What Is Virtue Signalling?

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http://www.returnofkings.com/114295/what-is-virtue-signalling

Virtue signaling is an attempt to get into the good graces of an individual or group by taking a political stance that attempts to show moral superiority. It allows someone to cheaply gain social status—and sometimes money—through comments or displays that are easy to make in place of genuine activism or work.

Such politically correct “holier than thou” empty gestures by ordinary individuals are silly but innocuous. By the powerful, though, this can have real impact on pushing agendas. More disheartening is when it happens by politically notable figures, for instance the “I’m not an extremist, unlike this guy a little to my right” routine. What’s quite troubling is how common it is for corporations, celebrities, and the ultra-wealthy to jump on the virtue signalling bandwagon. Many corporations have enthusiastically embraced affirmative action policies, put on gay pride events, ostentatiously celebrate diversity, and so forth—a clear endorsement of these things.

If you’ve looked at the terms of service for any number of social media companies and content providers, there will be verbiage disallowing politically incorrect speech. These are generally written broadly enough to get anyone banned they don’t like, and such bannings are often acts of virtue signalling (i.e. “Their speech is bad and immoral according to our standards”).

At first glance

There’s a lot more to it than just that.

Virtue-signaling by celebrities tends to resemble groupthink and trendy blather. By corporations, it seems like spineless pandering. It’s easy to see how people insulated from the real world by their limousines and gated communities would behave that way. Still, the picture is more complicated than that. The rabbit hole goes pretty deep.

Sam Francis wrote extensively about virtue-signaling before it had a name. (That covered corporate varieties, though celebrities and politicians are a problem too.) He listed several examples; here are a few:

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it ought to be obvious that the dominant powers and authorities in the United States and other Western countries are either indifferent to the accelerating racial and cultural dispossession of the historic peoples of America and Europe or are actually in favor of it.

And this:

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the University of Michigan law school’s affirmative action policies, 65 corporations filed amicus curiae briefs endorsing the school’s admission policies that discriminate against white applicants.

Further:

Large businesses, foundations, and universities are in the forefront of mandatory “sensitivity training,” multiculturalist indoctrination, and efforts to portray white racial and cultural identity as a source of pathology, extremism, repression, and violence, and to instill feelings of guilt for white, European, Christian civilization and achievements.

Now this one is just weird:

Some years ago the Budweiser company sponsored a series of advertisements that helped popularize and legitimize various myths of Afrocentric propaganda, such as the claims that the Semitic Carthaginian general Hannibal, various kings of ancient Egypt, and the last Macedonian queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, were all Negroes—claims known to be preposterously contrary to historical fact.

Why would promoting Afrocentric theory—a screwy academic fad by leftist professors—be in their corporate agenda? Wouldn’t a less goofy marketing campaign, like a celebrity endorsement, do just as well to boost sales to Black customers? A more evocative question is, did they consider whether in-your-face distortion of history might turn off their existing customers?

The article then discusses the nature of power structures; it’s a lot more than just who won an election. Politics is downstream of culture, and Francis argues that those who hold the reigns of opinion-forming institutions are more powerful than elected officials. Then he discusses motivations, of which I have some further observations.

Some of them really believe it

“Human rights, anti-racism, globalism” – the messages are everywhere, and it’s all the same

Let’s consider the interesting case of Martine Rothblatt (formerly Martin until transitioning at age 40), CEO of GeoStar and Chairman of the Board of United Therapeutics. According to the Wiki page:

In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via mind uploading and geoethical nanotechnology. Through a charitable foundation, leaders of this school convene publicly accessible symposia, publish explanatory analyses, conduct demonstration projects, issue grants, and encourage public awareness and adherence to Terasem values and goals.

Through her blog Mindfiles, Mindware and Mindclones, she writes about “the coming age of our own cyberconsciousness and techno-immortality“ and started a vlog together with Ulrike Reinhard on the same topic. She also created Lifenaut.com as a place where thousands of people could go to backup their minds.

Rothblatt contributed $258,000 to SpacePAC, a super PAC that supported her son, Gabriel, who was running as a Democrat in Florida’s 8th congressional district but lost. Gabriel is a pastor for the Terasem Movement.

