German Skeptics Report On Risks Of Expressing Climate Views At FFF Friday Strikes … “Bomb” Threat

What follows is a field report from Hanover, Germany, by AGW skeptic organization KlimaKontroverse, who have attempted on multiple occasions to seek a rational dialogue with FridaysforFuture (FFF) demonstrators. Though some demonstrators were civil and polite, others harassed, defamed and even brought in Antifa.

Intolerant times

Taking a different view at a political demonstration in Germany is a risky affair, and could get you a bloody nose, or worse. So it really is an act of courage for these climate skeptic KlimaKontroverse citizens to go out to present their non-conforming views at these FFF demonstrations – especially when one considers how emotionalized and radical some have become.

As Greta has demonstrated herself, there’s lots of pent-up anger, impatience and intolerance out there.

Staying calm and respectful

Personally, as author of this blog, I’m actually considering showing up and joining KlimaKontroverse at an upcoming event. I’m a bit familiar with the KlimaKontroverse people, and I can assure you they are calm, friendly, respectful and go the extra mile to avoid provocation and confrontation.
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FridaysForFuture – and dealing with alternative opinions

by Klaus Öllerer
(German text translated, edited by P. Gosselin)

The FridaysForFuture movement has strict targets that would mean drastic consequences for all of the people living here. But what if you disagree? What if, after an intensive study of these issues, completely different conclusions emerge? Of course, it is obvious to go and discuss them – as is customary in democracy. Or perhaps better – should be usual again.First we began with e-mails and telephone calls offering discussion. No reaction. No willingness to talk to each other. FridaysForFuture did not react.

Some polite, respectful demonstrators

So we went to the climate strike meetings at Kröpcke, distributed our “Open Letter” and tried to get into conversation. Some conversations with participants were constructive and in the spirit of mutual respect. We listened to each other. That was nice.

“Stalking” and intimidation

But some leading persons and FFF orderlies reacted very differently. They stalked us and demanded we leave the square as they grew increasingly angry. We insisted on our democratic right to express our opinion freely in public space. At some point they also approached the police – but the officers agreed with us. We distributed our flyers and discussed with demonstrators (15 February 2019).

“Climate lies”

But at the next demonstration, the FridaysForFuture orderlies thought of something special, and it looked like this: The FFF orderlies brought a bag with the inscription “Klimalügen” (climate lies) and spoke to the passers-by and demonstrators who had taken our flyers. If they managed to convince a passer-by to surrender the flyer, they threw it in the “climate lies” bag. The finale: Our flyers were demonstratively torn in front of our eyes. (15 March 2019).

 

“Bomb” threat

At one of the next demonstrations, we had set up our stand just across from the Hanover main station. The demonstration passed by. The left picture below shows leftist autonomists and Antifa marching up front. They called out aggressively: “Climate deniers! Climate deniers! …”.

Then suddenly someone from the march charged towards our stand (middle picture), threw something under our table and shouted “Bomb!” before quickly running away and rejoining the marchers (right picture). The thrown object turned out to be harmless (5 July 2019).

But even so, KlimaKontroverse.de’s offer to enter a dialogue and to discuss in the truly democratic tradition remains open.

www.KlimaKontroverse.de

About us: We are an initiative in Linden (Germany) that meets regularly at the Freizeitheim in Linden. Easy comprehensibility and the open discussion of different views are at its foreground and should be a trademark of this initiative. KlimaKontroverse.de appears publicly. info@KlimaKontroverse.de, www.KlimaKontroverse.de.

12 responses to “German Skeptics Report On Risks Of Expressing Climate Views At FFF Friday Strikes … “Bomb” Threat”

  1. Mike

    Admiration is the first thing that comes to mind when I read this. Pointlessness is the second. Confusion is the third.

    Does it make sense to go into a any conference of any religious group with flyers showing that they are wrong? Surely the history of the Reformation and counter reformation is example enough of the way it works.

    Religious intolerance is on the rise again. In some way, the old religious ideas have passed their sell by date and have to be discarded whilst the new religious ideas are based on the same principles, but without any divine being. Articles keep popping up online showing the religious and cult like nature of the climate alarmist madness.

    So how can we fight this new cult?
    I think we have to start asking the right questions before we can get the right answers.

    Clearly, as those with a sceptical view know, this whole climate battle is nothing to do with science, so trying to convince people about their folly by tons of scientific information is not going to work.

    Going after the cult leaders like Michael Mann won’t work either. The persecution of the leaders only reinforces the faithful.

    Eventually, like all cults, this one will also diminish and die. It can take a long time though, and a lot of damage can be done along the way.

    The history books of the future will analyse it carefully and document the mass delusion, the heros and villains, and all the signposts and warning signs that were either missed or ignored. The general lack of courage of world leaders to seek truth, and act on it.

    People, including teenagers, have needs. If these needs are not met in some way, they will try to satisfy them in some other way. It is always good to have a world view where there is someone to blame, and something that needs to be done which requires sacrifice.

