Yesterday, Letzte Generation climate activists forced their way through the fenced perimeter of the international airports at Hamburg and Düsseldorf with bolt cutters.
They then used rented bicycles to make their way onto the tarmac where they glued themselves to taxiways, causing multiple flight cancellations and considerable delays precisely at the start of the school holidays.
Ordinary travellers experience airports as bizarre fortresses. They’re routinely subject to arbitrary and invasive screenings by security personnel on the pretence that policing the amount of liquid in carry-on luggage is necessary to prevent terrorism. Apparently, though, even the most naïve and inexperienced university students can just break into these terror-proof airfields with nothing more than standard tools available at every home improvement store, and move freely within them while wearing high-visibility orange reflective vests.
A look at the Letzte Generation website suggests we can expect more of this. Its online recruitment form asks respondents what they’re willing to do in order to combat climate catastrophe. Roles are listed in order of escalation – you can volunteer “in the background” or participate in “protest marches,” which involve “minimal risk”. The more daring can “block streets”, which interestingly is said to entail “limited risk,” but that’s not all. There’s a still greater level for truly insane activists who wish to contribute “spectacular” acts of resistance involving “high personal risk”. We can presume that the taxiway gluers represent the debut of the spectacular Letzte Generation high-risk commando.
The action was a prelude to the midsummer blitz Letzte Generation has planned before some of them depart for their three-week holiday tomorrow. Today we got the frontal attack, a coordinated campaign of street blockades in 26 cities, including Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Munich. Activists wore printed masks to assume the personae of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Economics Minister Robert Habeck and Transport Minister Volker Wissing, and with their unglued hands unfurled banners declaring “Wir brechen das Gesetz” – “We’re breaking the law”. The message is that the Scholz Government, by not doing more to combat emissions, are guilty of violating the climate legislation and the German constitution. Sudden interference with traffic is dangerous, and today’s protests have already contributed to at least one serious accident in Nuremberg.
The political establishment, including the Greens, have widely condemned the protesters, and I continue to insist that this is a hint as to their real purpose. Their insane demands allow radical politicians like Robert Habeck to pose as moderates, while they fight to impose climate legislation opposed by three-quarters of the citizenry and a majority even of their own party. If the German state really wanted this to stop, the protesters would all be in jail and their movement under investigation by the political police. Certainly, state media wouldn’t be granting extended interviews to Letzte Generation spokesgirls like Lina Johnsen, allowing them to rehearse their doubtful and oblivious talking points mostly unchallenged before an audience of millions.
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The most important piece isn’t mentioned: the bureaucracy
None of these things can be achieved without a willing and enthusiastic bureaucracy.
Hitler could have ranted all he wanted about exterminating jews, but it wasn’t until he got his hands on the German state bureaucracy that all his ideas and schemes could be put into practice.
Political ideologues don’t get things done. Disciplined and well directed bureaucracies do.
And what we find is that bureaucrats are more than willing to expand their power and reach and infiltrate every nook and cranny of our lives.
As Arendt herself pointed out it was the cold, methodical, thoughtless obedience.of the state bureaucrat thinking he was doing the right thing that really chilled her bones.
As has been pointed out people commit the most evil acts under the illusion that they are doing some service or even sone good.
Ah yes, the functionaries. The useful idiots. Lovers of rules, they seek the comfort of being told what to do, by people they believe have their best interests at heart. The ones whose parents never punished them fairly, the ones whose parents always patronised them.
Their weakness, however, is that they fail to recognise the presence of people who do not think like them. Thus, they believe everyone is following the rules. It never occurs to them that there are those who manage to avoid their kindergarten, and have found ways to live freely… despite the rules.
So, where the fool tries to look different, the wise man looks the same, but is different.
The most important piece isn’t mentioned: the bureaucracy
None of these things can be achieved without a willing and enthusiastic bureaucracy.
Actually, nothing significantly above the level of subsistence farming can be achieved without usually professional administration experts, neither by the state nor by private enterprises.
And your point is, what,exactly?
Isn’t that obvious? Bureaucracy is not necessarily working for a sovereign government and outside of the Marxist paradise the neoliberals are trying to sell to us, it’s an inevitable feature of human enterprises above the mom-and-pop level.
t’s a valid point.
I suppose what I’m really referring to is public bureaucracies which impose administrative rules on us, rules we can rarely escape. And with the backing of brute force if necessary.
Business bureaucracies are directed at supplying us with goods and services that we (typically) can freely chose to purchase or not.
So Pfizer’s bureaucracy can produce and distribute all the covid jabs it wants but it’s only the state bureaucracy that can force or coerce us into taking one. Without the backing of the state bureaucracy, Pfizer would have sold a tiny fraction of the covid jabs it did, if any.
The state bureaucracy also isn’t one we can opt out of funding. And it seems to have a life of its own. The bigger it gets the more funding it seems to suck in to continue growing like a cancer within a body that is incapable of stopping its growth.
The corporate totalitarianism the article talks of depends entirely on a publicly funded state bureaucracy. Corporations couldn’t do it without the state bureaucracy.
The state bureaucracy […] seems to have a life of its own. The bigger it gets the more funding it seems to suck in to continue growing like a cancer within a body that is incapable of stopping its growth.