Although one might quibble with this individual’s politics and odd hobbies, clearly Rothblatt means it and has a personal stake in it.

For some other examples, several well-known Hollywood figures have gone far beyond the call of duty. Perhaps the Powers That Be require conformity, condoning politicized Oscars speeches and punishing off-message utterances harshly. while giving a free pass to degenerates.

Still, some celebrity antics are difficult to imagine unless personal conviction is involved; method acting only gets you so far. Music industry figures are also well-known for political poses, odd personal choices that ostentatiously display their politics, and the like. In any event, if something goes far beyond perfunctory declarations of solidarity for trendy causes, that’s a good sign they really believe this stuff. When that happens, it’s not merely virtue-signaling, but rather propaganda and—in some cases—social engineering attempts.

How sincere are they, really?

Sam Francis goes on to say:

One of the major differences between the theory of elites [by Mosca and Pareto] and simpleminded conspiracy theories is that the latter almost always postulate hidden groups of conspirators who do not believe in the ideas they use to gull and manipulate the masses. In elite theory, political formulas tend to become ideologies that take on a life of their own and push behavior of their own accord, without conscious or deliberate fraud or calculation of interests by those who accept them.

Although a good number of champagne Socialists and celebrity airheads really believe their claptrap, I wouldn’t so quickly dismiss callous cynicism by many others. The boundless hypocrisy of leftists would make even a televangelist blush. Either way, the practical results for society are the same. For that matter, how much does a celebrity who hasn’t tasted tap water in years, or a billionaire CEO, really feel for the common people or relate to them?

Still, Francis was spot-on about ideologies taking on a life of their own. Cultural Marxism did, in fact, start as a Communist conspiracy by the Frankfurt School to weaken American society. This spread through academia and the media, creating the crazy 1960s counterculture. By the 1990s, cultural Marxism memes permeated society and became politically correct orthodoxy, even though Russia was no longer Communist by then. Now, it’s taken some very strange directions, going well beyond what the Frankfurt School expected to accomplish in wrecking society.

The culture-destroying agenda

Following a discussion about the transition of power from the old American elite to what James Burnham called the managerial class, Francis describes the type of world the globalists want:

The culture the managers seek to build places more value on individual achievement and “merit” (defined largely as the ability to acquire and exercise managerial and technical skills) than on family inheritance, on sexual fulfillment than postponement of gratification and the breeding and rearing of children, on social mobility and advancement rather than identification with family, community, race, and nation.

But in addition to the family, the managerial class simply does not need other traditional institutional structures to maintain its power— not the local community, not religion, not traditional cultural and moral codes, not ethnic and racial identities, and not even the nation-state itself. Indeed, such institutions merely get in the way of managerial power. They represent barriers against which the managerial state, corporations, and other mass organizations are always bumping, and the sooner such barriers are leveled, the more reach and power the organizations, and the managerial elites that run them, will acquire.

So this is why they favor rootless cosmopolitanism and anti-family policies. These are goals that they have in common with cultural Marxism, though for their own reasons. This new version of leftist ideology fits their agenda quite well, and (at least in practice) it’s not too concerned with vast extremes of wealth, quite unlike old-school Socialism. So globalist plutocrats naturally latch onto something that lets them feel good about themselves and what they’re doing.

For some, this may be a strange form of atonement. Those who practice predatory lending, crash economies with funny money stock trading and forex schemes, promote crazy consumerism, and sell products that are unhealthy, overpriced, shoddy, or made with planned obsolescence at least can pat themselves on the back by gestures showing that they care about “social justice”.

After that, Francis details what the globalist agenda involves, a rather chilling picture. Then later:

[T]he new managerial elite rejects and destroys the mechanisms of the old elite that excluded other ethnic, racial, and religious groups, such groups are often able to permeate the managerial power structure and acquire levels of power unavailable to them in pre-managerial society and to advance their own interests and agendas by means of the managerial instruments of power.

Well, we can see where that one is going. It’s remarkably short sighted of them to wreck the society that brought them unprecedented wealth. Those who do so clearly aren’t as smart as they think they are. It didn’t have to be that way. They can have constructive cooperation, or they can have mutually assured destruction. However, they can’t sink the ship they’re on and expect not to go down with it.

