George Monbiot Profile picture
Jan 28, 2022 13 tweets 2 min read Read on X
For years I’ve been struggling with a paradox that seems fundamental to our age. We live under a system that celebrates freedom and choice. Yet almost everyone in a position of power or influence subscribes to the same set of preposterous beliefs.
Thread/
Here are a few of them.
- That economic growth can continue indefinitely on a finite planet.
- That the economic system should be granted primacy over the Earth systems that sustain it.
- That you should pledge allegiance to capitalism, even if you don’t know what it is.
- That natural wealth can be turned into private property, and the right of a person to own it corresponds to the numbers in their bank account.
- That the “invisible hand of the market” can one day solve our problems, though it has failed to do so to date.
- That the unhindered acquisition of enormous wealth by a few could lead to something other than economic and political disaster.
- That taxes sufficient to break the cycle of accumulation and redistribute this wealth are unthinkable.
- That permitting a handful of offshore billionaires to own the media, set the political agenda and tell us where our best interests lie is somehow OK.
- That democracy can proceed in the almost complete absence of civic knowledge and useful information.
- That we are best-served by an education system which recognises only one kind of intelligence (analytical, linear and hyperlexic) while neglecting other forms (spatial, systemic etc), writing off millions of children.
What amazes me is that no terror or torture is required to persuade people to fall into line with these crazy beliefs. Somehow the system has created an entire class of politicians, officials, media commentators, cultural leaders, academics and intellectuals who support them.
Reading accounts of 20th Century terror, it sometimes seems to me that there was more dissent among intellectuals confronting totalitarian regimes than there is in our age of “freedom” and “choice”.
It’s not total. There are a few dissenters.
They are not, on the whole, imprisoned or executed. The system is so powerful that it doesn’t need to crush them. They are simply ignored and marginalised. It is entirely unruffled by their objections.
So what’s going on? How has this system created a near-consensus around its ridiculous ideas? How has it ensured not only that people of power and influence defend them, but that almost everyone else nods along, or simply shrugs as Earth systems spiral towards collapse?
I don’t have a complete or satisfactory answer. But here are some guesses:

1. That petty ambition (better job, bigger house, smoother car) is as potent an enforcer of consensus as state terror.

2. That the billionaire press has become more powerful than human courage.
3. That spectacle, banter and an obsession with trivia and celebrity are more effective at defusing dissent than coercion and fear.
4. That our current organisational structures, which look as if they offer choice and freedom, actually do nothing of the kind. On the contrary, though it might have been accidentally achieved, we have arrived at an almost perfectly calibrated system of social control.

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

Nov 28
1. The one benefit of Brexit was a new farm subsidy system, paying for public goods like ecological restoration. But now the government has frozen the new grants, while swiftly cutting off the old ones, leaving farmers high and dry. It's deeply unfair and highly destructive. 🧵
2. It will leave farmers who started investing in restoration out of pocket, and destroy their faith in the green transition. The sharpness of the transition will drive some to bankruptcy.
3. Two obvious questions:
A. What is the government playing at?
B. Where are the big environmental NGOs who asked for this transition, but are now failing to defend it? Why are they not raising hell about this betrayal?
Read 5 tweets
Nov 15
1. People are objecting to my lashing of academics and intellectuals in today's column. I understand this. Here’s my reasoning. I chose examples of topics that are endlessly circled by researchers with ever diminishing returns, while huge and existential questions are ignored.🧵
2. I see the obsession with the Bloomsbury Group etc as highfalutin celebrity culture. The effort and attention spent on it, in scholarship, publishing and reviews, seems to me to signal a deep sickness at the heart of intellectual endeavour. It has a name. Denial.
3. It reminds me of Eliot’s comparison of the mindless gossip in the pub with the mindless gossip in the high society salon in Part II of The Wasteland:
"‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’
But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag -
It’s so elegant
So intelligent"
Read 5 tweets
Nov 13
1. A few days ago, I wrote a thread about the pros and cons of staying on this platform and asked for your views. They were very helpful. As a result, I’ve decided to stop using X from January 20. Already I’m mostly posting now on BlueSky (@georgemonbiot.bsky.social) instead.🧵
2. I won’t delete this account, as I don’t want to lose the archive. But I won’t post anything here after then. Will you join me in setting January 20th (a significant date) for the Xodus?
3. I thought for a while that the best alternative would be Threads. But Meta’s deliberate downgrading of political content and suspension of journalists on Threads rules it out as a prime platform for people like me. .theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Read 6 tweets
Nov 12
1. Who really won the US election? The fossil fuel companies and other polluting industries. We scarcely heard about them during the election campaign, which is just how they like it. Almost everything we *did* hear about was a distraction from the real agenda. 🧵
2. Trump’s campaign was an economic war against the interests of almost everyone on Earth, on behalf of the planet’s most powerful and destructive industries. But it was dressed up, as always, as a culture war: a trick that has been used to great effect for more than a century.
3. It’s not as if Biden/Harris were seriously curtailing polluting industries, especially oil and gas. It’s shocking how little Harris even mentioned the existential threat to humanity that climate breakdown presents. But now? It’s a free-for-all.
Read 7 tweets
Nov 10
1. Here are my thoughts on the pros and cons of staying on this platform.
Pro: We were here long before Musk took it over. We built this.
Con: He has used our creation to help elect a far-right autocrat, and build his own grim political career.
🧵
2. Pro: We should never cede any space, real or virtual, to the far right. Fascist trolls are trying to drive us out. Don't give them the satisfaction.
Con: Our presence could be used to legitimise a far-right hellsite.
3. Pro: It remains, amid the viciousness, a good place to share information, ideas and opinions.
Con: It is also an abysmal, dispiriting place to inhabit, the humour, lightness and kindness crushed by bots and trolls.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 7
1. My column on what happened, what comes next, and just how easy our fake democracies are to overthrow. + short thread on where our remaining hopes lie. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2. People seek to destroy what they feel excluded from. Centralised “democracies” exclude all but a rarefied circle from genuine power. Centralised democracy is a contradiction in terms.
3. Disempowered people tend to be profoundly unimpressed by “rational arguments” for this faction or for that one: they have an entirely reasonable desire – however unreasonable its expression may be – to kick the system over.
Read 7 tweets

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