See atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen’s presentation on how collectivist revolutionaries shifted, in the 1970s, to demonize fossil fuels/CO2 as the more effective means for destroying Western societies (the link for his presentation is below, with summary quotes). Politicians and other Western elites then joined the crusade for the trillions of dollars involved. Lindzen also notes the corruption of “science” in this crusade.
Fear-mongering and shifts toward irrationally dangerous salvation schemes, Wendell Krossa
This is generally an anti-alarmism site, but I also fully recognize the potency of alarmist narratives to incite fear and render populations susceptible to irrational and destructive salvation schemes to “save the world”. Apocalyptic narratives exaggerate threats, exaggerate and demonize differing others as irredeemable enemies, and that can engender irrational hysteria that begins to dangerously toy with shifts toward “exterminate or be exterminated” solutions to the imagined apocalyptic scenarios and threatening enemies.
We like to think the madness of the last century (i.e. two world wars) was a one-off at some final stage of history. Maybe, but maybe not.
Here’s hoping the saner leaders in our countries can help us find our way through this current spasm of insanity.
Note the “madness of crowds” episode that we are in the midst of right now- i.e. the “climate crisis” crusade and its Net Zero decarbonization project that is ruining societies like Britain, Germany, Canada, and more. Again, sources like the Net Zero Watch newsletter of Global Warming Policy foundation keep us up to date on the ongoing destruction in those societies. Also, see Wattsupwiththat.com for good reports on climate and energy issues.
We are on dangerous ground when we become susceptible to embracing a deformed version of the hero’s quest that has been distorted under the influence of apocalyptic-scale exaggeration and harasses us to engage some imagined righteous battle to conquer and purge an exaggerated monster/enemy that purportedly threatens our world. Add alarmist prophets who actually set dates for the “end of days” as climate alarmists have done for 3 decades now and thereby incite public panic to hysterical levels, Chicken Little levels.
And with the other features in a deformed hero’s quest (note the full complex listed below) so also watch the exaggeration of “evil enemies” that are so dehumanized they cannot be contacted, engaged, or compromised with, but must be exterminated. Well, then we are now in real “madness of crowds” territory.
Examples: Look at Joe Biden refusing to talk to Putin and now playing an insane game of escalation with missiles, hoping to outguess what the other side might do in response. And look at the insane demonizing of those who do try to engage enemies in hopes of reaching some peace accord- i.e. Tulsi Gabbard demonized as a “Russian asset” for advocating contact with Assad and Putin. Mica and Joe of MSNBC were recently blasted by fellow leftists for contacting the demonized “orange monster” Trump, whom Progressives claimed should never be “normalized”.
Such is the insanity that results from engaging narratives of apocalyptic-scale threats and exaggerated demonization of differing others as irredeemable enemies.
Note:
“Orange monster, Hitler, fascist, racist…”, these and other smears result from irrational fear-mongering and excessive demonization of differing others that feeds into the dangerous late-phase shifts of apocalyptic crusade leaders toward violent purging as necessary to their salvation scheme, the demand to exterminate the purported threats to their world.
I would also toss into the mix, to understand what is going on, the totalitarian’s formula, the elite formula of “fear=control”. This formula is evident in the constant elite push to establish and maintain the elite-commoner divide in societies.
Apocalyptic millennialism- Still a clear and present danger, Wendell Krossa
This below is from research on the “apocalyptic millennial” complex of themes that were behind the Marxism and Nazism crusades of last century and are now driving the environmental alarmism crusade, along with inciting/validating resurging collectivism in new versions like leftist Woke Progressivism.
The full complex of apocalyptic alarmism mythology: this reposting from below…
“This apocalyptic millennial complex is better understood when fleshed out as the larger complex of primitive myths that includes-
“(1) The baseline myth of a lost original paradise- i.e. a better past that “corrupt, evil humans” have ruined. That undergirds the sense of the loss of something good and, hence, now unbalanced justice demands that that the lost good must be restored in order to rebalance justice and righteousness in the cosmos and life. To make things right again.
