In his memorable account of the Soviet prison camp system, The Gulag Archipelago, Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn writes (pp. 27-28):
At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for…. For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, “the stormy applause,” rising to an ovation, continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin.However, who would dare to be the first to stop? …The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! … Insanity!To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! …Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down….That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.”
Today, in traditionally democratic societies, we can discern the same totalitarian stifling of free speech and thought in the violent intolerance toward opponents of the cancel-culture dogma. Dissenters are publicly shamed and demonized. We see this in mainstream and social media, on university campuses, in major athletic organizations, and increasingly, in the corporate world.
Universally beloved writer J.K. Rowling and creator of the Harry Potter series instantly became the target of vitriolic hatred for her alleged “transphobia.” Her golden handprints in Edinburgh were vandalized with red paint intended to symbolize “the blood on her hands” for daring to state a simple scientific fact—that sex is biologically defined.
Even more alarmingly, some climate activists have demanded jail time for those who question the accuracy of predictive computer modeling that forecasts global warming of apocalyptic proportions. “Climate change denial should be a crime,” declared a September 1, 2017, piece in the Outline. In an article, published in the Nation on September 6, 2017, and titled “Climate Denialism Is Literally Killing Us,” Mark Hertsgaard argued that “murder is murder” and that we should “[p]unish it as such.”
Ayn Rand aptly exposes the anti-humanist nature of the modern ecological movement: “Now observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists—amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for ‘harmony with nature’—there is no discussion of man’s needs and the requirements of his survival.” (p. 277)
Environmentalism originated with the positive goal of reducing pollution and protecting natural beauty. Many conservationists launched worthy initiatives to create parks and national reserves. Traditional organizations, such as the Boy Scouts of America, have educated generations of children to respect and protect nature. According to the North American Forest Commission, for example, “[b]y 1997 forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920.”
Such initiatives should serve to benefit humanity by creating a healthier, aesthetically pleasing environment. Modern environmentalists, on the other hand, demand that people refrain from procreating, eating meat, and using airplanes, among other absurd demands. They do not care about improving the human condition but seek to impose population control and destroy free market economies and industrial progress. They advocate extravagant government spending on utopian “green” policies with proven damages—both economic and environmental. In contrast, renowned scientists such as Freeman Dyson, Richard Lindzen, Steven Koonin, to name just a few among nearly 2,000 to date, have refuted the theory that an increase in CO2 emissions poses an existential threat.[*]
Regardless of whether one agrees with the critics of the cancel-culture dogma, they are entitled to free speech. They should not be silenced, slandered, or forced to lose their jobs on account of exercising their constitutional right to free expression. Disagreement is not violence, and neither is silence. Claiming the opposite is nothing short of totalitarian groupthink.
Fortunately, most people are naturally averse to groupthink. If armed with a historical and philosophical understanding of totalitarian theory and practice, and especially if they gain firsthand experiences to enrich this knowledge, most sympathizers of totalitarian policies will redefine themselves as classical liberals and unequivocally reject socialist ideology, including radical environmentalism. Totalitarian fanatics, though unduly influential in intellectual and elitist circles, are but a small percentage of mankind.
There is strength in numbers—and so we must speak out and eradicate cancel culture. Moreover, we must educate each generation to honor the fundamental American traditions of political and economic freedom. This would create a well-informed mass opposition to the tyrannical grip of political correctness, cancel culture, the Great Reset, or any other totalitarian metamorphoses of our times. That is why President Trump’s recent Executive Orders, aiming at neutralizing harmful net-zero policies and leftist globalist green absurdities, couldn’t have been issued at a better time.
* Cf. the detailed analysis and scientific references in Bernstein 2023; Lomborg 2011; Koonin 2021 as well as the informative documentary Climate: The Cold Truth.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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