10 Jan 2008

From Lenin's tomb to Spiked On Line


Just been updating my blog roll and stuck on Lenin's Tomb which is not especially ecosocialist or zen but has some excellent discussions which are worth a look at.

For example this post on the evils of carbon trading is essential:

In 2007, the carbon markets reached an historical peak of $117bn in value, and can only go up from here. The great thing about for investors is that it doesn't rely on the opportunities that markets can independently provide. Rather, governments and inter-governmental institutions can through subsidy and regulation utterly re-order the balance of risks and advantages, create a new set of winners and losers. For this reason, the carbon market has, er, 'weathered' the credit crunch and expanded beyond expectations.

Also put on a link to Paul Kingsnorth, Paul is a good guy, used to be an editor of the Ecologist has written some good books and I ran into him at a Green Left conference a couple of years ago where Joel Kovel was speaking.

This is his guest post from Brendan O'Neill...I ran into Brendan at Doughty Street and he introduced himself and had to admit to him that I preferred the robust but rather calmer criticism of the Economist to Spiked on Line which he runs with.

Any way here he is via Paul.

Regular readers will know that I've long had a beef with the rabidly anti-environmentalist editorial team over at Spiked magazine.

But I thought it was about time we tried to build bridges. So today this blog features its very first guest blogger - Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked, who writes here in a personal capacity.


Hi, I'm Brendan O'Neill - and you are a wanker.

That's a fact - an empirical one. Whether you like it or not.

Let me explain. Not that I need to explain myself to you people. But let me do it anyway because, God knows, you need to be enlightened.

Not that there is a God. And here's why.

One fine day, a long, long time ago, a fish crawled out of a swamp. Not long after that, the fish became a monkey.

Do I need to tell you what happened next?

That's right - the monkey became you. And me. And that's when it all really kicked off. Between us we did great things. Wrote the plays of Shakespeare. Built loads of cool machines. Started tonnes of fuck off big wars. Chopped down loads of crappy forests full of cunty animals and replaced them with roads and shit hot things like that. You and me - we're the fucking greatest. There's nothing we can't do. And believe me, my friends - we haven't even started yet.

But you don't believe me, do you? And that's the whole problem.

Because you people are scared. You look at the grand sweep of human progress, and instead of saying 'Bring it on!', you say 'Eeew! it's big and scary! I'm going back under the blanket with my cup of fucking cocoa!'

Poofters. The lot of you.

Progress, you see, is under threat. It's under threat from you. We've got tonnes of stuff that could make the world even cooler. We could genetically modify ourselves, for instance. I could make myself three mouths, so I could express three times as many groovily controversial opinions at once. You could get yourself a spine (ha!) We could grow tonnes more food to feed poor people so they could get rich like me, which everyone knows is better. We could kill all the fucking flies and shit that sting us. We could build flying cars and warp drives, so we could go off to other planets like Captain Picard. All of this is possible.

Or it would be - if you'd all just die.

Because you lot hate progress, don't you? You hate progress and you hate freedom. Like big, fat, crippled, spastic Luddite elephants, there's nothing you won't do to impede it. 'Climate change!' you whine. 'Oooh, trees and animals!' you squeal. 'Overfishing!' Overfishing? What's that? Never heard of it. Twats.

The reality is, these are all just excuses. Your real agenda is clear for all to see. You hate progress, and machines and freedom and modernity. Most of all, you hate people. You want to kill them all, don't you? Say it. Go on: say it. It's what you're thinking. You're all like that schoolkid who just shot up all his mates in Finland. His mum was an 'environmentalist.' Did you know that? Or did the eco-liberal media keep it from you? Perhaps they didn't tell you that Hitler was a vegetarian either. It's pretty obvious what that means, isn't it? Hmm?

You may not like hearing it, my friends - but it's an empirical fact.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

good read

Have you heard about this?
http://mckinney2008.com

Anonymous said...

Brendan O'Neill writes like a spoilt twelve year old, pathetic! If that is the level of his debate then the Green movement has little to worry about.

Derek Wall said...

This is a spoof of course but go and have a look at his original stuff and see what you think...I up for a bit of well honed critical right wing coment which is why I am a keen Economist reader.

Anonymous said...

Trying to separate spoof from reality is hard some times. Ann Coulter's comments on environmentalism are nearly indistinguishable from this sort of parody:

God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.

Frightening!

Regarding Spiked, should the Green Party legalise Clare Fox Hunting?

