If Gordon Brown Insists that the US Buy Into Global Governance, Then This Can Only Be Done at American Constitutional Standards

http://usvisit.pm.gov.uk/2008/04/18/keynote-foreign-policy-speech

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/british-pm-browns-speech-at-the-jfk-library/2454956070 (video of Gordon Brown’s Speech)


Keynote foreign policy speech


Friday 1:09 pm (BST-5) Boston


This is the full text of the Prime Minister’s Kennedy Memorial lecture.


Kennedy Memorial lecture


The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP


Prime Minister of the United Kingdom


18th April 2008


It is a great privilege to be here in Massachusetts, in Boston, and to be present with such distinguished guests in this library where history comes alive and values endure.


And a privilege too to be introduced by Senator Kennedy —– and I cannot speak too highly of the legislative record of Senator Kennedy who has served in the Senate for almost a quarter of the Republic’s life, earned his place as one of the greatest Senators in more than two centuries, and for its record of public service the Kennedy family is respected and renowned not just in this continent but in every continent of the world.


In the years since John F Kennedy’s Presidency:


· man has walked on the surface of the moon - directly as a result of his commitment, made on 25th May 1961;
· the Berlin Wall that he so famously denounced has been reduced to rubble – the Cold War ended, freeing eastern Europe, and making Europe whole again;
· and Nelson Mandela has walked free and apartheid – which John Kennedy denounced as ‘repugnant’ – has been swept away.


Great events, once the vision of one man - now landmarks in the history of the world.


And although he was President for less than three years I believe that the much of the progress of this half century has been testament to the scope of John Kennedy’s dream, the worth of the ideals he lived for, the breadth of hope he inspired in us, and most of all - amid all the wit, style, elegance and statesmanship that adorned the Kennedy Presidency - his summons to service —- one that never fails to inspire people to see farther and reach higher, a call which still reverberates around the world and always will. And his influence for good is so powerful that as Pericles said in ancient times even when he has left this world his influence ‘abides everywhere…woven into the stuff of other men’s lives’.


And although it is perhaps risky for a British Prime Minister to come to speak in Boston shortly before Patriots Day, I am pleased that over the past half century the special relationship between America and Britain which John Kennedy prized remains strong and enduring —- so firmly rooted in our common history, our shared values and in the hearts and minds of our people that no power on earth can drive us apart.

Nothing in President Kennedy’s enduring legacy has greater importance now - at the beginning of the 21st century - than his words on your Independence Day in 1962 when he proposed a new and global declaration of interdependence.


‘Today Americans must learn to think inter-continentally’ he said. ‘Acting alone by ourselves [America] cannot establish justice throughout the world. We cannot ensure America’s domestic tranquillity; provide for its common defence; or promote its general welfare; or secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. But joined with other free nations we can do all this and more’.


So if the 1776 Declaration of Independence stated a self evident truth - that we are all created equal – JFK’s Declaration of Interdependence in 1962 added another self-evident truth: that we are all of us - all of us throughout the world - in this together. Each of us our brother’s keeper, each of us - to quote Martin Luther King - part of an inescapable web of mutuality.


Yet no-one in 1962 could have foreseen the sheer scale of the new global challenges that our growing interdependence brings: their scale, their diversity and the speed with which they have emerged:


· the globalisation of the economy;
· the threat of climate change;
· the long struggle against international terrorism;
· the need to protect millions from violence and conflict and to face up to the international
consequences of poverty and inequality.


Challenges that all point in one direction – to the urgent necessity for global cooperation. For none of them - from economy to environment - can be solved without us finding new ways of working more closely together.


To recognize this is important. But simply to acknowledge that there are no ‘Britain-only’ or ‘Europe-only’ or ‘America-only’ solutions to the global threats and challenges we face - or to say we are all internationalists now - will change nothing in itself.


Instead, we must go much further: acknowledging that our common self-interest as nation states can be realised only by practical cooperation; that ‘responsible sovereignty’ means the acceptance of clear obligations as well as the assertion of rights.


And my argument today is simple:


· global problems require global solutions;


· the greatest of global challenges demands of us the boldest of global reforms;


· the most urgent of tests demand the broadest of global cooperation;


· and to address the worst evils of terrorism, poverty, environmental decay, disease and instability, we urgently need to step out of the mindset of competing interests and instead find common interests – summoning up the best instincts and efforts of humanity in a cooperative endeavour to build new international rules and institutions for the new global era.


[GORDON BROWN SETS FORTH THE MALTHUSIAN SOCIALIST'S 'TOP-TEN' LIST OF THREATS TRIGGER BY 'MARKET FAILURES' TO JUSTIFY A TOP-DOWN UN CENTRALIZED GLOBAL LEGAL, ECONOMIC & POLITICAL GOVERNANCE]


Let me sketch out the challenges we face, the new directions I favour and the solutions I propose.


[1] The first - and perhaps because of the credit crunch the most immediate - challenge is economic globalisation itself.


And does not the recent sharp and still unresolved credit crunch which has affected the whole world now demonstrate that with global flows of capital already replacing the old national flows and global sourcing of goods and services replacing the old local sourcing, national systems of supervision and economic management are simply inadequate to cope with the huge cross-continental flows of capital in this interdependent world?


But is not the issue even bigger than that? That we are seeing in the scale, scope and speed of globalisation the biggest restructuring of economic life since the industrial revolution. Already Asia is manufacturing more than Europe and soon America; China alone is producing half the world’s clothes and half the world’s electronics. And we are only at the beginning of this shifting balance of power as every day more and more of the 4 billion Asian people are entering the world’s industrial economy.


And the reality is that we are all affected now by what happens in Asia or Latin America or Africa. And if we do not work across countries and continents to create a globalisation that is inclusive for all, then not only will the poorest of the world who lose out react to being excluded, but people in our own countries will feel - as many do today - victims not beneficiaries of the process of change - losers and not winners - and protectionist sentiment will gain ground.


I am optimistic about the benefits of interdependence, and certain that globalisation need not be a zero sum game that says if China or India benefits America or Europe loses. Why? Because over the next 25 years we will see the world economy doubling in size, creating a billion new professional or skilled jobs worldwide, offering opportunity for any who have the creativity, ingenuity, skills and talent to benefit - a time of huge opportunity even if it is also a time of change and risk.


And in the spirit of John Kennedy who summoned us to think of how we can make our interdependence work for the benefit of all, I believe a new global deal is possible:


· in the industrial countries like ours a guarantee that even if we cannot keep people in their last job we can ensure people will be able to obtain the next job - through investment in skills and income support wherever necessary;

· and in the poorest countries a new deal that in return for opening up to trade, freeing regimes from corruption and a commitment to economic growth, we support the development of education, infrastructure and healthcare.


And the benefits will flow most widely and more effectively if instead of trying to pursue beggar-my-neighbour policies, or erecting national barriers to shelter people from change, we cooperate across frontiers to maximise the opportunities. But to do this we have no choice now – and his is my main argument - but to consider and agree new global rules and create new global institutions so that not some but all can benefit from change.


[2] And how do we face up to the second great global challenge? — that of climate change which is already creating the first climate change droughts, the first climate change evacuations, the first climate change refugees?


It is this challenge that starkly defines the most basic truth of our human condition: that, if as far ahead as we can foresee, there is no other planet for us and our children - we must cooperate to make our stewardship of this earth work.


So it will not be enough to discuss purely national initiatives or even to quarrel over the burden of sharing emission reductions while global warming continues unchecked. Because global problems cannot be solved without global solutions we need to join together in recognising that cooperation in an interdependent world means a single framework for global and national targets, and for the first time a truly global carbon market.


[PROOF THAT PROPONENTS OF TOP-DOWN UNITED NATIONS-CENTRED GLOBAL GOVERNANCE ARE USING THE ISSUE OF CLIMATE CHANGE TO CALL FOR NEW STRINGENT NON-SCIENCE AND NON-ECONOMICS-BASED PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE REGULATIONS THAT WOULD REACH INTO THE UNITED STATES HEARTLAND AND RESHAPE, 'RENEW' AND 'CHANGE' ITS UNIQUE, INDIVIDUAL-BASED CONSTITUTIONAL LEGAL AND FREE MARKET ECONOMIC SYSTEMS SO THAT THEY MORE CLOSELY RESEMBLE EUROPE'S COMMUNITARIAN NAPOLEONIC CODE, WHICH TELLS PEOPLE WHAT THEY CAN AND CANNOT DO FOR THE SAKE OF THE COMMON GOOD.]


[3] A third force of globalisation is the sobering reality that has already struck home in both Britain and America: that we are exposed - unpredictably but directly - to the risk of violence and instability originating in failed and rogue states around the world. Once we feared rival nations becoming too strong; now the worst threats come from states that are too weak. And we know that the richest citizen in the richest country can be directly affected by what happens to the poorest citizen in the poorest country.


So today no country can say that failed or failing states are someone else’s problem. They are a problem for us all. Instability in one country affects stability in all countries; an injustice anywhere is now a threat to justice everywhere. And that is how we must respond: not walking away as we did in Rwanda at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, but by engaging as hard-headed internationalists - through diplomatic, economic, and yes when necessary military action - to prevent crimes against humanity when states can no longer do so.


Linked to failed and failing states is the spread of international terrorism, in the form of loosely affiliated global networks that threaten us and other nations across oceans and continents — and let me praise President Bush for leading the world in our determination to root out terrorism and our common commitment that there be no safe haven for terrorists.


Where once we imagined that nuclear or biological weapons were a state monopoly, now there is the prospect of hidden unofficial arsenals in the hands of terrorists. And to counter such threats effectively we must work together across national borders.


We will at all times be steadfast and resolute against terrorism at home and abroad using all our resources - military, security, policing, intelligence – to expose and defeat terrorists. And vitally in this struggle we must mobilise the power of ideas, of shared values and of hopes that can win over hearts and minds.


Just as importantly, we must recognize that our enemy, as George Marshall put it in a great speech in Boston sixty years ago, will never be just one country but ‘hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos’. And while today many millions live well, we have 2.5 billion neighbours who subsist on less than 2 dollars a day: a fact that demonstrates what Winston Churchill once called ‘the gaping sorrows of the left out millions’.


And ours is already a world where no ‘us’ - however rich or influential - can pull up the drawbridge in an attempt to gain protection from a ‘them’


New contagious diseases can advance swiftly from the national to the global with all the speed of international air travel.


And as global transport networks and global communications erode or abolish traditional frontiers, national crime all too readily becomes international crime.


So global neighbours are closer than ever before - and we to them. And the critical question is this: how we plan and act together across continents to tackle disease, crime, mass migration and mass poverty?


And we must recognise too that our interdependence in the economy, environment, security, poverty, disease and crime is now underpinned by the truly revolutionary impact of advancing technology whereby a device on a desk or in the palm of our hand puts us in contact with anyone, anywhere, anytime. It is a revolution that is rewiring, multiplying and accelerating social, economic, and political connections within and between our nations, to their total and irreversible transformation. A revolution which potentially transforms democratic life and means the world can never be the same again.

[THIS IS A NUANCED REFERENCE TO THE NEED FOR OBAMA-TYPE 'CHANGE' WHICH LEAVES BEHIND AMERICANS' CONCEPTIONS OF INDIVIDUALISM, FREE MARKETS, AND U.S. CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED RIGHTS, ESPECIALLY TO PRIVATE PROPERTY. ONE NEED ONLY LOOK AT HOW GORDON BROWN IGNORED THE WISHES OF THE BRITISH PEOPLE TO HOLD A REFERENDUM ON THE REFORM EU CONSTITUTION/ TREATY - HE BASICALLY OVERRODE THEIR DUE PROCESS RIGHTS!! NOW HE & HIS EUROPEAN COLLEAGUES WANT THE AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY, SHOULD THEY SECURE THE U.S. PRESIDENCY, TO DO THE SAME - i.e., TO REINTERPRET OR OTHERWISE BURN THE CONSTITUTION IN FAVOR OF A NEW GLOBAL VISION/MISSION. AMERICANS HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW WELL BEFORE THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS].

A few years ago in regime after regime sentries could stand over fax machines as governments sought to deny information to their peoples. Today - as we have seen in Burma - pictures of repression sent across the internet can alert the whole world; and - as we saw in the Philippines - one million people exchanging text messages on mobile phones brought down a country’s leader —- what was called the first ‘coup de text’.


So the dawn of the digital age is enabling people to become the authors of change rather than its subjects, the agents of history rather than its victims. And within a decade or two, it will create a virtual world of individuals speaking instantly across once virtually impassable distances, communities springing up across the internet, a rising sense of global consciousness of millions of global citizens in the making.


To adapt an aphorism of President Kennedy, the new frontier is that there is no frontier…


· no frontier for the internet, for the mobile phone, for e-mails, for the cyber-world;
· no frontier for the capacity of individuals to influence, inform or even infuriate each other.


And because times are new, we must - in Robert Kennedy’s words -think anew. We must, as he said, leave behind yesterday and embrace tomorrow.


So while in President Kennedy’s time foreign relations were founded almost exclusively on the relative power of governments, today we must recognise the relevance to foreign policy of what we see before our eyes:


· that everywhere around us people are forming global associations, global connections and global communities;

· that all over the world from culture to education to social action individuals are harnessing people power to transcend states – for good, and sometimes for ill;

· and they are compelling institutions and authorities to follow their example — with regulators, environmental and development agencies, militaries, law enforcement and judges all having to cooperate directly across frontiers.


As greater people power drives forward the creation of this new world order, foreign policy has increasingly to be explained daily to a questioning public who will increasingly also demand to know the basis on which we act.


And if in the 18th and 19th centuries nation states looked to the concept of the balance of power for their security - and in the latter half of the 20th briefly put their faith in the concept of mutually assured destruction - we, amid the emerging complexities of the 21st century, must recognize afresh the power of John Kennedy’s Declaration of Interdependence. And must firmly root our international system in the values we hold in common — shaping more than a new world order, creating instead a truly global society:


· a global society no longer just based on the power of states delineated by borders but on the aspirations of people that transcend borders;

· a global society no longer founded just on balancing competing interests but on building institutions that foster mutual interests because they are grounded in common values.


Indeed I would go further: in democracies such as ours - and now in a global society where people can communicate, lobby, petition and express and organize their views freely across continents - acting upon our interdependence demands that we found our cooperation and build alliances upon those enduring and humane values we share in common —– values that emphasise at all times the dignity and liberty of the individual, the indispensability of justice within and between nations, and our responsibilities as citizens of both our own nation and of the world.


Throughout history we have too often allowed ourselves to believe that the foreigner was at best a stranger and at worst an enemy; that across national borders our ethical values could be as different as our cuisine or fashion or language. In fact, the more we discover about each other the more we find how often we subscribe to similar ideals - regardless of geography, history or identity.


For through each of our diverse heritages there runs a single, powerful moral sense: one that is reflected and replicated throughout the world’s great religions and also in the moral philosophy of those who adhere to none that shows we are not moral strangers but there is a moral sense common to us all.


When Christians say: ‘do to others what you would have them do to you’;

When Muslims say: ‘no one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself’;

When Jews say ‘what is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man’;

When Hindus say ‘this is the sum of duty: do naught unto other which would cause pain if done to you’;

When Sikhs say ‘treat others as you would be treated yourself’;

When Buddhists say ‘hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful’;
….they reflect a common truth dear to billions of adherents of those and other religions that is true also of all the great secular thinkers: that we not only cooperate out of need but there is a human need to cooperate; and that cooperation is built on the desire for liberty and the call to justice: respect for the dignity of every individual and our sense of what is equitable and fair.


Call it as Lincoln did ‘the better angels of our nature’;

Call it as Winstanley did ‘the light in man’;

Call it ‘our moral sentiment’ as Adam Smith did;

Call it conscience;

Call it the moral sense;


it is on the basis of our common humanity and common values that that even people thousands of miles apart can share the pain of others and believe in something bigger than themselves. And it is for our generation to bring to life these shared values - which already have the capacity to unite people across the world - in proposals to create the architecture of a global society.


[THIS IS THE SAME AS THE 'COMMON HERITAGE OF MANKIND' DOCTRINE EMBEDDED IN THE UNITED NATIONS LAW OF THE SEA CONVENTION, WHICH ESTABLISHES A 'GLOBAL COMMONS' THAT IS TO BE REGULATED BY A TOP-DOWN, UNITED NATIONS-CENTRED BODY]


Acting upon our interdependence does not mean a new version of the old balance of power arrangements based on opposing powers bargaining for their own narrow advantage.


[THIS IS THE SAME THING AS SAYING THAT INDIVIDUAL PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS SHOULD NO LONGER BE BASED ON THE NOTION OF 'NEGATIVE' RIGHTS, EXISTING IN OPPOSITION TO AND AS AGAINST BOTH THE SOVEREIGN AND OTHER PROPERTY OWNERS & CITIZENS, BUT RATHER ON THE NOTION OF 'POSITIVE' PROPERTY RIGHTS WHICH ARE GRANTED, SHAPED AND LIMITED BY THE SOVEREIGN FOR THE SAKE OF THE COMMUNITY - IN THIS CASE, NOT THE NATIONAL COMMUNITY, BUT THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY.]


But nor does it mean abandoning national interests. Instead, the very fact of interdependence requires nations to work out new ways of working founded on the recognition that they can best pursue their national interests by invoking broader global alliances – and that these global alliances must be grounded in shared global goals and globally agreed rules and institutions.