What can be done about it

The only reason elites have gotten away with giving the middle finger to the very population that founded the USA is that we lack the solidarity that has been aggressively promoted to others. (That itself is a greater problem.) Thus, not enough of us have spoken up about it or refused to do business with companies like that.

Everyone should be able to express their opinions freely, but in practice, it doesn’t work that way. Conservative business figures and celebrities are expected to remain silent lest they become targets of wrath. (The effort against Chick-Fil-A backfired spectacularly on the SJWs, but they’ve intimidated the owner and others with similar opinions from expressing their views in the future.) Well, two can play that game. If we send the message that virtue signaling hurts profits and ticket sales, then corporations will go back to focusing on selling products, and celebrities will focus on singing and acting.

Read More:  How To Wage Economic Warfare

THE END OF EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY

THE END OF EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY

Posted on February 12, 2017 12:30

By Thierry Baudet

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Thierry Baudet, leader of the new Dutch political party Forum for Democracy / Facebook

https://gatestone.eu/the-end-of-european-democracy/

[This seems like the extension of NAFTA of Canada, USA, Mexico, like wise with Australia New Zealand, and sort of thru the TPPA and of course the UN is aiding and pushing other rulings, agreements, rights etc.......All done with a subtlety and flexibility that allows the frog to be bought up to cooking temperature,

There is a lot of money, honor, prestige at stake and they will fight to; 1 keep the nose in the trough,  2 and follow their aggrandizement philosophy.]

In his dystopian classic, The Managerial Revolution (1941), the American political scientist James Burnham coined the concept of “controlled democracy“. According to Burnham, the civil democracies of the second half of the 20th century would – more or less gradually – be overgrown with backroom bureaucratic networks that make the actual decisions, all far away from the electorate and public debate.

While this would slowly but surely erode the democratic mandate of governments, Burnham explicitly didn’t expect that this would lead to the dissolution of the European nation state – in name, that is.

“The many nations that are in fact being absolved will remain existent in name; they can function as administrative subdivisions, but have no sovereignty.”

Elections will also remain in place; they will provide managers valuable insights into the preferences of the consumer-citizen, while at the same time functioning as an exhaust valve to possible opposition forces. Burnham predicted a form of political theatre in the guise of sham elections between candidates who happen to be like-minded on every fundamental subject, who are paid to debate in front of clueless spectators in mock parliaments, while the results were known in advance – after all, the actual decisions have already been made.

Not only did James Burnham’s work serve as the most important inspiration for George Orwell’s 1984, chances are Burnham also had a decisive influence on Jean Monnet and Robert Schumann – the founding fathers of the present day European Union. For after they tried to openly guide their “United States of Europe” through national parliaments, they chose, after the French parliament (while loudly singing the Marseillaise) voted down their plans in 1954, to use exactly the gradual and stealthy approach described by The Managerial Revolution to achieve their goals.

These Eurocrats label their strategy as “functionalism“, behind which the idea is that due to the so-called “spillover effect“, inevitably, ever more power ends up being centralised. One ‘function’ automatically forces another ‘function’. So: you sell open borders as a nice convenience, and after a while, you act surprised when they force you to adopt a centralised immigration policy. You present a monetary union as a facilitator of trade without having to hand over national sovereignty; and when the (inevitable) credit crisis presents itself, your push through a centralised budgetary system.

In the mendacious words of Monnet himself:

“We wish the community to take shape in a gradual process of change. Attempts to predict its final form are a contradictio in terminis.”

While he previously proclaimed to strive towards a federal European state, now all of a sudden it was an ‘open future’ he was after. He even went as far as to claim that it’s harmful to ask too many critical questions:

“Trying to anticipate the results will only smother ingenuity. Only by persevering, forwards and upwards, will new horizons present itself.”

In an attempt to provide some sort of philosophical justification for the European project, the German-American administrative scientist Ernst Haas wrote at the end of the 60’s that:

“We don’t have an alternative. We must seek refuge in graduality, in detours, in functionalism, if we wish to integrate the region. The functionalist who trusts in graduality and detours to fulfil his goals, must choose a strategy that unites the masses and alienates as few people as possible. Only with small steps and without a clear and logical plan, can he move in the right direction. For if he was to take great leaps, he would lose the support of many.”

