "nationalistic" revolution but had left unfulfilled the "socialistic" motive in National Socialism).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
Any minority grouping that by logic or intellect cannot command the hearts of more than few has inevitably to fall on violence as its modus.
Anyone angry at the current regime, has to blame all problems on that regime, and everything from previous regimes it has not, or chooses not to reverse. Ideas are therefore 'revolutionary', whether any ensuing revolution involves the gun or ballot box.
Anyone can have great ideas for change, but sometimes putting them into practice, is not as easy, practical or sensible, as first thought. Silencing any opposition, by gun, prison or censorship is often carried out, depending on how civilised the revolution is, or how it wants to be seen.
I agree with John Shade on the Life of Brian sketch. The idea that the majority of Iraqis wanted Saddam Hussein gone, is true, but umpteen different factions had their own idea, about who or what should be put back in his place. And Afghanistan, and Syria, and Rwanda, and Russia and Ukraine and Yugoslavia and so on, ad infinitum.
Giving people a common cause to fight, assumes that people have common goals. They don't. Labelling 'revolutionary' ideologies after people did not help Trotsky, Leninism died with Lenin. Stalinism died with Stalin. Russian Communism died before Lenin.
Harrow British history , and you'll come up with more than fifty shades of green:
http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/10/50-shades-ofgreen.html
Bvvussell spouts.
But won't answer Steve McIntyre's question on a thread dedicated to him.
@Russell
Do you seriously believe Marr is a worthy historian.!!
Ha ha ha
He is a classic corporate Beeb gun.
A PR rep of the bank.
http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/10/the-bbc-writing-christianity-out-of-history.html
Bring up that man over Christmas dinner and you have automatically lost the argument.
"Would that it were that simple. The Monty Python skit on the sundry Fronts of Judea is funny because of the schismatic nature of socialists and socialism."
Splitter......
I'm afraid this is all a load of wank.
Saying environmentalism grew out of fascism is like saying modern jazz grew out of disco. Back in the mists of time, they both had the same roots, but the intention, and more importantly the feel or atmosphere of the two quasi-religions is quite different.
In a way, environmentalism could be said to be worse, because it regards all humans as undesirables, not just Communists, homosexuals or the "racially impure". It has no leader-myth, no ideal of a social tripod involving Government, industry, and the military in collaboration, and it doesn't regard the misleading of the populace through propaganda as an end in itself.
In other words, it resembles fascism in no way whatsoever. Except in occasionally being rather nasty.
This book is no more than an extended example of Godwin's Law.
Bish: With respect, the Dork of Cork is Zed in a Leprechaun's suit (and it doesn't fit well). Constantly derailing threads and talking blox. I so wish he would ply his/her trade at SkS - and see what they would make of him/her.
Hey, Dork of Cork, you claim to know the ABC's.
Which political system ensures (or aims to ensure) that your labor is your property and, consequently, that what you purchase with your labor is also your property?
Enlighten the fools, please.
Aila:
You should have been alive in the GDR (East Germany), Aila. Then you would have been truly enlightened. But then, you're hardly old enough to vote, I guess,let alone have a memory you can count on.I wonder where they'll celebrate the centennial of blaming fascism on climate change ?
http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/12/elsewhere-in-yo-yo-news-of-world.html
I wonder if vvussell will ever respond to a simple question at the recent thread named in his honour, that could generate all the publicity he seeks?
Perhaps even as a lukewarmer? Or a Luke SkyWarmer?
"Not at all. Anybody with a brain knows that the term "Liberal" has been debased, so much"
And some, not Eli to be sure, but certainly the good Bish, having read Jonah Goldberg, knows by whom and why the debasing is being done. Of course, many can play, as in GWPF, you know the F is for fascism don't you? No? Strange.
@Alia
Labour theory of value concepts hold no value in the era of capital.
Its absurd concept under such circumstance.
Its a human theory of value if anything .
Its funny but Catholic agrarianism has many similarities with confederate agrarianism then anything else at the moment.
Its quite shocking for me.
Beside living for the moment we have very much in common with the Scottish Picts.
The world has turned on its head.