[OBVIOUSLY, MR. BROWN AND HIS FELLOW EUROPEAN SOCIALISTS ARE SENSITIVE TO THE ACCUSATION THAT THEY WISH TO DO AWAY WITH NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY, BECAUSE THAT ARGUMENT CAN CAST A DEATH KNELL OVER THEIR GLOBAL GOVERNANCE PLANS - READERS MUST CAREFULLY SCRUTINIZE THE WORDS USED BY MR. BROWN AND HIS COLLEAGUES. AS THE FRENCH SAY, WHAT IS STATED IS IMPORTANT; BUT WHAT IS NOT STATED IS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT, BECAUSE ACCORDING TO FRENCH LOGIC, IF SOMETHING IS NOT STATED, IT IS PERMISSIBLE.]


There have been four great moments in the modern age when statesmen have come together to reorder the world:


· in 1648: in the Westphalia Treaty that followed Europe’s catastrophic Thirty Years War;
· in 1815: at the congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic wars;
· and twice in the last century: disastrously in 1919 at Versailles and - most significantly - in the late 1940s when, in a world wracked by total war, new global arrangements were agreed.


At that time - and in a breathtaking leap forward into a new world order – American visionaries helped form the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund; and they put in place a policy of unprecedented generosity - the Marshall Plan - which transferred 1 per cent of America’s national income each year for four years to the war ravaged economies of Europe —– and saved the free world.


[BUT AMERICAN VISIONARIES NEVER, NEVER INTENDED FOR THE U.S. TO SURRENDER IS NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL SOVEREIGNTY TO THE UNITED NATIONS!!]


Such was the impact of what they did for their day and age that Dean Acheson spoke of being ‘present at the creation’. And in a new era when the challenges of 2008 are different from those of 1945, we must summon inspiration from the vision, humanity and leadership shown by those reformers to guide our actions today.


And this is no longer an academic debate that can wait because change is too difficult to implement; or because we must consider at length what is to be done – with a view to doing nothing.


This is urgent. And the challenge is far reaching.


[MR. BROWN IS CORRECT IN SAYING THAT THE DISCUSSION ABOUT WHETHER THERE EXISTS AND SHOULD BE A MOVEMENT TOWARDS GLOBAL GOVERNANCE IS NO LONGER ACADEMIC - IT IS NOW OUT IN PUBLIC VIEW FOR ALL AMERICANS TO SEE. BUT, MR. BROWN IS INCORRECT IN SAYING THAT URGENT ACTION IS REQUIRED AND THAT DOING NOTHING IS NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE; RATHER, DOING NOTHING IS OFTEN THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION WHEN THE LEGAL, ECONOMIC & POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF DOING SOMETHING ARE UNCERTAIN, SWEEPING AND VERY EXPENSIVE. DEAR MR. BROWN, THE SUCCESS OR FAILURE OF THE EU EXPERIMENT IS STILL UNKNOWN, AND YET YOU AND YOUR FELLOW EUROCRATS INSIST THAT THE WORLD FOLLOW IN ITS PATH.]


The great Bostonian Emerson not only summed it up when he said: ‘what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us’, but also warmed us of the radical consequences that follow: ‘do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail’.


Those who build the present only in the image of the past will - in the words of Winston Churchill - miss out entirely on the opportunities of the future.


And when he warned of countries facing change who were too timid that they were ‘resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent’, it is a powerful reminder of the need to act now.


First, a global society must embody and enact our obligations to each other not just within borders but across borders.


So I am proposing today reforms that will enable our international and regional institutions to do what they failed to do in the Rwandan genocide 15 years ago and are even now still failing to achieve amidst the tragedy of Darfur: to prevent conflict, to stabilise and then to reconstruct failing and failed states; and specifically to shield men, women and children who are being threatened by genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes or crimes against humanity. And so the United Nations must become a consistent defender of the interests of the world’s people – not simply those of states.


And this means new actions to prevent and respond to the breakdown of states and societies by:


· helping vulnerable nations develop the capacity to uphold the rule of law, by encouraging civil society, training police and security forces;

· more systematic use of earlier Security Council action including targeted sanctions and, as a last resort, the threat - and if necessary the use - of military force;

· new resources in the form of a UN crisis recovery fund to ensure proper financing for
stabilisation and reconstruction in countries emerging from conflict;

· and new encouragement for regional organisations from the African Union to the European Union to mount peace, stability and reconstruction efforts.


[PERHAPS MR. BROWN AND HIS EUROPEAN COLLEAGUES FEEL THE COLLECTIVE GUILT OF HAVING PILLAGED MOST OF THE AFRICAN SOCIETIES, THEY PREVIOUSLY HAD COLONIZED, HAVING LEFT THE AFRICAN PEOPLES WITH BARELY ANYTHING RESEMBLING A FREE, ENLIGHTENED AND DIGNIFIED EXISTENCE. IS MR. BROWN NOT RESTATING WHAT 19TH CENTURY REFERRED TO AS THE 'WHITE MAN'S BURDEN'???]


In 1960 President Kennedy called for an American peace corps - harnessing the idealism Americans felt in the face of deprivation and underdevelopment. Today in the same spirit we should create a new kind of global peace and reconstruction corps - an international stand-by capacity of trained civilian experts, ready to go anywhere at any time to help rebuild states.


Second, I favour strengthening the role of international institutions in ensuring a unified global response to terrorism - through asset freezes, travel bans, proscriptions, raising international legal standards, and unflagging resistance to extremist ideologies – measures led by President Bush as we discussed yesterday. But as he and I agree terrorism will ultimately be defeated only when it is isolated and abandoned.


So I propose a new cultural effort on the scale of the cultural Cold War in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s: an initiative that involves foundations, charities, faith groups, elders and young people — and engages TV, radio, the internet and all forms of multimedia communication across all cultures, faiths and tongues to make the case for democracy and respect for human rights: how these offer the best future for us all; and how - in the face of these arguments - violent extremism is both unnecessary and wrong.


We will support interfaith dialogue in every part of the world. And with people power in a global society already advancing democracy widely across the world - from 20 per cent of nations being democratic in the early 1970s to 60 per cent today - we must encourage the development of the daily accountability, transparency and responsiveness and the civil societies which are at the heart of true democracies.


Third, a global society demands new global agreements and strengthened global institutions to protect and safeguard essential global resources.


So by the end of next year we must secure a new global climate change agreement – with the UN at its centre - with binding targets for all developed countries, including America and Britain. I want to see at least a halving of global emissions by 2050. And we need new incentives for developing and emerging economies - helping them slow their growth in emissions through new flows of finance and technology.


A global agreement is more than a set of targets: it must include an international carbon market as the surest and most efficient way to achieve our aims — eventually generating up to $100 billion dollars a year to fund ‘green’ development.


[UN-BROKERED, EU SUPPORTED CLIMATE CHANGE CHICANERY]


And while we strengthen the World Bank’s focus on poverty reduction, I have a radical proposal to make the World Bank a bank for development and the environment — transferring billions in loans and grants to encourage the poorest countries to adopt alternative sources of energy and in doing so ensuring that its development programmes provide an integrated approach to both poverty eradication and global warming.


We require a similar global coordination of effort on food where we face the worst food shortages for decades. And on disease and global pandemics where - led by the World Health Organisation - the priority is to improve early warning, increase the stocks of global vaccine supplies and develop a more coordinated global response. We need now to ensure there are clear responsibilities and decision-making procedures at every level. And Britain will bring together all interested parties to agree the new international action that is now essential to prevent pandemics and the spread of ill health.


Globalisation can work if it is an inclusive globalisation and protectionism can be avoided only by means of open economies, free trade and flexibility accompanied by policies for fairness and justice - policies that include investment in education and other social goods in the industrialised countries and a new deal for the poorest countries.


[MR. BROWN ALLUDES TO WEALTH-REDISTRIBUTION ORIENTATED TRADE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICIES THAT UNDERMINE U.S. SOVEREIGNTY, ECONOMIC & TECHNOLOGY COMPETITIVENESS, AND FURTHER DRAINS U.S. JOBS - EXCEPT THOSE RELATING TO AN INTERNATIONAL UN-BASED PEACE CORPS.]


And my proposal here is that we set new global rules for a new 21st century global economic system with:


· a global trade deal that benefits rich and poor countries alike;

· new international financial architecture and economic institutions that end the mismatch between global capital flows and only the national supervision of them — with the IMF an early warning system for the global economy, focused on crisis prevention rather than just crisis resolution;

· and a new deal as bold as the Marshall Plan of the 1940s between rich and poor under which as developing countries open up to trade, address corruption and pursue policies for economic development and developed countries agree to make available new resources so that we can say of this generation: the preventable diseases of TB, polio and malaria are eradicated and for the first time in our history every child enjoys education.


And let me just explain why it is so important. When I visited Abuja in Nigeria I found that side by side with a dilapidated school that we did not support enough was a madrassas where Al Qaeda inspired extremists were enticing children into their school offering free high standard schooling – so our offer of education for all is not just an education and economic policy for the developing world it is a defence and security policy for the developed world.


So a new World Bank; a new International Monetary Fund; a reformed and renewed United Nations mandated and resourced that is greater than the sum of its parts; strong regional organisations from the European Union to the African Union able to bring to a troubled world the humanitarian aid, peacekeeping and the support for stability and reconstruction that has been absent for too long — all built around a new global society founded on revitalised international rules and institutions, and grounded in the great values we share in common.


[MR. BROWN & HIS EUROCRAT/UN BUREAUCRAT COLLEAGUES WANT AMERICA TO KISS 'GOODBYE' ITS UNIQUE CONSTITUTION, WHICH PROTECTS INDIVIDUALISM, 'NEGATIVE' PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS, FEDERALISM, BALANCE OF POWERS, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY, DUE PROCESS OF LAW (INNOCENCE UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY), AND U.S. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY.]


And during the year to come I want this debate about change to become a global dialogue about renewal as we embark upon a task perhaps more ambitious than even the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944.


Already the Commonwealth of 53 nations has agreed to convene a task force on these issues, the first meeting in London in June.


[THE COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS IS AN ASSOCIATION OF 53 INDEPENDENT SOVEREIGN STATES, MOST OF WHICH ARE FORMER BRITISH COLONIES. See:
The Commonwealth Secretariat, at: http://www.thecommonwealth.org/Internal/20596/about_us ].


Reform and renewal should feature on the G8 and EU agendas.


I welcome Harvard University’s interest in taking forward work on the proposals.
I suggest next year a series of international conferences and meetings to agree how to transform these ideas into real change.


And we must engage business, NGOs, faith groups and individuals from all nations and continents in these debates.


American leadership is and will be indispensable. And now is an opportunity for an historic effort in cooperation: a new dawn in collaborative action between America and Europe – a new commitment from Europe that I believe all European leaders can work with America to forge stronger transatlantic links. For I sense common ground between our two great continents in the urgent need for renewal and reform.


[THIS STATEMENT IS FOR OBVIOUS USE BY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES CLINTON & OBAMA]


And I also sense that this is the moment to bring in China, India, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and other emerging countries to the heart of this debate – offering a greater role with the G8, to offer them more say in the IMF and World Bank, and to reform the security council of the United Nations.


Today - as we face these new global challenges - the tantalizing possibilities of a world where, as John Kennedy put it, the strong are just, the weak secure and the peace preserved are matched only by the terrifying risks of us failing to seize this moment.


For the first time in human history we have the opportunity to come together around a global covenant, to reframe the international architecture and build the truly global society. So today my call is not just to the public purpose of this generation but to the idealism of this and the next generation.


[THIS IS AN ALL-OUT ATTEMPT TO APPEAL TO AMERICA'S YOUTH IN ORDER TO 'RE-PROGRAM' AND RE-ORIENTATE THEM AGAINST THE CONCEPT OF U.S. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY WHICH, ACCORDING TO EUROPEAN ELITES AND UN BUREAUCRATS, IS CONSIDERED AN IMPEDIMENT TO GLOBAL PEACE, PROSPERITY, MORALITY & CIVITAS, IN FAVOR OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE.]


History is not destiny. It is the sum total of the choices of each generation — the record of the vision of those who imagined and could see a better future, and believed they could touch the stars.


And if the 19th century became known as the century of industrialisation and the 20th century became defined as the century of world wars, the 21st century can be the first progressive century in which we created the first truly global society.


Forty years ago this year amidst tragedy and grief America lost two towering visionaries - Martin Luther King in April and Robert Kennedy in June.


Both of them refused to accept that the way things are is the way things must be and the way things must stay;

Both of them were men of conscience and courage who turned history in the direction of our best hopes;

Both of them believed in essential truths that I am celebrating today - that peace and prosperity are indivisible, that prosperity to be sustained has to be shared; and believed too that the greatest of social changes are built on the strongest of ethical foundations.


And when today cynics dismiss as and impossible dream or naïve idealism proposals to create the institutions of a truly global society let us remind them that people used to think black civil rights a distant dream, the end of the cold war an impossible hope, the ending of apartheid in our generation the work of dreamers, debt relief for the poorest countries an unrealisable idea.


It is fitting that this library - standing at the edge of the sea - is shaped like a great sail. For those it memorialises, to paraphrase Robert Kennedy, truly did send forth ‘ripples of hope’ that continue to move across history as a mighty wave.


And so let us have confidence we can discover anew in ourselves the values we share in common, let us have confidence we can act upon John Kennedy’s declaration of interdependence, and let us have confidence we can create a global covenant across nations to make peace and prosperity real in our generation.

Gordon Brown Wants 'Next' Democratic President to Submit America's Unique Constitution and National Sovereignty to Global Governance (UN/EU) Override

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7353824.stm

[READERS SHOULD NOTE THAT UK PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN HAS ALREADY GIVEN AWAY TO THE EUROPEAN UNION ANCHORED IN BRUSSELS, WITHOUT POPULAR DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC SUPPORT (e.g., A PUBLIC REFERENDUM) THE NATIONAL LEGAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS, AND THUS, THE NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY, OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. NOW HE WANTS THE UNITED STATES TO DO THE SAME...]

See: UK Labor Party Willing to Give-Away Country's Sovereignty to EU; Does the US Democratic Party Wish to Do the Same for America??, at: http://itssdpathologicalcommunalism.blogspot.com/2008/04/uk-labor-party-willing-to-give-away.html

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has urged a "new dawn" in co-operation between Europe and the US

All European leaders could work with the US to forge "stronger transatlantic links", he said in a speech in Boston on the last day of his US trip.


He urged them to work together to reform institutions like the UN, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.


They needed reforming to meet modern challenges, he told an audience at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library.

The tantalising possibilities of a world where as John F Kennedy put it, the strong are just, the weak secure and the peace preserved are matched only by the terrifying risks of us failing to seize this moment


Gordon Brown


Mr Brown, who is said to be angry that his trip to the US has been overshadowed by rows at home over his tax reforms, wants the UN to become more effective in conflict prevention and resolution.


He also wants the IMF to develop as an early warning system to prevent problems like the global credit crunch and the World Bank to acquire a new environmental emphasis.


He said: "Now is an opportunity for an historic effort in co-operation; a new dawn in collaborative action between America and Europe - a new commitment from Europe that I believe all European leaders can work with America to forge stronger transatlantic links.

[THIS TALK OF STRENGTHENING TRANS-ATLANTIC LINKAGES IS NOTHING MORE THAN NUANCED CODE LANGUAGE SERVING AS A FALSE PRETENSE JUSTIFYING THE SURRENDER OF U.S. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY TO AN ELITIST, COMMUNITARIAN & UNACCOUNTABLE EU/UN GLOBAL LEGAL INFRASTRUCTURE & INSTITUTIONAL BUREAUCRACY OPERATING AT LESS THAN GUARANTEED U.S. CONSTITUTIONAL STANDARDS]

"For I sense common ground between our two great continents in the urgent need for renewal and reform."


'Truly global'


Continuing this theme, he called for "strong regional organisations, building up the African Union as we built up the European Union".


Gordon Brown called for global economic policies that benefit both rich and poor

[THE SHERIFF & TAX COLLECTOR OF DOWNING STREET, IN LONDON, ENGLAND, NOW WISHES TO HELP THE EU COMMISSION SHERIFFS & TAX COLLECTORS SPREAD THROUGHOUT THE STREETS OF BRUSSELS, BELGIUM TO ELEVATE THE UNITED NATIONS TO THE SHERIFFS & TAX COLLECTORS OF PALAIS DES NATIONS, IN GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, SO THAT THEY CAN ASSUME THE ROLE OF A GLOBAL ROBIN HOOD]

Ultimately, he called for established institutions to "bring to a troubled world the humanitarian and peacekeeping and the support for stability and reconstruction that has been absent for too long", all of which would be "built around the vision of a global society founded on revitalised international rules and institutions".

[THIS IS THE SUPERIOR MORAL, SENTIMENTAL AND POLITICALLY CORRECT JUSTIFICATION FOR TOP-DOWN CENTRALIZED GLOBAL GOVERNANCE - LEST ANYONE DISAGREES, THEY ARE LABELED REACTIONARIES, SOVEREIGNTISTS, OBSTRUCTIONISTS, RACISTS, FASCISTS, ETC. ]

He also said that emerging nations such as China, India, South Africa and Brazil should have a greater influence in organisations like the G8, the IMF and the World Bank.