That’s a (mis-)feature of our current (western) political systems because the people who can impose new taxation are virtually identical to those who can create public jobs. As they can award themselves whatever money they want, the public bureaucracy can never become too inefficient to be still fit for purpose.
Compare this, for instance, with the general political arrangement of the German empire before ‘parliamentarism’ (aka SPD-rule): Government was run by the monarch who also had to pay for its expenses. But taxes could only be imposed when parliament agreed (I’m simplifying this a little) and even if it was willing to do so, it will usually have wanted something in return. Hence, there was strong incentive to get by without asking parliament for new money and no way cancerous growth of ‘bureaucracy’ could have happened.
The bureaucracy has always been in place hasn’t it – Whitehall?
Perhaps 90% of populations are oblivious to this stuff. They come home from work and switch on their 6 O’clock News to be brainwashed about climate, renewable energy, racism, equality, diversity, gender etc etc and they will swallow it all down. They are way too busy with work and family life to investigate everything for themselves and their TV News has this air of authority about it as if Investigative Journalism has taken place and they have looked into all of this stuff on our behalf and are presenting FACTS. ————-Nope, sorry they are presenting dogma.
It wouldn’t occur to a great many people that our leadership and media are anything but benign.
That’s been a significant stumbling block in any conversation I’ve attempted.
I was always fascinated by how Germany changed so quickly 90 years ago, easily mesmerized by a powerful orator, and my amateur historical research taught me power is frequently (always?) abused and that corruption was (and very likely is) everywhere.
Create a power structure and, even if the initial holders of the positions are ‘good eggs’, the roles will be rapidly inhabited by those least suited for them. It’s the human condition and always has been…
… except nowadays, according to some.
My argument tends to be along the lines of “why then, but not now?” but it’s hard going and few listen.
Or as Lord Acton pointed out “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
“Western liberal democracy and Christianity have provided little resistance to woke culture or corporate totalitarianism”
Because the Church is captured too!
with an Archbishop like we have, if he was put there to deliberately undermine Christianity, what would he be doing differently?
Corporate totalitarianism derives from para-statal corporatism, simply another malignant offshoot of socialist fascism, not so much different to state ownership itself.
Massive corporations feed off state funding by manipulating the state procurement system. They love DEI and other forms of state imposed regulation as barriers to entry for their more efficient and agile, cheaper competitors.
These competitors, the life blood of Germany’s manufacturing success, for example, do not have the resources to shadow state bureaucracy in the way that cumbersome massive para-statals can manage.
Deregulation and a reduction in the size of the state go together like, oh, I don’t know, maybe a horse and carriage?
Remind me, which party is offering reduced state spending, a more efficient state?
Tumbleweed……..
Reform!
UKIP!
Put Ben Habab at the helm, not that slippery jab pushing Tice.
ReformUK appears to be more like a private company than a political party. Some reports suggest Tice and Farage own the brand name so I don’t think he is going to sack himself as Farage doesn’t seem interested in leading a political party anymore. The party members have no say in anything and they have no branches. Having said that they are on mid teen poll ratings so they may be able to play a part in helping to destroy the fake Conservative Party. That is if Tice doesn’t do the dirty and stand his candidates down as Farage did to save Tory skins.
If you vote Reform, you may as well vote Tory. Once they’ve hoovered up all the disaffected Tory votes, they’ll merge Reform with the Tories and it will be containment job done. (Of course there will be a fig leaf of how “We are moving the Tory Party to the right” LOL!)
Speaking of the dangers of corporate totalitarianism. UKC Playing God. About state democide during the PATHWAYS protocols.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/playing-god
This week I was contacted by my GP surgery and told that I was now eligible for a regular medical check-up (due to age). They’ve only seen me twice in 8 years – when I registered and pre-Covid, for ear-wax removal. I’m unjabbed.
It’s become easy to envisage a future where the “free” medical check will be used to monitor declining health as you get older and to schedule in the date at which you will be terminated.
I’d ignore them. Chances are that they just want to do something useless and reasonably easy they can bill the NHS¹ for.
¹ Some time before COVID, my GP was effectively privatized, ie, turned into a service run by Virgin doing contract work for the NHS. On threat deregistering me due to not going to the doctor (an obvious attempt at defrauding the NHS), they did a bloodletting with me and measured my height and weight. They’ve also been somewhat keen of getting me on “Must not stop taking this!” medication but I stopped it nevertheless and the attempt faltered due to COVID. I’ll see what I do should they eventually remember me but I’ll try to avoid anything they can come up with. When I’m not sick, I’m not going to see a doctor.
I politely told them “no thanks …. I’m perfectly healthy. When I think there’s something wrong I’ll get in touch” ….. except I won’t.
I really liked this article – thank you. Many years ago (1996) I was given a book to read entitled ‘When Corporations Rule the World’. Dr David C. Korten who set out the disastrous betrayal of common people and future generations being carried out by corporations, governments and multi-lateral banks. Most of what he foresaw has come to pass.
I got a book on General Smedley Butler and the plot to seize the White House and instal a fascist regime there. When it was exposed in 1934 the New York Times covered up the big names like JP Morgan etc. It has been going on for a long time, just more apparent since 2020.