“Consequent to the myth of a better past that has been ruined, primitive mythology pivoted to (2) blame people, to blame humanity as the evil enemy that must be punished and even exterminated in order to restore the lost paradise and to save life. In contemporary terms- today the evil enemy of nature is greedy, consuming humans in industrial civilization. And even more specifically, greedy humans using natural resources like fossil fuels that enables them to enjoy the good life.
“Then to further re-enforce the narrative that evil humans had ruined divine nature (i.e. Earth as goddess), the ancients added the ongoing threat that (3) life was declining toward apocalyptic ending. And to even further re-enforce alarm, apocalyptic prophets repeatedly set “always imminent” dates to raise hysteria levels and validate the use of desperate measures to “save” the world that was always threatened by the looming apocalypse.
“But also, the apocalyptic alarmists introduced “hope” into the mix, the perverse version of hope that was built on the violent destruction of enemies. And they create salvation schemes where specially enlightened elites lecture the ignorant and unenlightened commoners on what they must do to be saved from imminent destruction and death- i.e. (4) demand some sacrifice/payment. Today’s sacrifice- “de-growth, de-development”, as a return to primitivism as in a return to the more pure and strong existence of “noble savage” life as hunter-gathers with no ecological footprint. Add to this sacrifice/payment element, the redistribution programs pushed in the endless annual climate COPs.
“Couch this madness in a deformed version of the hero’s quest where those identifying as true heroes will engage a righteous tribal battle to conquer and (5) violently purge a purported monster/enemy identified as demonized fellow humans.
“And when the enemy is fully purged/exterminated, then (6) salvation is attained in a renewed communal paradise.
“Most critical to understand in this set of primitive themes is- What is the driving Force behind this complex? What is the “cohering center” of this complex that has wreaked so much destruction across history? What validates the rest of the primitive and distorting ideas in the complex?
The cohering center is none other than the “wrathful” deity of all primitive mythologies, the deity royally pissed at humans for ruining his original perfect paradise. Hence, the subsequent threats of divine retaliation toward humanity by violently destroying the entire world in an apocalypse. The mother of all hissy fits. Followed by divine demands for sacrifice/payment/suffering as required conditions to achieve redemption.
“The cohering center of the apocalyptic millennial complex of myths is the violent, destroying God who threatens people in this life through natural disasters, disease, accidents, and predatory cruelty, and also threatens people with after-life harm that adds sting to death. That “monster God” is the central issue to deal with in apocalyptic millennial complexes of myths. That psycho-pathological version of deity has dominated mythologies and religions across history and has now been transformed into secular/ideological systems of belief to also dominate those. I.e. “Vengeful Gaia, punitive Universe, angry Planet/Mother Earth, payback karma”, etc.
“These deeply embedded themes, long entrenched in human psyches as subconscious archetypes, help explain why emotional satisfaction, not rational evidence is behind our choice in beliefs. Hence, many people simply respond to contemporary apocalyptic millennial narratives, whether Marxist collectivism or climate apocalyptic, because they feel right, good, just, and true. They resonate with deeply embedded archetypes.”
(End of reposting)
Also, a repost once more of Kristian Niemietz’s comments in ch.10 of his book “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”.
His point again: “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”
My previous post on this:
“Niemietz highlights a critical issue to understanding the root of contemporary psychopathological problems such as the continuing wide embrace of destructive narratives like socialism and climate crisis alarmism. He states that “emotional satisfaction not rational logic or evidence determines our choice in beliefs”. Emotional satisfaction is our intuitive response to subconscious impulses and archetypes, things that we don’t consciously question. They just are.
