Korea Times<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cInconvenient\nparallels between responses to the Holocaust and to climate change\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n January 13, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emanuel Pastreich<\/p>\n\n\n\n (with Alexander Krabbe<\/p>\n\n\n\n A comparison between the culture of\ndenial and self-deception that swept Europe during the Holocaust and the\ndisgraceful failure of so-called “advanced nations” to take even the\nmost basic steps to address the catastrophe of climate change may strike readers\nas a painfully stretched analogy that undermines the authors’ credibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sadly, the resistance to this analogy\nthat we have encounterd suggests the depth of the denial of climate change that\nlurks among intellectuals, and extends to the entirety of the educated classes\naround the world. For, if truth be told, the consequences of global warming and\nthe resulting accelerated climate change will be far deadlier for humanity than\nthe Holocaust, leading to the deaths of hundreds of millions, or billions, as\nagriculture collapses in the face of spreading deserts and the oceans die as a\nresult of warming waters and increasing acidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That we can read about this catastrophe\nin newspapers and refuse to end our thoughtless consumption of fossil fuels and\nour mindless plunge into a fantasy of immediate gratification without concern\nfor future generations suggests nothing less than mass psychopathology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The analogy to the Holocaust is\nimperfect and tentative, but it explains how a shadow has fallen between the\nknowledge of catastrophe and actual action. It offers precedents for the\npsychology of educated people who fall over backwards to deny an obvious\ndisaster, who refuse to admit that their daily actions had anything to do with\nthe radical crimes carried out in secret. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We can imagine a future date, if\nhumanity manages to survive in some form, at which this brutal truth of how\nthose with the learning to grasp the problem who pretended that they had\nnothing to do with this suicidal process will be forced out into the open and\nthe public will be forced to take responsibility for the immensity of the crime\nthat we have committed, and face the bitter fact that we betrayed future\ngenerations every time we drove to the market in a car or typed on a computer\nusing energy generated by coal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The denial of the Holocaust was not\nlimited to the refusal of Germans to acknowledge the systematic rounding up of\nJews (and other undesirables) for transport to concentration camps and on to\ndeath camps. The denial of this crime spread around the world, including all\nthe nations of Europe. Educated people in France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and\nelsewhere knew full well that Jews in their country, and elsewhere, were being\nrounded up and sent to their deaths. It was an open secret. There were a\nhandful of people who pursued the issue, who looked at the facts (disappearing\nJews, threats of violence and a rhetoric of annihilation) and were led\ninevitably to the unpleasant explanation for what was occurring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even intellectuals in the relatively\nfree nations of the United States and the U.K. were swept up in the systematic\ndenial of the reports of the Holocaust and those brave eye witnesses who\ntestified as to what was happening were dismissed. Officially, the Allied\ngovernments claimed that did not learn about the Holocaust until the first\nliberations of concentration camps in 1944, but in fact they were fully aware\nof the number (in the millions) who were being killed by 1942 and deliberately\navoided offering any assistance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, in 1980 the American historian\nand journalist Walter Laqueur found out that the British had already cracked\nthe encrypted code of the SS in 1941 and constantly listened to the radio\ntraffic of the Nazis. In 1996 Richard Breitman published British listening\nrecords that included success reports from the German\n“SD-Einsatzgruppen” and police battalions, about the\n“extermination of the Jews” during the summer of 1941. There was no\ndoubt as to what was happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Szmul Zygielbojm of the Polish\ngovernment took tremendous personal risks in June 1942 to smuggle detailed\nreports about industrialized mass murder to London. Although the Daily\nTelegraph did mention his materials eventually, it was on page five of a six\npage newspaper (similar to the treatment that catastrophic climate change\nreceives these days). Zygielbojm met with “indifference, disbelief or even\nsuspicion,” eventually took his life after his wife and son were killed\nduring the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Refugees trying to escape persecution,\nsuch as the passengers of the ship the German liner MS St. Louis that came to\nthe U.S. in 1939 were turned back without any serious discussion of the reasons\nthe passengers were fleeing. The U.S. even turned away 20,000 Jewish children\nfleeing Nazi Germany in much the way that refugees from climate change (whether\nin Central America or Syria, or Northern Africa) are turned back without a\nsecond thought from the U.S., Canada or Japan today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The use of Jews as slave labor to aid\nthe German economy (and the economies of other countries), the misuse of the\nproperty confiscated from Jews in Germany, and across Europe, profits generated\nthrough budgets related to the “Final Solution” project were deep\nsecrets that had real financial benefits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The point is not to berate the Europeans\nfor what they did then, but rather to suggest