The problem of virtue signalling and the “Every good cause is our top priority” failed approach

Systemic xenophobia is a thing, and these days this thing is flying high, along with demands that ”we all” immediately express the seemingly only acceptable sentiment, namely that systemic xenophobia is ”the same” struggle as whatever the climate thing is. In a way, they want us to state publicly that ”2+2=5”, for those of you who read George Orwell: We all know it isn’t the same struggle, and yet life will be much easier for each and every one of us if we ”just” say the words.

Let me start by telling a short story about the very first book I read entirely on a Kindle, back in the day. I read it outside in the very bright April sun at the family cabin, with bright-white snow reflecting even more light at my face and screen, a key test criteria for the Kindle, which had no backlight.

The book was written by a very strong Swedish woman, Inga-Britt Ahlenius, and documents the “decay of the United Nations under Ban Ki–Moon”, which Ahlenius witnessed first hand, having worked closely with Ban over many years. Besides being the regular type of arrogant liar & sleazebag, Ban liked to say that every one of 20–30 major issues were the “focus” of his administration as UN Secretary General. Or perhaps the number was 40, you get the picture.

You don’t need bright-white April sun to spot the flaw to a plan for “prioritising” 30-something huge world issues. But to be clear; if for instance the climate situation was in the process of getting out of hand, of passing the Big tipping point, and going into Point of No Return territory, during his time in office, then “focusing” or “prioritising” 30 other big issues, other than climate, equally and alongside the issue turning into a runaway existential threat, makes no sense at all.

One step further, one could even say that listing it as “one of 30” “prioritised” policy areas is a giveaway admission that Ban didn’t understand the first thing about the climate situation. (Or maybe he did: The Dark Side of the argument is of course that he knew exactly how royally effed we were already before the start of his term in the UN, and his treasonous job description included covering this up.)

Now, we don’t get to be at that all-important climate tipping point forever, no matter how “fun” that would be for activists. Now that ship has sailed, but for the pre–TP era, I don’t think it’s particularly hard to understand that the priority needed to be hard & razor-sharp on climate: Solve other stuff later. Granted, it’s unpleasant for every one of us as individuals to accept or realise that the ship did sail, and that many of the species we know & love will now go extinct, including our own, but this being hard to grasp doesn’t mean that every last problem on Earth and among humans is equally important as catching that ship before it sailed.

The very last part of this thought is that the only potential sanity to the “same struggle” argument requires there to be a planet where the climate “thing” is still fixable, together with a political situation on that planet where joining forces and mobilising millions, if not billions of people have even the potential to stop the climate “thing” from running away.

This is why they want us to say “2+2=5” and “every other struggle is a climate struggle” when they clearly are not. In short, they want us to compromise our very sanity in order to join hands with very, very different struggles so that a political front consisting of billions of human beings can smash store fronts while yelling our demand that the ship didn’t “really” sail fifty years ago.

Of course, the ship did sail, so join hands if you want, it doesn’t really matter now, does it.