Haas explains that walking down this path makes integration seem “almost self-evident” until it morphs “from mere customs union into an economic and political union.”

And that’s exactly the way it all went. Behind the seemingly spontaneous cooperation between national democracies resides a continental super-state ― built step by step and hidden in the immeasurable corridors of Brussels’ vast bureaucracy, in Commission meetings and shady administrative backrooms, in guidelines that sometimes come into effect years after they were written and in strategic agreements of the “Committee of Regions”. The wiggle room for member states has practically been reduced to zero.

Examples

An example. Last summer the Dutch parliament ratified the association agreement between the European Union and Ukraine. The organisations GeenPeil, Civil Committee EU and Forum for Democracy subsequently collected over 300.000 signatures in under six weeks, forcing an advisory, non-binding referendum on the matter. It was held on April 6, 2016, and resulted in an overwhelming 61% against the treaty.

Then something rather odd happened. The Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte stated even if The Netherlands revoked its ratification, the treaty would still be implemented. In other words: the entire national ratification process had been one big sham.

All those debates about the usefulness and necessity of the treaty had been little more than window dressing. Of course, the member states still use national parliaments and national ratification procedures; of course, they won’t fully abolish the institutions that deliver the democratic bread and circuses, but they have been reduced to mere symbols. It is, exactly as Burnham coined it, a form of  “controlled democracy“.

A few months later, another poignant example presented itself. The Dutch parliament was given a few hours (!) to study one hundred pages of EU directives on a centralised pension system. The parliament was asked if it would allow the Dutch Finance minister to approve this grand scheme that would place over 1200 billion euro in Dutch savings under Brussels’ control.

And as was to be expected, the parliament just went with it. An MP highly critical of the plan, Pieter Omtzigt (Christian Democrats), commented that it had simply been impossible to study the consequences of this plan, in such a short amount of time. And as it turned out, hitting the brakes was not longer an option either. The Netherlands no longer had the right to veto in the EU departments where such matters are decided!

One cannot help being reminded of the stringent teacher who assigns a student his homework and says: “This is your task, alright? Do we have an understanding?” The question is merely rhetorical – and is as humiliating to the student who has nothing to offer but his artificial concurrence, as it is to the peoples of this continent.

Meanwhile, national leaders are being co-opted by offering them future EU-positions accompanied by very high (and mostly tax-free) paychecks, a driver and other exquisite working conditions – without the possibility of being relieved by their annoying electorates.

During his national career, the Dutch Finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem was appointed as the head of the Eurogroup ― right at the moment, The Netherlands was about cause trouble by doubting yet another EU bailout package for Greece. A more severe conflict of interest was hard to imagine, since Dijsselbloem had now become both prosecutor and judge. But anything is possible in Eurotopia; and even before the ink of his signature had dried, he abolished the parliamentary work group tasked with exploring exit strategies in case of a next euro crisis.

Coincidence? Hardly.

Universities and civil society

Civil society too has been gripped by the EU. Oxfam, World Wide Fund for Nature, One World Action and hundreds, if not thousands of other ‘charities’ receive annual EU subsidies – and who will bite the hand that feeds him? And to make matters worse, there’s the ‘professional associations’ like the ‘European Union of Journalists’, the ‘European Women’s Lobby’, the ‘European Cyclists’ Federation, and so on – all an integral part of Brussels’ management system, and of course they propagate the virtues of EU expansion almost round the clock.

[seems like global warming, climate change, is also another way of obtaining taxes, under carbon trading/taxes schemes. Surely direct honesty, debate, discussion to solve any environment problems, leading to commonsense answers, or just simply mitigation, or just go with the flow.]

In universities in the meantime, the EU project is being propagated by professors in the Jean Monnet chairs, creating a pensée unique so visceral that employees at economy faculties frequently whisper my way that it’s categorically impossible to publicly criticise the euro. It would rule out promotions or future appointments, not to speak of research grants.

Does anyone truly expect a critical sound from the European ‘Horizon network‘ (which is allowed to spend billions in previously national research grants)? No, they would rather have one study the perils of ‘nationalism’ and ‘xenophobia’, as criticism of open borders is called in today’s Orwellian newspeak.