We have the opportunity to come together around a global covenant [??]to reframe the international architecture

DEAR MR. BROWN, WE ALREADY HAVE A UN CHARTER AND THOUSANDS OF INTERNATIONAL TREATIES, DECLARATIONS, AND RESOLUTIONS THAT ALLEGEDLY GOVERN GLOBAL, CONDUCT - WHY DO WE NEED MORE LAWS, STANDARDS, REGULATIONS, AND PROSCRIPTIONS AT THE UN / EU LEVEL?? IS THIS WHAT EUROPEAN UNION REGION-DOMINATED NAPOLEONIC LAW TRULY REPRESENTS ELEVATED TO A GLOBAL LEVEL?? WHY THEN, SHOULD AMERICA, WITH ITS UNIQUE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM, HARMONIZE WITH THE THE EU, IF EU, AND BY EXTENSION, THE UN SYSTEM YOU ENVISION, WOULD RECOGNIZE INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS AT LESS THAN U.S. CONSTITUTIONAL STANDARDS??]

Gordon Brown


"Today - as we face these new global challenges - the tantalising possibilities of a world where as John F Kennedy put it, the strong are just, the weak secure and the peace preserved are matched only by the terrifying risks of us failing to seize this moment," he said.


"For the first time in human history we have the opportunity to come together around a global covenant to reframe the international architecture and build the truly global society."

[DEAR, DEAR MR. BROWN - THERE ARE ONLY THREE IMPORTANT COVENANTS: TO FAMILY, GOD & COUNTRY]

Mr Brown has met President Bush and the three presidential candidates, senators John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in private meetings during his three-day trip.


Tax protests

But it has been overshadowed in the US media by that of Pope Benedict XVI, and he is said to believe a row over his decision to abolish the lowest rate of income tax at home has been exaggerated by the UK media.


On Thursday he broke off from meetings to telephone Labour MP Angela Smith to persuade her not to quit as a ministerial aide over the issue.


Later Ms Smith issued a statement denying she was about to quit as a parliamentary aide to Treasury Chief Secretary Yvette Cooper.


But since then four more ministerial aides have joined protests at the abolition of the 10p tax rate - although none have threatened to resign.


In total more than 70 Labour MPs have signed one of three motions protesting about the tax move, which came into force this month.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1087948


British prime minister calls for global ’interdependence’


By Associated Press


April 18, 2008


British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in his first foreign policy address in the United States, called on the U.S. and Europe today to lead a new era of global "interdependence" aimed at solving international problems such as terrorism, poverty and climate change.

[IN OTHER WORDS, GORDON BROWN IS SERVING AS 'THE LEAD' FOR THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION IN PROMOTING WHAT IS NOTHING LESS THAN GLOBAL ONE-WORLDISM OR KUMBAYA, GO-ALONG-TO-GET-ALONG DIPLOMACY]

"We urgently need to step out of the mindset of competing interests and instead find our common interests, and we must summon up the best instincts and efforts of humanity in a cooperative effort to build new international rules and institutions for the new global era," Brown said in a speech to about 350 invited guests at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.


Brown cited Kennedy’s Independence Day speech in 1962, when the president proposed a "new and global declaration of interdependence." Brown said Kennedy’s call for public service "still reverberates around the world and always will."

[BUT, PRESIDENT KENNEDY PROMOTED NATIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE, NOT GLOBAL PUBLIC SERVICE - HE ASKED THAT THE CITIZENS OF THE WORLD ACT FOR THEIR OWN SAKE, AND THAT OF THEIR NATIONS, SO THAT THEY EACH COULD BENEFIT FROM WHAT WOULD EVENTUALLY CONSTITUTE FREEDOM GLOBALLY. GORDON BROWN, IN IS APPEAL FOR SUPRANATIONAL GLOBAL GOVERNANCE MISREADS WHAT PRESIDENT KENNEDY SAID. HERE IS THE ACTUAL QUOTATION:

"My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."]

Noting Kennedy’s creation of the Peace Corps, Brown called for the creation of "a new kind of global peace and reconstruction corps," which he described as an organization of trained civilian experts available any time to rebuild states.

[DEAR MR. BROWN, THE UN ALREADY HAS THE 'BLUE HELMETS' AND WE ALL SEE HOW EFFECTIVE THEY ARE IN PREVENTING GLOBAL CONFLICTS, LET ALONE, IN KEEPING THE PEACE ONCE THE BATTLES HAVE BEEN WON...]

Brown also talked about U.S. leadership following World War II, include the Marshall Plan that funneled millions in economic aid and technical assistance to help rebuild Europe.


"We must summon inspiration from the vision, humanity and leadership shown by those reformers to guide our actions today," he said.


Brown reiterated his call for reform of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and United Nations to give emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil more say in the international institutions.


He called on the World Bank to intensify programs to reduce poverty and said the institution should become a bank for both development and the environment by transferring billions in loans and grants to encourage the poorest countries to adopt alternative sources of energy.

[WHAT MR. BROWN REALLY MEANS IS TRANSFER/REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH, TECHNOLOGIES & KNOW-HOW AT CONCESSION-RATE OR ROYALTY-FREE PRICES]

The British leader, who has set a mandatory target in the U.K. to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent by 2050, insisted that a new global pact on reducing carbon emission must be agreed on by the end of 2009.


He said the deal, which would replace the Kyoto Protocol that was rejected by the U.S. and expires in 2012, should be led by the United Nations and needs to set binding targets for all developed countries.

[MR. BROWN SHOWS HIS TRUE COLORS HERE - TOP-DOWN CENTRALIZED UN-BASED GLOBAL GOVERNANCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT, AND ALONG WITH IT, ALL ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES AROUND THE WORLD]

Brown, who has overseen some U.K. troop withdrawals in Iraq and sought to soothe public anger in Britain over the unpopular war, did not mention Iraq directly. But he insisted he would support future military action to intervene in failing states.


He praised President Bush for leading the world in an attempt to root out terrorism and "our common commitment that there be no safe haven for terrorists."


Brown said the United States and Europe should act as "hardheaded internationalists," and use "diplomatic, economic, and yes, when necessary military action _ to prevent crimes against humanity when states can no longer do so."

[MR. BROWN DENOUNCES U.S. HEGEMONY, BUT FAVORS US-EU JOINT HEGEMONY. HIS HE NOT BEING HYPOCRITICAL???]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/19/ncrisis219.xml


Gordon Brown's US speech calls for new global finance rules


By Andrew Porter, Political Editor, in Boston

19/04/2008


An international early warning system should be established to ensure that future credit squeezes are identified and dealt with before the effects become widespread, says Gordon Brown.


In a foreign policy speech in Boston, the Prime Minister urged America to join him in pushing for reform of the major international institutions including the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.


At the end of his three-day trip to the US Mr Brown also said the world faced "terrifying risks" if countries "failed to seize the moment".

[MR. BROWN INTIMATES THE NUANCED MALTHUSIAN FEAR-BASED MANTRA OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL ARMAGEDDON AND THE PREFERRED GLOBALIST SOLUTION: EUROPEAN STYLE, TOP-DOWN, UN CENTRALIZED, NON-SCIENCE & NON-ECONOMICS, PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE-BASED REGULATIONS]

Mr Brown told an audience at the John F Kennedy Library that globalisation should combine free trade and open economies with policies promoting fairness and justice.


He said: "My proposal is that we set new global rules for a new 21st century global system with: a global trade deal that benefits rich and poor countries alike; a new international financial architecture and economic institutions that end the mismatch between global capital flows and only the national supervision of them - with the IMF an early warning system for the global economy, focused on crisis prevention rather than just crisis resolution."


Mr Brown has used his trip to meet Wall Street bankers to discuss the credit crunch. Yesterday, in Washington he met Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve.


The two talked about what measures can be taken to alleviate the effects of the economic downturn. Next week, the Treasury is expected to announce measures to get the mortgage companies lending again, including taking on some debt in exchange for the lenders' co-operation with market liquidity.


Mr Brown also wants a reformed United Nations that is more effective and relevant to the 21st century that will give greater leadership and can give better assistance to poorer countries.


He told the audience, which included Senator Edward Kennedy: "During the year to come I want this debate about change to become a global dialogue about renewal as we embark upon a task perhaps more ambitious than even the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 [which established international monetary rules]."


He added: "American leadership will be indispensable."

German Fascism Principles Long Used by Enviro-Groups in Effort to Change US Laws & Deprive American Landowners of Their Private Property Rights

http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=3647


Eco-Fascism


The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty - April 1995


By Russell Madden, Instructor in Communication at Mt. Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa


[READERS SHOULD WELL CONSIDER HOW & WHY THIS MOVEMENT HAS ENDURED AS LONG AS IT HAS - IT HAS RECEIVED BACKDOOR SUPPORT FROM THE LIBERAL POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT - PREVIOUSLY, FROM THE (BILL) CLINTON ADMINISTRATION DURING THE 1990'S AND PROSPECTIVELY, FROM BOTH THE (HILLARY CLINTON AND BARACK OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS), AND ALSO THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION WHICH IS 'DISCRETELY' TRYING TO INFLUENCE U.S. PUBLIC OPINION ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES, AND THROUGH THEM, THE OUTCOME OF THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS]


The violations of private property rights that have flowed from the environmental movement and its adherence to the erroneous theory of "intrinsic value" have already caused intense hardships for many people. Individuals have been prevented from developing their land as they best see fit because of claims by environmentalists that such usage would threaten an endangered species, a coastline, a wetland, or the general "character" of some landscape. The contention is that efforts to enjoy the benefits of these properties would destroy the value which that land or animal or plant supposedly possesses by its mere existence regardless of its relationship to specific human beings.


Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, "You ain't seen nothin' yet."


Generally, owners are allowed to retain title to the property under question but are prohibited from altering it in any way which does not follow some (usually ambiguous and frequently self-contradictory) governmental law or regulation. While they suddenly find themselves denied any say in what to do with that land, these hapless owners are still permitted the privilege of paying taxes on the property in question. This type of titular ownership devoid of control fits the definition of that economic/ political system known as fascism.


Given their successes in gaining governmental control over many disparate pieces of private property situated near so-called "ecologically sensitive" areas, the advocates of environmental fascism have gained confidence and grown bolder. They are now advocating a move that takes the environmental movement from a practice of petty theft to grand larceny on a breathtaking scale. The more radical practitioners of the theory of intrinsic value are no longer satisfied with the passage of laws that prevent the removal of a tree, the building of a fence or house, or the dumping of a few loads of dirt without permission. Their new Holy Grail is to create millions of acres of wilderness zones that will not merely regulate human usage, but will prevent anyone from venturing into such areas for even esthetic enjoyment. It is the intrinsic theory of value taken to its ultimate conclusion: the total elimination of human beings.


The Wildlands Project


The North American Wilderness Recovery (Wildlands) Project suggested by the Earth First! movement and its founder, Dave Foreman, proposes a violation of property rights which is so outrageous that many people might be tempted to dismiss it out of hand.[1] It would be easy to assume from its ludicrous provisions that the Wildlands Project would stand no realistic chance of passage; that defenders of private property could easily ignore it and devote their efforts to other concerns.


Yet fifty years ago, who would have supposed it credible that a snail, an owl, or a tree on one's own land would become excuses for the ecological fascism that has already spread its tentacles not only into American society, but throughout the entire world? The micro-management of land usage we have witnessed in the past thirty years now aspires to "macro-management" of the entire continent.


In these wilderness preserves, all evidence of humanity would be erased. All dwellings, the roads that link them together, the power lines that feed them, and any and all other man-made constructs would be removed and destroyed. Plants and animals—not people—would become the definers of value and usage. The needs, interests, or desires of human beings would be ruthlessly excised from any "ecological" decisions by the central planners of this ecological fascism. People would become subordinate to lower life forms in a crazy flip-flop of values and priorities. The needs of other species-not the protection of human rights-would become the new basis and rationale for politics if those who accept the credo of Earth First! have their way.


This movement becomes less a wild-eyed-pie-in-the-sky and more of a scary potential reality when you realize that other-wise reputable scientists support the general premise if not the specific details of such widespread preservation attempts. John Robinson, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, believes preservation should be done on a "landscape level." Another biologist from Oregon, Reed Noss, suggests that conservation must be practiced on a scale large enough to include not only endangered animals or plants, but also supporting flora and fauna and entire ecosystems in which natural selection and adaptation can occur.


New Endangered Species: Man


The logical conclusion of such premises is the removal of human beings from the entire earth, the largest ecosystem that exists. Then and only then would "Gaia" be restored to health.


While the eco-fascists have not yet announced such a far-reaching target, according to Michael Soule, creator of the Wilderness Project, they are unconcerned with "the limitations of time and space." They are committed if necessary to a centuries-long endeavor to restore much of North America to its pristine condition before the advent of humans altered these landscapes. Noss would like to see "at least half of the land area of the coterminous states" (emphasis added) included in this "hands off" zone. Additionally, these zones would be bordered by buffers in which only limited human activity would be allowed. Eventually, land occupied by people would exist only as isolated pockets within the greater wilderness areas.


Spokesmen for such groups as the Society for Conservation Biology, The Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife, and even members of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offer support for the general idea of the Wilderness Project. Peter Brussard from the University of Nevada at Reno believes that the Project "certainly is justifiable scientifically." Luckily, not a biologists accept that position; Deborah Jensen, a biologist with The Nature Conservancy, does not believe that the goal of conserving biodiversity requires such an approach as the Wilderness Project.


Even if those touting the Wilderness Project do not believe it possible to create such a massive preserve in one fell swoop, they may yet achieve their final goal piecemeal. Efforts are currently underway to set aside 139,000 square miles in the Great Plains for a buffalo sanctuary; the Paseo Pantera project seeks to connect wilderness areas in Central America; British Columbia is linking a new 4,000-square-mile park with Alaska and the Yukon Territory to create a 33,000-square-mile preserve; Congress is considering setting aside 11,000 square miles in California; the Nevada Biodiversity Project seeks to set aside hundreds of square miles of mountains; and Noss recently received $150,000 from the Pew Charitable Funds to further planning for wildlands set-asides.


In response to this proposal, some people were rightfully outraged.[2] One woman from Nevada said that, "Proponents of the project are incredibly insensitive to the values, freedoms, and property rights of the many millions of people who live in and love" these lands. She characterized these ecologists as "an arrogant urban elite with a compulsion to live out their fantasy at our expense" (italics in original—which is a remarkably accurate description of statists of any stripe.


Another man from Arizona stated that this idea "illustrates all the absurd flaws in the ecocentric mind—... that balanced ecosystems don't include humans, [and] that government coercion can override human nature." Absurd, yes ... but no more so than might describe the mind-sets of Marx or Lenin. Unfortunately, the "absurd flaws" of their political system did not prevent them from imposing it across a significant fraction of the globe over a seventy year time span. The idea of the Wilderness Project is still relatively new and controversial, yet its supporters may become powerful beyond any rational expectations.


Some of those advocates believe it is important to "halt the spread of nature's most dangerous predator and competitor"; that lands should be cared for by people "who wish to restore themselves to a natural (i.e., tribal) state"; that "27 representatives" and "over 50 scientists also support the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act."


Even if the Wildlands Project itself is not implemented, its very radicalism makes other, more subtle eco-fascist strategies seem reasonable. This kind of strategy has been used repeatedly in the environmental movement: push an outlandish policy then propose something even crazier so the first proposal appears rational in comparison. Given the plethora of environmental laws strangling our country and shredding our property rights, this approach has been an effective one.


As has been pointed out by other writers, collectivists and statists who have been unable to achieve the degree of control they desire over our society through economic arguments have shifted their plan of attack to a "moral" appeal based on the false premises of "intrinsic value," "animal rights," and the supposed imminent destruction of the very environment upon which we depend for survival.


A new coat of paint, however, does nothing to alter the essence of who these eco-fascists are and what they believe. As a song from the Sixties said, the new boss is the same as the old boss. The struggle against collectivism is far from over: it has merely shifted to a new playing field. And as do most collectivists, the eco-fascists say they want to do this to us "for our own good."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


1. Elizabeth Pennis, "Conservation's Ecocentrics," Science News. 9-11-93, pp. 168-170.

2. Science News, "Letters," 11-20-93, pp. 323, 334.

How Close Is Euro-Environmentalism to German Neo Eco-Fascism? VERY! But is Virulent Socialist Eco-Pacifism Any Better?

ONE IMPORTANT QUESTION THAT READERS SHOULD ASK THEMSELVES, GIVEN THE EMOTIONAL AND OBSESSIVE CAMPAIGN CURRENTLY BEING WAGED BY EUROPEAN COMMISSIONERS, PARLIAMENTARIANS AND GREEN AND SOCIALIST PARTY GROUPS, IS WHY NOW ARE CERTAIN MULTILATERALIST AMERICAN POLITICIANS (INCLUDING FORMER V.P. AL GORE, SENATORS CLINTON & OBAMA, AND THE 110TH CONGRESSIONAL MAJORITY), EMBRACING WHAT, ON THE SURFACE, APPEARS TO BE ENLIGHTENED GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTALISM, IN THE NAME OF STOPPING CLIMATE CHANGE, BUT, WHEN EXAMINED CLOSELY, REVEALS ITSELF AS AN HISTORICAL EUROPEAN BELIEF SYSTEM THAT CLOSELY RESEMBLES CLASSICAL GERMAN-FASCISM???


OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND AT:

Precautionus Principilitis: A Psychosocial Disorder Causing Luddite Psychobabble

http://itssdpathologicalcommunalism.blogspot.com/2008/01/precautionus-principilitis-psychosocial.html .


See Also: The ITSSD Journal on Economic Sabotage, at: http://itssdjournaleconomicsabotage.blogspot.com/.


