As Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to be in the headlines, JC Cole on Rural Route Radio recently mentioned the dangers of the second in command.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland brings a very interesting outlook for the future.
There have been allegations her maternal grandfather was the Ukrainain publisher of newspapers and a media mogul for the Nazi’s National Socialist Party. (Freeland has denied those allegations.) That caused me to dig even deeper in the world of “conservation.”
To be clear, no government in the history of the world used the term “conservation” more often than the Green Wing as part of the Nazi movement and it appears that this thought process led to the formation of the National Socialist Party.
While I have found a large number of publications that explain the land use and conservation tactics of the Nazis, the best information assembled in one spot is by Peter Staudenmaier, a faculty member at Marquette University, who wrote “Fascist Ecology: The Green Wing of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents.”
He shares gems like the following about the agenda behind what lead to the Nazi Party:
“In emphatic terms it disparaged Christianity, capitalism, economic utilitarianism, hyperconsumption and the ideology of ‘progress.’ It even condemned the environmental destructiveness of rampant tourism and the slaughter of whales, and displayed a clear recognition of the planet as an ecological totality. All of this in 1913!”
I think without question this quote sheds tremendous insight into how they got to the Extreme Green Wing:
"When one sees nature in a necessary connectedness and interrelationship, then all things are equally important—shrub, worm, plant, human, stone, nothing first or last, but all one single unity."
Willhelm Heinrich Reihl, author and historian, fosters many ideals to lead to certain tendencies in recent environmental activism. His 1853 essay “Field and Forest” ended with a call to fight for "the rights of wilderness.” But even here, nationalist pathos set the tone: “We must save the forest, not only so that our ovens do not become cold in winter, but also so that the pulse of life of the people continues to beat warm and joyfully, so that Germany remains German.”
The more I read and study about the tyrants of the past, one common denominator is the use of propaganda for the purpose of nationalism. I feel I can just hear the folks of these days in Germany pitting one segment of the citizens against the other by how they contribute to conservation. Just look at his terminology “so that Germany remains German.”
I can’t help but think of these words from Mark Twain: “It is easier to fool people than convince them they have been fooled.” Freedom loving Americans (and Canadians), we need to dig a little deeper and take a closer look before it’s too late.
Editor’s note: The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not represent the views of High Plains Journal. Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.LoosTales.com, or email Trent at [email protected].