The Swiss online NZZ has a commentary written by Social Sciences Prof. Ulrike Ackermann, Director of the John Stuart Mill Institute for Liberty Research in Heidelberg, read here (in German).It’s no secret that the German Greens have been on the rise and that their movement has spearheaded the drive against the use of fossil fuels and atomic power in Germany and Europe. Ackermann writes: “For the Greens, nature is good, humans are bad” and thus must be always kept under the watchful eye of a powerful, better-knowing state. This means more central (by amateurs) planning, equalization and social uniformity.
It means the destruction of individual responsibility, and thus the individual.
Ackermann reminds us: “History shows us that this is precisely what never has put us on the path to democracy, freedom and prosperity.”
The German Greens advocate massive state intervention and deep interference in our private lives with the aim of squashing individual liberty and independence. The Greens in Berlin, for example, aim to require all do-it-yourself home improvement projects to be subjected to state permitting. This, they say, would ensure cheap and affordable housing. Installing hardwood floors or other similar improvements only serve to make living quarters more luxurious, and thus less affordable to poorer people.
The same massive state intervention is also called for when it comes to transportation. People need to be herded into public transport systems and other forms of “healthy transport modes”…like bicycles, buses, or walking. Airport expansions, on the other hand, are to be stopped at any cost. Ackermann writes:
On the path to this noble target, adult citizens are being treated like children. The program is in ‘easy language’ that is especially designed for people with ‘learning difficulties, reading impairments and speech problems’, and so verily pushes infantilism to a new high.”
To me this indicates that people who do not have the faculties to care for themselves as responsible adults are particularly attracted to Green promises. Green sympathizers probably can be classified in 3 primary categories: 1) people who want to nanny and boss everyone around, 2) people who want to be nannied and bossed around, and 3) the many gullible who actually believe the climate catastrophe scam.
The Green movement of course needs scientific authority to sustain it. This is provided by Hans Schellnhuber’s WBGU, which in English stands for: Scientific Council of the German Government for Global Transformation. Global transformation by Germans?
Here once again we have a few arrogant Germans with an insatiable desire for world domination. One function of the WBGU is, as Ackermann writes:
With a new contract for society, the Council desires to implement the Great Ecological Transformation to a nuclear-free and carbon-free global economy. A powerful, ruling government shall provide for this, and will care for the ‘societal problemtic’ of ‘non-sustainable living styles’. Climate protection will be one of the fundamental targets of the state. Our current parliamentary democratic legal process is to be supplemented by a ‘Future Council’ which will be expressly superordinate over Parliament, party squabbling and conflicting interests, and will be assembled by draw.”
This means a select unelected elitist group of European white guys, would have the final say on global decision making. Clearly the green movement is well on its way to something of quite another color. Ackermann asks:
Haven’t we seen something like this before?”
Ackermann summarizes by writing we do not need a paternalistic, dictatorial state that decides everything for us, thus destroying the individual. Instead, she writes, we need a state that promotes all individuals, their independence, and thus their pride and self responsibility. Only a society that can produce such individuals can expect to see prosperity, justice and equality. The Green Movement will deliver none of that.
Kudos to the NZZ for publishing Prof. Ackermann’s commentary.
Thanks for posting this. I missed that particular mad green idea of having citizens report when some house owner modernizes a bathroom. Berlin is an economical and spiritual basketcase; they wanna make sure it stays that way – that’s fine, we need a big lunatics asylum in Germany.
Didn’t someone in Germany – though a foreigner, I think – make similar moves to dictate what standards we all should live to; back in the 1930s? How much progress did he make with that?
Not only in the 1930s. It’s as old as man.
Spike Milligan: not a foreigner; the guy you’re likely thinking of became a German citizen in 1932 (otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to hold political office). But then, given the situation that brought the fascist dictatorships to power in the 20s and 30s, their Leaders always talked about heavy industrialization and rearmament (as did Lenin & his ilk). Blustering is the lifeblood of every Big Brother, but Germany had been through two crippling instances of hyperinflation and economic crash (as well as the “home front” deprivations of WWI), and the brownshirts knew that talk of “austerity measures” would cost them the support of the people they were claiming to “put on top of the world”. The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for the rest of the regimes, whether nominally communist or fascist. Actual instituted poverty was always sold as temporary, “for the next 20 or so years – but your children will inherit the Paradise of the Workers/the People”. (Sometimes this took on bizarre forms: in 1958 Ulbricht proclaimed “überholen ohne einzuholen” as the economic aim for East Germany: “overtaking (i.e. the West) without catching up”). It was the continued failure to deliver on that long-term prospect that really sapped out all spirit from people finding themselves trapped in these unending nightmares. That’s the difference from today’s Political Religion: they start out with societies so prosperous that the current measures do not (yet) make themselves felt in any glaring way (i.e. economically), and they aim for permanence – as long as Mother Gaia needs their help (and given human nature, they will see to it that it stays that way).