See Also: The Historical and Philosophical Antecedents to the Current Wave of Anti-Americanism at: http://www.itssd.org/Issues/TheHistoricalAntecedentstotheCurrentWaveofAnti-Americanism.pdf


See Also: The Relationship Between EU Environmentalism and Historical German Eco-Fascism: TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT, ITSSD Journal on Pathological Communalism, at: http://itssdpathologicalcommunalism.blogspot.com/2008/04/relationship-between-eu.html


See Also: Ode to Gaia: Obsessive Modern European Environmentalism Has Fascist, Paganist, Racist and Anthroposophist Roots, ITSSD Journal on Pathological Communalism, at: http://itssdpathologicalcommunalism.blogspot.com/2008/04/ode-to-gaia-obsessive-european.html


Beyond these sources, there are other commentators who have further researched this question.

They have concluded that there is a close link between these extremist doctrines which continue to play an ever more influential political role within Germany and Europe at large.

Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience By Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier© Copyright: 1995




The first chapter following the introduction has been reproduced and posted to the ITSSD Journal on Pathological Communalism. It is entitled, The Relationship Between EU Environmentalism and Historical German Eco-Fascism: TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT and is accessible at: http://itssdpathologicalcommunalism.blogspot.com/2008/04/relationship-between-eu.html .


The Introduction and Chapter 2, follows:


http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/intro.html


Introduction


For most compassionate and humane people today, the ecological crisis is a source of major concern. Not only do many ecological activists struggle to eliminate toxic wastes, to preserve tropical rainforests and old-growth redwoods, and to roll back the destruction of the biosphere, but many ordinary people in all walks of life are intensely concerned about the nature of the planet that their children will grow up to inhabit. In Europe as in the United States, most ecological activists think of themselves as socially progressive. That is, they also support demands of oppressed peoples for social justice and believe that the needs of human beings living in poverty, illness, warfare, and famine also require our most serious attention.


For many such people, it may come as a surprise to learn that the history of ecological politics has not always been inherently and necessarily progressive and benign. In fact, ecological ideas have a history of being distorted and placed in the service of highly regressive ends--even of fascism itself. As Peter Staudenmaier shows in the first essay in this pamphlet, important tendencies in German "ecologism," which has long roots in nineteenth-century nature mysticism, fed into the rise of Nazism in the twentieth century. During the Third Reich, Staudenmaier goes on to show, Nazi "ecologists" even made organic farming, vegetarianism, nature worship, and related themes into key elements not only in their ideology but in their governmental policies. Moreover, Nazi "ecological" ideology was used to justify the destruction of European Jewry. Yet some of the themes that Nazi ideologists articulated bear an uncomfortably close resemblance to themes familiar to ecologically concerned people today.


As social ecologists, it is not our intention to deprecate the all-important efforts that environmentalists and ecologists are making to rescue the biosphere from destruction. Quite to the contrary: It is our deepest concern to preserve the integrity of serious ecological movements from ugly reactionary tendencies that seek to exploit the widespread popular concern about ecological problems for regressive agendas. But we find that the "ecological scene" of our time--with its growing mysticism and antihumanism--poses serious problems about the direction in which the ecology movement will go.


In most Western nations in the late twentieth century, expressions of racism and anti-immigrant sentiments are not only increasingly voiced but increasingly tolerated. Equally disconcertingly, fascist ideologists and political groups are experiencing a resurgence as well. Updating their ideology and speaking the new language of ecology, these movements are once again invoking ecological themes to serve social reaction. In ways that sometimes approximate beliefs of progressive-minded ecologists, these reactionary and outright fascist ecologists emphasize the supremacy of the "Earth" over people; evoke "feelings" and intuition at the expense of reason; and uphold a crude sociobiologistic and even Malthusian biologism. Tenets of "New Age" eco-ideology that seem benign to most people in England and the United States--specifically, its mystical and antirational strains--are being intertwined with ecofascism in Germany today. Janet Biehl’s essay explores this hijacking of ecology for racist, nationalistic, and fascist ends.


Taken together, these essays examine aspects of German fascism, past and present, in order to draw lessons from them for ecology movements both in Germany and elsewhere. Despite its singularities, the German experience offers a clear warning against the misuse of ecology, in a world that seems ever more willing to tolerate movements and ideologies once regarded as despicable and obsolete. Political ecology thinkers have yet to fully examine the political implications of these ideas in the English-speaking world as well as in Germany.


What prevents ecological politics from yielding reaction or fascism with an ecological patina is an ecology movement that maintains a broad social emphasis, one that places the ecological crisis in a social context. As social ecologists, we see the roots of the present ecological crisis in an irrational society--not in the biological makeup of human beings, nor in a particular religion, nor in reason, science, or technology. On the contrary, we uphold the importance of reason, science, and technology in creating both a progressive ecological movement and an ecological society. It is a specific set of social relations--above all, the competitive market economy--that is presently destroying the biosphere. Mysticism and biologism, at the very least, deflect public attention away from such social causes. In presenting these essays, we are trying to preserve the all-important progressive and emancipatory implications of ecological politics. More than ever, an ecological commitment requires people today to avoid repeating the errors of the past, lest the ecology movement become absorbed in the mystical and antihumanistic trends that abound today.


J.B.P.S.


http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/janet.html



'Ecology' and the Modernization of Fascism in the German Ultra-right


Janet Biehl


It is an incontestable fact that the ecology crisis today is real. In a vast number of ways and places, the biosphere of this planet is undergoing a great deal of damage. Parts of the environment have already been rendered uninhabitable through toxic wastes and nuclear power plant disasters, while systemic pollution, ozone holes, global warming, and other disasters are increasingly tearing the fabric on which all life depends. That such damage is wrought overwhelmingly by corporations in a competitive international market economy has never been clearer, while the need to replace the existing society with one such as social ecology advances has never been more urgent. 1


At a time when worsening economic conditions and strong political disaffection occur along with ecological dislocations, however, nationalist and even fascist ideas are gaining an increasingly high profile in Europe, particularly, but not only, in the Federal Republic of Germany. With social tensions exacerbated, neofascist groups of various kinds are winning electoral representation, even as their loosely linked cohorts commit acts of violence against foreigners. Such groups, both skinhead and 'intellectual,' are part of a 'New' Right that explicitly draws its ideas from classical fascism. They are updating the old nationalist, mystical, and misanthropic themes of the 'Old' Right, writes Jutta Ditfurth, in a "modernization of fascism." Among other things, they are using a right-wing interpretation of ecology "as an ideological 'hinge' for organizing the extreme-right and neofascist scene." 2


Today's fascists have a distinct ideological legacy from their fascist forebears upon which to draw. Indeed, 'ecology' and a mystical reverence for the natural world are hardly new to German nationalism. At the end of the nineteenth century, a cultural revolt against positivism swept much of Europe, as George L. Mosse writes, and in Germany it became infused with both nature-mysticism and racial nationalism. This revolt became intimately bound up with a belief in nature's cosmic life force, a dark force whose mysteries could be understood, not through science, but through the occult. An ideology based upon such premises was fused with the glories of an Aryan past, and in turn, that past received a thoroughly romantic and mystical interpretation. 3


Culminating in the 1920s, an assortment of occult and pseudo-scientific ideas coalesced around the idea of a German Volk into a romantic nationalism, romantic racism, and a mystical nature-worshipping faith. Indeed, as Mosse observes, the German word Volk is a much more comprehensive term than "people," for to German thinkers ever since the birth of German romanticism in the late eighteenth century "Volk" signified the union of a group of people with a transcendental "essence." This "essence" might be called "nature" or "cosmos" or "mythos," but in each instance it was fused to man's innermost nature, and represented the source of his creativity, his depth of feeling, his individuality, and his unity with other members of the Volk. 4


[COLLECTIVISM]


The völkisch movement of the 1920s regarded modern materialism, urbanism, rationalism, and science as artificial and evil, alien to this 'essence.'5 In a time of bitter social dislocation, it saw Weimar democracy as the product of Western democratic and liberal ideals and, further, as a puppet regime controlled by people who did not represent German 'essence.' Many alleged that a Jewish world conspiracy lay behind the discontents of modernism, including materialistic consumerism, soulless industrialism, a homogenized commercial culture, and excessive modern technology, all of which were said to be systematically destroying traditional German values. Only true patriots could save Germans from ruin, thought the extreme right -- themselves.


This movement sought to assert a truly Germanic alternative -- one as racialist as it was nationalist in nature. The popular writings of Paul Lagarde and Julius Langbehn favored an aristocratic social order in which Germans would rule the world. It invoked a nature-romanticism in which a closeness to the natural landscape was to give people a heightened sense of aliveness and 'authenticity.' It advanced a new cosmic faith, embodied in 'Aryan' blood, that was to be grasped through intuition rather than science in a plethora of occult and esoteric spiritualistic faiths that abounded in Germany in the 1920s. Mystical belief-systems like Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and Ariosophy (a mystical Aryanism) abounded and were rife with Germanic nationalist components, such that they could be used to mystify an 'ecological' nationalism.


However inadvertently, the romantic nationalists of the völkisch movement became an important source for National Socialist ideology, which ironically drew on its antimodern sentiments even as it built a technologically modern and virulently nationalistic and genocidal totalitarian state. Demagogically appealing to a very real sense of alienation, the Nazis stage-managed indoctrination extravaganzas that promised 'authenticity' in a mystical, romantic nationalism that was 'closer to nature,' even as they engaged in mass murder. Stressing the need to return to simpler, healthier, and more 'natural' lifeways, they advanced the idea and practice of a 'Nordic peasantry' tied organically to the soil -- even as they constructed a society that was industrially more modernized and rationalized than any German society had seen to that time.


The so-called 'New' Right today appeals to themes reminiscent of the völkisch movement in pre-Nazi Germany. It, too, presents itself as offering an 'ecological' alternative to modern society. In the view of the 'New' Right today, the destruction of the environment and the repression of nationalities have a common root in 'Semitic' monotheism and universalism. In its later form, Christianity, and in its subsequent secularized forms, liberalism and Marxism, this dualistic, homogenizing universalism is alleged to have brought on both the ecological crisis and the suppression of national identity. Just as Judeo-Christian universalism was destructive of authentic cultures when Christian missionaries went out into the world, so too is modernity eliminating ethnic and national cultures. Moreover, through the unbridled technology to which it gave rise, this modern universalism is said to have perpetrated not only the destruction of nature but an annihilation of the spirit; the destruction of nature, it is said, is life-threatening in the spiritual sense as well as the physical, since when people deny pristine nature, their access to their 'authentic' self is blocked.


The dualistic yet universalistic 'Semitic' legacy is borne today most egregiously, in 'New' Right ideology, by the United States, in whose 'mongrel' culture -- egalitarian democracy -- all cultures and races are mixed together, forming a crass, soulless society. American cultural imperialism is genocidal of other cultures around the world, and its technological imperialism is destroying the global environment.


The fascist quest for 'national identity' and ecological salvation seeks to counter 'Western civilization' -- that is, the United States, as opposed to 'European civilization' -- by advancing a notion of 'ethnopluralism' that seeks for all cultures to have sovereignty over themselves and their environment. Europe should become, instead of a modernized monoculture, a 'Europe of fatherlands,' with autonomy for all its peoples. Just as Turks should live in Turkey and Senegalese in Senegal, Germans should have Germany for themselves, 'New' Right ideologues argue.


Ecology can easily be perverted to justify this 'ethnopluralism' -- that is, nationalism.


Conceptions of one's region as one's 'homeland,' or Heimat, can be perverted into a nationalistic regionalism when a region's traditions and language are mystically tied to an 'ancestral' landscape. (The word Heimat connotes as well a turn toward the past, an anti-urban mood, a familiar community, and proximity to nature. For several decades the concept was looked upon with disfavor because the Nazis had used it, but intellectuals rediscovered it in the 1970s, after further decades of capitalist industrialization.)


For a people seeking to assert themselves against an outside intruder, an 'ecologized' Heimat in which they are biologically embedded can become a useful tool not only against imperialism but against immigration, foreigners, and 'overpopulation.' Elaborate justifications for opposing Third World immigration are disguised as diversity, drawing on 'ecological' arguments against 'overpopulation.'


Today it is not only fascists who invoke Heimat; in September 1989, for example, the head of the respectable League for the Protection of the Environment and Nature (Bund für Umwelt- und Naturschutz, or BUND), environmentalist Hubert Weinzierl, remarked that only when humanity's main concern, the diminution of the stream of overpopulation, has been accomplished, will there be any meaning or any prospect of building an environment that is capable of improvement, of configuring the landscape of our civilization in such a way that it remains worthy of being called Heimat. 6


An ecology that is mystical, in turn, may become a justification for a nationalism that is mystical. In the New Age milieu of today, with its affinities for ecology, the ultra-right may well find the mystical component it needs to make a truly updated, modernized authoritarian nationalism. As in Germany between the two world wars, antirational cults of the New Age -- primitivistic, esoteric -- abound in both the Federal Republic and the Anglo-American world. Such antirationalism and mysticism are appealed to by the 'New' Right; as anarchist publisher Wolfgang Haug observes, "The New Right, in effect, wants above all to redefine social norms so that rational doubt is regarded as decadent and eliminated, and new 'natural' norms are established." 7


[THIS IS WHY GERMANY ORIGINATED, AND THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND PARLIAMENT CONTINUE TO PROMOTE, THE CONTRA-WTO PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE]


Neofascist 'Ecology'


Ecology is warped for mystical-nationalist ends by a whole series of neofascist groups and parties. Indeed, so multifarious are the ecofascist parties that have arisen, and so much do their memberships overlap, that they form what antifascist researcher Volkmar Wölk calls an "ecofascist network." 8 Their programmatic literature often combines ecology and nationalism in ways that are designed to appeal to people who do not consider themselves fascists, while at the same time they ideologically support neo-Nazi street-fighting skinheads who commit acts of violence against foreigners.


National Revolutionaries 9


The National Revolutionaries (NRs) manipulatively mix themes of left and right in their uses of nationalism and ecology, in an attempt to cross ideological lines. They draw on an old tenet of right-wing dissent in Germany -- the belief that a 'Third Way' between capitalism and socialism is necessary and that Germany is predestined to lead humankind toward it. 10 The NRs' 'Third Way' is based on nationalism, a socialism "of the specific national way" 11 -- in short, a 'national socialism.' A wing of the NRs today, called the Solidaristen, identifies itself with the Strasser brothers, two 1920s Nazi Party members who took the 'Socialism' in 'National Socialism' seriously and represented the 'left' anticapitalist wing of the Nazis. Today, the Solidaristen and other NRs regard Otto Strasser in particular as the 'Trotsky of National Socialism' because of his 1920s intraparty power struggle with Hitler; Hitler's ejection of this fascist in 1930 was, for them, a betrayal of National Socialism.


Today's leading NR ideologist, Henning Eichberg, calls for the assertion of "national identity" and a "liberation nationalism." Seeking to appeal to left and right, NR publications have supported national liberation movements from across the traditional political spectrum, including the Irish, Basques, Ukrainians, and Afghans, as well as Sandinistas. 12 They regarded divided Germany as an occupied country, "the result of the imperialist politics of the occupation forces," and they sought to "liberate" it -- including Austria. Now that Germany has been freed from this "occupation," the National Revolutionaries are free to concentrate on "reunifying" with Austria.


Eichberg regards Judeo-Christianity as the ultimate root of all present evils, since it is overly intellectual and alienates humanity both from itself and from the divine; it neglects the emotions and the body. Tied in as it is with the logic of productivism, Christianity, Eichberg writes, is the "religion of growth" that must be fought at all costs. To help cultivate 'national identity,' he proposes instead a new religion that mixes together neopagan Germanic, Celtic, and Indian religions with old völkisch-nationalistic ideas.


It is to be based on "the sensuality-physicality of dance and ritual, ceremony and taboo, meditation, prayer, and ecstasy. In essence, [this religion] constitutes itself as a form of praxis" against the "religion of growth" since its "sensuous counter-experiences" can restore humanity to closer contact with nature. Sounding like many New Agers in the United States, Eichberg calls for a return to pristine nature, to the alleged primordial sources of people's lives, psyches, and authentic cultures, and for people to heal themselves within as part of healing the ecological crisis, overcoming their own alienation, and rediscovering themselves. 13


National Revolutionaries exploit ecological themes not only to construct primitivistic New Age religions but for political activity as well. During the 1970s they organized around opposition to nuclear energy at about the same time as the citizens' initiative movement did. "With their ecological and antinuclear enthusiasm," observes Walter Laqueur, their cultural anti-Americanism and their support for movements of national liberation in many parts of the world, the "national revolutionaries" tried, in fact, to outflank their left-wing contemporaries. Some regarded Sinn Fein as a model for the German national revolutionaries, others suggested "political Balkanization" in Germany and Europe as a solution to all outstanding questions. 14


Other National Revolutionaries took a different political approach: at the end of the 1970s, they joined the newly emerging Greens, where some of their number succeeded in holding office for a time. In October 1980, the Alternative List of West Berlin, for one, decided they could not work with National Revolutionaries, whom they considered even more dangerous than overt neo-Nazis because they hid their true intentions behind a veil of grassroots democratic and ecological programs. They were mostly driven out of the Greens, at least as far as observers seem aware today. 15


The Freedom German Workers Party 16


Like the National Revolutionaries, the Freedom German Workers Party (Freiheitliche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or FAP) calls for a 'national socialism,' albeit one based on "a sense of community instead of class struggle." The FAP seeks no rapprochement with leftists; it openly and militantly proclaims its support for Nazi ideas, celebrates race and nation, and is pro-Hitler rather than Strasserite. It praises German soldiers, whose "achievements" in two world wars will "still be admired in a thousand years." The FAP is largely controlled by The Movement (Die Bewegung), which seeks to reestablish the NSDAP (the Nazi Party) in the Federal Republic and unite all fascist groups under its aegis. 17


The FAP recruits from among skinheads and soccer fans, and its activities include acts of violence, arson, and racial attacks on foreigners. It advances the crudest 'Germany for Germans -- foreigners out' slogans. 18 When it engages in electoral activity, its programmatic demands have included "German jobs for German workers," "repatriation for foreigners," "no franchise for foreigners," and an end to the "crazy enthusiasm for integration." 19 Germans today must not ruin the "legacy of our fathers," the "cultural landscape"; Alsace-Lorraine, the South Tyrol, and Austria should all be returned to Germany.


