No, the Green Party are not "Luddites"

[What_Exit]

@xtisme

Yes…it was a whoosh.

That said, I do believe that many (perhaps not most, certainly not all) Green’s have an anti-tech mind set, or at least an aversion to a lot of ‘modern’ technology. Some of the more radical ones seem to go beyond mere aversion of technology to a stance bordering on (or even surpassing) the Luddites.

Anyone trying to paint the whole party (or the broader group of which the Green party is merely a small subset) with the term Luddite is, well, painting with a ridiculously, um, broad brush. However, anyone who denies that there are a lot of folks in this group who ARE technology averse, and more, that there is a hard core of, well, loons, who are completely over the top Luddite-like in their mentality hasn’t been paying attention during the last few decades to the movement.

There are a few (somewhat) good points here, but broadly, the Green/Eco types who are most rabid for ‘organic’ type farming and against the above are simply divorced from reality. Simply put, you can’t (CAN NOT) feed the worlds population with ‘organic’ methods. It’s a niche farming method which is more about wealthy folks trying to feel good about themselves, the environment, and the supposed benefits of what they are eating, than a serious and viable method of farming.

While you might scoff at a company like GM’s motives (like the evils of ‘profit’…eeeee-GAD!), the fact of the matter is they produce staggering quantities of food. The fact that they don’t ‘feed the world’ has less to do with the quantity of food that ‘big Agri-concerns’ can produce, and more about distribution of the food stuffs to the folks who are starving…well, that and the brutal thugs and warlord types ready to take the food for themselves or allow it to rot on a dock somewhere so that they can put their feet on some poor peasant groups collective neck.

-XT

Keep in mind I am reporting my observations from within a Green group and reading a lot of green materials. These are not my views. I am even in favor of building Nukes and I am OK with GM foods though I do think the corporations could learn a lot in PR.

[BrainGlutton]

@Sam_Stone

They also tend to be anti-development. A new factory requires a lot of mining activity to provide the steel and other materials.

I don’t think anti-development is a Luddite position at all. (But I’m in Florida, where “development” always means residential-commercial burbsprawl, not industrial development.)

[kopek]

@BrainGlutton

I don’t think anti-development is a Luddite position at all. (But I’m in Florida, where “development” always means residential-commercial burbsprawl, not industrial development.)

I am curious and lack the time right now to read the entire platform; does it include anything about a preference for redevelopment over development?
FWIW I see a lot of what I caught in a quick scan of the platform of basically being an off-shoot of the old-school Liberal Democrat. It’s making me think its something worth looking into more.

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

@John_Mace

You forgot to put “sigh” in the title.

A link or two to posts where we “keep seeing this meme repeated, on this board and elsewhere, as a basic, established fact”. Especially the latter part about being an established fact.

Right here is a good place to start.

[BrainGlutton]

@kopek

FWIW I see a lot of what I caught in a quick scan of the platform of basically being an off-shoot of the old-school Liberal Democrat. It’s making me think its something worth looking into more.

I think the Ten Key Values are a bit more radical than that.

[BrainGlutton]

I have deep intellectual admiration for the ex-conservative, “radical centrist” commentator Michael Lind, but even he seems to have bought into the “Green = Luddite” meme. That’s part of what I mean by its being “widespread.” See his latest article, “A Progressive Divorce?”

Along with the neoliberals and New Dealers, I would identify a third significant faction to the left of center – ideological Greens. While remaining true to the conservationist heritage of the two Roosevelts, New Dealers need to distinguish themselves from pessimistic, technophobic and antinatalist Green Malthusians. You can’t be a New Deal liberal and view poverty in either the American South or the global South as a problem of too many dark-skinned people instead of too little social justice and too little economic development. You can’t celebrate FDR’s Tennessee Valley Authority as a symbol of economic and social progress and condemn it as a monstrous assault on the purity of an idealized natural world in which humans, unlike other animals, are intruders. And because one of the achievements of the New Deal was to use federal investment to promote electrification, the automobile and industrialized agriculture, you can’t be a New Deal liberal and weep for a vanished early-industrial world of steam railroads, trolleys, tenements and locally grown food. (For opponents of coal, Greens seem to share a surprising nostalgia for the densely populated, transit-based cities of the ephemeral steam engine era.)

