Thanks Rachel, for making a terrific speech when speechlessness at our horrific situation is the automatic response. Things have gotten so out of hand that it is difficult not to imagine that common peace-loving people will not soon spill out into the streets, pitchforks in hand, and demand that sanity be restored to this world.
Thanks Rachel, a great summation of the madness of our direction of travel. Although, while I say madness, it also feels all too predictable. Some activist friends were sceptical when I noted that the new Labour government would be all to happy to leave in place the anti-protest laws introduced by their predecessor and would likely aim to tighten them up (rather than roll them back). Sadly, the road to authoritarianism, autocracy, eroded civil liberties and illiberalism seems very closely coupled to other ecological, financial geopolitical and material trends within the polycrisis. Studies like the Limits to Growth provided little in the way of a summation of the socio-political impacts of those intersecting and declining curves of collapse, and - as you note - we must look to history and studies like Federici's to understand some of the features. As with many things, the Seneca Effect seems relevant: growth is slow and hard but the way to ruin is rapid.
Another amazing post, thanks Rachel! And I really would recommend the interview with luxx to anyone, it's really powerful and moving. Just fyi it was Just Stop Oil activists who were jailed after attending a Zoom call, not XR.
As always a very astute summary of where we are Rachel. I'm reminded of the Frank Zappa quote, "The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
The madness involved in the ruling patriarchal orders that to verbally dispute their hierarchical notions of which nation-states are not to be commented upon in any way shape or form that can be viewed as a description of that nation-state's conduct as the equivalent of criminal behavior, is now viewed as committing a speech crime! ~ well, what do we expect from these digital screen monsters and bloated idiots that currently sit in offices of executive authority in most of the nation-states on Earth?
Having been born in a place known as New England, I am appalled at what you in Olde England are dealing with in regards to your government's mad and, to my mind, criminal policies in this regard. But I still envy you folks in the UK...you don't have a convicted felon who also happens to have been civilly found to be rapist, as your head of state. And as awful as your ruling Labour party has become, it is better than the Tories, and yet, neither of them are as dreadful as our ruling legislative party, the GOP (Gang-Of-Psychopaths). Which is to say ~ I envy you your softer pelted mad-hatters!
The annoying part is that it is all so very predictable, in the sense that it was all predicted long ago. As George Orwell pointed out in 1946:
"Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country."
The question today is not whether we need a revolution but how to make it happen. The madmen (and occasional women) in charge of the our society are clearly not going to save us.
Exactly! Predictable is the right word. Every attempt to question the prevailing system is followed by a disproportionate clampdown and vilification of the threat to power.
Rachel, thank you - this is the most insightful and powerfully encouraging analysis I've encountered about the laws surrounding proscription. So much rooted hope here!
Thanks Rachel, for making a terrific speech when speechlessness at our horrific situation is the automatic response. Things have gotten so out of hand that it is difficult not to imagine that common peace-loving people will not soon spill out into the streets, pitchforks in hand, and demand that sanity be restored to this world.
Brilliantly framed: restoring sanity.
What do they expect if they ignore legal protest?
Thanks Rachel, a great summation of the madness of our direction of travel. Although, while I say madness, it also feels all too predictable. Some activist friends were sceptical when I noted that the new Labour government would be all to happy to leave in place the anti-protest laws introduced by their predecessor and would likely aim to tighten them up (rather than roll them back). Sadly, the road to authoritarianism, autocracy, eroded civil liberties and illiberalism seems very closely coupled to other ecological, financial geopolitical and material trends within the polycrisis. Studies like the Limits to Growth provided little in the way of a summation of the socio-political impacts of those intersecting and declining curves of collapse, and - as you note - we must look to history and studies like Federici's to understand some of the features. As with many things, the Seneca Effect seems relevant: growth is slow and hard but the way to ruin is rapid.
Another amazing post, thanks Rachel! And I really would recommend the interview with luxx to anyone, it's really powerful and moving. Just fyi it was Just Stop Oil activists who were jailed after attending a Zoom call, not XR.
Thank you for the correction!
As always a very astute summary of where we are Rachel. I'm reminded of the Frank Zappa quote, "The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
We all need to be *actively* campaigning to get Greens elected everywhere to all levels of government.
The madness involved in the ruling patriarchal orders that to verbally dispute their hierarchical notions of which nation-states are not to be commented upon in any way shape or form that can be viewed as a description of that nation-state's conduct as the equivalent of criminal behavior, is now viewed as committing a speech crime! ~ well, what do we expect from these digital screen monsters and bloated idiots that currently sit in offices of executive authority in most of the nation-states on Earth?
Having been born in a place known as New England, I am appalled at what you in Olde England are dealing with in regards to your government's mad and, to my mind, criminal policies in this regard. But I still envy you folks in the UK...you don't have a convicted felon who also happens to have been civilly found to be rapist, as your head of state. And as awful as your ruling Labour party has become, it is better than the Tories, and yet, neither of them are as dreadful as our ruling legislative party, the GOP (Gang-Of-Psychopaths). Which is to say ~ I envy you your softer pelted mad-hatters!
The annoying part is that it is all so very predictable, in the sense that it was all predicted long ago. As George Orwell pointed out in 1946:
"Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country."
The full essay is well worth reading: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-prevention-of-literature.
The question today is not whether we need a revolution but how to make it happen. The madmen (and occasional women) in charge of the our society are clearly not going to save us.
Exactly! Predictable is the right word. Every attempt to question the prevailing system is followed by a disproportionate clampdown and vilification of the threat to power.
Protect your witches. That’s a command.
Rachel, thank you - this is the most insightful and powerfully encouraging analysis I've encountered about the laws surrounding proscription. So much rooted hope here!