that the mentality was strikingly\nsimilar to what we see today. Fossil fuels (petroleum and coal above all) are\ndirty and immoral sources of energy and wealth whose catastrophic implications\nfor the environment have been carefully hidden from sight while the immediate\nconsequences are disguised through misleading reports in the corporate media\nthat understate their deadly implications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The best and the brightest of so-called\n“advanced nations” have their fingers all over this crime, whether in\nthe promotion of economic theories that ignore climate change and assume that\ngrowth and consumption are necessary, or policy reports that vastly understate\nthe gravity of the situation, or media reports that fail to mention\n“climate change” when reporting massive hurricanes, forest fires or\ndroughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The number of people who are dying now,\nand who will die in the future, are carefully guarded by these gatekeepers,\nmuch as the mass killings of Jews were hidden from the writings of professors,\njournalists and government officials in Paris and Budapest, in Berlin and Rome,\nduring the 1940s. Similarly, today we see educated people distracted by\ntrivialities like Trump’s temper tantrums, and unable to focus on the disaster\nthat stares them in the face. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We created this cognitive dissidence and\nwe are all guilty. The industry of death around us has been hidden with our\npermission and with our consent. Factories in China or Vietnam use coal that\ndestroys the ecosystem and pollutes the local region so that rich nations can\nenjoy inexpensive products without having to consider the price paid by our\nprecious Earth. We pat ourselves on the back for being environmentally friendly\nbecause we do not have the domestic pollution we had in the 1960s and 1970s.\nBut the unspeakable damage to our shared ecosystem is the same, whether the\nfactory is in downtown Paris, or in rural Myanmar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How is such an approach different from\nthe scheme whereby placing the death camps in Poland allowed all of Europe to\nenjoy a false sense of innocence? As the recent Hungarian movie\n“1945” (directed by Ferec Torok) shows, the confiscation of the\npossessions of Jews was a massive industry that was assiduously covered up by\nthose involved. It was too easy to blame the entire project on a small group of\nSS officers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The current project of death encompasses\nthe production of petroleum, the entanglement of the U.S. dollar with the use\nof petroleum, and the creation of fraudulent mechanisms like “carbon\ntrading” that distract us from the necessary steps such as banning the use\nof fossil fuels. The myth that market mechanisms can solve the problem is\nembraced by environmental groups that limit their discussions to the most\nsuperficial solutions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even more grotesque is the\ntransformation of the military in the U.S. (and elsewhere) into a massive\nconsumer of petroleum and massive producer of carbon emissions that devotes its\nwork to promoting wars to secure only more petroleum and natural gas, and\nthereby to create petroleum wealth for a select few. The generals embrace the\nmission of “security” while ignoring the real security threat of\nclimate change. The scale of the horror is so great that many prefer to simply\nplay stupid and let the insane project proceed unimpaired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today we deny the deaths of millions in\nwars over oil and the death of tens of millions as the consequence of climate\nchange globally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We can understand the mass pathology\nbehind the killing of the Jews, or the embrace of fossil fuels, through a\ncomparison with incest. Incest, sexual relations between close family members,\nis ethically offensive and disruptive behavior in our society. It results in\ntremendous psychological damage for victims (and at some level all family\nmembers involved are victims) that last for a lifetime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a disturbing pattern in incest.\nAlthough disputes between family members about money or power often spill out\ninto the open where they can be addressed by the family as a whole, and can be\nresolved, incest is often swept under the rug. Families try to maintain a\nsemblance of normality for years, or even for decades, pretending that the\nunspeakable relationship does not exist. The same behavior is true for other\nforms of child abuse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, when addressing the denial of\nclimate change, we must confront the capacity of humans to embrace false\nnarratives at the family level, the national level and the global level that\nspare them the pain of facing the truth and taking responsibility. We must\nrecognize the ability of humans to deny the truth despite the tremendous damage\nthat such action causes them over the long-term. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Such was most the mentality of\nthoughtful people in Prague, in Budapest or in Warsaw who felt comfortable\nsitting at cafes sipping their favorite drinks, reading intellectually complex\nnovels and discussing the weather, or enjoyed the latest movies with friends\nwhile avoiding any mention of the mysterious disappearance of Jews from their\nneighborhood. They even struggled to block out the memories of evictions and\nroundups they had witnessed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course the Gestapo and other fascist\ngroups were so dangerous that silence was demanded. Yet the totalitarian system\ncould never have been established if citizens had not practiced psychological\ndenial for long enough to allow totalitarian rule to take root. The willingness\nof educated Germans to ignore the Nazi Party’s actions from 1933 on allowed\nthat organization to establish a system that would eventually make criticism\nimpossible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually those who tried to help Jews,\nhomosexuals, dissidents, disabled people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists,\nPOWs, critical authors, Sinti and Romanies were charged with crimes that\ndemanded immediate and brutal punishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the Trump administration has\nmade climate change a topic that government officials are not allowed to\ndiscuss, let alone respond to, discussing the topic is not illegal yet.