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It is helpful to understanding the "climate change" frenzy among young people to remember that a dismaying number of them were educated by people who were shocked and horrified when the Soviet Union lost the Cold War.
Many of those people didn't think of themselves as communists, and would become very upset if accused of being such, but they were (and remain) true believers in collectivism, central planning, and the doctrine that free-market capitalism is selfish and evil.
It's hard to remember now, especially for those too young to have lived through it, but while revisionist history paints the Soviet collapse as an inevitable disaster everyone saw coming, it most certainly was NOT. Western lefties were convinced the USSR was eternal and WINNING.
The "smart set" was pumping out praise for the brilliance of Soviet central planning months before the collapse. It was "conventional wisdom" that conservatives were nuts for thinking sloppy, greedy capitalism could compete with authoritarian governments run by genius managers.
Some of the left-wingers stunned by the fall of the Soviet Union had grown disenchanted by its ruthless behavior and begun to suspect its economic reports were lies, but they still loathed selfish capitalism and consumerism (i.e. the little people benefiting from capitalism.)
There's nothing new about the intelligentsia condemning free markets as greedy and less effective than central planning, by the way. The "smart set" of the early 20th Century thought the West was losing an ideological arms race by being too slow to embrace fascism.
So when the Soviet Union went down in flames, it was a staggering psychic shock to the Left around the world, a mortal blow to their core beliefs. Radical environmentalism and the growing "global warming" movement in the 80s were profoundly affected by that shock.
Climate change ideology developed as a more-or-less immediate response to the collapse of the great collectivist power - an instant demand for a do-over under the same old rules of "capitalism is greedy, immoral, and less effective than scientifically-managed collectivism."
Today's climate marchers are not so different from the objectively pro-Soviet left-wing agitators of the 80s. Many of them don't realize that the organizations promoting these marches have agendas that are very difficult to distinguish from Soviet communism.
Those who run those organizations grew up during the last days of the Soviet Union, or were educated by left-wingers traumatized by its fall. They're playing extra innings in the game collectivism lost, using climate change as a bad referee call to overturn the winning touchdown.
It's alarming and despicable they have brainwashed so many children, but it's not in the least bit surprising - that has ALWAYS been a go-to move for collectivists of every stripe. They always think they can impose ideological dominance by going after young minds.
As before, collectivists demand power with an army of children who have been taught economic freedom is immoral because central planners are far more intelligent than individuals, private owners of capital are rapacious and cruel, and "justice" is synonymous with collectivism.
If you were a student in the 80s, you've heard all of this before - preached by people who were absolutely convinced Reagan's America was headed for a crushing defeat against the scientific socialism practiced by the USSR, the global champion of social justice. /end
