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Like most backward looking judgements these days, such things require understanding the culture and zeitgeist of the mid 70s. I'm pro-nuclear as well, but unde
by 01100011 5mo ago
Like most backward looking judgements these days, such things require understanding the culture and zeitgeist of the mid 70s.
I'm pro-nuclear as well, but understand that for many decades the "smart" thing to do was to oppose it. I wouldn't expect a musical artist to have a more nuanced opinion than most of their contemporaries.
- colechristensen 5mo agoIt was largely our own governments wanting to scare us of nukes so we'd be scared of the Soviets, like in America with the schoolchildren doing duck and cover drills. Having enemies the population is afraid of is good for politicians and they'll take any enemies they can find, and they'll do so indiscriminately regardless of the real nuance of the issues. Immigrants, abortion, this religion or that, rock music, jazz music, alcohol, marijuana, global warming, windmills, books... just whatever as hard as they can regardless of if it's reasonable or not.
- 01100011 5mo agoI think it came from peaceniks and hippies mostly. You're talking about the equivalent of modern anti-vax liberals. Anti-science and given to conspiracies and mysticism. There was a pretty good reason to be scared of nukes when these folks were children in the 50s. The world was quite a different place back then. The US was lagging behind the Soviets, militarily speaking, and Communism was much more expansionary.
- happymellon 5mo ago> anti-vax liberals Just a small correction, but the anti-vax arguments are very conservative, not liberal.
- secretsatan 5mo agoThere is undeniably a middle class anti vax wellness leftist movement whether it was originally conservative or not, unfortunately.
- userbinator 5mo agoAppeal to nature is something that definitely cuts across the political spectrum.
- lostlogin 5mo ago> Appeal to nature is something that definitely cuts across the political spectrum. I wish this was true. How many right wing political parties support policies that improve the natural environment? Doing that is the domain of left wing parties, but I’d love to know of any exceptions.
- amanaplanacanal 5mo agoConservation used to be quite popular in conservative circles before it got branded as a lefty position. Once that happened, everyone who thought of themselves as conservative started running away from it. The US EPA was created by Richard Nixon, for example.
- happymellon 5mo ago> wellness leftist movement Hang on, are we talking about liberal or leftist now? Because a lot of these hoax "wellness" movements are conservative. Distrusting science and things you don't understand is a conservative mindset.
- TheOtherHobbes 5mo agoAnd trusting science while distrusting technology you do understand is a leftist mindset.
- happymellon 5mo agoI've never heard of that as a leftist mindset. Do you have examples? People like the Luddites weren't distrusting of technology, they were distrusting of the owners using it to depress wages.
- soperj 5mo agohate to tell you this, but there's a whole contingent of "granola moms" who won't vax their children. They're the same people that subscribe to those teething stones that are really only a strangulation risk.
- happymellon 5mo agoYep, and a lot of what they say is deeply conspiratorial conservative rhetoric. They may be self described liberal, but their actions certainly aren't.
- tekla 5mo agoIts so fucking wild to see how fast the winds change. And since its inconveniently politically incorrect, history rewrites or "they were actually the opposite of us and lying" Anti-Vax people are/were seen the leftist idiots who were anti-capitalist, anti-corpo, anti-the fascist govt, who would rather have died of preventable diseases than perpetuate the medical industry and its capitalist schemes trying to keep us sick to sell drugs and also ban weed. It's so funny to watch the political sides swap and the doublethink take all of a few days to propogate.
- amanaplanacanal 5mo agoWhen antivax was a lefty thing, it was a tiny percentage. The most wacky on the left always get the most airplay for some reason, making their views seem more mainstream than they really are. Since antivax is now popular on the right, it has grown into a much larger proportion of the populace. It doesn't help that they now have positions in government.
- 01100011 5mo agoIt's not surprising. As a kid I was an anarcho-communist punk rocker but I had a friend who was a christian and his parents were scammy, MLM, right-wing conservative types(think Rush Limbaugh but loonier) who distrusted the government and lied on their taxes. It was obvious how the wings of the political spectrum almost touch at times. Paranoia and distrust of institutions, mystical thinking, adherence to alternative truth structures.. these are apolitical just as mental illness is also apolitical.
- JuniperMesos 5mo agoThere are both liberal and conservative strains of anti-vaccination sentiment that have been more or less prominent at various times.
- pjc50 5mo ago> There was a pretty good reason to be scared of nukes when these folks were children in the 50s Yes, but I think if you asked which country was more likely to "push the button" in the 50s-70s it would have been the US, and the extent to which the US continued invasions after the collapse of the USSR kind of vindicates that. > The US was lagging behind the Soviets, militarily speaking I don't think this was ever true except in the least useful measure, raw headcount of conscripts.
- Forgeties79 5mo ago> You're talking about the equivalent of modern anti-vax liberals. Anti-science and given to conspiracies and mysticism In 2026 this is decidedly a more conservative stance. They installed RFK Jr., who in addition to Wakefield, is the antivax guy. MAHA specifically (can’t believe they actually stuck with that acronym) is overwhelmingly Republican dominated/supported.
