Excommunication from the Ecomentalist Cult
I was commenting on a green "friends’" post when I found that my comments had been removed, as indeed had I. I tried to add a comment and received the message ‘Post has been removed.’ I tried to find the page and found that I had been exiled. If you want to know how people would behave with a little political power, see how they manage their ‘dialogue’ with others. If the communication is one way then it is no communication at all. As annoying as this episode was, it was rather satisfying to have one’s suspicions confirmed, yet again. I once felt a certain pain, a certain feeling of disloyalty, in expressing criticisms of the environmental movement to which I have belonged since the 1980s. But no more. That movement has been taken over by people who practise the worst kind of politics. This politics is characterised by a naïve cynicism that is manipulative to the core, uses fear and threat as tools of communication and motivation, and invites democratic failure to justify authoritarian imposition in the name of ‘necessity’ and ‘emergency.’
I did think to make the title of this piece something much less dramatic and pejorative. But the fact is that the people I am targeting betray all the hallmarks of a cultish mentality: the same monomaniacal fixation – ‘everything’ is climate change – the same religiosity, the same intolerance of dissent. I read critics describe this strain of environmentalism to a new religion, but this somewhat underestimates its dangers – this is not a new religion but a bad religion, one that is big on the ecological sins of others and replaces redemption with retribution and damnation.
I continue to be read by academics and researchers all over the world. I can’t keep up with the messages that come my way. Which is encouraging. The ideas I have sought to develop are filtering out slowly but surely. My biggest regret is to have wasted so much of my time and talent with greens who are no more than activists and ideologues, using fear, threat, and resentment as political tools and threatening to institute, wittingly or otherwise, an authoritarian austerian repression in the name of ‘necessity.’ Such people are neurocrats and to be opposed vehemently. A much better path to the ecological society is available. These characters will betray the right cause into the wrong hands.
But it has been made crystal clear to me that I am the Anti-Christ to the bourgeois – an authentic working class voice who cannot be dismissed as being stupid and who refuses to be hectored and awakened by people who are much less educated and enlightened than they think they are. I contradict their approach to politics and it makes them uncomfortable – for the reason that I am from solid working class stock; for the reason that I am steeped in fact and reason, history, economics, politics, ethics, and philosophy; for the reason that I have been an environmental campaigner involved in various eco-organisations since the 1980s – for the reason I can check and challenge their approach to green politics from within. These people are forever in hectoring and lecturing mode, presuming to know better than the people they harangue. They ‘tell the truth’ to politics at a safe distance from responsibility and the consequences of policy making. They seek power without responsibility. Their approach is the very antithesis of the ‘rational freedom’ I have sought to develop in my work, establishing the conditions of an authentic public realm within moral and social as well as ecological boundaries.
I have been ‘exchanging’ words with green ‘friends’ over social media. I put ‘friends’ in inverted commas for the reason that such people are not friends at all; their loyalty is to symbols rather than persons, to the causes and principles they fetishize and demand sacrifice to. Become critical, ask awkward questions, deviate slightly, or merely refuse to conform and parrot the mantras, and said ‘friends’ become a whole lot less friendly. In fact, they unfriend and block you in no time. They really do not want to be confronted by contrary voices raising difficult issues they would prefer not to address. This is interesting and well worth investigating.
The fact that I have been ‘friends’ with such people for a decade and more, and have frequently expressed support for their positions, would lead you to think they had some kind of personal attachment to you. Not a bit! The evidence is crystal clear that we are in the presence of a cultist mentality, with activists and ideologues dividing the world up into the sheep and the goats, the saved and the damned, the elect and the unredeemed. The irony is that whenever I have questioned such people on class relations and class division they have taken their stand on ‘humanity’ in general, accusing those who speak of class of being divisive and outdated. They have quoted Greta Thunberg to me, to the effect that those still talking of capitalism and socialism are stuck in an ‘unimaginative debate.’ And yet here they are dividing the ‘humanity’ they love in the abstract into the enlightened and the unenlightened as in the elect and the damned. Time and again now I have been excommunicated, silenced, cast to Hades for having had the temerity to ask for clarity with respect to terms and goals. That should make one and all deeply suspicious as to the political implications of such movements: such actions are an indication of how such people would behave with an ounce of power.