If Russell wants to take us into the realms of the pre-scientific, why not go back to the Little Ice Age, when the Earth managed to put an end to the (non-existent) Medieval Warm Period all by itself (because the sun has no part in climate change). Must have been witchcraft:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/medieval-witch-hunts-influenced-by-climate-change/
As Mary Douglas reminded us, accusations of witchcraft are ways of allocating blame, usually directed at those who deviate from social norms, so are a means of social control, often used by those in authority. So climate change has long been used to assert authority - since the Holy Roman Empire and before.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iwopVR1hhMU
Well, the Dork of Cork has at least managed to get Alia to write not only more than one line, but also pose a question.
If he can now get [snip-manners] Rabett to be more than "not Eli to be sure", then that will shurely be progress.
I'm sure I got scolded around here by the Bish for referring to "ecofascists". Glad you've caught up!
O/T Dear Santa can you make it so troll posts appear in grey font ?
Maybe a button next to each most and when 3 members down vote it, that comment gets greyed out
...or some other kind of system to deal with troll posts . ta
Is Akismet enabled ?
The comment from troll Eli Rabett 1.29am should be deleted. Rather than admit his ignorance he makes a slur against others.
What's one's labor if not capital? The issue is who owns it.
And so back to the original question, please. Be a bud. Shine and shed light.
For me the terms of " fascism' and " communism" are fairly useless today. Even Orwell's dark prophecies are off.
We mean Totalitarianism, not fascism ?
It's easy to say eco-fascist or eco-nazis and everyone knows what you mean.
However Stalin was not a Nazi ... ISIS and Al Qaeda are not fascists, but they are totalitarians.
Libertarian governance can be open, like you can have your community farm or you Islamic bakery whilst the government is capitalist, but those above examples can only govern if everyone is FORCED to take part ie communism must impose communism on business and religious fundamentalism like ISIS seeks to impose religious rules on all.
Likewise the normal green movement is fine "I'll do my organic, and you use factory farming".
BUT Climate Change Greenism is inevitably drawn to totalitarianism as it seeks to have no dissenters, It's no good some people/countries puffing out the CO2 if "true believers are cutting their CO2 to zero".
The other thing about totalitarian ideologues is that come with this amazing CERTAINTY of belief beyond the evidence, whereas in some other systems that is not necessary. Capitalists and Buddists can say "lets try this project out this way and if it doesn't work we'll try something else".
You try it with a modern Climateer ask them what things they are sure they don't know, and they won't volunteer much. They seem certain about everything and don't have much awareness of the limits of what they do know.
The historic roots of an unspoilt past can be found in Plato's 'Republic.''
Seeking to arrest all change Plato's Utopia, based on his necessary
'noble' lie of the metals in men, was to ba the return to a mythical Golden
Age to be ruled by a philosopher king.. The first Utopia was the precursor
to later undemocratic, back to nature movements, none of which, put into
practice, turned out well. With the latest green-fascist movement, its try,
try again.
I'm not sure that there is any advantage in seeing environmentalism as reborn fascism (or communism, or...). It is what it is, and should be called by the name its followers give it.
By all means, point out the similarities to previous outbreaks of Utopianism: but this isn't a re-run. Circumstances have changed and the evil has changed with them.
For example, the violence is real but still largely covert: public policy is manipulated in ways that cause great harm to human beings, but generally there aren't goon squads in action (yet).
On the other hand, the level of misanthropic hatred is a good deal worse than in previous episodes: neither fascists nor communists suggested that the whole human race is a cancer on the earth, or that most (if not all) of the current human population should be eliminated. It isn't just employees of the BBC and green NGOs who think in this disgusting way: I have encountered it in conversation with people I (otherwise) like and respect.
Environmentalism is quite vicious enough on its own terms: don't give its apologists room to wriggle out of facing its true nature.
Good point, Beth. It brings us back to Popper's political philosophy and also his philosophy of science. His 'The Open Society and its Enemies' and 'The Poverty of Historicism' deal with Plato, Hitler, Stalin, et al, but his insistence that science is about repeated attempts to falsify hypotheses, which are held tentatively pending better hypotheses, but have their predictions tested against observational evidence is what climate science is lacking. Instead, we have evidence brought to theories ('consistent with models'), non-falsifiable propositions, and the shouting down as 'deniers' those dissenting voices that form an essential part of the scientific method.
