The Quiet Desperation
Of Woke Fanatics
What's driving them? And how can they be defeated?
“The fiercest fanatics
are often selfish people who were forced, by innate shortcomings or external
circumstances, to lose faith in their own selves. They separate the excellent
instrument of their selfishness from their ineffectual selves and attach it to
the service of some holy cause.”
— Eric Hoffer, The
True Believer
Over
the last few weeks, climate activists in Britain have blocked highways (because cars emit carbon
dioxide), poured milk onto the floors of supermarkets (because livestock emits
methane), and thrown tomato soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” (because climate
change is more important than art. Or something). The activists are a kind of reboot
of the Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate protests in the UK in the fall of
2019.
People
in the UK are at risk of dying from natural gas shortages. Still, the climate
activists with “Just Stop Oil” think it’s outrageous that their government is
desperately trying to produce more natural gas for its people. But without more
natural gas, there could be three-hour-long blackouts, which threaten the operation of medical equipment, and
thus the lives of vulnerable people.
The
various media stunts appeared authentically grassroots but were, in fact,
financed by a $1 million grant from a philanthropic group called Climate
Emergency Fund, which is funded by their heirs to the Getty and Rockefeller oil fortunes, and founded in 2019. The Board of Directors consists
of a who’s-who of climate alarmism including “Don’t Look Up!” film director,
Adam McKay, who donated $4 million, New Yorker writer Bill
McKibben, and New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
The Fund and their grantees have been cheered on by the Secretary General of
the United Nations and much of the mainstream media.
A portion of the web page of Climate Emergency Fund.
In
a series of recent articles I have argued that what lies behind climate fanaticism and narcissism is an apocalyptic religion born from nihilism. The power of science to
explain humankind’s place in the universe (e.g., the big bang, evolution by
natural selection) resulted in a dominant narrative coming out of society’s
elite institutions for over 100 years that human life has no inherent meaning or
purpose (nihilism). We’re just animals like any other.
This
depressing story has led the ostensibly secular elite, which are educated and
indoctrinated in universities that teach nihilism as unquestioning scientific
gospel, to create a new apocalyptic religion (climate catastrophe), complete
with a new victim-god (nature), a new reason for guilt (sins against nature),
and a path for redemption (renewables and low-energy living). It, and the broader Woke religion, have found
intellectual ballast since World War II from Rousseau, Malthus, and
Foucault.
But
that account only partly addresses the motivations of the fanatics. It doesn’t
answer why some people become fanatics and others don’t. It doesn’t explain the
specific role of fanatics, particularly in relation to other actors, such as
the intellectual architects of the movement, and the institution-builders. Nor
does it address how fanaticism ends and what, if anything, can be done to
hasten its expiration date.
As
such, we need to ask, who exactly are the climate fanatics? And how can their
power over Western cultural and political life be reduced?
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The Psychology Of Fanaticism
Harper and Row published Eric Hoffer’s now-classic work of political psychology, The True Believer, in 1951.
All
mass movements have certain things in common, argues Eric Hoffer in his
now-classic 1951 work of political psychology, The True Believer.
Hoffer was mostly describing Nazis and Communists but his observations are
incredibly fresh and relevant. I devoured most of the book in a single sitting
and underlined many sentences and shouted to myself “Yes! That’s it!” as I
reflected on how well it described climate fanaticism and Woke fanaticism more
broadly. While at times Hoffer can sound reactionary, he was himself
working-class, laboring as a longshoreman (stevedore), and he is writing in
defense of liberal democracy, not pining for a return to the aristocracy.
Hoffer
argues that fanaticism is born from personal frustration. Fanatics are people
with more ambition than talent. Notes Hoffer, “most of the Nazi bigwigs had
artistic and literary ambitions which they could not realize. Hitler tried
painting and architecture; Goebbels, drama, the novel and poetry; Rosenberg,
architecture and philosophy; von Schirach, poetry; Funk, music; Streicher,
painting. ‘Almost all were failures, not only by the usual vulgar criterion of
success but by their own artistic criteria.’”