Multinationals

The EU has also revealed itself as the big corporations’ best friend. Even though it presents itself as an anti-cartel institution, it actually facilitates the formation of cartels by sitting corporate lobbyists right next to the so-called ‘expert groups’ of the European Commission who draft guidelines and regulations that enable multinationals to expand their operations throughout the EU, while at the same time excluding competition from smaller businesses by making entry conditions next to impossible. 

The prohibition of the slaughtering of animals on farms, with the official goal of “the protection of public health”, for example. The bio-industry thrives on it, while it kills smaller bio-friendly entrepreneurs. Think of strict regulations for bed&breakfasts regarding sanitary facilities and pets, making it harder for them to compete with large hotel chains.

Think of regulations for window-cleaners and condoms, vegetables and fruits, raw milk cheeses, white and yellow car headlights, vacuum cleaners above 1800 watt, coffee machines and vitamins. If you look closely it’s always a small club of large multinational companies pushing out the middle and small level companies with regulations seem to serve some kind of abstract purpose. Animal welfare, women’s emancipation, or something vaguely environmental.

Big business and big government thus go hand in hand and form a conglomerate of managers who pass each other the ball. This is also why Goldman Sachs executive Draghi’s transfer to the European Central Bank (ECB) went so smoothly, while the ex-president of the European Commission seamlessly transferred to Goldman Sachs. It’s why ALDE’s party leader Guy Verhofstadt cashes 190.000 euro a year as an advisor to investment funds with interests in shale gas (in Ukraine among other places) and why European Parliament member is also a commissioner at Mercedes-Benz.

Can one still be surprised that the automobile industry ‘together with the European Commission’ succeeded in creating legislation that was very advantageous to… diesel engines? While Japan was experimenting with electric cars, during the 90’s Volkswagen had a whole arsenal of TDI diesel engines for sale. A whole body of regulations was drafted to ‘protect the environment’ since diesel engines emit less CO2 than gasoline engines. But in the meantime, diesel does pollute more than twenty times as much as gasoline. The consequence of this EU stimulus package: the market share of diesel engines grew from 10% in 1995 to over 50% in 2012.

[then twisted by VW computerisation for getting past  emission measurements]

Losing grip by watering down

In addition, it’s critical to understand that all these processes and systems are not controlled from one central place – the trick is that European sovereignty is very hard to pin down. To the contrary even, one could say that European sovereignty has been watered down and diluted so much that it spread and branched out like vapour. Almost everyone has lost its grip on it.

The European Commission initiates legislation, the European Council debates (records are classified). The EU Council of Ministers has its say, and don’t forget the EU Court of Justice, counselling bodies of national politicians, formalised lobbies and the Committee of Permanent Representatives. Oh, and of course, there’s the European Parliament with its 751 members ― who can hardly communicate amongst one another due to language barriers ― claiming to represent 600 million Europeans. Enfin, the result of it all is a nightmare that no one actually controls and that no one can reform.

But now for the astonishing part: even the greatest europhile would admit to all this. In an exceptionally cynical manifestation of Orwellian newspeak – again – this is called the “democratic deficit“. They look very serious and serene and repeat: ‘yes, you’re right, there’s a democratic deficit‘.

Brilliant! As if it’s some sort of temporary flaw that can easily be overcome. A cash flow problem that just needs a small credit injection. A lack of vitamins. A mild form of sleep deprivation. Something, that in any case, will soon recover. A disbalance that will soon balance itself out.

But as Burnham’s analysis of the managerial revolution illustrates: the EU’s abolishment of democracy is neither temporary nor overcomeable.The EU is not so much undemocratic as it is anti-democratic. A democratic EU is impossible. The plans by Monnet and Schumann that were voted down when presented honestly in 1954, would suffer a similar fate in 2017. Nobody wants to live in a United States of Europe. Europe is not a country. We don’t speak the same languages. A population of 600 million is too large for a functioning and transparent democracy.

