The Economist, an unabashedly global liberal news magazine that touts itself as offering “fair-minded, fact-checked coverage of world politics, economics, business, science, culture and more,” got an early foothold onto the humans-should-die act. Of all things, its “Christmas Special” section in 1998 vomited up “Sui Genocide,”63 an essay discussing the ruinous impact of humanity on the planet. The goal was to open the door to the proposed solution to the problem of humans. And the answer is . . . you guessed it . . . suicide.
“It is clear that human history will end; the only mystery is when. It is also clear that if the timing is left to nature (or, if you prefer, to God) and humans hang on until the bloody end, the race’s final exit will be ignoble . . .” writes the anonymous seer who authored the article. “It is hard, indeed, to imagine any reason to be against voluntary human extinction. The tricky question is not whether to extinguish, but when.”64
Moreover, the article romantically describes this ultimate act of personal violence as “far and away, the greatest act of goodness ever contemplated, the ennoblement of a whole species; an act, almost, of angels.”65
This reviling of human life permeates the left not just on climate extremism, but on every issue it co-opts. Hatred of humanity invites the expectation and acceptance of violence. Culture and society become an orgy of fear, violence, selfishness, guilt, paranoia, and anxiety. The idea that our very existence is the problem presents the perfect storm with which to divide, quell, and even eliminate populations.
After constant hectoring for decades by climate extremists, major newspapers, and magazines legitimizing the fiction that human beings are a scourge, climate extremists then offer up surprise and faux lamentation when a poor soul sets himself on fire to protest climate change. Disgracefully reinforcing their advocacy of the desperate and horrific act, the victims (and they are victims of the left) are lauded as “martyrs,” described as providing a “sacrifice,” are “fearless,” offering “an act of compassion,” and “an act of generosity.”66
None of this is “complex.” For the left, it is mission accomplished.
The Need for Fossil Fuels
Despite the lack of a factual basis for climate alarmism, the dire predictions from the alarmists stubbornly persist. While we can prove that disastrous climate change forecasts in the past were indisputably wrong, the new crop of predictions won’t be proven equally false until we arrive at those future years. For example, as I noted in chapter 3, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez crazily predicted in 2019 that the world would end in twelve years if climate change is not addressed. This is nuts, but if Ocasio-Cortez had not later backed away from this claim herself after she was ridiculed, her doomsday scenario would no doubt be treated as gospel by the far left until 2031 arrives.
“Climate Kid” Greta Thunberg, the Swedish girl elevated by the left to the status of world-famous prophet since she began leading climate protests and writing books at the tender age of fifteen, has written: “Around 2030 we will be in a position to set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.”67 Well, 2030 hasn’t arrived yet, so her fans no doubt still believe her alarmist predictions.
“Earth isn’t ending in 12 years. . . . Earth, as a whole, will be okay—for at least another few billion years,” Sheril Kirshenbaum wrote in Scientific American in 2019 in response to Ocasio-Cortez. The executive director of the nonpartisan organization Science Debate, Kirshenbaum wrote in the same article: “Doomsday scenarios may generate clicks and sell advertisements, but they always fail to convey that science is nuanced. Arbitrary ‘time left to apocalypse’ predictions are not evidence based, and the story of climate change doesn’t fit neatly into brief bullet points competing for your attention in today’s saturated media environment. Stoking panic and fear offers a false narrative that can overwhelm readers, leading to inaction and hopelessness.”68 A spot-on analysis.
We are blessed with brains that allow us to assess risk. We need to judge the risks that face us rationally and clearly, and resist giving in to fear that leads us to make bad decisions that bring about more harm than good. The real “inconvenient truth,” if I may borrow a phrase from former vice president and continuing climate alarmist Al Gore, is that people around the world today depend on coal, oil, and natural gas in just about every aspect of their lives. Enormous quantities of these energy sources are buried under America’s land and coastal waters and could be extracted safely and in an environmentally responsible manner, allowing the US to supply energy to much of the world. Doing this would reduce our trade deficit, create American jobs, and reduce world dependence on oil and natural gas from less desirable sources, such as Russia and certain Middle Eastern countries.