One Green ‘friend’ made a series of sneering comments on the ‘fake joy’ of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, seeking in trademark fashion to hijack the event for climate change. On the pretence that ‘nobody ever talks about climate change.’ They have been pulling this trick for years now. I first became sensitive to these hijack tactics at the time of the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, with Thunberg leading the chorus of those asserting that the world needs to act on climate change in like manner. The fire made the headlines for a few days, causing eco-campaigners to lament the lack of attention given to the fact that ‘the planet is on fire.’ I noted the claim that the media never discusses climate change, which struck me as patently false seeing as the media seems to discuss nothing but climate change. Anything happens and ‘it’s climate change.’ It is this that is fake, a fake panic, a fake emergency, all to incite people and governments into an unreasoning response.
There was nothing ‘fake’ about the joy at the Jubilee celebrations. I took part in those celebrations and played a little volunteering role in putting on a Garden Party for those with autism and learning difficulties. It is not merely insulting to call these activities fake, it is ignorant, and that ignorance may well be the most revealing fact of all – these eco-campaigners and activists live in a hermetically sealed world of their own, remote from ‘ordinary’ people and their concerns. They claim to be acting for all humanity but the truth is that they despise human beings in the flesh and blood; they have withdrawn to the Empyrean heights from which to better organise the society they have seceded from. They don’t know real people at all, they have no connection with real people. They sneer at the heartlands and the grassroots, forever lamenting the refusal of people to obey their moral and intellectual superiors. That, I would say, is a wise and rational choice on the part of the people. Those who hector and lecture from the outside and who seek to panic people into a quick and unreasoning response do not have your best interests at heart, only their own interests.
I took one Green to task on his use of the term the “industrial growth society.” I am a critical thinker; I cut my teeth on Kant’s great critiques. In my work I also emphasise that Marx didn’t write theories but engaged in critique; instead of writing of the state or capital or the proletariat as passive objects of knowledge, Marx engaged in immanent critique which focused on the lines of movement, development, and potential. Marx was also good at exposing ideology, the use of terms and phrases to conceal and preserve asymmetrical power relations. Marx also taught the lesson to historicize the things that ideologues sought to naturalize, dissolving abstractions and generalisations such as ‘nature,’ ‘reason,’ and ‘humanity’ into specific social forms and relations. The advantage of this approach emerges clearly in the way that Marx identified capital as a relation and a process as against the bourgeois conception of capital as a ‘thing.’
I looked at the phrase ‘industrial growth society’ and sought a greater socio-economic precision beyond such generalities. ‘Industrial growth society’ is a slippery, ideological, and evasive euphemism for the capital system and its accumulative imperatives. It is these imperatives, in pursuit of exchange value at the expense of use value, that lies at the heart of the social and ecological contradictions of the world today. I would have thought that a valid point for eco-campaigners feigning concern with the deleterious ecological effects of ‘economic growth’ and ‘industrialism’ to take on board. I posted links to a couple of my works explaining these points in depth.
He removed the post. I have had a similar experience with other eco-campaigners. At best, the ones that respond positively, beyond equating socialism with the ecologically destructive Soviet Union, tend without exception to revert to a terminology that strips the sociological dimension out and replaces it with quasi-scientific or technical terms, such as organic vs inorganic growth instead of accumulation and valorisation. The switch that occurs here is significant, because in denuding the issue of “growth” of its precise socio-economic forms, demands for reformation come to focus on technical issues abstracted from the very social relations to be transformed – no transformation will occur, the ecological destruction will continue under a universal form.
These people are fake, phoney; they have an agenda and they are seeking to advance and impose it without check.
One of the most striking things about such people is how immune to criticism they are, the criticism of others but also self-criticism. There is a lack of reflexivity in such movements, organised as they are around a certain set of ‘thoughts.’ Inevitably, such people are prone to errors of groupthink. They see the world only through their own narrow filters, with nothing and no-one else coming into view. Such people endlessly reinforce their own prejudices and seek to impose them on others. They cannot handle questioning and cannot take criticism. It is no surprise that in interview they repeatedly state that their positions are ‘beyond debate.’ Such people do not enter into dialogue with others precisely because they have convinced themselves that they know the truth and that others have nothing of value to say. Engagement with others is by monologue, not dialogue.
This is a disastrous mindset for politics, effectively seeking to insulate a cause or a movement from the very criticism that keeps it in touch with reason, reality, and people. Such people easily mistake error for truth and in the process move further and further away from their ends and ideals.