“We embrace certain ideas, themes, belief systems because they intuitively feel right, true, and good. This is due to the reality that they have long been deeply embedded in human subconscious thereby creating the “collective unconscious” that Jung refers to, the collective subconscious of humanity that we see expressed repeatedly and endlessly across history in the great public meta-narratives of religion and in the secular ideologies of the modern era that have adopted the same core themes of the religious precedents.
“Hence, many of us intuitively respond to the same old themes and narratives just as Joseph Campbell noted, in stating that people have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world.
“This helps to understand why people today hear another “new” apocalyptic millennial narrative like “climate crisis” and intuitively, subconsciously affirm it because it presents the same basic archetypes as ever before that resonate with emotional felt needs and personal narratives of populations. That happened with Marxism and Nazism and is now happening with environmental alarmism, as also with Woke Progressivism, a version of neo-collectivism similar to past versions of socialism.
“Many respond subconsciously to such crusades as “righteous battles for oppressed people” and subsequently are not able to admit to the evidence of destructive outcomes. The emotional affirmation of embracing a movement that is outwardly presented as right, true, and just, overwhelms rationality and evidence. People just affirm the crusade because the core themes resonate with deeply embedded archetypes in their subconscious.
““Emotional satisfaction”- the comforting and self-validating belief that we are part of something true, right, and good. That we are the “righteous heroes fighting a just war against evil enemies”. Even that we are on God’s side, the side of good in the great cosmic wars of good against evil.”
(End of reposting)
Continuing…
Get a good grasp of the basic themes of the apocalyptic millennial complex listed above. Those themes will help you to better understand the argument of historians like James Tabor that Paul’s apocalyptic Christ has been the most dominant influence on Western civilization. Paul’s Christ has been most singularly responsible for re-enforcing the primitive psycho-pathology of apocalyptic millennialism in Western narratives, consciousness, and societies.
Why bother? The outcomes from the apocalyptic millennial complex continue to ruin lives and societies, even to mass-harm scale. That makes it critical to understand this complex of contributing factors and how to counter them in human narratives.
The line of descent of this complex of themes runs down from the earliest written mythologies of the Sumerians/Akkadians/Babylonians/Egyptians to Zoroaster’s formalization of apocalyptic millennialism, that then shaped Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in our Western tradition. The apocalyptic millennial complex then continued into the modern era, still dominant in the world religions, and also through the 19th Century ideology of Declinism (mythology secularized as ideology, even science). Declinism then shaped the more recent varieties of apocalyptic millennial narratives in Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.
It is irresponsible to avoid confronting the apocalyptic millennial ideas behind the apocalyptic crusades of today (i.e. in resurging Marxism, in climate crisis alarmism). The irresponsibility relates to the dangerous element in the apocalyptic millennial mix of the “demand to purge some threatening evil”, to coercively and violently purge some imagined threat to life.
Richard Landes has spoken well to the refusal of Western intellectuals to acknowledge the “debt to Christianity” behind their Marxist heroes. They wanted to view Marxism in terms of the “modernity project of the French Revolution” and not as a crusade of backward religious extremists.
Continuing with the theme of demand for purging of evil…
When the element of violent purging is framed in terms of today’s all-too-common deformation of the Hero’s quest as an unchallengeable “righteous battle against irredeemable evil”, evil that must be purged in order “to save the world that is on the brink of soon ending”, well, now you are placing yourself inside a narrative bubble of dangerously extremist and irrational delusion.
Yes, there are authentic battles against evil in life, but some of today’s imagined battles against evil have been horrifically deformed as in the exaggerations of apocalyptic climate narratives (i.e. CO2- the food of all life- now demonized as the evil threat to be purged, a “pollutant/poison”, and natural climate changes as warning signs of imminent apocalypse).
Others have deformed the Hero’s quest in the resurging collectivist battle against what is claimed to be the evil of Classic Liberalism or liberal democracy (i.e. prosperous industrial, technological civilization), and purging this system in order to restore the imagined original communalist paradise that has been ruined and lost.