Unfortunately, President Biden so fears the climate alarmists who make up the base of the Democratic Party that he has, in effect, put large “Do Not Disturb” signs on much of our country, refusing to allow fossil fuel extraction in many areas under federal jurisdiction. He even blocked the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought over 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil to US refineries every day.69 Some states have imposed further restrictions of their own, such as New York’s ban on extracting large oil and natural gas deposits in the state using a technique known as fracking.70
Like it or not, fossil fuels are used to power every type of transportation vehicle, to make fertilizer to grow the crops essential to our food supply, and to manufacture plastics that go into thousands of products. Even if you drive an electric car, there’s a good chance it’s powered by fossil fuels because about 61 percent of the electricity in the US is generated by such fuels, with the remaining 20 percent coming from renewable sources, and 19 percent coming from nuclear power.71 “We are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon,” says Vaclav Smil, an environmental scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Canada, “and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.”72
Fossil fuels assumed their important role in modern life because they provide efficient, reliable, and portable power. Technological innovation may eventually allow renewables and nuclear power to replace fossil fuels for many uses. But this won’t happen overnight. (It may not happen ever.)* It makes no sense to let fear driven by climate fearmongering prompt us to hurriedly abandon fossil fuels at all costs, such as increasing world hunger or crippling our economy. As we do when making other decisions, we need to make a cost-benefit analysis to determine what actions we should take.
The hysterical fear porn the left is peddling to get us to accept the growth of Big Government, higher taxes, new limits on our freedom, and a one-way ticket to a socialist future is something we must refuse to accept. The world will not end because of climate change. But our right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness described so eloquently in the Declaration of Independence—and many of our dreams for better days ahead—will be endangered if fear of climate change overwhelms us. Yet, in reality, this will only happen if we allow the fear merchants to succeed.
Chapter 10 BLM’s Toxic Agenda of Fear
They’re not going to stop and everyone beware, because they’re not going to stop. . . . Everyone should take note of that on both levels. They’re not going to let up and they should not and we should not.
—KAMALA HARRIS1
This epigraph quotes then-senator Kamala Harris on June 17, 2020, as America was watching the violence of the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots engulf major cities. It was also just two months before Biden chose her to be his vice presidential running mate. Just five months before the 2020 presidential election, on national television with Late Show host Stephen Colbert, and sounding bizarrely like a proud mama, she excitedly told Americans to “beware” and then promised that the obscene violence of the riots was not going to end after the election,2 a message Antifa adopted just a few months later.3
The violence unfolding was explained as a response to the killing of George Floyd, forty-six, by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. The nightmare leading to his murder began when four officers responded to a call from a grocery store clerk who reported a black man had used what appeared to be a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill to make a purchase. Floyd, who was unarmed, was handcuffed by officers and lay face down on the street, not posing a threat.
The four officers were fired, convicted of crimes, and sentenced to prison. The longest sentence—twenty-one years on federal charges and twenty-two and one-half years on state charges, to be served concurrently—went to Chauvin, who was found guilty of murder, manslaughter, and other charges.4, 5 In addition, Minneapolis paid Floyd’s family members $27 million to settle a lawsuit they filed.6 Thankfully, the justice system held those responsible accountable and served true justice.
What happened in the few weeks following Floyd’s death was stunning and historic. Some 4,700 demonstrations were held across the country to protest the police killings of Floyd and other black people. A New York Times analysis concluded that the protests were attended by an estimated 15 million to 26 million people. “These figures would make the recent protests the largest movement in the country’s history, according to interviews with scholars and crowd-counting experts,” the Times reported.7 Protests also took place in countries around the world.8
Were these massive protests spontaneous reactions by individuals outraged at the unjustified killing of Floyd? For some who participated, yes. But they were not organic demonstrations. They were organized by a militant group of anti-American Marxists with a nice-sounding name that many Americans had never heard of: the Black Lives Matter organization and subsequent “movement.” The goal of the organization, aside from raising as much money as possible, was turning a statistical rarity into a looming, apocalyptic race problem hidden in every corner of American life. In the summer of an election year, it was the perfect example of how the left never lets a good crisis go to waste, and in this case Marxist activists weaponized and exploited the pain and suffering of others to further the leftist agenda of fear and control.9
They didn’t try to hide who they were—a typical Marxist group with a big side of woke. It was displayed openly on their website until people began to notice. As their identity politics pandering was mocked and criticized, their word-salad mission statement rewrite began in earnest. Fortunately, the Blaze reported on the original we’re-fabulous-and-everything-for-everyone version in 2020 before it got a makeover: “‘We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum,’ the BLM website reads. ‘We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead. We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.’”10
The problem too many wouldn’t recognize at this early point is the history of Marxist organizers co-opting important issues with the goal of maintaining the pain while scooping up as much money and power in the process as possible. But that realization would begin to emerge soon enough.
As the New York Times reported: “One of the reasons there have been protests in so many places in the United States is the backing of organizations like Black Lives Matter (BLM). While the group isn’t necessarily directing each protest, it provides materials, guidance and a framework for new activists. . . . Those activists are taking to social media to quickly share protest details to a wide audience.”11
What exactly is the interest of BLM leadership in stoking civil unrest? They claimed it was justice. However, the actual result has made life worse for black Americans.
