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"Many scientists have compared the war on environmental science to the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe. Hutchings muses, "you look at the rise of certain politi

"Many scientists have compared the war on environmental science to the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe. Hutchings muses, "you look at the rise of certain political parties in the 1930s and have to ask how could that happen and how did they adopt such extreme ideologies so quickly, and how could that happen in a democracy today?" Well of course it's just like the rise of fascism. And the "knowledge massacre" is, as the word denotes, essentially a genocide. Thank you, HN.

cstross 13y ago
Here, let me jog your memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik (Apologies, but Godwin's Law seems unavoidable in this context. Yes, here's a historic example of a no-shit Fascist party who fired lots of academics because of their ethnicity or their field of expertise and replaced them with a whole fabricated fake "science" that was ideologically acceptable to them. Note: burning libraries was explicitly part of the program.) It's excessive to call Harper's government "fascist" (although Harper has prior form for hard-right politics: http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2011/04/19/03610.html http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2011/04/19/0... ), but this is indisputably a tactic used by fascist movements.
- throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
  Holy shit I just got a reply from Charlie Stross! Honestly, I don't see the parallel at all. GoC isn't trying to rewrite science: it's closing scientific institutions (minor ones) as part of budget cuts. Certainly it's not doing so out of a nationalist campaign against scientists of a specific race, which is what defines fascism (isn't it?). Arguably it's a politicization of science, if it's intended to suppress climate science; but that has nothing to do with fascism, it's just bad policy.
  - sp332 13y ago
    Fascism is a kind of authoritarianism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism It's extremely conservative but not necessarily racist.
    - throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
      It's also explicitly nationalist, according to that article. Regardless of the definition, I think it's obvious GoC closing some research stations is neither nationalist, espousing a supreme Canadian nation or Canadian race, nor authoritarian, "characterized by absolute or blind obedience to authority, as against individual freedom". That's just ludicrous. This is in the same league as equating socialized health care with communist totalitarianism: it's about 15 orders of magnitude of Godwin.
  - slurry 13y ago
    I'm not going to get into the fascism vs. not-at-all-fascism debate. But there is something like nationalism at work here. You have the self-appointed champions of "real Canada" (Harper's base in the landlocked provinces) systematically undermining the knowledge and cultural capital of the Alien Other (the "weird" provinces that touch salt water, which for various reasons are all not quite "real Canada). It's probably not fascism. But it's more than just bad policy. It's bad policy that consistently works out to the detriment of non-favored geographic, linguistic, and yes sometimes ethnic groups.
    - cstross 13y ago
      Yes, this. It's the equivalent of red state/blue state culture war politics in the USA, turned up to 8 or 9 (if not 11). It's also destroying research libraries that provide exhaustive raw data going back decades or centuries on the natural environment. If you view Harper's constituents as the resource extraction industries, the destruction of this information is useful to them insofar as it deprives their opponents (the science-backed environmental lobby) of ammunition with which to oppose environment-degrading policies. With these libraries gone, much information is forever lost that could otherwise be used to build a coherent policy case opposing, e.g. tar sand extraction or other resource extraction businesses on environmental grounds. Note that Stephen Harper is a member of an evangelical fundamentalist church that opposes environmentalism and denies anthropogenic climate change: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/03/26/Harper-Evangelical-Mission/ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/03/26/Harper-Evangelical-Miss... Whether what's at work is misguided tribalism, business-centric anti-environmentalism, religious fundamentalism, or something else, I hope everyone on HN can agree that destroying research libraries isn't a good foundation for evidence-based policy making in governance.
  - pasbesoin 13y ago
    One principal description of Facism is the collusion of state and private corporate interests, to the point of one being subsumed under the other -- to the point where they become indistinguishable. That does appear to be happening. I'm reminded of some insight I gained a decade ago into the energy boom in Alberta, via an insider. It was, both figuratively and, as the case were, literally, "fuck all to get yours". I can easily extrapolate to the behaviour I see coming out of the Harper government. Government is an extension of favoured private interests, to that lot.

cstross 13y ago

Here, let me jog your memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik (Apologies, but Godwin's Law seems unavoidable in this context. Yes, here's a historic example of a no-shit Fascist party who fired lots of academics because of their ethnicity or their field of expertise and replaced them with a whole fabricated fake "science" that was ideologically acceptable to them. Note: burning libraries was explicitly part of the program.) It's excessive to call Harper's government "fascist" (although Harper has prior form for hard-right politics: http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2011/04/19/03610.html http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2011/04/19/0... ), but this is indisputably a tactic used by fascist movements.

throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
Holy shit I just got a reply from Charlie Stross! Honestly, I don't see the parallel at all. GoC isn't trying to rewrite science: it's closing scientific institutions (minor ones) as part of budget cuts. Certainly it's not doing so out of a nationalist campaign against scientists of a specific race, which is what defines fascism (isn't it?). Arguably it's a politicization of science, if it's intended to suppress climate science; but that has nothing to do with fascism, it's just bad policy.
- sp332 13y ago
  Fascism is a kind of authoritarianism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism It's extremely conservative but not necessarily racist.
  - throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
    It's also explicitly nationalist, according to that article. Regardless of the definition, I think it's obvious GoC closing some research stations is neither nationalist, espousing a supreme Canadian nation or Canadian race, nor authoritarian, "characterized by absolute or blind obedience to authority, as against individual freedom". That's just ludicrous. This is in the same league as equating socialized health care with communist totalitarianism: it's about 15 orders of magnitude of Godwin.
- slurry 13y ago
  I'm not going to get into the fascism vs. not-at-all-fascism debate. But there is something like nationalism at work here. You have the self-appointed champions of "real Canada" (Harper's base in the landlocked provinces) systematically undermining the knowledge and cultural capital of the Alien Other (the "weird" provinces that touch salt water, which for various reasons are all not quite "real Canada). It's probably not fascism. But it's more than just bad policy. It's bad policy that consistently works out to the detriment of non-favored geographic, linguistic, and yes sometimes ethnic groups.
  - cstross 13y ago
    Yes, this. It's the equivalent of red state/blue state culture war politics in the USA, turned up to 8 or 9 (if not 11). It's also destroying research libraries that provide exhaustive raw data going back decades or centuries on the natural environment. If you view Harper's constituents as the resource extraction industries, the destruction of this information is useful to them insofar as it deprives their opponents (the science-backed environmental lobby) of ammunition with which to oppose environment-degrading policies. With these libraries gone, much information is forever lost that could otherwise be used to build a coherent policy case opposing, e.g. tar sand extraction or other resource extraction businesses on environmental grounds. Note that Stephen Harper is a member of an evangelical fundamentalist church that opposes environmentalism and denies anthropogenic climate change: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/03/26/Harper-Evangelical-Mission/ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/03/26/Harper-Evangelical-Miss... Whether what's at work is misguided tribalism, business-centric anti-environmentalism, religious fundamentalism, or something else, I hope everyone on HN can agree that destroying research libraries isn't a good foundation for evidence-based policy making in governance.
- pasbesoin 13y ago
  One principal description of Facism is the collusion of state and private corporate interests, to the point of one being subsumed under the other -- to the point where they become indistinguishable. That does appear to be happening. I'm reminded of some insight I gained a decade ago into the energy boom in Alberta, via an insider. It was, both figuratively and, as the case were, literally, "fuck all to get yours". I can easily extrapolate to the behaviour I see coming out of the Harper government. Government is an extension of favoured private interests, to that lot.