A repeated argument on this site…. The deforming of the Hero’s quest arises from people giving way to their dark impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
Richard Landes notes in “Heaven On Earth” that the threat from the element of violent purging becomes more critical as the alarmist crusades appear to be collapsing/losing. Then the apocalyptic crusade leaders “double down in desperation” and even move toward the late-stage phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”.
We can see elements of this dangerous shift to extermination, to “double down” solutions emerging in the climate crusade madness- i.e. Al Gore’s increasingly enraged frustration at people not listening to his narrative, and John Kerry’s similarly enraged demands to get rid of the First Amendment that hinders his totalitarian alarmist consensus. And we see this extermination urge in Justin Trudeau doubling down on his decarbonization madness even as it further ruins Canada. Delusional self-righteousness is blind to outcomes in the mass-harm consequences of Net Zero policies.
We also see this dangerous shift to extermination solutions in Putin’s fear of losing the war he started and lowering his threshold standards for using nuclear weapons. And we see it in Biden’s decisions to increase escalation in the Ukraine war to “save democracy” (i.e. with US personnel required in the latest launch of “ATACMS” missiles into Russia as noted by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn in their latest “America This Week”, Nov. 22, 2024). The Ukraine war was incited partly by the US/CIA involvement in overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Ukraine back in 2014. And so on.
Note this recent comment from Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn after Ukraine was given the go-ahead by Biden to use the US “ATACMS” missiles…
“Keir Starmer himself… (said), “No, we can’t back off the use of these missiles, we have to double down.”
Minds/populations subjected to endless apocalyptic-scale hysteria- i.e. climate or other- then experience aroused survival impulses and consequently succumb to irrational “salvation” schemes. Then life becomes exposed to dangerous actions and counter-responses as the consequence of leaders “doubling down” on their crusades and even making the decision to shift toward exterminate or be exterminated solutions.
As someone said, “War is insanity”. That mass-death insanity is the outcome of populations driven to irrationality by apocalyptic alarmism, and susceptible to demands for violent purging as part of the salvation schemes of their alarmist prophets.
Read the historical research that has already been done in great detail. I post those historians repeatedly here (Herman, Landes, Mendel, Redles, etc.). We need to learn from history if we are not to repeat another episode of madness once again.
Note: Once again, note the alternatives to apocalyptic millennialism in “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives” http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
This illustrative bit of commentary from two of the best on world events– Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn. These two are worth subscribing to- transcripts available at their site on Racket News.
Here is my post to a discussion group urging them to read Taibbi and Kirn…
“Guys, this comes with an urgent- “All of you read this”. There are some absolutely insane things happening in the world today and mainstream media largely ignore it all. Trump has voiced his concern that this is the greatest threat today, not global warming but nuclear warming. Not to affirm exaggerated doom and gloom but just to note some dangerous shifts and gamesmanship going on… dangerous poker moves..
“Historian Richard Landes noted the patterns of apocalyptic millennial movements. Most interesting was his research on the stage when movements appear to be collapsing, losing. And then leaders, disillusioned with the looming collapse, will choose to “double down” in desperation, and even shift toward the extremely dangerous phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”. We saw Hitler do exactly that as his war effort began collapsing around him.
And we are hearing the same arguments from Al Gore, John Kerry, and others as the climate apocalypse crusade appears to be collapsing. So also, similar dangerous murmurings are coming out of Ukraine as both sides fear losing.
Taibbi and Kirn try to describe the level of irresponsible insanity going on now as Western decision/makers play poker with nuclear war gambling. And no quibble with their comment that in all this “Trudeau is looking more and more like a gibbering idiot”.” His idiocy has more to do with the climate file as he and his environmental extremist pal Stephen Guilbeault “double down” on decarbonizing Canada. Trying to do as much further damage as they can before the door hits their asses on the way out.