Anonymous said...

Derek:

Do you think that people often fetishize the word "socialist"?

I mean, how many people who affiliate themselves with "socialism" could say much about what they consider this "socialism" to be? And if just ten people (who weren't closely tied to one another somehow) did articulate their views on "socialism," how consistent would those views be? The word gets thrown around in a very hollow way; people often affiliate themselves with the word in a way that isn't very meaningful.

The word is always somewhat anti-commercial, and there's always social justice values connected to it, but isn't that about it much of the time? I think so, and I don't see much good in those approaches.

I'm not criticizing you, by the way. I haven't read a lot of your writing yet, so I don't know your views well.

Anonymous said...

On second thought, I think there is a lot of consistency in vague views about socialism. I think most people associate the term with strong "social-democratic" arrangements -- i.e. more state and less market.

There are other approaches to socialism, of course, but it seems that most people who support a version of the concept also strongly support a version of nation-states.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that a lot
of these anti-environmental
groups such as Spiked,
the Ernest Bevin Society and
the Last Super Power group
in Australia, have their
origins in Leninist groups.
I think Leninism is
anti-environmental (see
for instance, Judith Shapiro's
book "Mao's war against Nature") and when many former Leninists
move to the political
right they take these
anti-green beliefs with them.
Indeed Mr. Wall, you mentioned this in your book "Green History"
when you described the
Webbs' approving Stalin's
polluting of Russia.

Derek Wall said...

Well thanks all for some interesting comments....I think this drifting into a discussion of socialism and the environment which is something I can post on.

Most of the left for most of the 20th were hostile to green themes.

I think spiked on line use lots of words including 'green' and 'socialist' in a cartoon hate way.

Interesting to look at the origins of spiked on line (Revolutionery Communist Group) in high tech, growth orientated production for the sake of production versions of Marxism

Must have a look at the book on Mao sometime

My kind of 'ecosocialism' is about commons/open source principles....which is libertarian not state orientated

Anonymous said...

"Most of the left for most of the 20th were hostile to green themes".

Maybe. But there's an interesting
book called "Utopian England"
by Dennis Hardy, where he discusses fringe left-wing
people like Aldous Huxley, Robert
Blatchford & CR Ashbee who
would have held views similar
to "eco-socialism" in that
period (1900-45). It also
mentions groups like
the Woodcraft Folk and
the Garden City movement.
I think there is a small
but strong link between
Victorian "Greens" like Morris & Ruskin,and the 1960s green
movement, that is represented in
Hardy's book.

greenman said...

Hi Derek, with my pedantic lefty trainspotter hat on (!) the Spiked/Institute of Ideas/Furedi-ite crowd grew out of "Living Marxism" (LM) organ of the Revolutionary Communist *Party* which was itself a split from the Revolutionary Communist *Group* (whose organ is/was "Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!") and are a "third-worldist" outfit. I believe both had their roots in a split from the SWP/International Socialists. What lovely things have come out of the SWP (not!)

Kingsnorth's O'Neill spoof is great. Though as has been said, it is difficult to spoof someone like O'Neill whose main purpose in life appears to be being outrageous, offensive and contrarian.

Anonymous said...

You updated the blogroll and took mine off!!! And after you said nice things about my Marxism and Chicken Sheds! lol

Derek Wall said...

I haven't taken you off, I least I don't remember doing so...I suspect it is even worse...you may not have been on the first place...anyway you are on now and very nice blog you have too!

We ought to debate 'Leninists and the environment', lots of Leninist organisations seem to be rethinking the environment and many are talking about ecosocialism...I have certainly had a couple of quite heated but very convival debates with the Socialist Party

AVPS is a member of the SP (for those of you not in the know) and is also a social movement theory person...

I think as I mentioned on your blog
animal issues are a problem for a lot of the left even when environment is addressed

Anonymous said...

My bad, Derek. For some reason I thought I was!

I think a discussion about how green issues have been taken up by Leninist organisations is one well worth having. In fact, I hope to shed a little light on it with my PhD as I did ask comrades about environmentalism, ethical consumption, and the Green Party.

Re: animal rights, Andy recently commented over at Socialist Unity that one of the historical problems of the far left is the lack of resources it has to properly research a whole number of questions. Hence the emphasis in theoretical publications on domestic political questions, international relations, and political economy. Animal rights aren't big on the left's radar, but I do agree, the issue has to be taken up seriously.

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