You
can see the connection to wounded pride. Many narcissists are seeking to feel
relevant but lack the talent or stamina to become any good at their craft. They
must thus resort to cruder actions that require courage but little creativity,
or hard work, like throwing a can of tomato soup onto a Van Gogh painting,
stopping traffic, or emptying milk onto the floor. It is notable the extent to
which the first and last of those behaviors are typical of the temper tantrums
of children. Konstantin Kisin aptly dubbed the climate fanatics as belonging to
“tantrum groups.”
For Hoffer, the fanatic pursues politics for the same reason an addict pursues drugs: to escape inner demons. “The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft,” he notes. “What looks like giving a hand is often holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless… in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.”
Martha’s Vineyard church offers “kneeling every Sunday.” (Author photo)
All
mass movements are religious movements, says Hoffer. Both the swastika and the
hammer and sickle are versions of the cross. “The ceremonial of the parades is
as the ceremonial of a religious procession.” Such movements aren’t only religious;
they can be nationalistic or communistic, too. But they are movements offering
the feeling of immortality to their true believers. Today we can see such
religious rituals in the kneeling promoted by Black Lives Matter activists
including (or especially) in secular places like uber-woke Martha’s Vineyard.
Harsh
as it sounds, fanatics tend to be losers. They are those with the least to gain
from the status quo and the most to gain from radical change. “The reason that
the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is
that they are wholly without reverence toward the present,” he writes. “They
see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to
waste and wreck both; hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and
anarchy.” Hoffer doesn’t mince words. He goes so far as to refer to fanatics as
the slime that serves as the mortar for building a castle.
It
is worth noting that Hoffer is not suggesting that there is never a role for
outcasts. America was founded, after all, by them. “The stone the builders
reject becomes the cornerstone of a new world. A nation without dregs and
malcontents is orderly, decent, peaceful, and pleasant, but perhaps without the
seed of things to come. It was not the irony of history that the undesired in
the countries of Europe should have crossed an ocean to build a new world on
this continent. Only they could do it.”
The
first fanatics tend more often to be bored elites than exploited or oppressed
victims, writes Hoffer. But this is a “boredom” of nihilists. “The
consciousness of a barren, meaningless existence is the main fountainhead of
boredom,” he writes. Such people lack the experience of “flow” that comes from
being engaged in absorbing, meaningful work. Disruptive activism offers a kind
of high. It’s the feeling of power that comes from breaking the rules. “The
rules are for thee, not me,” says the law-breaker. For some, like Prince Harry
and Duchess Megan Markle, who keep getting caught jet-setting to UN climate
conferences, the hypocrisy is the point.
Other
fanatics are oblivious to their privilege. Last month, a 16-year-old climate
activist in New Zealand told a radio journalist that people should have to
apply to take gas-guzzling flights. Under her rules, the reporter asked, would
people be “allowed to go to Fiji”? Said the activist, “In the current climate
crisis I don’t think that that’s necessary.” After the reporter asked what the
last place she had flown to was, the 16-year-old admitted it was Fiji. Stressed
the teenager, “Of course, I’m not embarrassed.”
In
addition to attracting teens, the ennui of everyday life attracts church lady
types — something I found in my research into XR in 2019. “Boredom accounts for
the almost invariable presence of spinsters and middle-aged women at the birth
of mass movements,” finds Hoffer. Such was also the case with the birth of the
anti-nuclear and “population control” movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Conversely,
marriage cuts against activism because it offers women a “new purpose in life,
a new future, and a new identity… The boredom of spinsters and of women who can
no longer find joy and fulfillment in marriage stems from an awareness of
barren, spoiled life…. Hitler made full use of ‘the society ladies thirsting
for adventure, sick of their empty lives, no longer getting a ‘kick’ out of
love affairs.”
Who,
then, are the climate fanatics? They are frustrated, needy, and lonely. They
are in the grip of nihilism and wounded, narcissistically. They are spiritual
seekers and creative failures. They have both a strong need to feel special,
and powerful, but also to lose themselves in the group. They are people who
desperately want to get away from having to deal with themselves and the
confrontation with inner demons required for personal growth.
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