“Transcript- America This Week, November 22, 2024: Gambling with Nukes: The US and Britain ‘double down’ over Ukraine, firing missiles into Russia. Strategic or insane?”, Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-november-59e
This sample line of comments from Taibbi and Kirn: They express exactly the outcome of what the apocalyptic millennial scholars detail in the patterns of apocalyptic movements, such as the dangerous shift to “doubling down” and moving toward “exterminate or be exterminated” madness…
Taibbi notes a New York Times story where “Biden allows Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range US missiles.” He then acknowledges that he initially under-reacted to how serious this was. As he adds, “for the first time in this conflict, Joe Biden is giving permission for Ukraine to use these ATACMS missiles.”
He continues, stating that these hypersonic, long-range weapons can only be launched by American of NATO personnel, not by Ukrainians. And the Russians know this.
Walter Kirn responds, “This is a real boundary that’s been crossed, and people come back at me, mostly automated people, part of this strange social media army that is meant to slowly lull you into World War III, and say, yeah, but it’s just a capacity, it’s just a capability, they don’t necessarily use them.” His point is- that is delusional thinking.
Taibbi then goes on to make the point of the danger in “doubling down” on this insane game of gamesmanship escalation: “The missiles, the first ATACMS landed on Tuesday, then the Storm Shadows hit on Wednesday, and in between there was an amazing moment where Sir Keir Starmer himself talked about how we have to, ‘No, we can’t back off the use of these missiles, we have to double down.’…”
“Sir Keir Starmer: We must double down on our support for Ukraine…. I’ve been really clear for a long time now that we need to double down…”
Starmer is asked by a reporter if this is dangerous: “How do you respond to the risk of the escalation triggering World War III?”.
Starmer replies once again, “My number one issue here at the G20 is to make sure that we absolutely double down on…”
Taibbi comments on Starmer’s response: “It’s amazing. He’s like a robot, right? He starts…”
Kirn then adds, “He is a disgusting, risible robot. The scariest thing about all this is this guy expects to walk the earth after all this is over. Or does he? Because I can tell you, if this goes bad, if this goes sideways, these people are absolutely personally responsible. And I call them the Biden missiles, or the Sullivan missiles, or the Blinken missiles, or the Harris missiles because there’s somebody at the helm and forgetting that and acting like this is some weather event is ridiculous. People are doing this, and this guy, with his double down, that’s a poker term you asshole.”
Then Taibbi again: “That’s what I mean. I thought it was so significant that he used that term twice, by the way.”
Kirn: “I think it was three times.”
“Matt Taibbi: Three times. Was it three times?
“Walter Kirn: He tripled down on double down.”
They continue, with Kirn stating, “Who cares about all the rules anymore? Who cares about the norms? Dude, they just broke the biggest norm in history, which was to send our missiles into a nuclear state to land and explode. That’s the biggest norm in American or world history since those kind of things were invented, frankly….
“It is beyond insane and it will not end well, Matt…. When this missile went off this morning, every power in the world that has modern warning systems had an alarm go off…
“For the first moments after its launched, the United States had to assume that it was under nuclear attack.”
And so on in their discussion…
Later, Taibbi and Kirn comment on how the wealthy people apparently running things from behind the scenes actually embrace the insanity of apocalyptic mythology (irrational madness) and they game-plan how they can survive in the post-apocalyptic world. This is beyond irrational lunacy…
Kirn talks about a college friend of his who directed his play on nuclear gamesmanship and then that friend was asked to meet with “extremely rich hedge fund types”. The friend thought the wealthy wanted a speech about futurism but instead they asked him specifically, “In a post-civilized world, how will we control our slaves? How will we control our servants? Will we have to use shock collars? What other techniques could we use?”
Kirn continues, “Now, there are people among you, and they are unfortunately your leadership, who think this way. And America has to wake up to the fact that all these jokes about Oprah and Zuckerberg and so on, building their arks in Hawaii, those aren’t jokes. All the people who are getting New Zealand citizenship or somehow rights to build or live there, those aren’t jokes. All these jokes about people with private jets who can take off at a moment’s notice to anywhere in the world, those aren’t jokes. These are the people who are running things and they are considering the world from the point of view of their own incentives and their own capabilities, and they differ vastly from ours.”