No, he doesn’t use the word “Luddite” here, but his misrepresentation is substantially identical. And he doesn’t even seem to be talking about the Green Party, but the whole environmental movement as a faction within the Dem coalition.

[XT]

No idea who this guy even is, to be honest, but from your own quote:

ideological Greens

I haven’t read more than what you posted, BG, but it’s clear he isn’t talking about every Green out there, but a subset, that he is calling ‘ideological Greens’.

-XT

[BrainGlutton]

@xtisme

No idea who this guy even is, to be honest, but from your own quote:

I haven’t read more than what you posted, BG, but it’s clear he isn’t talking about every Green out there, but a subset, that he is calling ‘ideological Greens’.

-XT

No, he seems to be using “ideological Greens” to (mis)characterize the whole environmental movement, of which the Green Party is a subset. And “environmentalists = Luddites” is just as big a lie.

[Stoneburg]

@Laudenum

A large segment of the Greens in Ireland are:
Anti-nuclear
Anti-vaccination
Anti-floridation

and some are:
Anti-automation (they don’t like auto-checkouts)

They also believe that wind energy can power EVERYTHING.

Anti-nuclear - Almost all Greens in the world are anti-nuclear, for good reasons. Nuclear energy is not renewable, so it is not a long term solution. Although the risk of reactor failures is very small, eventual consequences are insanely large. More importantly, the mining of uranium is destructive to the enviroment and the question of what to do with the waste is not yet solved. It makes sense to be critical.

Anti-vaccination - FALSE. The Greens are critical of the benefits of mass vaccinations, not “anti-vaccinations”. I’m for example critical of the Swedish mass vaccination against swine flu for three reasons: It’s not a pandemic, the vaccination itself will spread more disease than it stops, and it’s not cost effective. That does not mean I am anti-vaccination.

Anti-floridation - Ireland is the ONLY country in Europe that still floridates its water supply. Of western countries only the US and Australia still does this.

Anti-automation - Cite? There is nothing in Irelands Green Party policies to even suggest this.

Wind power - Cite? Irelands Green Party policies support a diversification of energy sources and allowing market forces to chose which is more effective.
This board is supposed to be about fighting ignorance, not spreading it.
http://www.greenparty.ie/

[kopek]

@BrainGlutton

I think the Ten Key Values are a bit more radical than that.

I’m not sure I would agree that they are all that much more radical. At least I don’t see anything Doctor King or Bobby Kennedy would have disagreed with and much there that they taught us. It’s not a bad set of values at all.

[yorick73]

I think the current green movement is much more redistributionist than being Luddites…although the effect for Americans would be the same either way if the greenies had their way.

[BrainGlutton]

@yorick73

I think the current green movement is much more redistributionist than being Luddites…although the effect for Americans would be the same either way if the greenies had their way.

How would it “be the same either way”?

[BrainGlutton]

@Stoneburg

Anti-floridation - Ireland is the ONLY country in Europe that still floridates its water supply. Of western countries only the US and Australia still does this.

Why is that? That is, why have other European countries decided to discontinue fluoridation?

[What_Exit]

@BrainGlutton

Why is that? That is, why have other European countries decided to discontinue fluoridation?

This is from the wiki article:

The effectiveness of water fluoridation can vary according to circumstances such as whether preventive dental care is free.[51] Most countries in Europe have experienced substantial declines in cavities without the use of water fluoridation.[3] For example, in Finland and Germany, tooth decay rates remained stable or continued to decline after water fluoridation stopped. Fluoridation may be more justified in the U.S. because unlike most European countries, the U.S. does not have school-based dental care, many children do not visit a dentist regularly, and for many U.S. children water fluoridation is the prime source of exposure to fluoride.