FAP Nazis especially loathe "humanistically oriented cosmopolitanism." Marxism, liberalism, and Christianity "have torn humanity from its connectedness to the natural cycles of our earth." No "technical environmentalism" will succeed against the "increasingly obvious ecological catastrophe," they believe.


Rather, the "disrupted relations between humanity and the rest of nature" require an "ecological revolution" and a "radical revolution in consciousness" that will "lead humanity to a reintegration with the structure of planetary life." We need a new ethics, they maintain, one in which "humanity, animals and nature are regarded as a unity. Animals are not things" but are "life-forms that feel joy and pain and need our protection." Not surprisingly, the FAP regards abortion as a "crime against the laws of a healthy nature and against God."


[ANIMAL RIGHTS & ENVIRONMENTAL EXTREMISTS, ONE AND THE SAME]


In a blatant self-contradiction, their concrete environmental demands are in fact friendly to capitalism: They want "continued economic growth," yet less profit-seeking. "Ecological necessities . . . must be brought into accordance with a functioning economy," they believe, while "the cyclical system of nature should . . . be incorporated into the economic realm."


[THESE ARE MOST LIKELY THE EXTREMISTS WHO CALL FOR 'GREEN' ACCOUNTING STANDARDS TO INTERNALIZE AND REFLECT THE COST OF ENVIRONMENTAL EXTERNALITIES, FOR THE PURPOSE, ACCORDING TO SOME COMMENTATORS, OF ULTIMATELY UNDERMINING CAPITALISM
(See e.g., Aaron Wildavsky, Culture and Social Theory, Chap. 4, “Accounting for the Environment”, edited by Sun-Ki Chai and Brendon Swedlow, collected writings by Aaron Wildavsky (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), at 85-88, 106-108].


The Republicans 20


The Republicans, a political party founded by former Waffen-SS member Franz Schönhuber in 1983, have made numerous disavowals of any association with the Nazis -- they present themselves as nothing more than a "community of German patriots." Yet this does not stop them from taking explicitly anti-immigrant stances, especially against Turks, or from exploiting discontents about the influx of foreigners generally, or from maintaining that Germany should be "for Germans." The presence of a "tidal wave" of asylum-seekers in the Federal Republic, they believe, causes "the importation of criminals," "social tensions," and "financial burdens."


The Republicans call for the "preservation of the existence of the German Volk, its health and its ecological living-space [Lebensraum] as a priority for domestic policy. This goal," they add, "will also foster environmental protection." Indeed, ecological dislocations are endangering Germans' "health" -- and by 'health' they mean the 'genetic health' of the German people. Such 'health' has "a higher value than short-term profits and striving for a standard of living." Protecting and maintaining a "healthy environment" not only assures the "security of the means of life of our people" but is "a patriotic duty." The Republicans are stringently antiabortion for German women, yet for the Third World, "meaningful family planning" is necessary to end the "population explosion" and its consequent threat to the environment; without it there will be "natural catastrophe and starvation."


The National Democratic Party 21


The National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or NPD), founded in 1964 mainly by people who had been active Nazis before 1945, rose to prominence during the 1960s. This aggressively nationalist party long called for German reunification, while its programmatic literature complains that "two wars within one generation . . . have eaten away at the substantive health of the German people." (It does not mention what those wars did to the Jews, as Ditfurth dryly notes.) The NPD laments the destruction of the environment, which "has disadvantageous effects on the Volk-health." Germans should not be exposed to "chemical dyes" and should be protected from "congenital illness," while people with AIDS should be required to "register." The "preservation" of the "German people" requires that German women prolifically give birth, and therefore the NPD is against the "devaluation and destruction of the family." Since abortion threatens "the biological existence of our people," women who have abortions should be punished. The party calls for maternal and housekeeping training for "feminine youth."


In 1973, the NPD drew up an "Ecological Manifesto" that invoked "the laws of nature" to justify a hierarchically structured, "organic" order that would govern social relationships. 22 It inveighs against "the environment polluted and poisoned by a humanity that lives increasingly isolated in a degraded mass," which "is only the most noticeable symptom of the ruined equilibrium of humanity and nature."


In the years since then, the NPD's rhetoric has become increasingly New Age oriented; it now calls for "reachieving . . . an environmental consciousness, so necessary for life." Achieving this consciousness, the 1988 NPD program states, "first requires an inner revolution in human thought. It is not the unlimited accumulation of material goods or boundless consumption that gives meaning to human life and happiness, but the experience of nature, concern for cultural values, and social security in the family and Volk." Indeed, "Volk-consciousness and environmental consciousness are inseparable," since "millions of strangers" threaten "our Volk in its existence."


The German People's Union 23


The German People's Union (Deutsche Volksunion, or DVU) was founded by Dr. Gerhard Frey (born in 1933), a longtime ultra-right activist and publisher. Still its leading figure, Frey has been fixated for decades on the Second World War in DVU publications, casting doubts on the concentration camps as they are normally depicted and generally denying German guilt; his publications offer Nazi memorabilia for sale. The DVU proclaims that "Germany should remain German" and calls for "priority in German housing for Germans" and "national identity and self-determination." For the DVU, environmental protection means passing "stringent laws against polluters," "strict examination of imported foodstuffs," and imposing restrictions on animal experimentation and on "the torture of animals." Protecting life means "an end to abortion abuse."


[STRICT NON-SCIENCE-BASED PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE HEALTH & ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS. THIS IS THE LIKELY GENESIS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION'S ANTI-GMO CAMPAIGN, ITS 'REACH', ROhS REGULATIONS, & ITS BAN ON ANIMAL TESTING FOR COSMETICS]


Anthroposophy and the World League for the Protection of Life


Political parties like these have an assortment of 'Old' Right -- that is, Nazi -- connections upon which they may draw in their search for 'ecological' modernization. One such connection is the World League for the Protection of Life (Weltbund Schutz des Lebens, or WSL). This group is not without a certain general appeal in the Federal Republic, since its outlook is based on Anthroposophy, a body of occult ideas formulated earlier in this century by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Steiner, the leading German figure in the nineteenth-century esoteric 'wisdom' cult Theosophy, founded the German Theosophical Society; he went on to found his own doctrine, Anthroposophy, and the Anthroposophical Society thereafter. He wrote many books on his occult spiritualistic philosophy.


Anthroposophy holds a particular attraction in the German counterculture today, as it did in the völkisch movement of the 1920s. The Waldorf Schools, for example, were founded on Steiner's educational principles and are respectable in many German and American countercultural circles. (There are more than sixty in the Federal Republic today.) Founded by Steiner in 1920, they provide children with an alternative, reformed education, one that is free from aggression and from pressures to achieve, one that places emphasis on the musical aspects of life and on feelings over understanding. Steiner is also the founder of biodynamic farming, a form of organic agriculture that does without pesticides and tries to foster a more organic relationship between cultivator and soil. Biodynamic agriculturists today produce a line of organic foods under the brand name Demeter and a line of cosmetics under the name Weleda. Many people have been and continue to be innocently attracted to these efforts and to Anthroposophy without any notion of the less savory aspects of Steiner's work.


Yet not all of Steiner's beliefs were benignly ecospiritual. For one thing, Anthroposophy classifies humanity into 'root races' in an esoteric evolutionary theory. 24 Building on a similar doctrine in Theosophy, the root-race theory is integral to Anthroposophy's cosmology. According to this doctrine, a series of root races of human beings evolved sequentially over the millennia, each superior to the ones that preceded it, each with a higher level of development of self-consciousness. The first two root races, the Polar and Hyperborean, were 'astral-etheric'; they are now extinct -- the evolutionary process superseded them. The next people to evolve were a bit higher, but they were still half animal, purely instinctive, lacking the capacity for conceptual thought and memory. The fourth root race finally began to be recognizably human; finally came the Atlantans, to which Europeans belong. The European whites, as the most highly developed so far, are at the summit of the hierarchical scale of humanity; they have brought everything that is good to humanity, since they "are the only ones who have developed humanity within themselves." 25 These various races have been mostly killed off in various catastrophes of one kind or another, after which only certain people -- presumably the fittest -- survived; "in the case of the inferior kinds of human beings," wrote Steiner, ". . . the life body was not sufficiently protected to enable it to withstand the Luciferic influence." 26 There are numerous subdivisions within these basic root races. Blacks, for example, must live in Africa, we learn, a land of much heat and light; blacks soak up this heat and light, and their brains are specially constructed to process it; their supposed highly instinctual nature results from all this processing.


And since the sun, light, and heat are retained in his epidermis, [the black's] whole metabolism proceeds as if he were being cooked inside himself by the sun. From this results his instinctive life. Within the black, he is continuously being cooked, and what stokes this fire is his posterior brain. 27


Once blacks emigrate out of Africa, the balance of light and heat is different, and therefore they will die out -- "they are in fact a declining race, they will die out of their own nature, since they are receiving too little light and heat." 28 Such a theory would justify accelerating the extinction of races since they are presumably going to die off anyway. In the future, wrote Steiner in 1909, certain people who have not reached a "high level of development" will incline toward evil: "The laggard souls will have accumulated in their karma so much error, ugliness, and evil that there will form, for the time being, a special union of evil and aberrant human beings who voluntarily oppose the community of good men." 29


Perhaps this root-race theory was what appealed to Rudolf Hess about Anthroposophy, for he became an Anthroposophist. As Ditfurth points out, "The root-race ideology of the Theosophists and the Anthroposophists melded seamlessly into the National Socialist idea of the purity of the 'Aryan race.'"30 Certainly Steiner's ideas on biodynamic farming influenced some National Socialists. Anthroposophical ideas are eminently usable by ecofascists today, and there is a strong right wing within the Anthroposophists that is closely connected with the ultra-right. Author Günther Bartsch is an Anthroposophist who is also a National Revolutionary of the Solidarist variety; the author of an adulatory 1989 biography of Otto Strasser, he attempts in his publications to synthesize ecological themes based on Steiner's ideas with Strasser's political ideas. 31 It should be noted that Anthroposophy is also well funded by huge multinational corporations like Siemens and Bertelsmann. 32


Among the ultra-right adherents of Anthroposophy today are officials of the World League for the Protection of Life (WSL), a small but influential and very wealthy environmental organization in the Federal Republic. The garden at its educational center is cultivated according to biodynamic methods, and visitors are served organic refreshments. Yet this organization was founded in 1958 by former members of the National Socialist party, and today it links protection of 'life' (that is, 'right-to-life') themes and the environment with racism and a revival of völkisch ideology. The 'life' it is most interested in protecting is of course German 'life'; thus the WSL is rabidly anti-abortion, believing that German women should be devoted to giving birth to 'Aryan' babies.


The spiritual leader of the WSL and its key figure for most of its history has been Werner Georg Haverbeck. Born in 1909, Haverbeck became an active Nazi at an early age; it should be recalled that Nazism was largely a youth movement, so that members like Haverbeck are still alive. 33 Haverbeck joined the SA in 1928 and from 1929 to 1932 was a member of the Reich Administration for the National Socialist Student League (Reichsleitung der NSDAP-Studentenschaft) and a leader of the Reich Youth Leadership of the Hitler Youth (Reichjugendführung der Hitlerjugend). He served as a leading official of the Strength Through Joy organization, which controlled recreational activities under the Third Reich; in 1933 Rudolf Hess saw to it that Haverbeck's passport was stamped "This man is not to be arrested." He survived the Röhm purge to help organize the Nuremberg Party Congress and join Hess's staff. It was Hess who converted him to Anthroposophy. During the war he conducted radio propaganda in Denmark and worked in South America; by the end of the war he was an officer. 34


After the Allies rudely aborted Haverbeck's many efforts on behalf of the Third Reich, he contented himself for a time working as a pastor for the Anthroposophical Christian community. He founded an educational center called the Collegium Humanum in 1963, where today ecofascist, esoteric, völkisch, Anthroposophist, neopagan, and primitivist groups meet and hold workshops. He co-founded the WSL and served as its president from 1974 to 1982. In 1981, he was a signatory of the notorious Heidelberg Manifesto, a document drawn up by a group of professors to warn the German people of the dangers that immigration posed to them. Its first draft began: “With great concern we observe the subversion of the German people through the influx of many millions of foreigners and their families, the foreignization of our language, our culture, and our nationhood. . . . Already many Germans have become foreigners in their living districts and workplaces, and thus in their own Heimat.”35


Routine as this language may sound now, when opposition to immigration in the Federal Republic is much more tolerated and neofascists pander to it relentlessly, the Manifesto had to be toned down at the time (1981) because of the public outcry it raised.


In accordance with Anthroposophical root-race beliefs, Haverbeck is notable for propounding the thesis that the two world wars in this century in fact constituted a thirty years' war waged by foreign aggressors against the German people and their spiritual life. Apparently, German spiritual life stood in the way of "the strivings for world domination by the Anglo-Saxon race," behind which lay "the intensive image of a call to world dominance, like the old Jewish consciousness." Indeed, Haverbeck maintains, the two world wars amounted to a conspiracy against the German people and spiritual life. It is a "historical lie" that the Nazis ran "mass-murder camps," argues Haverbeck, and is actually "enemy propaganda." It was Russia that was the aggressor in the Second World War. 36


In his 1989 book Rudolf Steiner: Advocate for Germany, Haverbeck lauds Steiner (who died in 1925) for understanding the existence of this ongoing conspiracy early on.


During the first world war, Rudolf Steiner delivered a multitude of lectures about contemporary history, and he toiled inexhaustibly for the truth about the question of "war guilt." . . . Steiner presented his listeners with maps that showed that goals that had been proclaimed back in 1889 were being fulfilled [during World War I]. These maps anticipated the separation of Central Europe that would be ultimately achieved with the loss of East Germany. . . . What was not fully achieved through the Versailles treaty in 1919 was in fact completed in 1945: the demolition of Germany. . . . The leading forces of both parties to the cold war were united in this common struggle against spiritual Germany. "This war [World War I] was a conspiracy against German spiritual life," said Steiner. 37


When Haverbeck's book on Steiner's nationalism was published, it caused an outcry of protest among outraged countercultural Anthroposophists who send their children to Waldorf Schools, use Demeter products, and are in no way racists or fascists. Yet as researcher Wölk points out, their protests were unwarranted, since Haverbeck was only presenting Steiner as what he actually was -- "a crude nationalist whose demonizations were shared by the völkisch groups of his day" -- to show his usefulness for nationalist and neofascist groups today. 38


This alleged conspiracy against German spiritual life pervades much of the WSL's current thinking, notes Wölk. WSLers consider the "flood of asylum-seekers," the destruction of the environment, and the ongoing transformation of the Federal Republic into a multicultural society to be part of the spiritual war against the Germans. They regard the protection of the environment as part of the protection of a people, of its biological "substance" and its national identity. Indeed, WSLers see the battle for a healthy environment as part of the all-encompassing spiritual struggle against the homogenizing forces of modernity and "Western civilization." Haverbeck's wife, Ursula Haverbeck-Wetzel, another former WSL president who "for religious reasons refuses to dissociate herself from any human being, including Adolf Hitler," 39 observes:


Whenever a person comes to feel that he belongs to the cultural strain that is deeply rooted in his people which has not only a material existence but a spiritual reality that is superior to the material plane -- he has broken out from being a manipulated consumer. He has escaped the mass homogenization of completely manipulated people who are "amusing themselves to death" (as Neil Postman put it), which is the goal of "One World" advocates, intent on power and domination. The person who is faithful to his religious convictions and attentive and caring to his culture and customs, they consider dangerous. 40


Ernst Otto Cohrs, the WSL's president since 1989, is another devotee of Rudolf Steiner, having been an Anthroposophist since 1961. Today Cohrs's interests seem to lie in promulgating race theories, and publishing and distributing anti-Semitic literature. In 1982, an official of the WSL's Bavarian chapter made a public issue of Cohrs's activities inside the WSL. He wrote a letter to a WSL membership assembly saying that it should dissociate itself from Cohrs because, among other things, he was sending anti-Semitic literature to WSL members, running advertisements in ultra-right magazines like Bauernschaft (the journal of the notorious Holocaust-denier Thies Christophersen), permitting neofascist periodicals to reprint WSL leaflets, and himself distributing such writings as There Were No Gas Chambers and The Auschwitz Myth.41 Many members withdrew from the WSL as a result of this letter; those who remained were overwhelmingly those who shared Cohrs's anti-Semitic ideas and were not disposed to contradict him. Among them was Baldur Springmann, the 'ecofarmer' who was involved in the Greens in the early days, whose book Partner Erde (Partner Earth) was published by an ultra-right publisher (Arndt Verlag), and who writes for the 'New' Right publication Nation Europa; and Dr. Arnold Neugebohrn, a Republican candidate for the provincial legislature who takes pride in his NSDAP 'gold medal.' Concludes Wölk, "The internal crisis caused by Cohrs's activities in 1981-82 may have diminished the ranks of the WSL, but it also strengthened the WSL's neofascist orientation." Cohrs's current activities are still primarily the dissemination of Holocaust-denial literature. 42