I’m interested in the socialists who have hitched a ride on the back of the environmental movement, optimistically thinking that the anti-capitalist implications of working within planetary boundaries will lead greens in the direction of eco-socialism. I see precious little evidence of any substantial movement in this direction. On the contrary, whenever I have pushed the case for eco-socialism a little I have encountered scepticism at best and positive resistance in the main. The greens are not for turning! Greens seem congenitally incapable of recognising the socio-political implications of the ecological message with respect to the systemically transgressive nature of the capital system. Time and again they translate the precise sociological terms of accumulation, capital, the commodity form, value form etc into the socially banal terms of ‘growth,’ the ‘materials economy,’ the division between the ‘organic’ and the ‘inorganic.’ It saves them from having to dirty their hands with some real transformative politics, join with the great unwashed in the attempt to supplant existing social forms and replace them with alternate forms. How they think future society will function is a mystery – a government of experts turning the keys of the materials economy seems to be the technocratic fantasy. This is regression to a Saint Simonian position, a socialism without a working class voice and input. The technocrats very excited dream. It is thoroughly reactionary and will result in a perpetuation of the very ‘industrial growth’ system that is driving ecological transgression, no doubt powered by ‘green’ energy under the control of the corporations. Who else? I ask this question of eco-campaigners. I have yet to receive a straight answer. ‘Renewables’ is not an answer to the question of social forms, it is merely a statement of a particular energy forms. Whilst some do go into the democratisation of the energy infrastructure, the dominant voice is one of ‘government’ and ‘renewables’ in abstraction from social forms. These are expensive investments and programmes – again, the question is one of who pays who to do what?
The time is long overdue for bourgeois greens to stop pretending at being radical and actually identify the socio-economic causes of the crisis more precisely (and stop focusing on the easy targets). Having little hope in this direction, it is surely time for those who are socialist to end that bourgeois pretence and force eco-campaigners and activists to confront the precise socio-economic drivers of ecological transgression and then set about the work of social transformation. At present, socialists are riding on the coattails of environmentalism, on the overly optimistic presumption that it is bound to turn socialist on account of the inherently anti-capitalist implications of the ecological concern with planetary boundaries. It ain’t necessarily so. There is a long history of a posh anti-capitalism that leads not to socialism but to the top-down bureaucratic regulation of ‘the economy’ for the public good. A state capitalism, in other words, with the capital logic rooted firmly in place. That’s the direction the dominant strain of environmentalism is heading in, and socialists need to become more critical and much less supportive if environmentalism is to be steered in the direction of a post-capitalist ecological society.
Here is one of the passages I wrote to an eco-campaigner and ‘friend’:
“It would be a great advance if greens stopped hiding the problem behind politically neutral language like “industrial growth society” and instead engaged in a proper critique of political economy, having the guts to name the capital system and identify its component parts precisely, paying particular reference to capital logic, the accumulative dynamic, and the systemic imperatives arising from these. Exchange value is deaf to use value – the source of ecological transgression lies here. Too often, the material relations, class dynamics, and specific social forms lying at the heart of transgression (both social and ecological) are overlooked in favour of sociologically banal language that has no critical and practical purchase on the social world. Translating a socio-economic question into politically neutral technical terms merely deradicalizes the issue and leaves ecology with a lot of impotent ends that are deficient in and even devoid of means and agency. Hence the endless activism and awareness raising and demands levelled upon the abstract collectivity that is ‘government,’ all of which is a sure sign that we are in the presence of an empty signifier. ‘Government’ is a key second order mediation within the capital system, providing a certain order and unity that a fundamentally anarchic and irresponsible system of production cannot supply. The capital system is defined as a competition of capitals. The people who target what they call “fossil fuel capitalism” miss the issue by a wide mark, targeting an energy form rather than the expansionary dynamic of the system itself. In targeting “fossil fuel capitalism,” the term “capitalism” is redundant: the focus is entirely upon the energy form. The result is a continuation of capital logic under a new regime of accumulation, one fuelled by clean, green energy (presuming that there is such a thing). The problem is neither “industry” nor “growth”: these terms explain nothing in themselves and instead require a more sociologically precise explanation in terms of social forms, relations, and division of labour.
