Recently, the European Institute for Climate and Energy held its annual conference in Germany, with more than 200 attendees. This year, however, the organization met in hiding from the Open Anti-Capitalist Climate Protest, affiliated with the communist domestic terror group Antifa.
The protestors’ goal has been to shut down climate debate through harassment, intimidation, disruption, and violence. Americans are familiar with the violent tendencies of Antifa, but its German counterpart is even more radical and echoes the brownshirt terror of the 1920s-30s. This year, therefore, the climate scientists had to hold their conference at a secret location.
EcoFascism
What were the offending words the ecofascists wanted to prevent the audience from hearing? Speeches with titles like “The Real Condition of the Great Barrier Reef,” “The Influence of Greenhouse Gases on Climate Research,” and “What Role Did the Sun Play in Climate Change” presented by top scientists from all over the world.
The activists, however, were recruited with the narrative that the conference attendants were “near-AfD.” Alternative for Germany (AfD) is a nationalist-populist party that has risen immensely in popularity in recent years due to the influx of Third World migrants. Because supporters of AfD want to limit immigration, Antifa views them as neo-Nazis. Portraying climate scientists and conference attendees as “near-AfD” painted a virtual target on their foreheads.
This confluence of socialism and environmentalism is not new. The National Socialists in Germany were pioneers in vegetarianism, ecological food, renewable energy, and animal welfare. On Aug. 28, 1933, Hermann Göring announced in a radio speech that:
“An absolute and permanent ban on vivisection is not only a necessary law to protect animals and to show sympathy with their pain, but it is also a law for humanity itself … I have therefore announced the immediate prohibition of vivisection and have made the practice a punishable offense in Prussia. Until such time as punishment is pronounced, the culprit shall be lodged in a concentration camp.”
The profound commitment by the Third Reich to totalitarian environmentalism is detailed in Ecofascism: Lessons From the German Experience by author Janet Biehl and associate professor at Marquette University Dr. Peter Staudenmeier.
After Germany’s defeat in World War II, environmentalism was picked up by other socialists, first in the 1960s and then in the 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, disillusioned communists in search of a new leftist ideology became climate activists. Now, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet failure has been forgotten and suppressed, and a new generation of ignorant youth now openly embraces both communism and ecofascism.
Violence Versus Debate
In the good old days of the late 1990s there was still a vigorous and healthy climate debate, and even those who warned of pending doom conceded that the science was shaky and uncertain. Then, as the influence of ecofascism increased, the message was changed to “the science is settled,” even though the evidence is mounting for the climate skeptic position. Now, we see that debate is abandoned altogether in favor of outright threats of violence.
Fascism, in any form, if it is permitted to grow, tends to end in a dark place. On one occasion, Göring sent a fisherman to a concentration camp for cutting up a bait frog. The Enlightenment philosophers valued free speech as the primary value of a free society because they understood that, if debate as an arena for the outlet of disagreement is stifled, the only alternative is violence.
Nowadays, everyone who disagrees with the radical left is branded as racist, misogynist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and transphobic. Even climate scientists skeptical of catastrophic global warming are given the same treatment. Who’s next?
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