\nNevertheless, the brutal suppression of the protests against the Keystone SL\ntar sands pipeline last year, including ridiculously long prison sentences,\nsuggests that it is entirely possible that the debate on climate itself will be\ncriminalized in the years ahead, forcing us to make even more difficult\ndecisions at even greater sacrifice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We who fight for climate justice must\nrecognize that we may not have much time before not only is radical climate\nchange unavoidable, but also before the discussion of the topic is made\nimpossible. Creating a sustainable future may require profound sacrifice and\nmoral courage that goes beyond any “carbon trading” schemes that have\nbeen floated by multinational investment banks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Climate change is already killing\nmillions around the world, and will kill hundreds of millions in the years\nahead. Yet the vast majority of the well-off (and well-off means those who make\nmore than $US40,000 a year) are indifferent to the relationship between their\noverheated homes, their minivans, their imported cheap products, or their\noffices with ridiculously high ceilings in the lobbies and glass and steel\nexteriors that require vast amounts of energy to keep at a comfortable\ntemperature, and climate change. They do not see, or they do not want to see, a\nlink between the hurricanes devastating the coasts, the spreading deserts, the\nincreases in forest fires, and their own daily actions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In a grotesque burlesque that has become\ncommonplace, we remark to each other as a greeting that the weather is so cold.\nYet we are fully aware that today’s winters are so warm that flowers continue\nto bloom into December, and beyond. We intentionally wear heavy jackets when we\ngo out, willing to put up with the inconvenience because the ritual somehow\nreassures us that the climate has not changed at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The painful pursuit of truth<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were brave men and women who\nrisked their lives, and often more importantly, their relations with their own\nfamilies and friends, to get the truth out about the Holocaust. More often than\nnot their stories were dismissed as exaggerations. It was assumed that the\nunfortunate deaths of a few Jews were being exaggerated into a fantastic mass\nmurder. The arguments for dismissing their stories (and such arguments are made\neven today) were based on the assumption that the fascists could not possibly\nhave engaged in something so terrible and that the populations of Europe could\nnot possibly have allowed something on that scale to happen. In effect, the\nscale of the crime made the task easier, not harder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The psychology we see today regarding\nclimate change is identical. The reports produced by scientists based on the\nscientific method that speak of massive destruction are dismissed or ignored\nbecause they are Pollyannish. The rosy predictions made by politicians,\ntelevision personalities, columnists and businessmen, constructed from\nself-interest, ego and primitive denial are embraced by many as a precious\nsalve for their deeply troubled collective conscience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The scale of the catastrophe, which\nthreatens humanity with extinction, is so large that those who embrace the\nculture of denial find it easy to dismiss. But there is no scientific basis for\nsuch dismissal. If anything, multiple mass extinctions from prehistoric times\nsuggest that such scenarios are all too possible. That bitter reality is\ndetailed in Elizabeth Kolbert’s book “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural\nHistory” (2014). Certainly the current massive die-out of insects,\namphibians, and reptiles indicate that the process of extinction is inexorably\nworking its way up the food chain towards us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is no longer a secret that a small\ngroup of billionaires are making a fortune off of encouraging waste among the\npopulation and forcing us to be dependent on fossil fuels, often using\ntaxpayers’ money to subsidize this addiction to a dangerous energy source. They\nare fully aware of the crime that they are engaged in and they are informed\nabout the coming catastrophe. Yet they march forward towards mass destruction,\nmuch as the leaders of the Third Reich did when they started their invasions of\nEastern Europe and Russia, knowingly launching a catastrophe that destroyed\nthem as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as a small group of intellectuals,\nsuch as Austrian-German Orientalist Adolf Wahrmund (1827-1913), pushed fake\nscience about Jewish inferiority in Europe from the late 19th century, and\ntried to convince French and Germans that the contradictions of capitalism\ncould be traced back to racial characteristics of Jews, a circle of fraudulent\n“experts” have made a fortune from paybacks from fossil fuel industry\nto push their denial of, or understatement of, climate change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These professional deniers and\nscientists for hire such as Fred Seitz, Robert Jastrow (founder of the\nnotorious George C. Marshall Institute) and William Nierenberg pawn off fake\nscience using glossy brochures and fancy PPT presentations with the criminal\nintention of misleading the public about a national security crisis. The\nprocess is immoral and illegal, but even today is described in the media as\nmerely matter of differing opinion \u2015 much as rabid anti-Semitism was treated in\nEurope from the late 19th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today’s professors, lawyers, doctors or\nbusinessmen and reporters contribute to the promotion of a fossil fuel-based\neconomic system that defines the economy in terms of consumption and waste.