By David Futrelle
There have been a lot of terrible things said in recent days about environmentalists in general and Greta Thunberg in particular. Even our dear impeachable president got into the action, mocking the 16-year-old climate activist in a tweet that Thunberg quickly appropriated ahs her new Twitter bio. Meanwhile, a host of creepy online commenters suggested that Thunberg just needed a good spanking.
But the most unhinged attack on Thunberg I’ve seen so far comes not from some anonymous Tweeter with four followers and an anime avatar but from a writer for The Federalist, Sumantra Maitra, who argues that “Saint Greta” has become the Joan of Arc of a new pagan cult of environmentalism that is trying “not only to turn back time but essentially to destroy the entire current edifice” of Judeo-Christian civilization itself. “The pagan barbarians from the north,” he writes ominously, “are back circling outside the citadel.”
He’s especially perturbed by the protest group “Extinction Rebellion,” which he describes as
an apocalyptic cult that wants to radically end every thing around you, from your private cars to the burgers you eat and the plastic chairs in your yard. It is a cult that was formed after its founder took psychedelic drugs … Members have blocked D.C. and London intersections, “twerking” the way people in a pre-civilized era would perform a fertility dance to pray to Gaia.
And above it all, Maitra writes, floats the spirit of the pagan “Saint Greta, our perpetual teen of sorrow,” whom he compares, in what he sees as a devastating blow, to Joan of Arc — apparently forgetting that Joan wasn’t the product of paganism but of the Judea-Christian civilization he is purportedly defending.
To Maitra , the anger in her voice during her recent speech to the United Nations was evidence of an “emotional meltdown.” Yet, he laments, she was “hailed … as a brave savior as well as a vulnerable, autistic teen who shouldn’t be bullied.” (Evidently he’s a bit chagrined that anyone would speak up against bullying.)
And so, Maitra complains, the allegedly rational forces of climate change denial — sorry, “skepticism” — find themselves up against “barbarians” engaged in
Sexualized dances, psychedelic hallucinogens, worshiping nature, confessing sins in pagan animism, worshiping purified teen saints, and throwing them up on an altar, bereft of their childhood, to promote a greater cause. …
The strangest part of the whole rant is Maitra’s weird paean to old-timey Stalinism. Unlike the new environmentalist pagans, Maitra notes, the old left understood that the earth was there for humans to exploit as ruthlessly as they could. And there’s no way that Stalin would have put up with those awful environmentalist twerkers!
For all the Marxists’ faults, the old left at least wanted to conquer nature instead of turning subservient to it. Of course, that went to its own extremes, but one can imagine Joseph Stalin putting all twerking climate fanatics as mentally ill people in a forced labor camp to build railroads in Siberia.
Apparently Maitra wishes he could do the same. Why is it always the ones who rant about the barbarians who turn out to be the least civilized?
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Maybe he prefers to live in an Amish paradise ?
Ah, yes, those enterprising Marxist-Leninists of the former Soviet Union and their all-conquering approach to nature which gave us such miracles of geoengineering as the disappearance of the Aral Sea:
(Source: ibid.)
Of course, the American Right has apparently never had a problem with contaminated water supplies and high maternity mortality rates.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/27/the-greta-thunberg-problem-so-many-men-freaking-out-about-the-tiny-swedish-climate-demon
@Alan Robertshaw
Ha, ha, I loved that cartoon. It’s true: the entire grim spectacle is also entertaining.
“forced at the pointy end of a knäckebröd”
Best FDOTM ever.
Hello David. Thank you for writing about this. I have linked this post to the Manchester Extinction Rebellion FB page. We are very pleased that they are this frightened.
I have been involved in XR since inception and am most upset to have missed out on all the drugs.
I think this quote is all we need to know about this person: There are two ways to interact – Conquer or be conquered. Exploit or be exploited. Kill the tree or the TREE WILL KILL YOU!
That’s the kind of mentality that children’s TV shows warn about.
Plus, I am sure the Federalist will be delighted to know, there is a Christian group linked to XR, the Christian Climate Action Network. We would be delighted to debate his theological arguments, which are errant nonsense
Eh, more likely they’re just constructing a ludicrous false dichotomy for rhetorical purposes.