    1. Georg Thomas

      (1) From my point of view, persistent opposition (to detrimental religious cults) is very important, and so is the dissemination of facts and alternative ways of looking at climate change and other harmful cults.

      Atheism, agnosticism and other challenges to magical thinking by arguments in the tradition of critical rationalism (which does not exempt anything from rational criticism) have eroded religious creeds for many centuries and let in rationalism into our culture – I conjecture: more timely, more powerfully and more fruitfully than would have been the case in the presence of total/greater compliance with religious figments.

      Religions are shot through with cracks of contradictoriness, and the capacity to think critically is always present in human beings, which is why religions evolve and become prey to rational reasoning – originally, protestantism was in some important aspects a rational criticism of undesirable developments in the catholic church.

      In short: challenge (dangerous) irrational beliefs where and whenever you can.

      The masses of hangers-ons are fickle in their “convictions”, especially since CAGW is not rooted in their real life experience, most people participate vicariously in it (and turn against it once it becomes a real life experience when windmills pop up in the vicinity); politicians are even more opportunistic, and they are cynical: the astute among them weigh the likelihood of taking advantage of CAGW-fears against the risk of being proven wrong.

      Radicalism is bad news to them; politicians want to control the population à la Göring (make them think politics is the solution to an impending catastrophe).

      Politicians know that there is no such danger (only look at their policies and you realise they do not act as if they were afraid of an apocalypse within the ever renewed brief deadlines of purported peril), they are not interested in solutions commensurate with the hysteria, but in disarming the people’s minds filling them with magical thinking, thereby making them easy to herd.

      (2) Also, it seems to me that nature in the green mythology is at least implicitly treated as a divine being aping the Christian dichotomous pattern of human sinfulness and divine goodness. The cult was first sanctified by the powers that be in Germany, when in 1983 Bundespräsident von Weizsäcker – currying favour amidst the acid rain scam – told the nation: “Wir müssen die Natur um ihrer selbst schützen” – “we need to protect nature for her own sake”.

      Adulation, “protection”, worshipping of something for its own sake is the hallmark of religion, it means dogmatism, it means giving up critical assessment, amounting to the institution of a higher being – and thus a denaturation of nature; for nature does not have a meaning and significance other than within the system of human notions of nature.

      Nature is not a person capable of rational exchange with human beings, let alone a being equipped to form and express moral concepts that should be exemplary to our species. Yet, this is the primitive religious assumption of the green movement.

      Leave nature to her own devices, take away from human beings their ability to subject nature to our needs, and you will instantly experience that nature is our greatest enemy. It is our incessant and far-reaching intervention in nature that turns her into a helper.

      Handling nature can only be defined relative to human thoughts and needs. Genuine environmentalism, ecological consciousness of a conducive kind can only be conceived of as helping human beings, improving the lot of mankind, fulfilling human needs.

      We are not sinners, we are heroes turning nature into something benign and useful.

    2. Don from OZ

      Mike You are Oh So Right.
      But we can’t just sit back and cop the flack.
      We have to continue spouting the scientific truth in the hope that sooner rather than later the message will get through.
      I am currently in something of a dilemma as to what to write in a letter to a motoring association here in New South Wales, Australia. They produce a bimonthly magazine for assoc. members called OPEN ROAD.
      The last two editions have espoused the need to curb ’emissions’ but with an invite for people (from both sides of the debate) to write in expressing their point of view.
      They are currently in the throes of installing Charging Stations across the State for electric vehicles. Whilst I a non-believer in the whole AGW debate I am in favour of the development of electric vehicles as an alternative to Internal Combustion Engines even though the development of stored energy ( batteries ) has along and arduous road to run in their development – if it is at all possible!.
      My dilemma – How do I convey in a short, concise way where and why we should be heading down that path.

  2. bonbon

    Since there are behavioral psychologists involved with F4F and XR, Tavistock style, be not naive. Major money too.

    Extinction Rebellion’s radical action manual, “This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook,” has been released in German translation, and will serve to mobilize for the protest tent camp in the government district of Berlin, Oct. 5-13. The camp will host XR activists from other European countries as well.

    Some attended training in Switzerland, the NZZ reported, impressed by the communication forms which are trained in the gathering: “to support a proposal, hands are agitated in the air. If one feels attacked, forms a symbolic house over one’s head. And to demand silence, they form a ‘{schweigefuchs}’ with their hands.”

    At least check what is out there….

  3. mwhite

    James Flynn interviewed by Andrew Bolt

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=14&v=l09ii8jxCvw

    book on free speech banned deemed too dangerous to publish.

  4. John F. Hultquist

    The world needs a series of nasty weather events on Fridays.

  5. Truth

    FridaysForFuture Hiding in plain sight. F is 6th letter. 666

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  10. M E Emberson

    It may in fact be better to compare the climate ideology to the odd beliefs of the Gnostics of the Roman Empire who like you were anti Christian Romanticism in Europe in the 19th century was where both your beliefs were revived and flourished in Central Europe.

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