One collective member of the WSL is a Hamburg-based organization known as the Society for Biological Anthropology, Eugenics, and Behavioral Research (Gesellschaft für biologische Anthropologie, Eugenik, und Verhaltensforschung, or GfbAEV), whose head is Jürgen Rieger, a "neo-Nazi in lawyer's robes" (as the newspaper Die Zeit called him) who is currently defending two fascist groups that the Federal Republic banned in 1992; one of the GfbAEV's fellows is the leading ideologue of the French Nouvelle Droite, Alain de Benoist. Its periodical is the notorious quarterly journal Neue Anthropologie, which maintains, among other things, that there has always been environmental destruction in the history of humanity, that in fact one could even say this was part of human nature were it not for one sole exception:


Only the Germans were different. In pagan times they worshipped groves and trees, and because of their closeness to nature, they had a caring orientation toward nature. Even the love of animals is much more pronounced among the Germanic peoples than it is, for example, among the Romance-language-speaking peoples. It is thus no coincidence that even today the most stalwart environmentalist efforts -- private as well as state -- are those conducted by peoples who have a larger proportion of the Nordic race. 43


Rudolf Bahro:Völkisch Spirituality


If fascists are using ecological themes to update their racial and nationalist aims, other thinkers are developing an ecological spiritualism along New Age lines that bears no small resemblance to the völkisch Germanic spirituality of the 1920s. Indeed, "a great part of the literature about close-to-nature spirituality that the alternative scene is reading is permeated with reactionary, völkisch, or even National Socialist content," writes Ditfurth. "We find neofascist and ultra-right positions not only in the various political and even ecological groups, but also . . . in neopagan, esoteric and occult circles." 44


Perhaps the most prominent figure in this connection is Rudolf Bahro. Many German 'new social movement' circles previously accepted Bahro as a social theorist contributing to a 'socialism with a human face' and continue to regard him as part of the independent left; leftist periodicals publish uncritical interviews with him. In the Anglo-American world, too, many ecological radicals still consider Bahro as representing something 'leftist.' Yet Bahro no longer considers himself a leftist; indeed, he is a vehement critic of the left45 and of "comrades without fatherland." 46 In fact, as antifascist researcher Roger Niedenführ argues, since the mid-1980s Bahro has been contributing to the development of a "spiritual fascism" that has the effect of "rehabilitating National Socialism," openly calling for reclaiming the "positive" side of the Nazi movement. Not only does Bahro appeal to a mystical Germanist spirituality like the völkisch ideologues of the 1920s, he even sees the need for a "Green Adolf" who will lead Germans out of their own "folk-depths" and into ecological "salvation.


Bahro originally became well known as the author of The Alternative in Eastern Europe, which he wrote during the 1970s while he was a dissident Marxist and party member in the former East Germany. In 1977, the ruling Communist government sentenced him to prison; in 1979, he was deported. Once arrived in what was then West Germany, Bahro became involved with the nascent German Greens, affirming that "red and green go well together." 48 In the early 1980s peace movement, he alarmed many by enunciating nationalistic arguments against the deployment of Pershing missiles. 49 He began to speak less in political terms and more in religious terms, asking that "the emphasis [be] shifted from politics and the question of power towards the cultural level . . . to the prophetic level. . . . Our aim has to be the 'reconstruction of God.'"50 He became a vocal 'fundamentalist' critic of the realo wing of the Greens (those who became generally committed to exercising parliamentary power) and ultimately left the party in 1985. In a parting speech in Hamburg, he said there were structural similarities between the Greens and the Nazi movement that the Greens were not taking advantage of but should; then he gave his 'fundamentalist' alternative: "the other republic that we want will be an association of communities of life-communities in which God and Goddess are at the center." 51


Bahro thereafter moved increasingly toward the New Age esoteric milieu. His major concern remained "the ecological crisis," whose "deep structures" must be investigated, but he now thinks ecology "has nothing to do with left and right." 52 Today Bahro is one of the leading spokespeople and theorists of New Age ideas in the Federal Republic. "The most important thing," he rambles, is that . . . [people] take the path "back" and align themselves with the Great Equilibrium, in the harmony between the human order and the Tao of life. I think the "esoteric"-political theme of "king and queen of the world" is basically the question of how men and women are to comprehend and interact with each other in a spiritually comprehensive way. Whoever does not bring themselves to cooperate with the world government [Weltregierung] will get their due. 53


In 1989, Bahro cofounded a combination educational center and commune near Trier, the Lernwerkstatt (an "ecological academy for one world"), whose purpose is to synthesize spirituality and politics, "to come to a new personal and social orientation." It presents lectures, cultural events, and weekend workshops on various New Age themes, including deep ecology, ecofeminism, Zen Buddhism, holistic nutrition, Sufism, and the like -- as well as German identity. 54 His 1987 book Logik der Rettung marked an overt embrace of authoritarian theological concepts that shocked many former admirers. 55


Bahro also holds a professorship at Humboldt University in Berlin, where he conducts a seminar whose sessions are usually filled to overflowing. At Humboldt, he holds a chair in 'social ecology,' and he refers to his 'science' by this name, but Bahro's work is not to be confused with the social ecology conceived and developed by Murray Bookchin. Although the two theorists agree that class contradictions are not the exclusive social contradiction, Bookchin regards hierarchy as basic, while emphasizing the importance of class interests. Bahro, by contrast, points to "tribal consciousness" as rooted "more deeply than class consciousness," even in the spiritually "deepest layers" of a people. "The national question is an objective reality," Bahro says, that is on a much "deeper basis than the class question." 56


Moreover, whereas Bookchin's consistently internationalist social ecology affirms reason and naturalism and repeatedly criticizes ecomysticism and ecotheology, Bahro's version of 'social ecology' is overwhelmingly spiritualistic. Indeed, in late 1990, when Bookchin spoke at the Humboldt seminar at Bahro's invitation, Bahro told Bookchin that his (Bahro's) own 'social ecology' was actually an attempt to synthesize Bookchin's social ecology with deep ecology. 57 Politics must be based on spiritualistic values today, in Bahro's view, because "without a return to the spiritual source," politics "will not be worthy of that name." 58 Not only are those who see spirituality and politics as opposites fundamentally wrong, he argues, but our global ecological problems are in fact a material reflection of the inner spiritual "sickness" that separates them. It is a religious "politics of consciousness" -- that is, the implanting of spiritualistic ideas -- that can arrest the global ecological crisis and prepare people for the new political order. 59


[RELIGIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISM]


Bahro's spiritualistic approach has a distinctly ethno-cultural dimension. He speaks of peoples as if they had unique spiritual 'essences' that are indissoluble, that cannot be destroyed over time. 60 He is particularly concerned with the 'German essence' (deutsche Wesenheit) and its various manifestations on the material plane. 61 In approaching the ecological crisis, the German 'essence' demands the incorporation of spiritualism, particularly the mystical tradition initiated by Meister Eckhart, whom "we Germans should read." 62 Bahro favorably contrasts this "German legacy"63 with socialism and the Enlightenment.


It appears not to alarm Bahro, as antifascist researcher Peter Kratz points out, that his mystical Germanism closely resembles the mystical Germanism of the völkisch movement. 64 Bahro, in fact, consciously associates himself with the völkisch movement -- he says he wants an "awakening in the Volk"65 -- and with the 1920s Conservative Revolution against the Enlightenment generally. 66 Indeed, Bahro is critical of the Greens, among other things, because they did "not attend to this völkisch moment." 67 Kratz warns that this gives Bahro's approach "the same potential for political catastrophe that the völkisch movement had, even though this would please Bahro as little as it would have pleased the originators of the völkisch movement." 68


'Essences' like the 'German essence' cannot remain in the spiritual plane; they must be manifested in concrete reality -- that is, in politics, history, and society. In Bahro's prospectus (and in stark contrast to Bookchin's anarchist libertarian municipalism), these manifestations will not take the form of democratic institutions, since "to say that we will create grassroots democracy now, among these wolves, is nonsense." 69


Bahro criticizes the "bean-counting voting" process of democracy and prefers a spiritual consensus process for decision making. 70 Although he is currently receiving state support from Saxony for an eco-communal demonstration project (thanks largely to his friend and visiting lecturer at Humboldt, Saxon prime minister Kurt Biedenkopf), Bahro also rejects the state: "Society's rule of law," he asserts, "may no longer be based on the state or on any other existing forces that are even less legitimate." 71


[THIS SOUNDS EERILY SIMILAR TO THE EUROPEAN UNION'S CALL FOR REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONSENSUS-BASED REGULATIONS AND STANDARDS. IT ALSO SOUNDS EERILY SIMILAR TO THE EUROPEAN UNION'S CALL FOR REFLEXIVE MULTILATERALISM AND WEAKENING OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY]


Despite his antistatist assertions, which may make him appear attractively anti-authoritarian, like many 'New' Rightists Bahro expressly believes that the ecological crisis is resolvable only through authoritarian means. He calls for a spiritually based and hierarchically elitist "salvation government" (Rettungsregierung) or a "god-state" (Gottesstaat)72 that will be run by a "new political authority at the highest level": a "prince of the ecological turn." 73


The "prince," which apparently may be a collective entity, will constitute a spiritual elite, an oligarchy responsible only to God. As a "voice of the divine," 74 this guru elite will dictate the law of God and nature, in order to convert the present society to the "order according to nature"75 that Bahro sees as desirable. People should not "be afraid" of the advent of this "prince," says Bahro, since "a bit of 'ecodictatorship' is needed" to handle our problems today. 76 Besides, "it is a matter of absolute indifference whether [this prince] is a man or a woman," he assures us, "it is a question of structure. That is the German moment in this Green movement." 77 But today it is important to develop a broad spiritual consciousness in the general population, for "without a spiritual determination, there will be no new redemptive institutionalization" -- that is, no "prince." 78 It is presumably cheering that "in spite of all bad experiences . . . the strongest political-psychological dispositions of our people" make "the Germans more responsive than other peoples to charismatic leadership." 79


[THIS SOUNDS EERILY SIMILAR TO THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS OF PLATO'S UTOPIAN REPUBLIC. THE REFERENCE TO 'STRUCTURE' ALSO SEEMS TO RELATE TO A 'NEW INTERNATIONAL ORDER' BASED ON STRICT PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE-BASED REGULATION]


Liberating the 'Brown Parts'


Since the mid-1980s, Bahro has been remarkably open about proclaiming his embrace of the spiritual content of fascism for the 'salvation' of nature and humanity. In The Logic of Salvation, he asks, "Is there really no thought more reprehensible than a new 1933?" -- that is, Hitler's rise to state power. "But that is precisely what can save us! The ecology and peace movement is the first popular German movement since the Nazi movement. It must co-redeem [miterlösen] Hitler." 80 Indeed, "the Nazi movement [was] among other things an early reading of the ecology movement." 81 Germans are to look for "the positive that may lie buried in the Nazi movement" and reclaim it, he says, "because if we do not, we will remain cut off from our roots, the roots from which will grow that which will save us." 82 Today one must "liberate" the "brown parts" in the German character. 83 The fact is, says Bahro, that today "there is a call in the depths of the Volk for a Green Adolf." 84


When Bahro's critics reproach him for this assertion, Bahro responds that no, he does not mean Adolf Hitler. That his leftist critics think he means Adolf Hitler shows that the left "responds only with fear, instead of comprehending that a Green Adolf would be an entirely different Adolf from the one we know about." 85 Yet as Kratz points out, Bahro himself is evasive about what this 'Green Adolf' actually would be: perhaps a personified Führer, perhaps a spiritual elite, or perhaps some inner self-recognition that within each of us there is supposedly a 'Green Adolf,' to whom we must subordinate ourselves voluntarily through spiritual insight. This evasiveness is itself a matter of concern. Kratz believes that Bahro really means a personified Führer; for one thing, Bahro invokes the 'sleeping emperor' myth, 86 the nationalistic notion that the Emperor Barbarossa is sleeping in the Kyffhäuser Mountain and will one day come back as the Führer and rescue Germany from dire straits 87 -- an idea that is also one of the foundations of the Nazi Führer principle.


For Bahro, this Führer will clearly be a spiritualistic leader. In a foreword to a book by his colleague Jochen Kirchhoff, he argued that National Socialism had had the right spiritual aims: it sought to manifest the 'German essence' on the material plane. It went wrong in the execution -- for one thing, it was very violent. But even this was understandable since, arising as it did in the 1920s, it was the task of National Socialism to make the first real spiritual revolt against the overwhelming materialism of the age. Thus, the materialistic thinking of the Weimar era, against which National Socialism rebelled, was the real cause of the Nazis' material "vehemence"-- that is, mass murder. 88


The materialistic thinking of Weimar modernity that the Nazis were so correct to oppose, says Bahro, is also today the immediate cause of the ecological crisis. Only the spiritualization of consciousness, Bahro believes, can prevail over biosphere-destroying materialism. Hence Germans today have no alternative but to invoke the spiritually "deep forces" from the Nazi movement -- in order to "be present with our whole potential." 89


But it must be a strictly spiritual endeavor: undertaking concrete political resistance on the material plane is, for Bahro, itself an integral component of materialistic secularism, an expression of negative spirituality. Those who engage in politics on the material plane today, he says, in fact politically resemble -- Nazis! True, the Nazis had to struggle in the twenties, but at least they had the right spiritual ideas. But "revolt (under the conditions of our imperial situation) is fascistic. That is to say, it redeems [rettet] nothing." 90


Bahro's religious dispensation thus does not synthesize spirituality and politics at all, as critic Niedenführ points out; on the contrary, it simply eliminates political action. 91


Repelled by these ideas, critics have denounced The Logic of Salvation as fascistic or 'fascistoid' -- potentially fascist. Bahro responds that such "faint-hearted antifascism" has "refused" to "look for the strength that lay beneath the brown movement." 92 Precisely because the left rejects the insights of spirituality, it can never see the necessity of völkisch-authoritarian structures and therefore can never give material form to the 'German essence,' he believes. Bahro replied further in his next book, Rückkehr:


It can be instructive that there was a strong wing of the Nazis that wanted to be socially and culturally revolutionary. This wing was not consolidated, and the Hitler movement went on to serve a regenerated German capitalism. . . . We can no longer allow fascism to be a taboo subject.

It should be noted that fascism has hardly been a 'taboo subject' in the Federal Republic -- on the contrary, it has been much discussed. What has been rightly rejected -- and hardly merely 'taboo,' since a taboo begs to be broken -- is sympathy for the Nazis. Bahro continues:


I can't rule out the possibility that at the end of the 1920s I wouldn't have gone with the Nazis. And it's very important that we be prepared to ask such a question. As for what would have happened later, I don't know. There were people in the Nazi movement who gave it up before 1933; there were people who saw the light with the Röhm affair; some went into the resistance; others were executed. But we're not supposed to imagine what we ourselves would have done. And I was ready and am ready to go into such questions. I think that if we are serious about forming a popular movement and overcoming the ecological crisis, and if we are really to address what comes out of the depths, we will have to have a lot to do with what it was that found expression then and that is seeking another, better expression this time. That can go well only if there is a great deal of consciousness about whatever unhappy mechanisms lie in all of us, the resentment reactions, mere rebellion instead of revolution. 93


Posing as a courageous inquiry into the breaking of taboos, such practices do nothing more than give people permission to envision themselves as Nazis -- a horrifying dispensation in any era, but particularly in one when present-day Nazis routinely attack foreigners in German towns and cities and when fascist parties are having electoral victories.


Some of Bahro's associates add to the strong suspicion that his 'Green Adolf' refers to a new Führer. One of his fellow teachers at the Lernwerkstatt, for example, is Rainer Langhans, a former anarchistic 'wild man' of the 1960s German student organization SDS who writes today that "spirituality in Germany is named Hitler. And only when you have gone a little bit further can you go beyond it. Until then, however, you must reclaim the inheritance . . . not in the sense of this fine exclusionary antifascism but in the sense of further developing what Hitler tried to do." And: "This dumb Enlightenment, which builds up dams against so-called 'outbreaks of the irrational,' is actually merely laughable as an antifascist syndrome." And: "We have to be, so to speak, the better fascists." 94 Another of Bahro's fellow teachers at the Lernwerkstatt is Jochen Kirchhoff, who writes that "National Socialism was a botched attempt at healing the world . . . and to ground politics in the spiritual." 95


To speak at his seminar at Humboldt, Bahro also invited Wolfgang Deppert, a onetime head of the völkisch-racist sect German Unitary Religion Community (DUR), even though at the end of 1990 Deppert permitted the publication in one of his periodicals of an article by Princess Marie-Adelheld Reuss-zur-Lippe. Earlier in her life, in the 1920s, this person was a founder of the 'Nordic Ring' and later a close political and personal confidante of the Third Reich's Agriculture Minister, Walther Darré, who called her "my little sister." In 1985, she was the editor-in-chief of the journal Bauernschaft (Peasantry), whose publisher is Thies Christophersen, the notorious author of the despicable 1973 pamphlet Die Auschwitz Lüge (The Auschwitz Lie). 96 Deppert, apparently, spoke at the Humboldt seminar on philosophy and science.