I have put these points many times to greens and received bland responses that translate politically loaded socio-economic terms into neutral technical terms: the distinction between organic and inorganic growth, for instance. This is a political neutering that leaves activists and campaigners without political capacity; hence the constant recourse to ‘government’ in the manner of children nagging at parents.
If greens were to get real on class, contradiction, and capital then they might start getting somewhere. Even then, it will be a struggle, for the reason I don’t remotely see an agency with both the will and structural capacity to act. And I don’t see enough people who are committed to engaging in the work of reconstruction: supplanting the capital and commodity forms and creating new forms of mediation to deliver a viable economy is not the work of a summer’s day. I see plenty of activists and campaigners whose view of reality and political possibility is shaped by campaign imperatives. They state at extremes, take outliers in the science, present exceptions as norms, and seek to force action by a combination of fear and threat. That is a very low politics; in fact, it is an anti-politics that threatens to swallow up democracy in an authoritarian imposition.”
These words may be critical, but they are reasonable, and reasoned. I supplied links to my works which developed these points in greater depth. The response? My comments were removed and I was unfriended and blocked, immediately. I was still writing when I realized that I had been summarily dismissed and excommunicated. I attempted to post another comment and was met with the message “Post has been removed.” As indeed had I. The most significant point about this ‘exchange’ is that my removal happened immediately. This person had no time to pause and reflect. I disagreed and therefore I was by definition persona non grata. That reaction doesn’t describe a political movement, it describes a cult. In which case, I am thankful to be out of its clutches.
I shall keep arguing for socialism. We have been living through an age in which the bourgeois voice has dominated in culture and politics and the working class voice has been abused when not being ignored. I’m not taking any of it. I’ll not suffer class war by proxy. The problem today is that far too many activists and campaigners have zero connection with ‘ordinary’ people, and routinely take a sneering tone towards such people. As someone who is very ‘ordinary,’ from a building background and who has worked door-to-door in my community for years, I can tell you that people, being so ‘ordinary,’ note the condescending tone of their would be educators. And being so ‘ordinary,’ people would prefer to be asked rather than told. I have made these points over the years in the hope of overcoming the democratic deficit at the heart of environmental politics. The hostile reaction to my arguments on the part of environmentalists tells me very clearly that this is a movement that cares little for democracy and the people, it simply wants to get its own way any way it can. I have wasted my time seeking to introduce these people in the idea of a democratic green republicanism – they are not interested. It is worth recalling at this point the Social Darwinist and misanthropic menace that has stalked ecology from the first. It is still there, as can be seen in the obsession with overpopulation and population control. You are hardly likely to think much of democracy if you don’t think much of human beings in the first place. I have spent decades willing to be proved wrong on this. Time and again my worst fears have been confirmed.
I have spent the days running up to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee volunteering to put together a Garden Party for people with autism and learning difficulties. Isolated in the best of times, they have suffered badly during lockdown and have been looking forward to celebrating as a little community. I was honoured to have played my part putting up the bunting and blowing up the balloons. I revealed these details to the eco-campaigner who sneered at the ‘fake joy’ of the Jubilee celebrations. I was dismissed and deleted without a word. I contradict the narrative and therefore do not exist. Once more, consider how such people would behave should they ever come to be invested with political power. They see themselves as enlightened despots; the rest of us can see them for what they are: would be universal tyrants. They have contempt for all who think differently, and a positive hatred for all those who challenge, criticise, and question them. They are the very worst people to be leading the environmental cause. The historical record is clear: authoritarian regimes removed from criticism and questioning have the very worst ecological records.
As for ‘fake joy,’ even celebrating in the rain I would say that we the people have more joy and thanks in our hearts than the elect who spend their times sneering at others. Fear, resentment, condescension, threat, contempt, and hatred are not good character traits in anyone, least of all in those who would seek to educate, lead and, heaven forfend, rule society.
There was no ‘fake joy’ among the people I shared the Jubilee celebrations with, and there is nothing fake about me. The people who make these sneering comments merely show how remote they are from real folk. They think people stupid and in need of enlightenment from them. That’s not a good character attitude, least of all when it is possessed by people with a pronounced tendency to conceal social truths behind quasi-scientific terms. Climate change is not the problem, it is the physical manifestation of a problem that lies at the heart of capitalist social forms and relations. Instead of a critical analysis of mediation, all greens like this give us is “government.”
