AnarchoNinaAnalyzes on Nostr: It's not very often I come across and article in the Guardian that A) agrees so ...
It's not very often I come across and article in the Guardian that A) agrees so completely with my positions on culpability, collaboration, corruption and climate crisis, while also B) is written well enough that I wish I'd penned it myself.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/30/our-leaders-are-collaborators-with-fossil-fuel-colonialists-this-is-the-source-of-our-communal-dread
Our leaders are collaborators with fossil fuel colonialists. This is the source of our communal dread
"Fanon saw that the terrible hardships of the struggle for liberation could be endured because the promise of freedom kept hope alive in the people. Seventy years later, in the grip of a global emergency whose tribulations are being visited upon the poorest of us already, few of our leaders inspire the hope and solidarity that could help us fight, endure and survive. Liberation doesn’t interest them. Many are devoted servants of the status quo. Which is a polite way of saying they’re collaborators.
They’re so ensnared in webs of patronage and co-option they can neither see nor acknowledge our real predicament, which is a state of global subjugation to fossil capitalism. What they offer us – young and old – is business as usual, and for all their deluded airs of respectability and legitimacy, our leaders are largely agents of desolation.
Deep down we know it. This is the source of our communal dread. Few of us want to admit it, but what we’re experiencing is the horror of resignation, the humiliation of captivity and the shame of collaboration."
Look, you may choose to quibble with Winton's choice of comparing Pig Empire subjects with colonized peoples if you want, although I would say that having read Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and C.L.R. James I have never been able to unsee the reality that colonialism and the brutality necessary to maintain it dehumanizes and debases both the colonizer and the colonized. What you cannot quibble with however, and what I've been writing about for ten years now, is the idea that our leaders have clearly sold us down the river to billionaire extractivists who'd rather install fascist dictatorships while billions die and the world boils like soup, than give up the wealth and power afforded to them by fossil fuels and the capitalist order that depends on it. Even now, we live in states and societies that are spending infinite money on walls, armaments, and security forces while doing precisely nothing about preventing climate catastrophe and the very real human cost that will come of it. When our rulers do nothing about fossil fuel capitalism and babble about fantastic net zero pledges and magical future tech that will save us, while buying bombs, bullets, and militarized policemen as the world grows hotter and hotter, you'd have to be some kind of rube not to realize they're gearing up to protect rich people, extractivism, and the capitalist order from you and yours when the shit hits the fan - and man, the shit is hitting the fan as we speak.
At some point the people around me are going to have to accept reality here and then ask themselves a simple question; are you ready to die in a world of scorching heat, ash and rising water so rich people can keep making five points a share on the fossil fuels and capitalist economy that's killing you? My bet is the answer is no for most of the billions of us who *aren't* rich nazis planning to crawl away to bunkers in New Zealand or run to Mars with Elon Musk, but I do admit that as the hour grows late I'm becoming increasingly concerned that I might be wrong about that. One thing I can say, and I'm sure Winton would agree, is that our so called leaders aren't going to tell us it's time to take back our power, and they're already helping to protect the rich people planning to murder billions rather than give up fossil fuels and capitalism, from us. Who watches the watchmen, when all the watchmen have been bought? If not us, the people, then the answer is no one.
#ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #Revolution #Colonialism #Collaborators
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/30/our-leaders-are-collaborators-with-fossil-fuel-colonialists-this-is-the-source-of-our-communal-dread
Our leaders are collaborators with fossil fuel colonialists. This is the source of our communal dread
"Fanon saw that the terrible hardships of the struggle for liberation could be endured because the promise of freedom kept hope alive in the people. Seventy years later, in the grip of a global emergency whose tribulations are being visited upon the poorest of us already, few of our leaders inspire the hope and solidarity that could help us fight, endure and survive. Liberation doesn’t interest them. Many are devoted servants of the status quo. Which is a polite way of saying they’re collaborators.
They’re so ensnared in webs of patronage and co-option they can neither see nor acknowledge our real predicament, which is a state of global subjugation to fossil capitalism. What they offer us – young and old – is business as usual, and for all their deluded airs of respectability and legitimacy, our leaders are largely agents of desolation.
Deep down we know it. This is the source of our communal dread. Few of us want to admit it, but what we’re experiencing is the horror of resignation, the humiliation of captivity and the shame of collaboration."
Look, you may choose to quibble with Winton's choice of comparing Pig Empire subjects with colonized peoples if you want, although I would say that having read Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and C.L.R. James I have never been able to unsee the reality that colonialism and the brutality necessary to maintain it dehumanizes and debases both the colonizer and the colonized. What you cannot quibble with however, and what I've been writing about for ten years now, is the idea that our leaders have clearly sold us down the river to billionaire extractivists who'd rather install fascist dictatorships while billions die and the world boils like soup, than give up the wealth and power afforded to them by fossil fuels and the capitalist order that depends on it. Even now, we live in states and societies that are spending infinite money on walls, armaments, and security forces while doing precisely nothing about preventing climate catastrophe and the very real human cost that will come of it. When our rulers do nothing about fossil fuel capitalism and babble about fantastic net zero pledges and magical future tech that will save us, while buying bombs, bullets, and militarized policemen as the world grows hotter and hotter, you'd have to be some kind of rube not to realize they're gearing up to protect rich people, extractivism, and the capitalist order from you and yours when the shit hits the fan - and man, the shit is hitting the fan as we speak.
At some point the people around me are going to have to accept reality here and then ask themselves a simple question; are you ready to die in a world of scorching heat, ash and rising water so rich people can keep making five points a share on the fossil fuels and capitalist economy that's killing you? My bet is the answer is no for most of the billions of us who *aren't* rich nazis planning to crawl away to bunkers in New Zealand or run to Mars with Elon Musk, but I do admit that as the hour grows late I'm becoming increasingly concerned that I might be wrong about that. One thing I can say, and I'm sure Winton would agree, is that our so called leaders aren't going to tell us it's time to take back our power, and they're already helping to protect the rich people planning to murder billions rather than give up fossil fuels and capitalism, from us. Who watches the watchmen, when all the watchmen have been bought? If not us, the people, then the answer is no one.
#ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #Revolution #Colonialism #Collaborators