When I was a community organizer in the 1990s, I was educated quickly by my leftist mentors that the “issues” were convenient excuses with which to exploit and fundraise. Fear of being called a racist or a sexist, fear of the repercussions for not virtue signaling that one is fully committed to the left’s caustic agenda, opens the pocketbooks of many. From major American companies to workers across the economic spectrum, it is the ancient ritual of offering “tribute” to those who would otherwise use their influence to harm you. The left has learned how stoking fear can facilitate a liberally sanctioned version of extortion.
Many of the protests sparked by Floyd’s murder were very different from the nonviolent marches led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders in the 1960s to protest racial discrimination. While most of the Floyd protesters were peaceful, sizable numbers (including members of the dangerous far-left anarchist Antifa group12) broke into and looted stores, including many owned by blacks. They stole merchandise, set stores and cars on fire, and assaulted police and others. It became clear the agenda was really to inflict violence, chaos, and intimidation onto the general public. It was the use of fear during an election season, and the prospect of big money, fueling that fire.
If you are picturing an angry domestic abuser smashing things, making threats, and saying your actions forced them to do this, you are not the only one.
Despite the efforts of the Democratic Party and their lapdogs in the legacy media to convince you otherwise, BLM and the 2020 summer of riots were not a natural, organic uprising of concerned citizens. Mike Gonzalez,13 one of the premier researchers, analysts, and reporters on Critical Race Theory, identity politics, diversity, multiculturalism, assimilation, and nationalism, as well as foreign policy, exposed the putrid founding history of the BLM machine in an article for the Heritage Foundation. His investigation uncovered information the legacy media will never share. He writes:
The founders of the BLM movement (especially groups such as the Movement for Black Lives and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation) and the members of the web around them are committed Marxists who, for years, created a vast revolutionary infrastructure in which to meet and strategize. They received ideological direction, strategic support, and emotional encouragement from foreign actors—Venezuela, especially, but also China.14
Moreover, Gonzalez tells us, “Garza, Cullors, Opal Tometi (the other BLM founder), and many others who were key in the ideological work behind the riots . . . traveled the world in the years since, and before, to coordinate activities in the numerous fora of the global Marxist left. All of this happened years before George Floyd was to breathe his last in 2020.”15
Of course, stealing TVs, computers, clothing, and other items from stores is not a legitimate act of free speech and assembly protected under the Constitution. Nor are acts of arson and violence. They are crimes, and they created an epidemic of fear across the nation. Some of the biggest protests and worst rioting took place in Minneapolis; New York City; Portland, Oregon (lasting for an incredible one hundred consecutive nights16); the nation’s capital in Washington; Kenosha, Wisconsin; Philadelphia; Rochester, New York; and Seattle. These are deep blue Democratic-run cities where political leadership was already either frightened of the political power of the far-left Marxist fringe or more than sympathetic to their aims.
In 2020, rioters caused an estimated $1–$2 billion in insured property damage.17 This was the largest civil disorder loss to the insurance industry in inflation-adjusted dollars since records began being kept in 1950.18
Yet even this staggering figure understates the true amount of property damage caused by the riots, because 75 percent of US businesses are underinsured and about 40 percent of small businesses have no insurance, which are not accounted for in the $1–2 billion figure. On top of this, businesses suffered additional losses as a result of being forced to close temporarily, and sometimes permanently, by the riots. Many lost customers who feared venturing into neighborhoods where rioting had taken place, even long after the disturbances ended. Businesses also had to replace stolen or destroyed merchandise, faced higher insurance rates, and experienced lower property values after the riots.19
Most tragically of all, some forty-seven people—many of them black—were killed in rioting, and many more, including police officers, were injured, according to the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.20 A report by the organization, which worked with Princeton University to study the protests, said 633 turned into riots, with at least 88 percent of those involving Black Lives Matter activists.21
The BLM Effect
No government should tolerate this level of lawlessness and ignore its most important obligation: protecting the safety of its citizens. Americans should not have to live in fear of rioters terrorizing their communities. After all, the lives of people killed in the rioting mattered just as much as Floyd’s. But too many Democratic leaders shirked their duty, giving in to the woke mob and dangerously telling police to hang back and “encourage crowd self-monitoring.”22 How progressive! It was as if the Democrats believed Floyd’s murder somehow justified the chaos, anarchy, and deaths in response. Many considered then-senator Kamala Harris’s repugnant remarks on The Late Show, in the midst of the unfolding anarchy, as a stamp of approval.
Paralyzed by the intense fear of being called racists and losing votes if they stopped rioters from destroying their own cities, some Democratic officials and their legacy media lapdogs regularly attempted to gaslight by characterizing rioters as “protesters” rather than criminals.