- TurdF3rguson 5mo agoThe Soviets were parking nukes in Cuba in striking distance of the White House. If that's not legitimately terrifying to you, I just don't know.
- zorked 5mo agoNot anymore than the US being able to strike worldwide to this very moment. They are the only country that has used nuclear bombs against civilians. The big problem is having one country be able to do it without deterrents and with impunity. MAD is a good thing, if anyone will have those things at all.
- TurdF3rguson 5mo agoOne of those things is scarier to American school children and their teachers than the other.
- soperj 5mo agoscariest thing for American School children and their teachers is the way that the second amendment is administered.
- lostlogin 5mo agoSchool children aren’t easily scared by boogie men, but maybe they should be. The Iranian girls found this out.
- pjc50 5mo agoObjectively, nukes have killed 0 American school children and their teachers while legal constitutional American gun owners have killed thousands every year. The main natural predator of Americans is other Americans.
- Tepix 5mo agoTheir nukes are still within striking distance.
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- cluckindan 5mo agoMore like the robot thing to do. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany was entirely manufactured; it was the product of Gerhard Schröder and similar robots who enriched themselves on Russian oil and gas. Ironically, it is also where the so-called Green Party began.
- Qdulf 5mo agoThis is historical revisionism. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany is rooted in the peace movement and environmentalism, with the majority of public discourse starting in the 1970s. The debate has always been about what to do with the waste. Our government misrepresented the "Asse" as a solved solution for a final repository, even though it was always only a test repository for low and intermediate-level radioactive waste. But hubris or corruption led to one scandal after another, forever tainting the discussion about nuclear waste in Germany. Everything that follows is just a reaction. My counterclaim to your unsubstantiated take: Pro-nuclear sentiment is what has been manufactured. Anti-nuclear is grassroots.
- Mashimo 5mo agoIndeed. Also Asse was a political decision, against the scientist who found better places to put the waste, but Asse II was close to east Germany. And West German politicians wanted to give a big "screw you" to East Germany, because they also did something similar. I'm still against nuclear in Germany. I'm fine with Finland doing it.
- AdamN 5mo agoIt's kind of all of the above. State and non-state actors have leveraged pretty much every movement there is to their own ends: civil rights, anti-nuclear, pro-nuclear, anti-Iranian government sentiment, pro-Iranian government sentiment, even jazz tours in Europe which were assisted by US intelligence orgs in the 20th century. It's not a 'bad' thing and doesn't say alot about the core movements - it just is what it is.
- TitaRusell 5mo ago
- JuniperMesos 5mo agoI quite enjoy the 1979 Dan Fogelberg song Face the Fire from a purely musical perspective, despite it being an anti-nuclear-power anthem written in the wake of three mile island. There's no reason to expect that Kraftwork's poltical ideas are good ones or were good ones at the time, even if it resulted in some good music.
- jcul 5mo agoI think Chernobyl was a big factor in European sentiment towards nuclear power too, in the 80s / 90s. I grew up in the 90s and didn't even fully understand what it was, but I remember the fear around it. I remember people in Ireland worrying about Sellafield nuclear power plant in the UK and talking about things like wind direction if there was an incident. And the government posting out iodine tablets to homes.
- account42 5mo agoNo it was never the smart thing, always an uninformed emotional reaction based on fear.
- atoav 5mo agoI grew in the area most hit by Chernobyl fallout in Europe. The disfigured newborn kids who didn't make it would probably not share your view. My girlfriends first older brother was one of those babies, the second one survived but is disfigured and needs serious care to live. I had three such kids in my first class at school, four different ones in my second and a sizeable number of parents whose kids didn't survive childbirth. Not being allowed to eat certain mushrooms or digging in the woods was the easier part. So this may be a bit more tangible for some people than for others.
- rectang 5mo agoThere are a number of pro-nuclear advocates on this page who can’t just engage in good faith but instead dismiss and deride their interlocutors as “crazy”, “paranoid”, “fear mongers“. It’s infuriating because the origins of anti-nuclear sentiments are often plain and perfectly understandable, as your poignant anecdotes illustrate.
- pfdietz 5mo agoI'd get angry with them, but at this point the renewable wave is so overwhelming and unstoppable that they are just screaming into the void. I know they are set up for bitter disappointment, having constructed a false defensive narrative to prop up their world view, and I kind of pity them. Ok, maybe not that very last part.
- pjmlp 5mo agoI rather not have another Fukushima or Chernobyl in Europe.
- lizardking 5mo agoThere is a difference between the "smart" thing to do and what's considered to be the right opinion by "smart" people. Lobotomies were endorsed by elite medical opinion (Moniz won a Nobel for it in 1949). Smart-person consensus often doesn't survive contact with reality. Smart people are as susceptible to groupthink, moral panics, and manias as anybody else.