I am rapidly severing my links with eco-campaigners and activists, they are either a blight on their cause or useful idiots for something very smelly, a reboot of the expansionary capital system with promises of clean green energy.
I called one class warrior out directly. This person never ever, not even once, makes reference to class, the working class, and socialism, and refers to ‘ordinary’ people only to express contempt for ‘populism.’ To make a cheap point about the monarchy at the time of the Platinum Jubilee he posed as a class warrior.
I wasn’t prepared to allow such bare faced falseness go unchecked. These are the people who talk normally in the blandest terms of ‘all humanity,’ people who have taken me to task for being divisive in mentioning such ‘us and them’ terms of class. Just don’t come the radical with me! I can spot bourgeois hypocrisy a mile off. I grew up in mining communities hammered during the Miners’ Strike, with the bourgeois cheering the class war being waged so relentlessly from above on.
Another ‘friend’ bit the dust.
Instead of selecting easy, lazy targets like the monarchy, such greens need to have the socialist guts to target the capital system. And by this I mean the capital system, and not merely (some of) the institutions of capitalism (particularly the energy forms in a particular time and place). If greens should come to understand that distinction then they might actually start to get somewhere politically.
I also asked one to “knock it off with the emotional garbage about listening to the children. Be adult enough to do politics for real, as in engage with citizens and respect citizen agency, as against traumatizing and terrorising children and then ask us to listen to how scared they are as they scream out of fear. This is a very low politics indeed. In fact, it is unconscionable.”
He didn’t like the advice and unfriended and blocked me. I stand by the criticism. My only regret is that I have not been more vocal and more public in checking the abuse of the public and of children on the part of these campaigners much sooner. Their behaviour has been reprehensible. Critics have noted that their behaviour is counter-productive in that it turns people against their cause rather than persuades them to it. The truth is that these campaigners are not out to persuade: they don’t give a damn about democracy. They have it in their stupid fanatical heads that all they need is a critical mass of 3% support to engineer change. They cite historical examples in a way that indicates that they know nothing of history. Bad history and bad politics is what happens when STEM people do history and politics. But that is a calumny against STEM people. The truth is we are dealing with activists and fanatics who claim some kind of scientific background. STEM people tend to be much wiser and more cautious in their pronouncements and actions. It’s more a case of bastard scientism on the part of people who treat human beings as manipulable objects. This is entirely the wrong direction for environmentalism to be moving in.
I’ve done my best to help and have no time left for people who scotomize specific social forms, class relations, capital logic.
I supplied a link to this work of mine from 2018, “Social Restitution and Metabolic Restoration in the Thought of Karl Marx.”
The work was described as “significant and meticulous” in The Socialist Review.
My comment was removed and I was unfriended.
I also supplied a link to my work on Istvan Meszaros, a work praised by John Bellamy Foster, who declared that “there is nothing like it out there.”
Meszaros was writing on the social and ecological limits of the capital system long before The Club of Rome. But with this key difference – Meszaros and those who proceed from the critique of political economy identify the precise social forms driving ecological transgression. Those following the Club of Rome scotomize those forms with vague references to “industrialism.”
That was another comment that was deleted, and immediately. Immediately, as in offering proof positive that certain environmentalists are seeking to impose their truth in circumvention of democracy and democratic institutions and processes. I have spent a lifetime in the environmental movement attempting to develop the moral, civic, social, and political dimension of ecology. It hasn’t been a waste of time. I have done very good work in all those years. What has been a waste of time has been my attempt to interest environmentalists in those profoundly human themes – they are not interested.
I’ll start taking greens seriously again when they cut the fear, threat, and the war of attrition upon the public. These things won’t lead to the ecological society at all, but to an austerian but still accumulative regime under the pretence of ‘saving the planet.’
Always I ask environmentalists the question:
Who has the capacity and resources to push technology to scale and implement extensive and expensive climate programmes?
I give them a clue: Not green hippies with startup companies.
I have never received a straight and clear answer yet, only, at best, statements of ‘necessity,’ with the implication that ‘any means necessary’ are justified. In the main my question is ignored, because environmentalists either don’t have an answer or don’t like the answer, preferring to carry on out of wishful thinking or knowing they have been found out.
A good rule of thumb in politics is never to trust those who would evade scrutiny, and who prefer to drown clarity in banality. If you hear someone singing some variant of ‘we are the world,’ be sceptical, be critical, question, and refuse support if answers are not forthcoming.
