In the late ’80s, a friend of mine had a conversation with a couple of Trotskyist acquaintances, where she got them to admit that there just was no point in having any politics without addressing sustainability issues. Whereas I agree with her about this, there are clearly also political positions which allow for non-sustainable options, such as driving the human race to extinction for the sake of the planet. This is a form of accelerationism and I’ll return to it in another post, but in general, most people are expected to agree that the long-term survival of the human race, or a fraction of it, is something they could get on board with, and to be honest I do think that could be a positive thing. It would be hypocritical for someone with grandchildren to be anti-natalist, although they may have changed their minds since they had children or may have had children against their will or better judgement, so it is possible. Given the current forced-birth movement in the US, this is indeed a plausible scenario, and it has also been in the past. Nonetheless it doesn’t apply to me. Consequently, no opposition to effective measures being taken to extend our long-term survival is consistent with such politics. What I’m saying, to put it simply, is that if you believe people being around in the future is a good thing, you can’t oppose effective measures to manage, for instance, climate change. If you do, your politics are worthless in that respect.
So, suppose you are a supporter of the current fascistic régime in the United States. Leaving aside your support for fascism, for once maybe tolerating that as a viable political position, you cannot support opposition to environmental sustainability. It may be that the current approach to relieving climate change is ineffective, but it’s a reality and urgently needs addressing. You can question the effectiveness of the measures, but you can’t support one of the largest industrially-active nations in the world opposing attempts to do something about it, because if you do that your politics don’t matter. Policies are unlikely to be realised in a post-apocalyptic world.
Other measures being taken are, well I would say equally bad but in fact the sheer scale of the approach to climate change dwarfs the others. However, a major one of these is to erode pandemic readiness and the ability to counteract research into addressing the dangers of a new pandemic if it does occur, because the chances are that it will and that it’ll be more severe if, again, a nation of that size actively avoids doing something about bird ‘flu. Again this just means that many millions of people will die. Whatever leads to this mind set has to be opposed, again regardless of what one’s politics are further down the line from this.
So that’s one thing. What else?
That a lot of what’s going on is a distraction from other things which are taking place too. Trump himself is a distraction. In a sense he doesn’t matter. Nor does Elon Musk. There are not shadowy people behind a curtain orchestrating this either. This has been thrown up by the inevitable and impersonal economic and political forces operating within capitalism. Apparent leaders are insignificant on the whole, and by focussing on Trump we’re kind of playing into what “they” want. Nonetheless their actions are important. It’s also important to be wary about paying too much attention to them. That said, it’d be weird not to talk about these antics.
The very obvious one is Musk’s Nazi salute, and this in fact highlights a lot about the character of world leaders in recent decades. It seems edgelordy – deliberately provocative and extreme and possibly insincere. There are a couple of issues with his behaviour. One is that attempts have been made to excuse it on the basis of being on the spectrum. There are clearly aspects of this which do reflect this, for instance he may have expected his audience to return the salute, which obviously wouldn’t happen, but none of these are adequate excuses. That specific piece of behaviour may be associated with other behaviours, and in fact is, such as calling the caver who refused his submarine to rescue the scout troop in Thailand a paedophile, which demonstrate that he’s not fit to be in the role he’s been placed in, and that in fact is rather a long thread to be pulled regarding others in office. The real difficulty is that Musk is a fifty-three year old man behaving like a thirteen year old boy. This, one might think, is exceptional but unfortunately it isn’t, and it’s not new either. I first noticed this in about 1991 at the age of twenty-three when George Bush senior did himself no favours in the negotiations to prevent the Gulf War and again behaved like a juvenile. The world is being run by little boys. I’m not entirely keen on this characterisation because it seems insulting to little boys, but there’s a strong element of egocentrism and emotional immaturity in their behaviour. As I say, this isn’t new. Caligula and Nero spring to mind, for example. That said, we particularly cannot afford for men behaving like that to be in esteemed positions nowadays with the likes of the climate crisis, risk of weapons of mass destruction use and pandemics ready to rage across the planet.
Then there’s the question of Panama, Canada and Denmark. Panama, sadly, is business as usual because it seems very much to be the continuing pursuit of US foreign policy in Latin America which has been going on for a very long time now. The reason I want to focus here on what’s happening in the North is that Denmark and Canada are both in NATO. I also recognise the importance of self-determination for those living in Kalallit Nunaat, also known as Greenland, and Canada. The history of élite White people’s relationships with these peoples is liable to introduce more than a little nervousness into their reaction to Trump’s idea of Manifest Destiny here. In fact, this is also the case with ICE harassment of the Navajo and I’m guessing others in the past few days, on their own territory. I don’t want to ignore any of this but I do want to focus on Denmark because that’s what’s been made most prominent by the media lately.
Denmark is a NATO member, and famously an attack on one NATO member is considered an attack on all by the organisation. Clearly the US is a NATO member, implying that by doing this, Trump has attacked his own country, but more importantly the most obvious thing to do next would be for NATO members to declare war on the US. That wouldn’t be a good thing, and there are other practical considerations such as the situation in the Ukraine which mean that having been stimulated to shore up defences in Kalaallit Nunaat, resources may be taken away from other areas. At the moment, many Scandinavian citizens want their own nations to break off diplomatic relations with the US. It’s also worth bearing in mind that in a sense, Trump has declared war on his own nation, and this is very close to being true in the sense that even the people who voted for him are being ill-treated by the government. It’s not just a metaphor that this has happened, and it’s vital that we remember that millions of American citizens, many of whom would never have considered voting for him, are now going to suffer as a result of his election.
More widely, we have Starmer continuing, so far as I know, not to condemn the régime officially. We now have quite a number of wealthy Western nations who have been royally pissed off by their actions and it seems evident that some kind of alliance against them is becoming ever-more practical. Although I have little faith in FPTP, it seems to me now that voting for a party led by someone who has not openly condemned a fascist régime in spite of the likelihood of support from others is unacceptable and tantamount to supporting the fascists. I realise that Starmer doesn’t speak for everyone, but continuing to be a Labour MP or MSP in these circumstances is no longer okay. A breakaway left wing party does seem feasible but right now I feel I’ve reached the point where I can no longer reconcile supporting them with my conscience. And you may say this’ll just let the Conservatives back in, but the fact is that the Labour Party’s whole thing right now seems to be just saying they’re not the Tories, without actually doing much that’s any good. They’ve come out and said their priority is economic growth, which is reason enough to oppose them. But this is what’s happening in Britain, not America.
So I don’t know, other stuff may come up, I may have forgotten stuff and this has been a bit of a ramble, so what’s the take away from this? I suppose to return to my original point: if you support any régime which is actively working to worsen climate change and reduce biodiversity, you are either child-free or don’t care about your children or grandchildren, even if you are a fascist.
A Box Of Chocolates 