But whatever happened at that lecture, Murray Bookchin's appearance at the seminar on November 21, 1990, did not go over well with the host. Bahro had asked Bookchin to address such questions as "Is the alternative to ecological destruction freedom from domination or an 'ecological' dictatorship?" Bookchin replied that "an 'ecological' dictatorship would not be ecological -- it would finally finish off the planet altogether. It would be the glorification, the hypostasization, of social control, of manipulation, the objectification of human beings, the denial of human freedom and selfconsciousness, in the name of ecological problems. . . . An 'ecological' dictatorship is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron."


When Bookchin had finished his presentation, the following exchange took place:


Bahro: You put such a spotlight on the positive side of human nature -- cooperation and so on -- that if that were true, it's improbable that again and again we would have fallen back into egotism and competition. You see human nature predominantly as positive. But more often than not, it has worked out for the worse rather than for the better. Most often the institutions that the human species has created have had hierarchy and domination. The fact that they did so must have a foundation in human nature. . . . When you talk about rationality, Geist, the fully developed capacity of being human, you are confronting this side least -- the "dark side." Because that is what gives us the capacity to dominate, this Geist, our rationality. You don't want to confront that as fundamental. . . .


Bookchin: I don't ignore the "dark side" of humanity . . . But if the "dark side" exists everywhere, then why has it been necessary for the "dark side" to express itself in institutions of the most barbarous kind? Why did there have to be coercion? Why does that "dark side" always have to be institutionalized through force, through superstition, through fear, through threat, and through ideologies of the most barbarous nature? . . . There's no question that there is a"dark side" to human history. . . . But it's very hard to find the biological reasons for that "dark side." Because that "dark side" has always operated through the institutions of a minority who relied on force and depended on propaganda and superstition, and on the worst things that the human mind can develop, to suppress the millions and millions.


Bahro: But does it have natural foundations?


Bookchin: It emerges from a social foundation. . . . If the "dark side" is natural, why is it that in all the great revolutions that we know of, people have broken out with a generosity of spirit that is incredible? They have been willing to trust, to care, to feel the pain even of their masters -- when their masters tried to oppress them, owing to their own insecurities. . . . In warrior societies, to make the adolescent transformation into a warrior, you have to inflict pain upon him. You have to spoil him, to make him a sufferer in order to make him part of the community of warriors. . . . I don't see the "dark side" of human nature, but of social nature. 97


After Bookchin gave his lecture, Bahro told Bookchin that he would not invite him to speak again.

Social Darwinist 'Ecology': Herbert Gruhl


Bahro, let it be said, claims to look for the roots of the ecological crisis in the "sickness" in "white Nordic humanity." But the far right most often locates these roots in non-Europeans and uses 'ecology' to marshal classic racist arguments against Third World immigration. In the "Europe of fatherlands" of the "ethnopluralism" concept, each Volk requires its own specific, familiar home environment in order to thrive. Interference from outside -- including immigration -- disturbs that natural environment, the "natural ecology of the Volk." Most often, the far right claims to be defending cultures rather than races; if the Nazis persecuted those who practiced 'race mixing' and sought to preserve 'racial purity,' today's fascists say they oppose cultural mixing and seek to preserve their culture. Thus, the ecofascist and misleadingly named Ecological Democratic Party (Ökologische Demokratische Partei, or ÖDP) calls for "asylum-seekers [to] be accepted by countries that belong to the same cultural area as the asylum seekers themselves," and they call for "Heimat instead of multiculture." 98


The hollowness of such claims becomes evident, however, when they are clothed in terms of 'ecology.' For the far right's notion of ecology is in fact nothing more than social Darwinism, the reactionary ideology that biology dictates the form of society, that genes rather than environment determine culture. Social Darwinist 'ecology' can then advance seemingly 'ecological' reasons for keeping out immigrants and for asserting ethnic or national identity -- while avoiding the terminology of race.


Social Darwinism has deep roots in the German ultra-right. When it first emerged as a doctrine in the nineteenth century, its German form was very different from its Anglo-American form.


Like Anglo-American social Darwinism, German social Darwinism projected human social institutions onto the nonhuman world as 'natural laws,' then invoked those 'laws' to justify the human social arrangements as 'natural.' It also applied the maxim 'survival of the fittest' to society. But where Anglo-American social Darwinism conceived the 'fittest' as the individual entrepreneur in a 'bloody tooth and claw' capitalist jungle, German social Darwinism overwhelmingly conceived the 'fittest' in terms of race. Thus, the 'fittest' race not only would but should survive, vanquishing all its competitors in its 'struggle for existence.' As historian Daniel Gasman observes:


It may be said that if Darwinism in England was an extension of laissez faire individualism projected from the social world to the natural world, [in Germany it was] a projection of German romanticism and philosophical idealism. . . .


The form which social Darwinism took in Germany was a pseudo-scientific religion of nature worship and nature-mysticism combined with notions of racism. 99


[VIRULENT ANTI-AMERICANISM DISGUISED AS AN ETHICAL, MORAL & HUMANISTIC APPEAL TO ESTABLISH ENLIGHTENED ENVIRONMENTALISM PREMISED ON MALTHUSIAN 'NEGATIVE' SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE, AS THE FOUNDATION OF A NEW WORLD ORDER]


Since this social Darwinism seemed to give a 'scientific' basis to racism, National Socialism drew heavily on it to provide 'scientific' grounds for its virulent racism. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, for example, that people "owe their higher existence, not to the ideas of a few crazy ideologists, but to the knowledge and ruthless application of Nature's stern and rigid laws." Among these 'laws': "Nature usually makes certain corrective decisions with regard to the racial purity of earthly creatures. She has little love for bastards." 100 To establish their totalitarian regime and implement genocide, the Nazis easily drew on the common ideology that the Volk mediates between individual and cosmos, rendering the individual mainly a member of a larger whole, the 'Volk whole' or 'Volk community.'


It is well known among ecological activists today that Ernst Haeckel coined the term ecology in the 1860s; what is less known is that Haeckel was the primary spokesperson for German social Darwinism in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as Gasman shows. German social Darwinism was thus almost immediately married to the concept of ecology. Haeckel was also a believer in mystical racism and nationalism, so that German social Darwinism was from the beginning a political concept that lent romantic racism and nationalism a pseudo-biological basis. In fact, as Gasman argues, racially inspired social Darwinism in Germany . . . was almost completely indebted to Haeckel for its creation. . . . His ideas served to unite into a full-bodied ideology the trends of racism, imperialism, romanticism, anti-Semitism and nationalism. . . . It was Haeckel who brought the full weight of science down hard on the side of what were Volkism's essentially irrational and mystical ideas. 101


Haeckel himself was a proponent of carrying over concepts like 'selective breeding' and 'racial hygiene' from nonhuman nature into human society.


Despite the widely different scientific concepts of ecology that have emerged since Haeckel's day, the 'ecology' that today's ecofascists draw upon is essentially the social Darwinism of Haeckel. Perhaps the most prominent social Darwinist-'ecological' racist in Germany today is Herbert Gruhl, 102 a former Christian Democrat parliamentarian whose best-selling 1975 book, A Planet Is Plundered: The Balance of Terror of Our Politics, makes an explicit social Darwinist interpretation of ecology. 103


In the late 1970s and early 1980s Gruhl participated in the formation of the German Greens with a new political group he had founded, Green Action Future (GAZ). It was Gruhl who created the slogan "We are neither left nor right; we are in front," according to Charlene Spretnak and Fritjof Capra. 104 In the early 1980s, ultrarightists, including Gruhl's GAZ, struggled with leftists and centrists for the direction of the Green Party; the center-left ultimately took control. "It is to the credit of the leftist tendencies in the founding phases of the Greens," writes Ditfurth, "that the ultra-right and neofascists were prevented from taking over ecological politics, as they were threatening to do at the time." 105


Gruhl, on the losing end, concluded that the Greens had given up their "concern for ecology in favor of a leftist ideology of emancipation" and walked out of the party. He continued his fight for his conception of ecology outside the Greens, however; with his fellow ultra-rightist Baldur Springmann, he founded the Ecological Democratic Party (ÖDP) in 1982 and wrote most of its programmatic literature, orienting ecology toward fascism and endowing racism and population policy with an 'ecological' legitimation. In 1989, when an ÖDP party congress dared to pass a resolution formally distancing the party from the NPD and the Republicans, this 'leftist victory' was too much for Gruhl, and he left to form yet another group. Since the mid-1980s, Gruhl has appeared as a guest speaker at various neo-Nazi and Holocaust-denial events and continues to publish books on 'ecology.'


Gruhl's social Darwinist 'ecology' reduces human beings to their biological attributes and applies the 'laws' of nature to society: "All laws that apply to living nature generally apply to people as well, since people themselves are part of living nature," he maintains. 107 These 'natural laws' dictate that people should accept the present social order as it is. Domination, hierarchy, and exploitation should be accepted, since "the swan is white, without anyone artificially cleaning it. The raven is black, and everything is in its natural place of its own accord. This is good. All the strivings of people . . . for organized justice are simply hopeless." 108 People should adapt to existing conditions instead of making futile attempts to change them, since "every life-form accommodates itself to that which it cannot change." 109


[THIS IS THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT CALLING FOR THE ABSOLUTE PRESERVATION OF NATURE WHICH SUPERCEDES MANKIND, AND THE REVERSAL OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL DIFFUSION]


If society were set up according to nature, Gruhl believes, cultures would institute prescriptions against those who deviate from their existing norms, since "in the hunting grounds of the wilderness, if an animal breaks the unwritten law of the herd and goes its own way, it generally pays for this independence with its life." 110 Moreover, cultures should be kept separate from one another: "When many cultures are all jumbled together in the same area, the result will be that they live alongside each other, in conflict with each other, or . . . they will undergo entropy, becoming a mixture whose value lessens with every intermixing, until in the last analysis it has no more worth." The reason for cultural separation too has its basis in 'natural law,' "a law of entropy which we particularly have in ecology, and this law also holds for human cultures." 111


In the coming years, Gruhl believes that cultures around the globe will compete for survival over the means of life, in a social Darwinist struggle for existence. "There is no doubt that the wars of the future will be fought over shares in the basic foundations of life -- that is, over the basis of nutrition and the increasingly precious fruits of the soil. Under these circumstances, future wars will far surpass in frightfulness all previous wars." 112 The peoples who have the best prospects for survival will be those who are best armed and who best conserve their resources; those who "succeed in bringing their military preparedness to the highest level, while keeping their standard of living low, will have an enormous advantage." 113


[THIS EERILY SOUNDS LIKE THE WARNINGS COMING OUT OF EUROPE AND THE UNITED NATIONS ABOUT THE IMPENDING STRUGGLE OVER NATURAL RESOURCES DUE TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL CALAMITIES THAT HAVE BEFALLEN THE EARTH]


In the interests of this struggle, Germans must not only arm themselves but preserve their environment by keeping the number of people who inhabit it down: "Violations of ecological equilibrium and the destruction of natural living spaces [Lebensäume] are directly related to population density."


"Overpopulation" in the Third World, however, has produced "armies of job-seekers" who are entering Germany with a "capacity for annihilation" comparable to a "nuclear bomb," Gruhl writes. This "tidal wave of humanity" is a primary menace that will cause "all order to break down" in Europe. Third World immigrants are thus threatening European culture itself, which will "perish not because of the degeneration of its own people, as previous high civilizations have, but because of physical laws: the constantly overflowing mass of humanity on an earth's surface that remains constant." 115 Therefore, there is no room for immigrants in the Federal Republic: "Because of its high population density, the Federal Republic of Germany, one of the most densely settled countries on earth, cannot be a destination country for immigrants. We therefore reject the unlimited acceptance of foreigners." 116 Accordingly, Gruhl demands "an end to immigration for ecological reasons." 117


[THIS EERILY SOUNDS LIKE THE MALTHUSIAN DOCTRINE OF 'NEGATIVE' SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PROMOTED BY THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE UNITED NATIONS]


The 'laws of nature,' for Gruhl, offer a solution to Third World immigration, especially the 'law' that "the only acceptable currency with which violations of natural law can be paid for is death. Death brings the equalization; it cuts back all life that has overgrown on this planet, so that the planet can once again come into equilibrium." 118 Fortunately, in his view, Third World people will accept this lethal solution since their lives "rest on a completely different basic outlook on life from our own: their own death, like that of their children, is accepted as fate." 119


Needless to say, Gruhl does not think democracy is the most efficient way to address these problems. After all, this situation "will take on the proportions of an emergency in coming years, and attempts that will be made to prevail in it will produce a permanent state of emergency." 120


In an interview with the editors of Junge Freiheit (Young Freedom), the flagship publication of the National Revolutionaries, Gruhl was asked whether the problems of protecting the environment and life can be solved within a democracy. "Probably not," he replied, "because democracies follow the Zeitgeist, and in all countries of the world today the Zeitgeist is to raise the standard of living further. Parties that warn about this and advocate renunciation of consumption seem to have little chance." Instead, Gruhl demands a "strong state," strong both internationally and domestically -- if possible, even a state with "dictatorial powers." 121


[THIS IS REFLECTIVE OF THE CURRENT EUROPEAN CAMPAIGN TO PERSUADE THE UNITED STATES TO SIGN AND RATIFY A MYRIAD OF MULTILATERAL ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATORY TREATIES THAT SET FORTH AN INTERNATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK PREMISED ON STRICT PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE-BASED ENVIRONMENTAL RULES NOT BASED ON EITHER RATIONAL SCIENCE OR ECONOMICS]


In the autumn of 1991, the environmental minister of Lower Saxony shocked many observers by awarding Herbert Gruhl a highly prestigious state honor. "With his international best-seller A Planet Is Plundered," minister Monika Greifahn said, Gruhl has "placed ideas of environmental protection and care at the forefront of public political consciousness." 122


A Social Ecology of Freedom


" A combination of nationalism, authoritarianism, and yearnings for charismatic leaders that is legitimated by a mystical and biologistic 'ecology' is potentially socially catastrophic. Just as the völkisch movement ultimately was channeled into the Nazi movement, so too new social movements that appeal to these concepts must be mindful of their potential for political and social catastrophe if they are channeled into a dangerous political direction that draws on mysticism.


" A love of the natural world and alienation from modern society are in themselves innocent and legitimate ideas, and it was by no means a historical necessity that they be permutated into a justification for mass murder. Nor is 'ecology' limited to an interpretation as a social Darwinist racial jungle, or politicized along tribal, regional, and nationalist lines. Nor is 'ecology' inherently an antirational, mystical concept. Finally, the ecological crisis can hardly be dismissed; it is itself very real and is worsening rapidly. Indeed, the politicization of ecology is not only desirable but necessary."


Although this article has focused on the 'ecological' right in the Federal Republic, 'ecological' fascism is hardly limited to that country. In Britain, a wing of the National Front issues the cry, "Racial preservation is Green!" In the United States, the notorious white supremacist Tom Metzger remarks:


I've noticed that there's an increased number of young people in the white racialist movement who are also quite interested in ecology, protecting the animals from cruelty and things like that, and it seems to me that as we are becoming more aware of our precarious state, the white man, the white woman's, state in the world, being only about 10 percent of the population, we begin to sympathize, empathize more, with the wolves and other animals." 123


" His colleague Monique Wolfing agrees: "Well, naturally. They're in the same position we are. Why would we want something created for ourselves and yet watch nature be destroyed? We work hand in hand with nature and we should save nature along with trying to save our race." 124 The noted U.S. deep ecologist Bill Devall, who is certainly not a fascist, has allowed anti-immigration themes to enter his views: He notes with apparent relief that while "population is beginning to stabilize in Western Europe and North America," there is a caveat -- "in-migration." Devall chastises those who would "justify large-scale in-migration to Western Europe and North America from Latin America and Africa" as guilty of "misplaced humanism." 125


" What is clearly crucial is how an ecological politics is conceived. If the Green slogan "we are neither left nor right but up front" was ever meaningful, the emergence of an 'ecological right' defines the slogan's bankruptcy conclusively. The need for an ecological left is urgent, especially one that is firmly committed to a clear, coherent set of anticapitalist, democratic, antihierarchical views. It must have firm roots in the internationalism of the left and the rational, humanistic, and genuinely egalitarian critique of social oppression that was part of the Enlightenment, particularly its revolutionary libertarian offshoot.


" But an ecologically oriented politics must deal with biological phenomena warily, since interpretations of them can serve sinister ends. When 'respect for Nature' comes to mean 'reverence,' it can mutate ecological politics into a religion that 'Green Adolfs' can effectively use for authoritarian ends. When 'Nature,' in turn, becomes a metaphor legitimating sociobiology's 'morality of the gene,' the glories of 'racial purity,' 'love of Heimat,' 'woman equals nature,' or 'Pleistocene consciousness,' the cultural setting is created for reaction. 'Ecological' fascism is a cynical but potentially politically effective attempt to mystically link genuine concern for present-day environmental problems with time-honored fears of the 'outsider' or the 'new,' indeed the best elements of the Enlightenment, through ecological verbiage. Authoritarian mystifications need not be the fate of today's ecology movement, as social ecology demonstrates. But they could become its fate if ecomystics, ecoprimitivists, misanthropes, and antirationalists have their way."


Footnotes
1. On social ecology, see the many writings of Murray Bookchin, particularly Remaking Society (Boston: South End Press, 1989) and Urbanization Without Cities (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1992).

