Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have published an essay “The Rise of End Times Fascism,” in The Guardian. It’s panic propaganda. The fear this piece intends to spread depends on the audience not actually knowing what populists believe and seek. Klein and Taylor don’t even know what fascism is. It’s not populism. Moreover, the current populism isn’t end times. Panic journalism is typical of Klein. Her books have titles like these: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism; This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate; On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal. She a catastrophist—and a paradigm of projectionism.
A solar flare could knock out the planet’s communication networks and electrical grids (it’s happened before). A company that sells you survival kits for such an event is meeting a need. A criminal or activists could threaten you life and property. A company that sells you a firearm for such an event is meeting a need. Criminal and political violence are real things (both have been on the rise). A pandemic can disrupt supply chains. We just experienced this. A company that sells you medical supplies for such an event is meeting a need. All of these potential crises can be mitigated through preparedness. These are legitimate markets.
What is the need behind the global climate change hysteria? What are the proponents of this view selling? What is the market here? The reduction in coal, gas, and oil to fuel our electrical grid? The reduction in the amount of land in production for food? The campaign to end meat-eating? The project to depopulate the Earth? It’s not global climate change that causes these crises that need mitigating. Reductions in fossil fuels, food production, and the world’s population will cause the crises. So, again, what are they selling? Who benefits from all this?
Reductions in fossil fuels, food production, and the world’s population are drastic actions. The actions are not always secret. Sometimes they are announced and carried out in public view. The United Kingdom is actively funding and initiating experiments aimed at dimming the sun as part of its climate change mitigation strategy. These efforts fall under the umbrella of solar geoengineering, specifically solar radiation management (SRM), which seeks to reflect a portion of sunlight back into space to temporarily cool the planet. Ask yourself, what will be the consequences of dimming the sun?
When you see things like this you should ask what’s behind them. One draws an inference from facts and effects. When you make that rational move, you will be accused of conspiracism. When you buy survival kits, firearms, and medical supplies to protect your family from hurricanes and other natural disasters and from those who mean you harm, you are accused of conspiracism. But preparedness is rational. Giving in to abstract notions of manmade climate catastrophe and allowing governments to dim the sun is irrational. Why are so many people passive in the face of madness?
Even if you don’t care to know what lies behind catastrophism of the progressive project, you know what its effects will be, indeed, they are already manifest in our lives: catastrophe. Don’t let the propagandists and rank-and-file progressive gaslight you. Concern is not paranoia. To be sure, prepare your family for disasters and violence. These are realities. But we can’t participate in elite projects to create disaster and violence. We must oppose them.
freedom and reason 