Two images, two different claims. Neither of them are ‘new’ as such. The first comes to us from Nathalie Rothschild, commissioning editor of Spiked-Online. It was taken during the “March Against Climate Change Chaos” in 2006. The second was taken during the UK’s 2008 local election campaigns.
The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) say go red to go green, and David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party tells us to vote blue to go green. Which is it?
Doesn’t this all seem a little familiar?
[youtube uGQF8LAmiaE]
Neo’s choice was far easier – he trusted Morpheus. And he was actually being offered a choice that he ultimately could take responsibility for having made. He goes on, somewhat ridiculously, to overthrow the tyranny of the computers. The level at which we are being asked to engage with British politics is no less ridiculous, the only differences are that we have no choice and the computer models that determine the scope of British politics remain unchallenged.
It makes no difference whether we take the blue pill, or the red pill. Whatever we swallow, we end up green. Whether we approach the future from the Left or the Right, we end up back in the past.
This is not an attempt to make a ‘we’re-living-in-the-matrix’ kind of argument. The point here is what happens when all political organisations simultaneously attempt to capture –rather than challenge – the sense of crisis that has been generated by environmentalism. The Communists, the Liberals, the Conservatives and whatever it is that New Labour are, all want you to believe the same thing: that unless you support them, you, or more likely your children, will live ,and probably die, in an a chaotic and dangerous world. The radicals, the revolutionaries, and the establishment struggle to identify themselves, and so seek to legitimise themselves by inventing an emergency that they, and only they, can solve.
This is what happens when everything is seen through the prism of climate change. It warps spatial relationships, distorts colours, and narrows depth.
David Cameron said,
Our message in this local election campaign is simple: vote blue, go green – and save money. Why? Because it goes to the heart of what Conservatives believe.
To answer this, we will return David to the Matrix, where he ought to listen to what this annoying bald child has to say about bending reality, and ‘belief’.
[youtube PyyhWF-bbQU]
But I don’t want to be green!
Yes you do – anyone can be green – it’s a numbers game – environmentalism is a Self-fulfilling ideology that’s bad for people and ultimately the environment – therefore skepticism / progress et al can be said to be good for the planet and “green” and we really can be fighting the powers that be for our world. Phew
You know, it is a sign of just how vacuous is the political debate, and intellectual life in general, in the Western world these days when everything is discussed in terms of Green.
Apart from the shear fraud of man-made global warming, Green is just cypher.
Another beautifully crafted analysis – spot on. It may not be The Matrix we live in but the ‘frying the earth’ disaster predictions are all computer generated so, in that sense, we’re being persuaded to live in a computer projection.
The greens are fundamentally regressive and, where they get control of governmental resources, repressive. Jonah Goldberg in “Liberal Fascism” argues that much of the green ideology is quasi if not actual fascist. Julie Birchill says that, “Green is the first socio-political movement in which every single leader and spokesperson is filthy rich…” and there’s a strong upper-class edge and controlling bossiness to UK greens. They’re into control with an upper and lower-case “c”.
How did we get here? How come the ‘political class’ are addled-brained green believers almost to a man and a woman? The greens, until 15 – 20 years ago were tolerated loopy-loos on the fringes of real politics but they’ve slowly, over at least 40 years, been drip-feeding Western society with a continuous dose of envo-eco bad news. All “manmade” chemicals are bad, ‘pollution’ is rife, thousands of species are becoming extinct, humans are using up the planets resources. The litany of ‘bad things’ is endless and it’s all ‘our fault’. And, more recently and perfectly, they’ve manufactured, with the help of swathes of compliant, well funded scientists, the perfect eco-stick to beat humanity, especially the West, with – carbon. We’re made of carbon, we, and all life on the planet, are carbon-based but now it’s a ‘pollutant’ – we’re a pollutant. It’s perfect on so many levels for beating up horrible humanity and for the masochistic middle-classes to feel further guilt for simply existing.
The success of the loop-loo campaign has happen by accident but the ground, or should I say earth, has been prepared over decades. Prominent, well funded and well connected greens have been sowing the seed in international bodies, like the UN and the EU, for decades and it’s has paid off. They have captured these organisations. But I think all this would still have remained on the fringe but 20 years ago the greens got lucky.
With the collapse of the communist illusion ‘real’ left-right politics collapsed too. Green ‘politics’ has filled the political vacuum but there’s something else psycho-social been going on. With the end of the Cold War the fear of complete nuclear man-made annihilation collapsed as well. But maybe the fear that I lived with through my first 40 years of life has leaked into people’s sub-conscious and that’s what greens have plugged into. During the Cold War we knew we could blow ourselves, all of ourselves, to kingdom come. For the first time in history we could actually destroy our human world. The green doom-laden arguments plug into that cross-generational, existential fear. They got lucky because with the collapse of the communist-capitalist game-show people could turn to their substitute secular Gaia religion but they made a clever psychological and marketing segue. The Cold-War existential fear of nuclear annihilation was transmuted into fear of industrial progress (read rapacious ‘multi-national American capitalism’) consuming and destroying the world. In the Cold-War the risk was real; the eco-doom risk is imagined, computer assisted story-telling, but real for many.
So what is to be done? We need to reclaim the sciences that are used to generate the green doom and challenge the received ‘wisdom’ pumped out by media outlets like the BBC. We need to be clear about the huge amounts of money green groups have and the huge vested interests backing their cause. The greens have created a world wide secular religion with great appeal to the young and naive. If they are organised in networks world-wide, which they are, that suggests that we need to do likewise if we’re going to reclaim the world of human rationality, progress, innovation and self-belief. They’ve been preparing the political ground for year and we will need to too. Julie B says, “Greens don’t hear the screams of people, it seems – they’re deafened by the wail of plants and the cries of the planet”. Protect the human I say. But I am still not sure what ‘real’ politics should look like and where new progressive political ideas, post capitalism-communism are going to come from. Any ideas?
Dear altruist realists all over the world!
Shouldn’t we start protesting against any replacement of the greedy Kyoto protocol with another worse in Copenhagen?
Can self-destructive egomaniacs stop by themselves aztec-like human sacrifices?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiGpL69T8aw