2. Jutta Ditfurth, Feuer in die Herzen: Plädoyer für eine Ökologische Linke Opposition (Hamburg: Carlsen Verlag, 1992), part three, especially pp. 158, 172. Ditfurth was formerly a leading spokesperson for the leftists in the German Greens. Now that the Greens have lost their radicalism, she is currently involved in organizing the Ecological Left (Ökologische Linke) in Frankfurt.

3. George L. Mosse, "The Mystical Origins of National Socialism," Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 22, no. 1 (Jan. 1961), p. 81. See also Jeffrey A. Goldstein, "On Racism and Anti-Semitism in Occultism and Nazism," Yad Vashem Studies 13, Livia Rothkirchen, ed. (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1979), pp. 53-72.

4. George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, Universal Library, 1964), p. 4.

5. On the völkisch movement, see Mosse, Crisis; Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961); and Walter Z. Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (New York: Basic Books, 1962).

6. Quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 170.

7. Wolfgang Haug, "'Pogromen beginnen im Kopf,'" Schwarzer Faden: Vierteljahreschrift für Lust und Freiheit [Grafenau]; translated as "'Pogroms Begin in the Mind'" in Green Perspectives, no. 26 (May 1992).

8. Volkmar Wölk, "Neue Trends im ökofaschistischen Netzwerk: Am Beispiel der Anthroposophen, dem Weltbund zum Schutz des Lebens und der ÖDP," in In bester Gesellschaft: Antifa-Recherche zwischen Konservatismus und Neo-faschismus, Raimund Hethey and Peter Kratz, eds. (Göttingen: Verlag die Werkstatt, 1991). Wölk is a spokesperson for the VVN/Bund of Antifascists and has published widely on 'neofascism.'

9. Unless otherwise indicated, quotations in this section are from the National Revolutionaries' documents Gegen Fremdherrschaft und Kapital and Grundsätze unseres Wollens -- Die fünffache Revolution (n.d.), as cited in Ditfurth, Feuer, pp. 228-30.

10. Walter Laqueur, Germany Today: A Personal Report (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 152. Also on Strasserite ideology, see Mosse, Crisis, pp. 286-90.

11. See Hans-Georg Betz, "On the German Question: Left, Right, and the Politics of National Identity," Radical America, vol. 20, no. 1 (1987), pp. 30-48.

12. See Betz, "On the German Question."

13. Henning Eichberg, "Produktivistische Mythen: Etwas über die Religion in der Industriekultur," in Zurück zur Natur-Religion? Holger Schleip, ed. (Freiburg: Hermann Bauer Verlag, 1986). Editor Schleip is, ironically, a member both of the Greens and of the völkisch-racist sect Deutsche Unitarier; the publisher, Hermann Bauer Verlag, is the largest New Age publisher in Germany. The content of Eichberg's article is summarized in Wölk, "Neue Trends," p. 126.

14. Laqueur, Germany Today, p. 153. Laqueur cites Henning Eichberg, "Balkanisierung für jedermann," in the National Revolutionaries' periodical Wir Selbst, "a journal for national identity and international solidarity" (May-June 1983). The German right has been interested in the IRA since the 1920s; the title of this journal, Wir Selbst ("we ourselves"), is a translation of Sinn Fein.

15. See Betz, "On the German Question," pp. 45-46; and Wölk, "Neue Trends," p. 123.

16. Unless otherwise indicated, quotations in this section are from the FAP's Action Program (15 Aug. 1990); the FAP charter (15 Aug. 1989); "Basic Principles and Goals of the FAP -- Electoral Program for Rhineland-Westphalia" (n.d.); and "Overview of Members of the Party Executive Committee for the Provincial Associations" (15 Aug. 1990), all as cited in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 229ff. [Since early 1993, when this article was originally written, the FAP has been banned in the Federal Republic.]

17. See Christopher T. Husbands, "Militant Neo-Nazism in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s," in Neo-Fascism in Europe, Luciano Cheles, Ronnie Ferguson, and Michalina Vaughan, eds. (Essex: Longman Group, UK Limited, 1991).

18. See Husbands, "Militant Neo-Nazism."

19. Husbands, "Militant Neo-Nazism," p. 96.

20. Quotations in this section are from the basic program of the Republicans, adopted at their first federal congress (26 Nov. 1983) in Munich; the 1987 program of the Republicans; "Ja zu Europa -- Nein zu dieser EG -- Deutsche Interessen haben Vorrang," the Dinkelsbühl Declaration of the Republicans for the European elections of 1979; and the 1990 party program of the Republicans, all as cited in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 228ff.

21. Unless otherwise indicated, quotations in this section are from the NPD's 1973 Düsseldorf program; the 1988 Wurfsendung of the NPD; and the NPD newspaper Deutsche Stimme 4-5 ( 1992), all as cited in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 228ff. On the NPD generally, see David Childs, "The Far Right in Germany Since 1945," in Neo-Fascism in Europe, Cheles, Ferguson, and Vaughan, eds.

22. Betz, "On the German Question," p. 35.

23. Quotations in this section are from a DVU leaflet (c. 1990) and "Overview of the Members of the Party Executive and the Provincial Associations" (20 Nov. 1989), as cited in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 228ff.

24. The following section on the root-race theory is based on Wölk, "Neue Trends," pp. 120-21, and Ditfurth, Feuer, pp. 217-22. In English, a mild 'revised' account appears in Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science (Spring Valley, N.Y.: Anthroposophical Press, 1972), especially chap. 6.

25. Rudolf Steiner, lecture (3 March 1923), Gesamtausgabe, vol. 349, pp. 52-67, cited in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 221.

26. Steiner, Outline, p. 216.

27. Quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 216.

28. Quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 216.

29. Steiner, Outline, p. 361.

30. Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 200.

31. See Wölk, "Neue Trends," p. 123.

32. Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 222.

33. He is mentioned in passing in Laqueur, Young Germany, p. 194n.

34. Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 224.

35. Quoted in Betz, "On the German Question," p. 36.

36. Werner Georg Haverbeck, Rudolf Steiner: Anwalt für Deutschland (Munich, 1989), pp. 143f, 242f, 324, cited in Ditfurth, Feuer, pp. 224-26.

37. Werner Georg Haverbeck, "Das Ringen um Völker- und Geistesfreiheit," in Europa (Feb. 1990), p. 41f, cited in Wölk, "Neue Trends," pp. 131-32.

38. Wölk, "Neue Trends," p. 132.

39. Letter from the WSL's provincial executive for Schleswig-Holstein to the WSL presidium (28 July 1981), cited in Wölk, "Neue Trends," p. 133; also in Vlothoer Tageblatt (19 Nov. 1982), cited in Ditfurth Feuer, p. 225.

40. Ursula Haverbeck-Wetzel, "Vom Wirtschaftskrieg zum Geisteskampf," in Europa (Mar. 1990), p. 28, cited in Wölk, "Neue Trends," p. 132.

41. Helmut Roehrig, letter (2 Apr. 1982), cited in Wölk, "Neue Trends," p. 133.

42. Cited in Wölk, "Neue Trends," pp. 13-34. On Springmann in the Greens, see, e.g., Werner Hülsberg, The German Greens: A Social and Political Profile, trans. Gus Fagan (London and New York: Verso, 1988), pp. 94-95.

43. Neue Anthropologie 3-4 (1988), p. 91, cited in Wölk, "Neue Trends," p. 131.

44. Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 190.

45. See conversation with Rudolf Bahro, "Die deutschen Linken und die nationale Frage oder unsere Öinteressen am Golf," Streitschrift 3 (Nov. 1990), pp. 4-7, quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 210.

46. Conversation with Rudolf Bahro, Streitschrift, quoted in Roger Niedenführ, "New Age: Die spirituelle Rehabilitierung der Nationalsozialisten durch Rudolf Bahro, Rainer Langhans und J. Kirchoff," in In bester Gesellschaft: Antifa-Recherche zwischen Konservatismus und Neo-faschismus, Raimund Hethey and Peter Kratz, eds. (Göttingen: Verlag die Werkstatt, 1991), pp. 141-54, at 149.

47. Niedenführ, "New Age," pp. 141-54, esp. 147-50.

48. Quoted in Hülsberg, German Greens, p. 93.

49. See the exchange between Bahro and André Gorz in Telos, no. 51 (Spring 1982). See also Rudolf Bahro's From Red to Green: Interviews with New Left Review, trans. Gus Fagan and Richard Hurst (London: Verso, 1984), especially part three, wherein Bahro says, "In practice, if we want to build an ecological decentralized Germany, we have to first free German territory" (p. 237).

50. Bahro, From Red to Green, pp. 220-21.

51. Rudolf Bahro, "Hinein oder hinaus? Wozu steigen wir auf? Rede auf der Bundesdelegiertenkonferenz der Grünen" (Hamburg), Kommune 1 (1985), pp. 40-43.

52. Conversation with Rudolf Bahro, "Die deutschen," Streitschrift, quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 210.

53. Rudolf Bahro, Connection (July-Aug. 1989), quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, pp. 207-08.

54. Lernwerkstatt, Rundbrief 13 (c. 1990); the Lernwerkstatt's 1991 program.

55. Rudolf Bahro, Logik der Rettung: Wer kann die Apokalypse aufhalten? -- Ein Versuch über die Grundlagen ökologischer Politik (Stuttgart and Vienna, 1987). I will refer to this book herein as The Logic of Salvation.

56. Conversation with Rudolf Bahro, "Die deutschen," Streitschrift, quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 210.

57. The author was present at this debate.

58. Rudolf Bahro, "Rette sich, wer kann," an interview with Rudolf Bahro, Connection, vol. 5, no. 8 (1989), pp. 18-19, cited in Niedenführ, "New Age," p. 148.

59. "Die Logik der Selbstausrottung," an interview with Rudolf Bahro, Magazin 2000, vol. 22, nos. 81-82 (1989), p. 64, cited in Niedenführ, "New Age," p. 148.

60. Niedenführ, "New Age," pp. 147-48.

61. Rudolf Bahro, "Lösung des Schattens und ökologische Kulturentwurf," Connection, vol. 6, no. 2 (1990), p. 65, cited in Niedenführ, "New Age," pp. 147-48.

62. Bahro, Logik, p. 153.

63. Bahro, Logik, p. 335; emphasis in the original.

64. Peter Kratz, "Bahros 'Grune Adolfs': Die 'Neue Rechte' an der Berliner Humboldt-Universität," reprinted in A-Kurier [Berlin] 41 (1993), pp. 6-15.

65. Bahro, Logik, p. 391.

66. Bahro, Logik, pp. 67-70. On the Conservative Revolution, see Stern, Cultural Despair, passim.

67. Conversation with Rudolf Bahro, "Die deutschen," Streitschrift, quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 210.

68. Kratz, "Bahros 'Grune Adolfs,'" p. 6.

69. Quoted in Dietmar Pieper, "Schickimicki unter Wolfen," Der Spiegel 26 (22 June 1992), pp. 62-63. See also Bahro, Logik, pp. 344, 481.

70. Rudolf Bahro, "Über kommunitäre Subsistenzwirtschaft und ihre Startbedingungen in die neuen Bundesländer," working paper, p. 10, cited in Kratz, "Bahros 'Grüne Adolfs,'" p. 9.

71. Bahro, Logik, p. 363.

72. "Salvation government" in Bahro, Logik; "god-state" in Pieper, "Schickimicki."

73. Bahro, Logik, p. 325.

74. Bahro, Logik, p. 491ff.

75. Bahro, Logik, p. 59.

76. Quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 206.

77. Conversation with Rudolf Bahro, "Die deutschen," Streitschrift, quoted in Kratz, "Bahros 'Grüne Adolfs,'" p. 8.

78. Bahro, Logik, p. 64.

79. Bahro, Logik, pp. 344-45.

80. Bahro, Logik, p. 346f. See also Robert Jungk, "Sein Kampf: Kritik an Logik der Rettung," in tageszeitung (10 Oct. 1987).

81. Bahro, Logik, p. 350.

82. Bahro, Logik, p. 461.

83. Bahro, Logik, p. 399.

84. Conversation with Rudolf Bahro, "Die deutschen," Streitschrift, p. 6, quoted in Kratz, "Bahros 'Grüne Adolfs,'" p. 8.

85. Conversation with Rudolf Bahro, "Die deutschen," Streitschrift, p. 6, quoted in Kratz, "Bahros 'Grüne Adolfs,'" p. 8.

86. Bahro, Logik, p. 347.

87. On the 'sleeping emperor,' see Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millennarians and the Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970; original, 1961), chaps. 6-7.

88. Summarized by Niedenführ, "New Age," p. 149ff.

89. Rudolf Bahro, foreword to Jochen Kirchhoff, Nietzsche, Hitler und die Deutschen: Die Perversion des Neuen Zeitalters (Berlin, 1990), quoted in Niedenführ, "New Age," p. 150.

90. Bahro, foreword to Kirchhoff, Nietzsche, Hitler, quoted in Niedenführ, "New Age," p. 150.

91. Niedenführ, "New Age," p. 150.

92. Bahro, Logik, p. 346.

93. Rudolf Bahro, Rückkehr: Die In-Welt Krise als Ursprung der Weltzerstörung (Frankfurt: Horizonte Verlag/Berlin: Altis Verlag, 1991), pp. 24-25.

94. All Langhans's quotes are from Niedenführ, "New Age," p. 146.

95. Bahro, foreword to Kirchhoff, Nietzsche, Hitler, p. 26, cited in Niedenführ, "New Age,"p. 152.

96. On Christophersen and Holocaust denial, see, for example, Roger Eatwell, "The Holocaust Denial: A Study in Propaganda Technique," in Neo-Fascism in Europe, Cheles, Ferguson, and Vaughan, eds.

97. This exchange was transcribed from a tape recording of the Bookchin-Bahro discussion, at which the author was present.

98. Quoted in Anti-EG Gruppe Köln, "Mit 'LebensschützerInnen' und RassistInnen gegen EG und Kolonialismus? Anmerkungen zur ÖDP und anderen 'BundnispartnerInnen' in der Kampagne '92," ÖkoLinX: Zeitschrift der ökologischen Linken 6 (July-Aug.-Sept. 1992), pp. 11 and 19, translated into English as "Should We Work in Coalition with 'Right-to-Lifers' and Racists?" Green Perspectives, no. 27 (Aug. 1992), pp. 2-6.

99. Daniel Gasman, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League (New York: American Elsevier; London: Macdonald & Co., 1971), pp. xxii-xxiii.

100. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Mannheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), pp. 288, 400.

101. Gasman, Scientific Origins, p. xxiii.

102. For critiques of Gruhl, see: Anti-EG-Gruppe Köln, "Mit 'LebensschützerInnen'"; Antifa-Gruppe Freiburg und Volksfront gegen Reaktion, Faschismus und Krieg, eds., Beitrag zur Kritik des Ökologismus and Beitrag zur Ideologie und Programmatik der ÖDP (Cologne: GNN-Verlag, 1989); and Ditfurth, Feuer, pp. 151-69.

103. Herbert Gruhl, Ein Planet wird geplündert (reprint Frankfurt/Main, 1987; original, 1975).

104. Charlene Spretnak and Fritjof Capra, Green Politics (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984), p. 15.

105. Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 152.

106. See, e.g., tageszeitung (7 Nov. 1991).

107. Quoted in Antifa-Gruppe Freiburg, Beitrag, p. 30.

108. Herbert Gruhl, Das irdische Gleichgewicht (Munich, 1985), p. 127; Antifa-Gruppe Freiburg, Beitrag, p . 27; and Anti-EG Gruppe Köln, "Mit 'LebensschützerInnen,'" p. 10.

109. Quoted in Antifa-Gruppe Freiburg, Beitrag, p. 35.

110. Antifa-Gruppe Freiburg, Beitrag, p. 68.

111. Quoted in Ditfurth, Feuer, p. 159.

112. Gruhl, Ein Planet, p. 322f.

113. Quoted in Antifa-Gruppe Freiburg, Beitrag, p. 114f.

114. Quoted in Anti-EG Gruppe Köln, "Mit 'LebensschützerInnen,'" p. 11.

115. Herbert Gruhl, "Die Menschheit ist am Ende," Der Spiegel 13 (1992), pp. 57-58.

116. Quoted in Anti-EG Gruppe Köln, "Mit 'LebensschützerInnen,'" p. 11.

117. Quoted in Anti-EG Gruppe Köln, "Mit 'LebensschützerInnen,'" p. 10.

118. Gruhl, Ein Planet, p. 110.

119. Herbert Gruhl, Himmelfahrt ins Nichts (Munich: Verlag Langen Müller, 1992), p. 242. See Thomas Ebermann's criticism, "Massakriert den Armen!" Konkret ( June 1991), pp. 36-37, translated into English as "Massacre the Poor!" Green Perspectives, no. 27 (Aug. 1992), pp. 6-7.

120. Quoted in Antifa-Gruppe Freiburg, Beitrag, p. 113.

121. Quoted in Reimar Paul, "EK III in Grün-Braun," Konkret [Hamburg] (Dec. 1991), pp. 35-36.

122. Quoted in Paul, "EK III," pp. 35-36.

123. Tom Metzger, quoted in Elinor Langer, "The American Neo-Nazi Movement Today," Nation (16-23 July 1990), pp. 82-107, at 86.

124. Quoted in Langer, "American Neo-Nazi Movement," p. 86.

125. Bill Devall, Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep Ecology (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 1988), p. 189.