- re: the dutch farmers... Archived Message
Posted by Ian M
on March 12, 2023, 3:42 pm, in reply to "Brand talks about the Maher appearance"
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Monbiot had this to say: 'A wildly popular clip from one of his videos about the Dutch nitrate crisis offers a classic conspiracy theory mashup: a tangle of claims that may be true in other contexts, random accusations, scapegoating and resonances with some old and very ugly tropes. He claims that “this whole fertiliser situation is a scam”. The real objective is “to bankrupt the farmers so their land can be grabbed”. This “shows you how the Great Reset operates”, using “globalist” regulations to throw farmers off their land. He claims it’s “connected to the land grab of Bill Gates” and the “corruption of companies like Monsanto”. In reality, the Dutch government was forced to act by a legal ruling, as levels of nitrate pollution, largely from livestock farms, break European law. Its attempts to curb this pollution have nothing to do with the World Economic Forum and its vacuous rhetoric about a “Great Reset”. Or with Bill Gates. Or with Monsanto, which hasn’t existed since 2018 when it was bought by Bayer. So why mention them? Perhaps because these terms have become potent click triggers. Brand is repeating claims first made by far-right conspiracists, who have piled into this issue, claiming that the nitrate crisis is a pretext to seize land from farmers, in whom, they claim, true Dutch identity is vested, and hand it to asylum seekers and other immigrants. It’s a version of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, itself a reworking of the Nazis’ blood and soil tropes about protecting the “rooted” and “authentic” people – in whom “racial purity” and “true” German identity was vested – from “cosmopolitan” and “alien” forces (ie Jews). Brand may not realise this, as the language has changed a little – “cosmopolitans” have become “globalists”, “aliens” have become “immigrants” – but the themes have not.' - https://www.dumptheguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/10/russell-brand-politics-public-figures-responsibility I clicked through to view the clip, which only shows the start of the video https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/1628722888973975554 and cuts out just before he says: 'Anyway you don't care what I think about this stuff but you should care what Vandana Shiva thinks. She is a bold, brilliant world teacher. Stay to the end of this clip, you're going to be smarter at the end of it, you're going to understand stuff that they don't want you to understand. It's vital that you watch all of it.' From 2:53 in the full vid: But Monbiot doesn't even mention Shiva, the fact she was interviewed by Brand, who based his opening comments on their discussion, or his pains to direct viewers to her comments on the matter. That's because she is a long time stalwart of the anti-globalisation (not globalist) movement, almost exclusively a pro-worker, anti-corporate leftist movement, and this would completely undermine his argument - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Shiva I watched the interview, and there's quite a bit of waffle, a mistaken claim that the Nazis invented artificial fertilisers*, but a good general background history of how farmers have been pushed into dependency on these chemicals and large scale machinery, subsidised by the same government bodies that are now trying to push them out of business out of claimed environmental concerns. Brand was arguably lazy or using buzz words in his intro connecting it to the WEF and the 'great reset', but the analysis he points to is solid and based on left wing, or simply humanitarian, anti-capitalist principles, not a hint of 'blut und boden' or antisemitism to be found anywhere. The over all effect is more likely that those members of RB's audience who have right wing views will be educated about the reality of capitalism's destructive influence on farming, and will be better informed about the context in which farmer protests are occurring. Furthermore, they will have seen arguments in favour of human-scale organic food production, just not enforced by bureaucratic diktat in a way that is guaranteed to drive them out of business. That's meeting people where they are and trying to influence the direction of their outrage into positive outcomes. All the farmers are getting from the likes of Monbiot is: "F*** You, fascist scum", telling them they shouldn't exist and should be replaced by people in white coats growing microbes in a sterile lab. Which approach is more likely to lead to a beneficial outcome? I * - actually that happened in the early decades of the 20thC and ramped up during WW1 to provide the German army with ammonia for explosives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process |