Introducing the Anti-Human Substack
What the New Left’s reaction to October 7th says about its pervasive misanthropy
Among the many alarming consequences of the 7th October terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas is the zeal with which the New Left has seized afresh on the Palestinian cause while remaining seemingly untroubled by the fate of some 1,400 dead and 220 hostages. Some social media contributors positively revelled in what took place.
Britain has, sadly, become familiar with the sight of Islamist extremists waving Palestinian flags and inciting violence towards Jews. But the vigour with which the New Left has demonstrated such vocal allyship has surprised many. Why would LGBQT+ protestors create a combined Palestinian and Pride flag when Hamas has been documented as being, to say the least, far from gay-friendly? Why would Greta Thunberg post a picture of herself holding a sign saying: “Stand with Gaza”?
What explains this?
To me, the answer lies in the extreme misanthropy of the New Left in all its guises. This underpinning attitude drives what Lionel Shriver has called “prix fixe politics” – once you sign up for one dimension of the New Left war, such as climate, you can only order from that menu henceforth. Belonging requires consistency.
Take one manifestation of the climate wing of the New Left in the form of Extinction Rebellion. In Spiked, Conor Tomlinson called XR out as “anti-human to the core” over three years ago:
XR co-founder Stuart Basden says that the movement ‘isn’t about the climate’. Rather, it aims to dismantle the ‘cruelty and violence’ of ‘600 years of colonialism’ conducted by ‘European civilisation’, and its delusions of ‘patriarchy’, ‘white supremacy’, and ‘heteronormativity’. Another XR co-founder, Roger Hallam, says that ‘forcing governments to act’ or ‘bringing them down’ in order to enact its policies will require ‘some to die in the process’.
Read in the 2023 immediate aftermath of Hamas’s barbarism, this paragraph is chilling and I’m afraid it is what the West is up against since this attitude – or something sympathetic to it – pervades not just environmental campaign groups but universities, the Civil Service, the BBC and many government institutions.
Dismantling “600 years of colonialism” requires, of course, some decolonisation. De- words are a hallmark of the anti-human New Left which advocates, alongside decolonisation, degrowth and decarbonisation. This is all to the purpose of throwing centuries of enlightenment, civilisation and human flourishing into reverse.
In this Substack, I will examine the assault on Western liberal democracy through the lens of misanthropy because to me it is the unifying force uniting a variety of superficially disparate political forces. I believe it explains why Antifa thugs intimidate protesters outside “Drag Queen Story Hour” in public libraries. It explains why a woman praying silently outside an abortion clinic is asked “Are you praying for the lives of unborn children?” by a police officer who goes on to issue a fixed penalty notice. And indeed, it explains why we see banners with the words “Queers for Palestine” on London streets.
In addition to coalescing around Israel-Palestine as a galvanising issue, the misanthropy of the New Left is observable across five key areas:
The first of these is, as already stated, climate. While much media attention has been paid to the disruptive tactics of fringe XR offshoots such as Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain, the UK Government has acquiesced to the principle of decarbonization and its antihuman consequences. It has acknowledged the “climate emergency” in law and committed the country to “Net Zero” by 2050. Many of the resulting policies have already impoverished the least well off, making it harder to heat homes, run cars and afford basic necessities.
The second area is population growth. As the world faces declining fertility in all places apart from sub-Saharan Africa, some countries are facing net population decline. This poses major problems in the future particularly for key labour-intensive roles that are not easily automated such as care. Some governments are responding with pro-natalist thinking in an effort to reverse declines in birth-rates. New Left activists, however, not only oppose pro-natalism in much the same manner as they do fossil-fuels – they seek to undermine human reproduction itself. This is evident in their actions and policies surrounding a range of issues including abortion, child safeguarding, the family and euthanasia. Much of what is thought of as the “culture wars” can be shrugged off as “political correctness gone mad” or “wokery”; I will argue that it is more than that. What is being witnessed, particularly in the issue of gender ideology, is a full-out assault on reproductive women and the traditional family.
The third area is democracy, the political system that underpins the liberal West. Complementing the headlong rush towards net zero and the abandonment of the traditional family is a weakening across the West of the electoral political system that has secured personal freedom and provided a check against tyranny. When the COVID-19 virus escaped from China to spread globally, the really damaging contagion was the political mind-virus that swept the West leading to unprecedented restrictions on personal freedoms that surpassed even those imposed in wartime. Increasingly infantilized populations that had made electoral decisions objected to by the elites (Trump, Brexit) were prevented from pushing back against their oppression thanks to a collusion between the same elites and “Big Tech”, the Silicon Valley companies running the world’s social media platforms.
The fourth area is capitalism, the economic system that, while problematic if allowed to run untrammeled, has been the foundation of human flourishing since the world’s earliest civilizations. Campaigning organisations tolerated and promoted by elites such as XR and Black Lives Matter are explicitly anti-capitalist. While economic growth has been the engine of human progress, activists seek “degrowth” in order to reverse human impact. This is by no means limited to marginal campaign groups, however, as governments across the West see themselves as managing decline and implement economic policies that are de facto degrowth.
Finally, culture is being used as an area in which to lambast countries and populations for their history, increasingly presented as imperial, racist and wholly destructive. By diminishing the achievements of the past and cancelling them from school and university curricula, the New Left is seeking to dehumanize and sow division. By stoking accusations of “systemic racism” and “white privilege”, they undermine social cohesion and further subjugate people to self-abnegation and abasement.
Future posts will address each of these areas as well as examining why the Left has changed irrevocably and why it has both Jews and Israel in its sights.
What has been witnessed since October 7th is a barbaric terrorist atrocity followed by a widespread dehumanisation of the victims. In a world in which people perceived as “white colonialists” are seen to represent humanity in its worst form, rhetoric – even that of affluent white westerners - that dehumanises them has becomes normalised. This has not been seen since 1930s Germany and its advent should trouble us all.