This is precisely why a discussion of political philosophy has everything to do with climate science. As it stands, the CAGW hypothesis has been falsified, and the 'lukewarmer' hypothesis is more robust.
@Alia
Last time I checked we live in the machine age.
Your labour has less and less value.
The Bank has seized accumulated knowledge and lays claim to it via the ticket / token system.
That is the fundamental problem.
Social creditors believe in a functional democracy rather then a fake ballot box democracy.
They believe Parliament is a oligarchy etc etc.
True democracy orbits around equity and equity claims.
A return of the commons etc etc.
"fascists tried to generate an almost permanent sense of crisis in order to unite their country"
That was an interesting phrase that the Bish mentioned
..but is it a governance trick rather than fascism ?
Other examples of permanent sense of crisis could include the war on Terror, the war on drugs, "even the threat of Nazi invasion" and all kind of other ongoing crises that dictators use as an excuse to stay in power ?
It is of course interesting that the CO2 apocalypse is the ultimate never ending crisis that provides a vehicle for all kind of restrictive laws and corruption. With some people thinking we can't contemplate anything other that Green Party government until global warming has been licked.
Aynsley Kellow, I agree. Such important books by Karl Popper!
“From the union of power and money,
from the union of power and secrecy,
from the union of government and science,
from the union of government and art,
from the union of science and money,
from the union of ambition and ignorance,
from the union of genius and war,
from the union of outer space and inner vacuity,
the Mad Farmer walks quietly away.”
Wendell Berry
The problem with that statement is that the mad farmer cannot walk away.
Agrarians do no understand the ticket system.
Most farmers cannot write prose for a living.
Berry gets cash flow outside his hobby farm.
Democracy as we understand it is the bank seizing your income via tax and other measures
This wealth subsequently gets concentrated.
In the British system of Parliament some of this concentrated wealth gets redistributed to their friends......
And that's ballot box democracy folks........
Is it true democracy ?
Sargon of Akkad does a detailed comparison of the general features of genuine liberalism with the behaviour of 'progressives' who in the States in particular have declared themselves to be liberals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH0mPfR-K2U
Of course he finds they contradict every precious element of genuine liberalism.
Fascinating philosophy here today., so I will toss another chip into the pot.
Science relies upon a concept that is at its heart totally religious: Namely the concept of the 'detached observer' whose consciousness assesses changes in the material world, but does not in so doing affect them.
That detached observational consciousness is what was called the 'spirit', the 'soul', or perhaps the 'holy ghost'.
Now in order for it to exist, of course, and be detached, it has to exist in a dimension orthogonal to the material world, towards which its observational prowess is directed. Hence the original notion of the spirit being a different realm from the material etc etc.
Of course today consciousness is held to be an 'emergent property of the material world' and indeed that materialistic dogma is at the heart of all Marxist type thinking. By placing the material world as the primal cause of everything, purpose and spirituality are stripped from the world, and are replaced with the evolution of consciousness towards the ideal communist society, or something.
However it has been noted by many people that this produces a circular argument, that cannot be proved to be true. Ultimately if consciousness is an emergent property of the material world, it cannot thereby completely understand the material world because in so doing it has to rise above itself to gain a vantage point of consciousness itself etc etc. For a full treatment of the nasty feedbacks involved in 'thinking about thinking' read Douglas Hofstatder...
What this means in effect, is that the world of experience that is delivered to us by consciousness can never be the 'real world', but is always some 'rationalisation' of it. Ergo in terms of our model of the world - the space-time-material world of our experience - indeed consciousness DOES exist outside it, because it is valid to claim that what consciousness is, is the way that that experience is delivered to us. I believe that this view is actually the view propounded by Kant and Schopenhauer. That the world in itself is unknowable, and inaccessible to pure reason,. but what we can deal with are the structures and 'categories' imposed by the conscious mind on the true - but imperceptible - experience...