The extension and entrenchment of the corporate form will proceed unabated if environmentalism continues along these lines. And the socialists who are taking a ride will be left high and dry as soon as a deal is cut with those who have the power and resources to drive the eco-programmes through.
As for eco-campaigners, activists, and greens, they are not a homogenous group. The footsoldiers are a very different bunch to the strategists and architects. They are a mix of idealists, utopians, and cynics.
Many are nowhere near as naïve as they seem with their vague statements of ‘humanity’ in general; the ‘classless’ appeal on the part of a very distinctive class of people reveals some very consistent themes. They work to an agenda, through existing institutions, from the global level to ngos and not-for-profit organisations, which will reproduce capital under the corporate green form.
The extent to which “truth tellers” hide from truth is revealing. They are gutless and authoritarian, and entirely untrustworthy. I have started to challenge these people directly, rather than my usual modus operandi in offering indirect criticisms in the hope that they take the ‘hints’ and mend the error of their ways. In making these critical comments I call upon those concerned with the current civilizational crisis to identify the capital system in its various forms of mediation and stop hiding behind terms like “industrial growth society.” My experience has not been remotely encouraging – such people become immediately hostile. The response is always and exactly the same – the removal of comments, unfriending and blocking. I know for a fact that they are trained to do this, because one such would-be universal environmental reformer told me, as he tried to recruit me to the elect. So much for years of ‘friendship.’ In being critical and asking questions I had revealed myself to be a member of the awkward squad and was promptly discarded without a qualm. These people are callous and inhuman and are the very last people we need in politics. We can understand clearly how such people would have no qualms in waging psychic war against people in order to terrorize them into action. These people are sociopaths, about as far away from notions of ecological health and happiness as it is possible to be.
I have known for a long time now that such people are fake. I have grown tired of their indifference to the arguments I make on ecology and so switched to questioning them directly. Rather than respond to my critical points on the expansionary dynamic of the capital system, these people unfriend and block, perform an act of excommunication. There is no doubt that I rock the green corporate boat.
These campaigners do not engage with people. They “tell the truth” and subject people to their attrition. Or they seek to recruit people, radicalise and terrorize people, have them repeating mantras, and telling the world how scared they are.
These people are authoritarian and gutless. They are terrorising the public. They are stealing the radical moment, diverting and perverting it into sterile forms. I wasted years with them. I have proof positive that they are no good. These people currently dominate the “radical” voice in politics, and they are reactionary to the core. You can kiss goodbye to socialism.
Ask these people awkward questions about class and capital and they unfriend and block you. They are suspicious characters in the extreme.
I’m not silenced easily and am one who tracks those who would bully, silence, and suppress others down. I find them and call them out for what they are – cowards and authoritarians. The only thing left to work out is whether they are useful idiots or actively working as part of a corporate agenda. I suspect that many of them are active in the lower levels of the ngos and ‘philanthropic’ organisations funded by the corporatations and linked to the UN. They seem benign in themselves but are complicit in something much greater and much less benign. The fact that they don’t like awkward questions concerning political economy has the red alarms ringing loud immediately. I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them. We need the voice of ‘ordinary’ people back and quickly, because politics and culture is dominated at present by "neurocrats.” They will take us to the madhouse.
I also note the extent to which fear is involved whenever we are in the presence of with a rank bad politics. Fear is a very low politics indeed and I constantly warn people not to use it as a tool to motivate people and incite them to action. Call me idealistic, but I think human beings are at their best when they are reasoning beings, reason with its moral component in place.
There are people out there who are sanctimonious, self-righteous, authoritarian to the core and gutless when challenged. But it should come as no surprise that people who make a big thing of “telling the truth” don’t actually respond to contrary, critical voices – they presume others have nothing to say.
Years ago I wrote of a certain kind of people who want to put politics and people on ice. They assert pre-political truths to citizens and politicians in a way that is a direct assault on democracy and the principle of self-assumed obligation. They are a blight. And I have their number.