I mean…
(Yes. This was intended to be a joke.)
I was at the Animal Rights march in August, which closed down an intersection for about and hour. I don’t remember any twerking happening. We sat and had a picnic and enjoyed the sunny weather.
@Kat:
“But Angela, Connie is good girl, no?”
If this is a tactic, I wonder what he takes to meetings with Trump? Stairs? Rain? Facts?
@Alan
I had a good laugh at that this morning!
I’m a member of Extinction Rebellion and as far as I’m concerned well, yes, frankly, that’s true*. If you can suggest a way in which we can continue to have the lifestyle we have now and still have a planet to live on, there are a lot of people who would be really very interested.
*Apart from the plastic chairs. You already bought them, you might as well use them. Throwing perfectly good chairs away and buying new ones would be a waste of resources.
@Malitia
That drawing made me think of that episode of Danny phantom where these like ghost plants attacked the town and we’re enslaving people.
@Violet:
At least your plastic chairs aren’t releasing a significant amount of plastic into the environment while you’re using them.
It’s from the comic book “Punisher Kill Krew”, where after the last devastating crossover event (“War of the Realms”) the Punisher takes some requests from a bunch of orphans to hunt down the (this time literal) monsters that killed their parents. To date (still ongoing) it included that tree, a cybernetic shark, and cannon fodder, I mean, a lot of frost giants and dark elves.
@Eddie
Wanted to add to your list: tools to process petrochemicals
“Sexualized dances, psychedelic hallucinogens, worshiping nature”
I’m not entirely sure i’m seeing what the problem here is. To me is sounds like an interesting way to spend a Tuesday.
Actually it’s amazing how one young person can utterly flip them out, it’s almost as if they know that they are awful people and lash out when they are called out for being awful people.
@ Podkayne:
What is galling the igno-right isn’t that they’re being “silenced,” it’s that NO ONE IS LISTENING TO THEM ANYMORE.
OT: Computers are learning our implicit biases.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/arts/design/imagenet-trevor-paglen-ai-facial-recognition.html
Their template for how to be is us. Which leads to an interesting problem. Some AI researchers worry about AIs being too unlike humans, to where they develop values wildly different from our own and, if they get powerful, will turn the world into a hell from our perspective, or more likely just something inhospitable, wiping us out quite incidentally in the process.
The opposite danger may also exist: that they’ll be too like us. Then, if they get powerful, they’ll act just like powerful humans have. Which means it’ll be 1492 all over again, with biological humans in the role of the Indians and the machines in the role of conquistadores.
Sounds disturbingly like Skynet, doesn’t it?
well, (as I’m sure you’ve all noticed…) trumpism has certainly ripped the masks off white american men. I apologize to the group, I’m in a funk and I need to vent. I’m a member (7+ years clean) of a fairly well-known recovery fellowship for substance abusers, but I’m unable (unwilling, actually) to go now. The fellowship literature speaks of a spiritual principle:
a principle which I was raised with. But, over the last few years, I’ve been “schooled” that the overt bigotry of some of the members is an “outside issue”, not available for discussion. I just can’t be around people who tell me straight up that my children don’t matter because they’re brown, who wear clothing with hateful slogans, and who openly mock people who are “not like them”… and that I’m less, or other because I object.
I don’t have the fucking spoons to deal with this and take care of myself, too. I also don’t have the tools to take care of myself if I try to sail alone.
I’m tired
@Weird Eddie
I’m sorry you have to deal with that. Are there any other fellowships you could join in your area?
@ Naglfar:
There are, but the problem is, it’s everywhere…. I despise what’s happening to me, I’m becoming a bigot. I’m not just angry, I’m disappointed, embarrassed, hurt, etc., etc., et-fucking-cetera…. I’ve begun to see trumpism as a disease of white men and I’m carrying that into my dialogue with others. That’s not fair, though there IS an argument to be made about toxic masculinity.
Not surprised, though.
Thank you for your concern!
@Weird Eddie
Have you considered seeing a therapist about this? It sounds like that might help with some of what you’re feeling.
@ Naglfar:
Looking up BCBS network shrinks in my area even as we (virtually) speak!
and every time I use my insurance I wonder why EVERYONE can’t get what amounts to FREE medical care….