\nThey are amply rewarded for their work, through consulting contracts, through\ntheir connections to corporations pushing automobiles or fossil fuels, or\nthrough other financial links. They shamelessly discuss economics while\nignoring the impact of wasteful energy consumption on the environment and they\npromote “free trade” while ignoring the tremendous emissions that\nresult from the transportation of products across the world by container ships.\nThis shameless work forms a perfect parallel to the pseudo-science of racial\ninferiority promoted by anthropologists and physiologists in pre-war Europe\nlike Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) who provided Hitler with his\nroadmap for systematic “scientific” attacks on Jews. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Washington Post reported in November\n2017, that the U.S. became the biggest polluter per capita in the world and\nthat it has the most climate change deniers of any country. Such an extreme\nsituation could not have been reached without the massive collaboration of\ncountless American intellectuals in this institutionalized death march. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some intellectuals have written books\nabout the magnitude of climate change that receive attention in the mainstream\nmedia. For example, Naomi Klein has written, and spoken, in a persuasive and\nblunt manner about the scale of the threat to humanity, saying that the Earth\nis “fucked” by the false promise of perennial growth on a planet with\nlimited resources. Her “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the\nClimate,” published in 2014, is a rare example of a widely read book that\nsuggests that the economic and ideological assumptions of our society will be\nfatal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So also Clive Hamilton, an Australian\nprofessor who is a member of the Board of the Climate Change Authority of his\ncountry, published a powerful critique of flawed economic policies “Growth\nFetish” in 2003, and the trenchant “Requiem for a Species” in\n2010. Hamilton suggests that even the experts behind the IPCC\n(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have vastly underestimated the\ndangers ahead because of economic and political pressures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But most climate change discourse has\nbeen laughable and pathetic. The most representative artifacts of this culture\nof understatement are former Vice President Al Gore’s two inconvenient movies:\n“An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) and “An Inconvenient Sequel:\nTruth to Power” (2017). Both films are more a promotion of Al Gore than a\nserious effort to address the threat of climate change. The saccharine\nnarratives assume unwarranted optimism that multinational corporations that\npursue profit can solve this catastrophe if only upper middle-class citizens\nraise their awareness of climate change. The movie avoids any consideration of\nserious actions such as the categorical prohibition of the use of fossil fuels,\nor even heavy taxing of pollution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The road forward<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2018 was a turning point in the modern\nHolocaust of climate change. The vastly increased warming of the North Pole led\nto a smaller difference in temperature relative to the equator, which disrupted\nthe Northern Hemisphere’s jet stream. The result has been reduced air\ncirculation at the altitude of nine to 12 kilometers with the consequence of\nminimal seasonal variations around the world. The resulting extreme rainfall in\nItaly, the unprecedented drought in Germany, the massive fires in California\nand Greece show that extreme climate is a reality, but governments, and their\ncitizens are incapable of articulating responses on the appropriate scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of us lack the bravery, and the\nintellectual clarity, necessary to face the ugly truth of climate change and\nits roots in our culture and habits. We have externalized the problem and\ntherefore are unable to move to the next step of changing our behavior so as to\nmake progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is still hope. We see a rising\nawareness of climate change around the world that makes an honest discussion\nabout the scale of the threat possible. But we cannot allow half-truths and\nrosy projections to delude us. The struggle ahead will be profound and\ndisorienting. We will have to challenge the consumption-based economics that\nunderpins every aspect of our current ideology. The circumstances may be\nentirely different, but a moral bravery on a par with that which was required\nto confront the Holocaust will be demanded of us if we wish to find a solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Korea Times \u201cInconvenient parallels between responses to the Holocaust and to climate change\u201d January 13, 2019 Emanuel Pastreich (with Alexander Krabbe A comparison between the culture of denial and self-deception that swept Europe during the Holocaust and the disgraceful failure of so-called “advanced nations” to take even the most basic steps to address the catastrophe … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9296425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[651,184],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9296425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}