(End of quoted comments. See full discussion at ‘subscribed’ link above. Again, Taibbi and Kirn are so worth subscribing to for their commentary on world events.)
“Manufacturing consensus on climate change: How a political movement invented its own scientific basis”, Richard Lindzen Nov. 21, 2024
https://americanmind.org/salvo/manufacturing-consensus-on-climate-change/
Atmospheric physicist Lindzen presents his detailed explanation of how anti-capitalist Marxist revolutionaries decided to move into the Western environmental movement in the 1970s. This did not mean abandoning the traditional collectivist takeover of “the means of production”, as in the business/commerce sector of societies. It was the recognition that it would be more effective to destroy industrial capitalist civilization by going after the energy sources (fossil fuels) that fuel the industrial civilization. That would be more successful to destroying capitalist societies. And of course, CO2 naturally became the demonized core villain of their project to destroy Western societies.
Politicians and other Western elites then joined this crusade for the trillions of dollars being funnelled to environmental programs like Net Zero decarbonization.
Lindzen notes how the claim to “science” was part of this program. He details the march of the revolutionaries through educational systems, then the capture of professional societies as part of the program, and on through the rest of Western societies.
Quotes from link:
“I think it would be a mistake to ignore he traditional focus of revolutionary movements on the means of production. The vehicle for this was the capture of the environmental movement. Prior to 1970, the focus of this movement was on things like whales, endangered species, landscape, clean air and water, and population. However, with the first Earth Day in April of 1970, the primary focus turned to the energy sector—which, after all, is fundamental to all production and, relatedly, involves trillions of dollars. As we will see, this last item was fundamental.”
This on the mindless embrace of decarbonization by Western elites, politicians and others:
“Of course, the attraction of power is not the only thing motivating politicians. The ability to award trillions of dollars to reorient our energy sector means that there are recipients of these trillions of dollars…
“Virtue signaling elites promised to achieve net zero emissions within a decade (or two, or three) without the faintest idea of how to achieve this without destroying their society.”
See full presentation at link above.
“Richard Lindzen is emeritus professor of meteorology at MIT, where he was the Alfred P. Sloan Professor, beginning in 1983.”
Where are the steel-spined heroes to pushback against the ongoing drift of our societies into Woke Progressive extremism and its “climate apocalypse” madness?, Wendell Krossa
Whoever this is (a brief 4 mins video), he nails some of the factors at play in the “War on the West” (title of Douglas Murray’s book). Britain (the original home of Classic Liberalism) has been central to promoting the decline of Western Classic Liberalism or liberal democracy. Notably, the conservatives in Britain have been at the forefront of this decline by mindlessly shifting along with others over the past decade or so into extremist Woke Progressivism and “climate crisis” insanity. I mean, WTF, eh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoB7W8qF4L4
Net Zero Watch (i.e. the newsletter of Global Warming Policy Foundation) has long covered one element in the mix, the mindless/spineless embrace by conservatives of the climate alarmism crusade and its decarbonization salvation scheme (“save the world”) that has been ruining Britain as it has ruined other societies, notably cases like Germany, Canada, California, Nigeria, and more.
Note the current emerging mess in Nigeria, now due to the decarbonization madness being pushed on developing countries by wealthy Western elites caught up in the insanity of virtue-signaling heroism in fighting an imaginary monster (i.e. CO2):
Add examples from Germany…
The hope element in this is the emerging populist pushback. “Populist” in that it involves all sectors of Western societies, from left to right, with moderates, independents, and others in between. The pushback of commoners against out-of-touch elites captured by extreme leftist Woke Progressivism (the latest “new front” of neo-collectivism).