What has this got to do with climate change? Well obviously in terms of actual climate change, nothing, but in terms of perceived climate change, by different categories (sic!) of people, a huge amount.
Roger Scruton makes the point that a characteristic of the Left, is their optimism about the ability of the human mind to encompass reality, come up with accurate pictures and achieve useful results. An optimism totally refuted by the experience of implementing their solutions.
But that is at heart where their weltanschauung is located, as others have pointed out, its a deep rooted Romanticism, a yearning to turn back the clock to before those 'dark satanic mills' to a sort of Hobbit infested Shire, of zero governance and harmony with nature. And like the Shire, the Enemy is the dark forces of industrialisation, the deep dark magic of Science, and the unpleasant Technology of the Orcs. And the shire must be scoured of these foreign elements to restore it to pristine racial purity, as a land for hobbits alone...
This worldview, is deliberately fostered by the cultural Marxists, to create useful idiots for the Cause, which is itself precisely that which the created Enemy is accused of. They believe in nothing but the ultimate destiny of mankind to become communist by smashing any and every structure that exists for the regulation and governance of society. Out of anarchy, they firmly believe will come true communism and the final liberation of the human spirit. Or something.
Therefore their worldview is predicated on destruction - the destruction of any and every institution on the basis that they are all restrictions on humanity. And that once gone mankind's creative instinct and probably racial destiny will emerge and lead us all to a new Golden Age.
World government to replace national governments is a critical stage in this process.
Now the point of all this wibble, is to indicate the three basic philosophies at work in this game we are involved in. The dark destructive forces of the neo-marxists who will use anything and everything to smash every structure except their chosen ones, their tools - the 'useful idiots', from the Islington intellectuals, the green activists, to the suicide bomber, who all in their own way are sold a romantic idealistic world view in order to direct their efforts towards the perceived enemies of that particular world view - and the sane ordinary members of society, who are fundamentally conservative, and tend not to change things that are not broken a do not hold to any particular ideology.
And this shows how you can combat these social tendencies. By altering the worldview that interprets the real world into what people perceive as 'facts' . We need to realise that to a Green, Climate change is not up for question, it is as much a fact as is gravity to a normal person. Surrounded by media, and peer group pressure, there is no chance for them to actually say 'well its only one way of looking at things'.
However one of the prime tenets of Marxist theory is described thus
"Perhaps Marx's greatest contribution to modern thought... is his comprehensive investigation into the role of Ideology, or how social being determines consciousness, which results in certain (for the most part unconscious) belief and value systems depending on the particular economic infrastructure pertaining at the time. From a Marxian point of view all cultural artifacts--religious systems, philosophical positions, ethical values--are, naturally enough, products of consciousness and as such are subject to these ideological pressures."
Now this is I think a reasonable model of consciousness, if you take the view that it's an emergent property of the material world. I don't, but Marxists do. Because the paradox inherent in that view was brought to my attention most succinctly in a book called 'why truth matters' where Jeremy Stangroom pointed out that the thought, the notion that 'consciousness is a product of the material world and is conditioned by it' is in fact produced by a consciousness that is itself a product of that material world - if that's what you believe in the first place!.. Once again we have recursive feedback and thinking about thinking, depending on what thinking is in place before you first thought of the thing that you are thinking about.... :0-)
So where does this leave us? Well these underlying belief structures can all be shown to be self referential and therefore ultimately incorrect. Including the belief that nothing can be known for certain :-)
What counts, therefore in this game on hearts and minds, is not the Truth, because we cannot know it, and anyway truth depends on the worldview - the weltaunschuung - that is in the persons mind. Every way we go with rational discourse we end up in Gödelian style statements that must be true for us to do the rationalisation, but which cannot be proved by that rationalisation. They are a priori of the intellectual process..So Truth is not a tool we can use. But other things are useful. The whole point of Science is not that its true, or that it has any truth content at all. It is that it WORKS.
And this is the biggest weapon we have against the anti-intellectuals of the Green and Left. Socialism doesn't work Green solutions don't work. Climate change models don't work. And indeed societal changes brought about by left leaning activists either will work,. in which case society will prosper or they will fail miserably, in which case it wont. And something that does work will replace it.
