Diseases of Socialism: Of Watermelons and the Environment
There was an old adage, which like most such things is not necessarily 100% accurate, which said an organisation that is not explicitly right wing - or to add libertarian - becomes left wing (I am paraphrasing). And this is a major problem. Why? You ask. Well, let me tell you.
To start, I will define, for those who do not know, a watermelon. You may tend to believe the following:
*“Watermelon Citrullus lanatus var. lanatus is a scrambling and trailing vine in the flowering plant family Cucurbitaceae. The species originated in southern Africa, and there is evidence of its cultivation in Ancient Egypt. It is grown in tropical and sub-tropical areas worldwide for its large edible fruit, also known as a watermelon, which is a special kind of berry with a hard rind and no internal division, botanically called a pepo.” (Wikipedia)
In this particular context, you would be wrong. A watermelon is, in fact not a vine, but a member of European Green Parties and Environmental movements. Watermelon as in green (environmentalist) on the outside, but red (socialist) on the inside. Socialism, you see, is a common disease that afflicts many organisations. The infection is quickly spread and can cause a lot of damage.
This is a common MO of socialists, to infiltrate various organisations and try to use whatever purpose that organisation has to push their ideology. It has its origins in the whole critical theory, cultural Marxist thing, Frankfurt School, whatever you want to call it. This is generally bad for the organisation. A lot of people, who may support the goals of the organisation, will be turned away by the underlying socialism. You see this even in very important fields like education. Universities were thoroughly infected, and mistrust of higher education is increasing in many societies.
To take a small example, in Britain the lefties attached themselves to the gay marriage campaign. After this was accomplished, several organisations advocating for this disbanded. Soon, the sewer which is The Guardian newspaper started printing articles about how the fight is not done, and the campaigning needs to continue for higher taxes and social justice, although a good number of LGBT people did not really care for this, just for marriage. But the left attached themselves to this cause to try and high-jack it for other purposes. The same was with a whole bunch of articles in US newspapers that were shocked at the existence of LGBT organisation for gun rights, Pink Pistols and others. Because gun control is a leftist cause, the left had hijacked all LGBT causes, so it was naturally assumed that all LGBT people support all leftist causes. This is not only wrong, it is, or should be, insulting for people, to be generalized in such a fashion.
The thing with all this is that, like in old mystery novels, sooner or later, you find out that the culprit was capitalism all along, no matter the cause. This is a major issue due to the simple fact that when you have a clear cause, you do not want other things distracting from that simple cause. It is much easier to achieve on result at a time than trying to change all society at once.
Human beings are biased, and ideological bias seems to be the worst, more so than financial bias, let’s say. Due to the existence of bias in anything, the last thing you want to do is introduce even more. If you do, then everything is discredited. Let’s say we ask ourselves the question is meat healthy. When asking this question, we need to analyse the effects of mean consumption on human health. That is it. Questions of environmental impact or animal welfare, for example, have no bearing on this. That is an entirely different question. So if animal welfare concerns are introduced, that will make that medical research more biased, and much worse.
It is quite counterproductive for many people to associate environmental movement with socialism. There are a lot of conservative conservationists, hell they often like the outdoor even more than lefties, and want to protect the environment. Introduce socialism, it all falls apart. If protecting the environment is your main cause, you need to see how to best achieve this, not whatever social justice causes lefties try attach to it.
The environmental movement was quickly adopted by leftists, who want to extend government control. If you look at the economic policies of most green parties, they are explicitly leftist. Many of the prominent members were socialist before they were environmentalists. Every green party is corrupted, like in a bad Kafka rip-off, they metamorphosed into talking watermelons. And they get redder by the day. They don’t even consider market solution for at least part of the environmental problems (it is one thing to carefully consider and decide against and another to dismiss outright)
This changes everything, they said (also in the title of a worthless book by a worthless author). Only this phrasing shows the true intent. It’s not about the environment, just another way to push socialism. Aha now we found the real way to get our idiotic ideology going, after all other ways were rejected. Well let me tell you, dear friends and reader, this doesn’t change shit.
The whole socialist environment premise is bullshit. They say that capitalism needs to end to save the environment. This is factually incorrect. In fact, capitalism can be the best thing going forward, allowing wealth creating and innovation to give the tools necessary to protect the environment. Socialist countries have a history of being much much worse (see the Aral Sea, for just one example). They can’t even claim that was not real stateless socialism, because environmental socialists explicitly call for some top men to control things, can’t trust the plebs with the environment.
Let me tell you a little secret. Environment, my fine pedigree chums, is a luxury for wealthy people. And you can see this every day. When a parent has a child crying of hunger and no food, they will not think about preserving the environment. It will be far from their minds. Most environmental activists tend to be well off people.
In Africa desperately poor people will not care about preserving the mighty rhino. They will shoot the fucker and sell the horn for the noble goal of Chinese hard-ons. But African areas with more economic development, being private for pay hunting (as distasteful as this may sound) or safaris or whatever have better track records of conservation. It may be counter-intuitive, but letting a few rich old white guys shoot lions may be the best thing to preserve lions.
If you care about the environment, focus on the environment. And the only thing that saves the environment is economic development, or, in other words, the opposite of socialism.