Based on the revolutionary and socialist tweets of SocialistWitch.
Coronavirus is not mother nature’s ‘cure’ for ‘evil humans’. The Earth doesn’t suffer from humanity. It suffers from a handful of multinational firms, run by a handful of billionaires, and the military industrial complex. I’m tired of the ecofascism, so here’s a thread.
When regulation of chemicals started in the first half of the twentienth century, THOUSANDS of chemicals were grandfathered in. The list of environmentally harmful chemicals on that bill, chems that never had to prove their safety, is boundless.
The Toxic Substance Controls Act is based on chemicals that were in use prior to regulation. Many of these chemicals have been proven dangerous to life on this planet but are still in use, thanks to lobbyists in Washington who argue removing them would hurt profits.
And who do these lobbyists work for? Not the working class, not the average citizen suffering from the adverse effects of environmental pollution today. The only people who are profiting from keeping these chemicals in use are a handful of billionaires.
How do these billionaires keep destroying the environment without consequence? Well, they pay politicians large sums in election campaign funding to turn the other way. They pay lobbyists to sit during congressional hearings and lie about the dangers. And nothing gets done.
Politicians will tell you that regulation will hurt business, and subsequently hurt jobs. But really, the focus is the profit margins of these companies. It is expensive to filter chems safely. It is expensive to provide safety equipment. So we suffer, for profit.
Meanwhile plastic pellets, which release a host of noxious agents into the ecosystem, are ferried into our water supply. They are eaten by our fish, they are burned into our air. Our children are born having absorbed them in the womb. But the ruling class just keeps profiting.
99 per cent of the materials used to create plastics? Fossil fuels. The other largest consumer of fossil fuels on this planet? The United States military.
By policing the world, the flagship of international capitalism is also the number one contributor to environmental disaster on this planet. Who needs such an expansive military? Billionaires, to extract resources. Billionaires, to keep labor prices down.
Billionaires, to keep markets ‘free’ and open to exploitation.
Billionaires, to profit from large defense contracts… paid for by American tax payers.
So I’m tired of hearing that “humans” is the reason the environment is being destroyed. We may contribute to the problem, but we have no say in what is produced. We may neglect to recycle a water bottle… but same day, the US air force is burning thousands of gallons of fuel.
Humanity as a whole is not the problem. A few humans destroying the environment for profit, at the expense of our future, is the problem. Simply put, capitalism is the problem. And we, humans, have the power to destroy it, for the benefit of every creature on this earth.
As an addendum, it should be explicitly stated that the destruction of the environment disproportionately affects black, brown + native people, as they are the most likely, due to systemic racism, to be marginalized + in poverty. This racism is inherent to the capitalism system.
Malcolm X once said, “You cannot have capitalism without racism”. That is true. The capitalist powers today would not have had the money or resources to dominate the world had they not plundered Africa, Asia, + the Americas for resources and slave labor during the colonial era.
I’m going to finish with Huey Newton, who says it far better than I do: “Clear-cut superiority in things social and economic—by whatever means—has been a scruples-free premise of American ruling class authority from the society’s inception to the present.
“The initial socioeconomic advantage, begotten by chattel slavery, was enforced by undaunted violence and the constant threat of more violence.” Thanks all