Wouldn't it be a hoot of the 'change in consciousness' brought about by cultural Marxists and their tools, the radical Islamists, the Greens and so on, was to utterly reject the cultural Marxism that had brought the change into place, just indeed as cultural Marxism itself arose out of consciousness that was produced by the economic impact of widespread affluence based on industrialisation and colonialism? Just as science that arose out of a religious world view ultimately rejected mediaeval religion?
Ultimately materialism, like every other ism,. denies its own claim to Truth. We simply end up doing what doesn't actually destroy our future, that's all. There is no purpose, no grand vista of human whatever spread out before us, nor yet some dark oppression of one sector of humanity by another. It's all in the end in our minds, and all that is happening is entirely beyond our ken, but what we experience is down to the world view we utilise.
In this sense we will never consciously win against the Green tendency: that is not the point. It will simply peter out when it becomes so dysfunctional that its adherents die without passing on their belief structures. Why did thousands ot Conservatives join the Labour party in order to vote Corbyn in? In order to demonstrate beyond any doubt the lunacy of the Hard Left by allowing it to come out in to the open. Which is why Germany must bankrupt itself with energiewiende, and the EU must destroy itself with unlimited immigration, so that people finally understand that solutions based on certain ideologies are dangerously dysfunctional and reject those ideologies not because we have argued them out of them rationally, but because they proved not to work. Not because they were not true but because they were not very useful.
Years ago when I was involved in an anti-windfarm project, I knew the tide had turned when a man in a pub said. 'Well they dont work, do they?'
All this protracted navel gazing and intellectual analysis of the various social/political/religious movements can tell us is that in the end we can't prove them right, and we can't prove them wrong, but we may finally show that they don't actually work and are not very useful.
And humans have a very definite inbuilt ability to understand what is not working, and reject it.
Even Lesser Spotted Red Breasted Corbynistic Bearded Islington Lefties.
As an Englishman, I have rather lost track of what a Liberal is. So has the UK Liberal Party, and most of the rest of the UK.
They always used to occupy some of the centre ground between the left and right, and be a little bit 'off centre' of the centre ground. But now there is no unoccupied centre ground, they can only appeal to those who are 'off centre'.
BH concludes the piece with the comment
The link is to an anonymous piece from one of the eight who pleaded guilty to aggravated trespass for blocking the entrance to Banks Open Cast Coal Mine (see BH article 17/12/15) What is clear is:-
- The blockade was do protest at landowner Matt Ridley, whose views these FOE activists disagree with, to cause him financial harm.
- Thinks that a coal mine producing 1/8000 of global output is a major contributor to climate disaster.
- Falsely believes that Matt Ridley was "debunked" by some climate scientists at Carbon Brief. One example was Gavin Schmidt defending the Hockey Stick graphs. He is still peddling the idea that Wahl & Amman 2007 substantiates the methodology of MBH. For the uninitiated Casper and the Jesus paper and The Hockey Stick Illusion will fill you in on how far Schmidt misleads. Another example is the dismissal of Goklany's work (that shows climate related deaths have been falling as CO2 emissions have been rising) on the basis of having been promoted by bodies incorrect political views.
- The writer rejects the rule of law, and is determined to carry out more acts of climate violence against the police and the state. (Does this violate the 12 month conditional discharge he received?)
- Claims the action was on behalf of Matt Ridley's conscience. But then claims Matt Ridley has no conscience.
I have written a post with the details here.
OK @Kevin I'm not sure if a few hours illegal protest at a coal mine constitutes the most fascist thing ever, but there are a few points of concern, like this holier than thou attitude etc.
But this website they use opendemocracy.net seems very Lewandowsky being neither particularly open nor democratic
I've tried to work out who pulls the strings before, but all I know is it's an offshoot of the US foundation.
opendemocracy.net has a sub program Climate Unspun I wonder if that too is the direct opposite of it's naming. It seems very slick climate disinformation thing like DeSmog blog and a contrast to us paupers here. But it's a joint project with Policy Institute at King’s College, London so might be more legit.
That ClimateUnspun page does seem fishy and maybe worth a deconstruction. It seems very Lewandowsky like they use this term "brown language" to mean "non-green activist language".