Please note I am not against water fluoridation but I can see it being questioned at least. Hardly luddite to stop it if it is not helping.

[yorick73]

@BrainGlutton

How would it “be the same either way”?

We won’t be able to afford all the shiny toys we have now.

[BrainGlutton]

@yorick73

We won’t be able to afford all the shiny toys we have now.

That might follow from Luddism, but not from redistributionism. (N.B.: Redistributionism != Stalinism.)

[yorick73]

@BrainGlutton

That might follow from Luddism, but not from redistributionism. (N.B.: Redistributionism != Stalinism.)

But of course it follows from redistributionism. If we are forced to hand over our wealth to 3rd world countries that don’t pollute as much as we do, then we cannot afford our extravagant standard of living.

[BrainGlutton]

@yorick73

But of course it follows from redistributionism. If we are forced to hand over our wealth to 3rd world countries that don’t pollute as much as we do, then we cannot afford our extravagant standard of living.

I thought you were talking about redistribution of wealth within the U.S. Where is the other, international form to be found in the Green Party’s platform?

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

Maybe casting the accusation of ludditism is a way to fight other political battles. This thread reminded me of a bit in the article, The Rise of Republican Nihilism:

A decade ago, nearly all conservatives rejected the connection between carbon emissions and climate change. Though many still do, a growing minority of right-wingers now accepts the mainstream scientific position. However, rather than proceed from that premise to some program of reduced emissions, they have feverishly devised a series of rationales for unlimited carbon use. Some have embraced fantastical geoengineering schemes–massive machines, for example, that would suck carbon out of the sky–with the rabid certainty of a science-fiction nut. Others insist that limiting U.S. emissions will do nothing to help force developing nations to do the same. Still other conservatives argue that the future world will be richer and thus able to cope with whatever calamities a hotter planet will bring.

The telling thing here is not that these arguments are provably wrong, though they are highly speculative. It’s that those conservatives who have accepted climate-change science immediately jumped to some other reason to oppose government action. These reasons are, in theory, separate logical propositions: The feasibility of creating giant machines to suck carbon out of the sky has nothing to do with the diplomatic question of whether U.S. climate action could influence China to follow suit.

Yet virtually no conservative intellectuals seem to settle, even temporarily, on the view that climate change is real and that government regulation is therefore appropriate. They cling to climate-science skepticism like a life preserver, and then, when they can’t hold on any more, they grasp immediately for a different rationale. If government intervention appears to be the answer, they must change the question.

Point being, for people who are firmly against government action on climate change, broadcasting the ‘Greens are luddites!’ meme can be a way to portray your usual liberal villians as ignoring the obviously brilliant ideas of unlimited carbon emissions, no government involvement, and giant machines to suck the carbon out of the sky! See the narrative? ‘These luddites just want to get government into your life; they aren’t even interested in geo-engineering!’

[Zephyurs]

There’s a reason Greens are often called Luddite. Whenever you hear them take a loud public stand on an issue, it’s that they’re against it. Nuclear power, development, GM-crops. This gives the impression that they’re anti-progress, instead of a group advocating change in its own right.

Is it fair? Perhaps. But if you move out of the college/hippie component of the movement, you see people who have very well thought out views of progress, even if it’s not necessarily to the liking of the general American public. Most Greens in the real world that I’ve met argue more for dense urban development (a la NYC or SF) with the necessary social progress to go with that (including nuclear power). I’m not sure how that’s any more or less Luddite than wanting more suburban sprawl, just a different vision.

One Green I know is obsessed with Google, the “cloud,” and netbooks. I think that pretty much gets at the Green aesthetic of progress–it’s not what technology is the most powerful, but what’s most economic and decentralized. Since people tend to equate technological development with great expense and concentration of capital, that also might play into why they’re perceived as Luddite.