It cuts both ways: Once people start to notice that the sky isn’t falling and that what bites are the consequences of the implementation of world-saving idiocies, they can (and will) consign these guys to the scrap heap of history with little crosses on a piece of paper.
Don’t hold your breath. The German warmists I know personally are True Believers of the Green religion – when CAGW fails, they’ll still uphold eternal austerity as a necessity; nature is holy for them. They’re never thinking economically – spending all your money on a passive house or an electric car is OK when you can reduce your energy usage. Not one of them thinks about the energy expended for e.g. the manufacturing of the battery of the electric car.
They haven’t mentioned CAGW for quite a while now (it would be ridiculous given the weather) – but they still say “We need to reduce our CO2 emissions” – they have internalized it. As soon as you point out to them that reducing CO2 emissions makes no sense when there’s no CAGW, they immediately fall back on peak oil and that we need to preserve oil for future generations – which doesn’t make sense either – when we’re not allowed to use it, why would future generations be?
They’re just not in the business of making sense; they’re in the business of being followers. Being Green/CAGW followers gives them a feeling of doing the right thing. It’s a coping strategy. Somebody (the media) reinforces their feeling of being right if they continue like that.
Fascism has many faces. And it has two definitions (1) a personal attitude, and (2) a state characteristic. The most important goal is to prevent that a state becomes fascist.
[…] Prof. Ulrike Ackermann from the university of Heidelberg has written an extraordinary lucid and clear article in the Neue Zuericher Zeitung. This should be (mandatory ?) reading for every citizen! See also Pierre Gosselin’s comment and partial translation here. […]
In a way, this is funny: Media in the US and in Europe were dead silent about Gore’s CRP – but now on both sides of the Atlantic they’re talking about how he allegedly let slip the “secret” that there will be more than one iPhone model released… Do they do this to humiliate him?
Lengthy article in German about this “exciting” iPhone revelation… and not one word about CRP! And the Sueddeutsche used to be as warmist as they come!
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/apples-smartphone-al-gore-bestaetigt-neue-iphones-1.1147415
Somehow I think our media will soon start the de-programming of the True Believers…
The green movement has not only become a quasi religion and a movement eager to impose dictatorial decisions. It also has a really fascination for masochism, as often found in movements were happiness can only be found by self-imposed pain thought to absolve from a sinful existence.
The attributed behaviour is not isolated to the German Green movement.
It’s on show in Australia, with the political leaders of the Greens in Australia calling for regulation of media, including “new media”. e.g. Blogs and web sites. As The Greens hold the balance of power, they have the left-wing Labor Party of the governing coalition by the proverbials and are ram-rodding through extremely unpopular legislation (80% of the population don’t want a “carbon” tax.)
Under the guidance of the Greens, the government is trying to shut down discussions and ignores dissenting view. It allowed six (6) days for the public to read 1100 pages of new “clean energy” legislation and to respond in writing to an inquiry. Unfortunately, urgent work prevented me from completing a submission to that inquiry; having, it seems, wasted about 4 days reading the legislative swill.
Parliament also denies the science by refusing to have relevant papers tabled by members of parliament.
Missing link … http://joannenova.com.au/2011/09/labor-censors-dennis-jensen-denies-peer-reviewed-science/
You have a kind of one-member-EU down there.
Western Australia has threatened to secede from the Commonwealth on previous occasions. The nett flow of revenue has long been from WA to the Commonwealth; to be distributed in part to our own “Greece”, Tasmania which also has more than its fair share of professional rent-seekers and apathetic useful idiots.
Australia is a federation of sovereign states. Western Australia joined very reluctantly.
In recent times, the productive States of Western Australia and Queensland have simultaneously pondered secession. New mining and “carbon” taxes should encourage even more vigorous discussions to cut the rent-seekers adrift. Both states derive substantial revenue from royalties on mining, and the mining tax shifts that revenue to the federal government. The feds are “making a deal” with the big mining companies, to give them special exemptions from the tax … but, judging by this federal government’s promises, those exemptions won’t last once the laws have been passed.
Alas, regarding secession, in WA we have a gutless nincompoop as Premier, even though he’s from “the other side” of politics. But as you know, self-serving politicians are the same regardless of the colours behind which they hide. It’s all a “game” of getting and hanging onto “power”, regardless of the costs to others.
[…] Gosselin reports on a commentary written by Social Sciences Prof. Ulrike Ackermann, Director of the John Stuart Mill […]
Excellent article by Prof. Ulrike Ackermann. Right on!
Thanks for the translation