Politicians lie

Government leaders, parliaments and politicians are pretending. They have to pretend the EU isn’t a super state and never will be; they must pretend they have a grip on EU decision-making; that EU officials are democratically elected and owe accountability to an electorate that can remove them – in Copernican terms; they must pretend as if they orbit the common voter. But that’s no longer the case. Mainstream politicians have been incorporated into the continental system. The EUdoesn’t orbit nation states – the nation state has become a satellite in the blue yellow galaxy of the EU.

In 1964 George Orwell wrote an elaborate critique of Burnham’s thinking. Eventually, he proposed, the reign of the managers cannot sustain itself because 1) it’s a closed circuit which will produce minds too weak to uphold the system, and 2) the human inclination toward liberty is too strong, and, due to modern communication, won’t let itself be chained.

While Orwell would expand on Burnham’s dystopian vision in his novel 1984, which is situated in a world where the power of the manager is complete and eternal, his political philosophy is a starting point of hope. The practical translation of which is: the referendum.

Referenda

All over Europe, we see the call for a plebiscite, for direct participation in public affairs. The people are signing petitions by the masses. It’s become impossible for politicians to ignore, so they reluctantly promise their electorates a direct say. Despite the EU still claiming to be a force of democracy by and for the people, referenda are the management system’s Achilles heel. A public uprising can be put down; a new political movement can be incorporated, but referenda are beyond the grasp of bureaucratic rulers.

One referendum, of course, doesn’t win the war. In 2005, the French and the Dutch both overwhelmingly rejected a European constitution. A few years later, that same constitution was still pushed through, albeit under a different name; the treaty of Lissabon. What followed was a ten-year silence until in 2015 the Greeks had a referendum in which they rejected proposed new austerity measures.  The EU decided to dethrone prime minister Papandreou and replace him with the unelected former vice-president of the ECB, Papademos.

How much longer do Eurocrats hope to maintain this state of affairs? The second Dutch referendum – on the treaty with Ukraine – cannot be ignored completely. The British choice to leave the EU will have severe consequences. Hungary held a decisive referendum on EU immigration quota. The Italian referendum was a victory for anti-EU forces. Finland is considering a referendum on the euro and the Czech president last year considered a referendum on leaving the EU altogether – the so-called Czexit.

The coalition of free nations has thus far been led by Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. With Great Britain as a fourth member, it’s starting to look like a winning team. Through British negotiations, the alternatives to a continental super-state will start to take shape; a vastly more attractive form of cooperation based on freedom, sovereignty and democracy.

Now is the time to pull through and bring down this managers’ empire. Now is the time to replace this controlled democracy by governments who are accountable to its citizens, and act in our interests.

Green dreamers are weaving baskets in the dark

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/janet-albrechtsen/green-dreamers-are-weaving-baskets-in-the-dark/news-story/4a17b417b568d6f1ab28ebdf63139a08

History is littered with failed experiments. The hippie experiment of the 1960s and 70s never turned into anything more than a fashion statement. While the outfits survived, it turns out most people would rather shower daily, live in their own houses and not take recreational drugs.

The kibbutz experiment in Israel was a sweet utopian dream of communal living that tanked too. It turns out that people expect to be rewarded for effort, rather than carry freeloaders who refuse to share the load.

Even that “progressive” stalwart at the ABC, former 7.30 host Kerry O’Brien, was forced to report on the end of a “remarkable experiment” back in 2015 when the misguided ideology of Israel’s oldest kibbutz, Degania, was dismantled.

After almost 100 years, 85 per cent of Degania members voted to abandon its collectivist dream in favour of a simple principle: individuals should be paid according to effort.

Let’s hope it doesn’t take 100 years to wake up to the utopian renewables energy experiment undertaken by state Labor governments and wholly supported by the federal Labor Party. Sadly, there are few signs that the green dreamers at the national broadcaster understand the harsh reality of these renewable energy policies. After a 10-week taxpayer funded break, commentators on ABC’s Insiders were back at it, trying to dream their way out of facts, basic reason and common sense.

When asked by Barrie Cassidy to what extent was the blackout in South Australia due to renewables, The Australian Financial Review’s Laura Tingle said, “well, none”. The Guardian’s Lenore Taylor propagated the same dream, saying “renewables aren’t causing the blackouts”.