Surveying social media, I have noticed how many people are activists and ideologues first and last, or just plain narcissists. How incongruous it is to see such people discover ‘the poor’ and even the working class, becoming class warriors in order to criticize the monarchy. “Forget the jubilee, feed the poor,” says one person who never pays any attention to the poor, never mentions the poor let alone does anything for the poor. A popular meme has a photo of a royal banquet with the words “this is why we have foodbanks.” I asked a number of people who posted this whether they have actually helped out at food banks. You must be joking! The same with a prominent climate change campaigner, dabbling at the radical end of the politics pool, even hinting at class division. I have spent decades trying to induce such greens to engage in class analysis, only to be accused of engaging in “us” and “them” thinking. They are not interested in a genuine class analysis, and they have certainly never showed any interest in class. Their politics is full of sociological generalities and banalities such as “humanity” and “nature.” Their sudden concern for ‘the poor’ and taste for class war is motivated purely by their need to abuse the Royal Family. Behind the pretence of expressing concern for the little people lies resentment. It is a resentment born of a lack of power and capacity, itself the result of their failure to put a shift in and build and sustain the material counter-organisations capable of restituting social power. They are weak and bitter people, crying out for public community but not having the first idea how to build it. It is not justice and equality that motivates the ideologues but resentment. The extent to which they appropriate the voice of the poor to themselves is revealing. The poor are just tools of political resentment. These people do not speak for the poor, certainly not for the working class. I should know. These have been my “friends” on Facebook for too long for the good of my peace of mind. They are the people who dominate leftist and green politics at a distance from ‘ordinary’ people, ensuring such politics is always lacking in popular appeal. They don’t care about the poor, they care about themselves and their own pet peeves. I called out the character who posed as a class warrior and made a remark about the “fake joy” around the Jubilee. I called out his attempt to wage class war by proxy, presenting my solid working class credentials and setting them against his impeccably bourgeois and privileged background. He didn’t like it and promptly unfriended and blocked me. Good riddance. The only fakes here are people like him. He is among those people currently waging a war of attrition against ‘ordinary’ members of the public seeking to go about their normal lives. Such people have zero connection with ‘ordinary’ people and zero concern with class, poverty, equality, and everyday social struggle. How do I know? I have had to suffer them recycling their pet peeves every day on social media for a decade. Whenever I call their bluff they unfriend me. Check them, counter them, ask awkward questions and they block, silence, and suppress. Like all cowards they are authoritarian to the core. These people are fake radicals who are blocking the space for a genuine radicalism.
I tracked one of my excommunicators down and delivered some hard truths:
I have noticed how many of those who are most insistent on “telling the truth” are much less keen on addressing any hard truths and even harder questions that come their way. A few years ago I wrote on the tendency of eco-campaigners to put people and politics on ice. Beyond the fear, the mantras, and “the science,” such people are socio-economically and politically illiterate. There is a democratic deficit at the heart of environmentalism that will rebound badly on the ecological cause. I have been a member of The Green Party, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and many more such organisations since the 1980s. Sadly, ‘greens’ have never done politics well and seem to have zero social roots – hence the constant recourse to fear and force. I had thought to add my own skills and experience over the years to overcome this deficiency. I have helped PhD candidates over the years in developing a “Green Republicanism.” I may as well have been writing in hieroglyphs for all the attention campaigners and activists have paid to that work. I offer a very different kind of ecology, one without fear and resentment, without the condescension, and certainly without the authoritarian streak. People who can’t answer pertinent questions, and who prefer generalities and banalities instead, shouldn’t be anywhere near politics.
In recent years I have also had reason to warn greens of the dangers of overspill and appropriation with respect to climate emergency. Escalating fear around the figure of “necessity” without paying sufficient attention agency with the organisational and structural power to act invites appropriation by those forces with the resources to push ambitious policies through and implement ambitious programmes. That may well be the end game of the strategists. If you do a little research you soon start to identify the complex web of connections. My concern is that the idealists pushing for change for the right reasons are being duped into performing the role of useful idiots. This is the radical moment and it is being wasted. Fear and wishful thinking are a blight on radical politics. The new environmentalism is riddled with authoritarianism, seeking to dictate truth to others from outside of the political arena, silencing and suppressing contrary voices. Politics is dissensus. Those who seek to silence and suppress are looking to bring the curtain down on politics – and democracy. Sadly, I am encountering a long line of eco-campaigners and activists who are unable to answer difficult questions, and who seek to ignore, even suppress, instead. That is always a sure sign that there is something badly wrong in a movement. You don’t like those terrible “c” words – “capital,” “class,” and “contradiction.” I’ll add another “c” word you won’t like: “coward.”