I'm in the process of reading Goldberg's book. Thanks Bishop!
One revelation to me was the common elements of Italian fascism, German fascism, Soviet Bolshevism, and the American progressive movement in the Wilson era. In fact, a case is made that the United States already had its own fascist regime during the WW I era, with its alien and sedition acts, a well established propaganda ministry, countless arrests and imprisonments which greatly exceeded anything that occurred during the McCarthy era.
Goldberg makes a good case that it CAN happen here, and in fact already has!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ANt4LW1Jl20
Listened again to the great global warming swindle . (above)
What strikes me is that the British sovereignist faction accused the green medievalists of attempting to recreate a fiction.
But they themselves spew out Victorian propaganda by the bucket load.
One commentator actually equates civilization with more and more cars !!
Let's be very clear on this.
The historical record is very clear.
The crowns oligarchy replaced the church oligarchy
This in reality was disastrous for the English peasant. The church engaged in major welfare (not charity ) spending until it lost its capital base.
Welfare subsequently became the poor laws and the workhouse .
Subsequent explosive rises in GDP destroyed the mean standard of living.
This can be seen again and again throughout the capitalistic period.
The most recent post Maastricht rise in Irish GDP (pointless activity) is yet another classic case.
Lets deal with real green activists such as the late Margrit Kennedy shall we ?
She combined ecological studies with a understanding of usury and its dynamics.
Stewgren @ 2:31pm
I know that the actions as Shotton were not the most fascist thing ever. It is trivial compared to the fascist and communist thugs who operated throughout Europe in the first half of the C20th. But it isthe diametric opposite of my view of science-based policy making in a democracy. That is to use scientific understanding to persuade people that by following a certain policy course we can expect a better future than by not. That means making the case both for the problem and the policy solution to that problem. Targeting leading opponents to silence them on the basis of false and shallow opinions has never created rational policy.
The climate consensus is failing, and will resort to ever more extreme measures unless they are vigorously opposed. Like Lewandowsky, this anonymous campaigner assumes that he holds a monopoly on truth and moral judgement. Also in common is that the two are just using climate as a ruse to impose their alternative systems.
Is it true democracy ?
Dec 29, 2015 at 12:38 PM | The Dork of Cork
====================================================
What is "true democracy"? And who gets to decide that?
As well as being horribly unpleasant, hate-filled people, these progressives (the 'liberal fascists') are also breathtakingly witless. Here are some highlights of their doings in 2015: http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2015/12/the-year-reheated.html
Taster:
I've never hear of the author before, but it seems he does heroic work wading through stuff and reporting back.
Jonah Goldberg seems to have omitted one of the more blatant links between environmentalism and nazism, one that Robert Zubrin covered in Chapter Fourteen of Merchants of Despair. This concerns the nazi ancestry of the German Green Party, whose founder was one August Haussleiter, a member of the nazi party from as early as Munich, 1923 (i.e. a decade before Hitler's actual rise to power).
Haussleiter joined a network of former SS members, one close associate being Gert Bastian. When the Green Party was looking for a more telegenic figurehead, Haussleiter and Bastian chose Petra Kelly, Bastian's (considerably younger) mistress.
Considering all this insalubrious baggage, it is rather surprising that Britain's Ecology Party chose to ditch its original name, in favour of the German one (or a translation thereof), and especially so in light of the fate of Petra Kelly, who was murdered by Gert Bastian.
@Jeremy
Individual sovereignty of choice ( only made possible with adequate purchasing power )
No central bank with the monopoly of credit creating artificial scarcity so as to concentrate power under the mask of the state.
Only a national credit office whose sole purpose is the distribution of purchasing power.
Capitalists pretending to be anti capitalists such as Corbyn (using taxation as the method of distribution ) need not apply.
@Owen
I was a fan of Zubrin until I grew up
Dirigisme does not work.
Did you read his plan to get America back into the car again during the inflationary oil crisis.
Corn baby and lots of it.
Simple question : why do people have to orbit a racetrack to access purchasing power ?
Why do guys like Zubrin wish to feed cars rather then people ?