• MORE:ALP bid to ease energy pressure

Like a modern-day version of the Mamas and Papas, Tingle and Taylor are so busy reworking the hippie lyrics of California Dreamin’ into South Australia Dreamin’ they refuse to see an experiment crashing down around them.

There’s one thing worse than a bunch of deluded commentators who treat green energy as a religion and Insiders as the church where they get down on their knees and pray. And that’s the South Australian Labor government. Prior to leaving on a trade mission to the US last year, SA Labor Premier Jay Weatherill said South Australia risked becoming like a “rust-belt” industrial state in the US if it didn’t change its economy. Weatherill’s changed economy is one powered by 40 per cent of renewable energy and the results are in.

Weatherill’s renewable energy policy has turned out to be the biggest policy hoax in the modern era. It is not transforming the economy: South Australia sits at the bottom of the economic performance table in this country. It is not creating jobs: South Australia has the highest unemployment rate in the country. It is not driving investment: companies big and small are rethinking their commitments to the state and others have already pulled back from expansion. And that says nothing about the businesses who will not consider opening up in the state.

SA Water Minister Ian Hunter crowed last year that “South Australia is proud of its role as a living laboratory, leading the way to a low-carbon economy”. That leaves the people of South Australia bumping around in the dark like laboratory rats while men in white coats express pride in a failed experiment.

What are they proud of? That the lights keep going off in homes across the state? Proud that they cannot guarantee cheap, reliable and secure energy to businesses, small and large? South Australia is turning into a rust-belt state because of Weatherill’s changed economy. In December, the lights went out again; the response from the SA Treasurer to business was blunt: build your own back-up, baseload power station.

After the latest blackout last week, the state Labor government was quick to blame energy market structures. No doubt, the market needs to be finessed. But why would a government leap headlong into what it describes as a renewable energy experiment before the right market structures are in place?

It beggars further belief that a government genuinely concerned about its people would rush into an experiment, without considering that intermittent wind energy creates serious engineering risks for managing the stability and reliability of the power grid. When the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann raised these engineering questions last year, he was harangued and mocked as the new face of the anti-wind lobby. The national broadcaster took delight in leaking to The Guardian that complaints had been received about Uhlmann’s reporting.

Talk about post-truth. The further blackouts last month and this month expose the hoax of a prosperous green energy driven economy. The stark difference between feeling good and doing good is now irrefutable. It doesn’t feel good to be unemployed, or out of business, as the myth of green prosperity explodes. It doesn’t feel so good to have your electricity turned off in the summer heat or the winter cold. It doesn’t feel so good to be subjected to the Left’s utopian dreams that end up hurting the poor the most.

As The Australian revealed on Monday, electricity prices have spiked 106 per cent over the past decade, outstripping the rate of inflation, making power bills the biggest slug to the household budget. And South Australia ranks as one of the states with the highest power bills.

Last week, opposition climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler accused the Turnbull government of playing politics over energy. That’s a bit rich coming from a bloke whose party, state and federal, is playing ideological games with the future of the Australian people to satiate its left flank and secure Green preferences. In any case, SA Labor and federal Labor, with its own 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030, have gifted the Turnbull government one heck of a political weapon. And they know it.

That’s why there are small signs of Labor panicking, even admitting that its ideological experiment, like Israel’s kibbutz movement, is being trumped by reality. After the SA blackouts last week, the West Australian Labor Opposition Leader Mark McGowan ran for the hills in the middle of WA’s election campaign, refusing to outline its own renewable target despite signalling at a conference in October last year that it supports a 50 per cent target by 2030.

Meanwhile, Weatherill last week admitted his state needed more baseload energy. That’s a no-brainer given the blackout during Adelaide’s sweltering heat occurred when wind dropped to 2.5 per cent of supply.

Even Butler said there needed to be a proper balance of energy sources, an admission that SA’s current energy source balance is entirely out of kilter. On SA’s leap into the renewables unknown, Butler said, there was always going to be a jurisdiction that led the way. That policy rush hasn’t worked well for the people of South Australia. And it’s not working for Labor. The only question is how much more evidence will it take for Labor’s hasty and ill-conceived green energy experiment to be deemed a policy and political disaster.

janeta@bigpond.net.au