Another ‘friend,’ one who is also somewhat green but a whole lot more socialist, posted this article on her FB page: ‘Recovering the Legacy of Marxism in the Face of the Ecological Crisis.’
‘Good luck with this one,’ I wished her. I explained how I had been unfriended and blocked by a prominent eco-campaigner when asking for greater clarity and precision with respect to politically neutral - and evasive - terms like “industrial growth society.” These people pose as rebels and radicals but are as safe as houses. ‘I struggled with some demons, they were middle class and tame,’ sang Leonard Cohen. These ‘radicals’ are bourgeois and tame. And they don’t like working class oiks like me talking bluntly about socialism. We probably eat the wrong end of the asparagus, too (if we even know what asparagus is .. What is asparagus, by the way?). They are monomaniacally focused on their ends. Such people have gone through their entitled and privileged lives getting what they want, and they take the same attitude to politics. They seek to silence and suppress contrary voices.
This article covers the same ground covered by the two works I posted to underline the relevance of Marx’s critical analysis to the ecological contradictions of the capital system. I also noted that Istvan Meszaros’ work predated that of The Club of Rome, and focused on the socio-economic drivers in a way the latter did not. Both works were hard graft on my part, coming a year after I had suffered a massive and near fatal heart attack. Both works received good critical review, by John Bellamy Foster, The Socialist Review, and other places. The response? I got deleted and blocked without a word, dismissed as if I were a pauper in the presence of a prince.
As disgusted as I was, this episode actually cheered me in some way. I felt like a burden had been lifted. No longer would I have to maintain the pretence of being united in common cause with these people, no longer would I feel the pains of having to be loyal to people whose politics, actions, and ideas I did not share, even if I shared the end of planetary health and harmony. I was free at last. In all those years of association I had hoped that some few of the eco-activists and campaigners would read at least a little something of my views. Not a bit of it – they already have their worldview, their orders, their plans and designs – they are in full execution mode.
You are left wondering what game these people are up to. I asked a relevent question about agency – who has the power and resources to push technology to the scale involved in these ambitious climate programmes?
It’s a legitimate question. This person either didn’t know the answer or didn’t want to risk losing the bland support eco-campaigns cultivate by revealing the less-than-appealing hard-headed answer.
I never get a straight answer to that question. I also note the slight of hand that occurs when the supposed radical assault is on what is called “fossil fuel capitalism,” the "capitalism" quickly becoming a redundant term. Either such people think that a change in energy form constitutes ‘system change’ or they are trying to convince – as in ‘con’ – others that it is. Radical terms are being appropriated and misused to less than radical ends, and in public view. They have broad numbers of people complicit in their expropriation.
I have neither the time nor the energy to go through the environmental movement differentiating between the useful idiots and the strategists for the corporate form. I don’t trust any of them: well-intentioned or otherwise the result is the same.
These cretins still think nature and science and classless assertions of harmony are enough. That is so lame as to be laughable. Except that the errors are deadly serious in their implications and consequencs. I would caution environmentalists to watch out for overspill and appropriation with respect to climate "necessity" - appropriation by some very nasty forces. With people as socio-economically and politically illiterate as this, it will be a walkover for the corporate form.
There is something rotten in the state of environmentalism. Some of the most basic lessons of political history have either been forgotten, not been learned in the first place, or are being consciously and deliberately disregarded through the descent into fanaticism. The ends, no matter how important, are never of such overriding importance as to justify any means. Once you have justified the means in this way, the door is open to others to employ precisely the same means in order to obtain ends of which you may not approve. This basic lesson of history is not to be discarded because of what you consider to be the urgency of the situation. Bad process will always but always return to consume the best of ends and pervert them into their opposite.
I am well aware that that point is likely to be appreciated most of all by those still on nodding terms with the common moral reason, and not at all by fanatics who make their cause one of such overriding importance that basic decencies and niceties are trampled underfoot. Our best hope lies in appealing to the former whilst opposing vehemently the latter. I make this point not to reject the ecological message but to rescue it from the hands of those who would betray it to the most anti-ecological of political forms, that of the megamachine. It beggars belief that people who are most insistent on the ecological cause would so easily countenance a political authoritarianism and centralisation that is opposed at every point to ecological principle. Such people are that most dangerous of creatures in politics – hopeless, impotent, desperate, and clueless.
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