Beware the Extinctionists
On a recent Joe Rogan podcast, Elon Musk spoke at length about a strange new threat to humanity known as “extinctionism.” Here are a couple of excerpts from the discussion:
The initial knee-jerk reaction to something this odd is disbelief. I mean, who could seriously want to wipe humanity off the face of the earth?
Apparently, a lot of people.
Extinctionism Explains a Lot about the Woke Left
In fact, there is a specific organized effort to eradicate the human species. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) advocates for the “peaceful phase-out of the human race.” Extinctionists believe that humans are a malignancy to the planet, responsible for the extermination of hundreds of thousands of innocent species. By eliminating humans, they believe the climate and delicate ecosystems will be restored, and the planet will eventually heal itself.
Their leader, a man named Les U. Knight, had a vasectomy at 25 and has advocated for human extinction ever since. Knight makes it clear that he does not support genocide or any involuntary methods to reduce the population. Instead, he hopes that the human race becomes more self-aware of its inherent destructiveness and willingly chooses to die off without reproducing.
Falling Birth Rates and Natural Disaster Won’t Achieve Zero Population
While several activists, notably Musk, warn of declining birth rates, the extinctionists look at it differently. They point out that the decline in fertility rates is irrelevant because, in aggregate, there are more couples creating children. Even the two-child replacement theory is inadequate for the extinctionists because those who reproduce remain alive for an extended period after the birth of their children. So, in essence, that’s four people ruining the earth where only two existed previously. Modern medicine plays a role as well since people are generally living longer, consuming and destroying the planet instead of decomposing in the ground or drifting on air currents as ash.
The hope that the earth’s population will die out due to famine, disease, war or natural disaster is also dismissed by the extinctionists as a fallacy. Knight points out that despite massively destructive wars, horrific natural disasters and several pandemics, earth’s population continues its relentless expansion, with estimates of 27 billion inhabitants by 2050. The expectation is that most of the growth will come from the southern hemisphere.
Extinctionism is not Benign
Despite Knight’s claim that extinctionism is benign and voluntary, this kind of cult-like movement eventually becomes populated with people who want results now. The longer they wait, the more disillusioned they become. It is a phenomenon that has repeated itself throughout history. The peaceful environmental movement of the 1970s spawned the 1980s eco-terrorist group Earth First, which spiked trees and burned down houses. The civil rights movement of the 1960s spawned the violent Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers in the 1970s. Modern civil rights and social justice efforts are now marred by groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa.
The allure of the extinctionist movement for woke leftists cannot be overstated since leftists are inherently self-destructive by nature. Musk’s assertion that places like San Francisco are infected with a “mind virus” is a euphemism for the inexplicable death instinct in our culture, particularly among young adults. A study conducted by the CDC in 2022 found that 44% of teenagers in the U.S. feel persistently sad and hopeless, up from 37% in 2019. A Harvard Youth Poll in 2021 found that 51% of young Americans 18-29 said that at least several days in the last two weeks they felt down and depressed.
The mind virus Musk and Rogan speak of manifests itself in substance abuse that robs the individual of self-respect, dignity and the ability to care for oneself. For most of these people, there is no future; no hope of rehabilitation or becoming a productive member of society.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the group on the next higher rung of the left’s ladder of cognizance is angry, directionless and self-loathing. Woke zealots, motivated by a burden of guilt they bear on behalf of everyone they believe has spoiled the planet, don’t care if their irrational actions negatively impact ordinary Americans simply trying to better their lot in life. If not overtly, guilt-ridden leftists subscribe to the basic tenets of extinctionism, but in a more urgent form. They believe humans are such an inherently corrupt species, no amount of inconvenience and suffering could atone for their sins. That’s why the unenlightened must suffer in discomfort and unhappiness at the hands of woke authoritarians, and all of life’s simple pleasures must be regulated or banned outright. And woe to those who work hard and expect to enjoy some degree of prosperity as a result of their efforts. That group must suffer the most.
Extinctionist Woke Policies
We see this warped view of reality manifested in the left’s approach to energy. Aggressively attacking the fossil fuel industry by banning key infrastructure projects, canceling leases and undermining energy companies by intimidating the banking industry has caused Americans extreme hardship. The left finds this necessary because of their belief that climate change is caused by human activity, which hasn’t been verified by a single real-world experiment.
Leftists propagate crime, murder and fear by defunding the police, which is antithetical to a safe, nonviolent environment. They support aborting fetuses that are in the third trimester and the genital mutilation of children in the name of “gender identity.”
All of these actions have the intended or unintended consequences of reducing the population, which was the stated goal of the Sierra Club in the 1970s, at least until they were told by the illegal alien industry to abandon that position.
Fatalists and those with other forms of psychosis comprise a large swath of the woke leftist movement, and if they become successful in their attempt to impose authoritarianism on America, expect the extinctionists to emerge from the shadows and become a prominent part of the psychotic left’s platform.
Imagine, there is actually an organization advocating for the elimination of humans from the planet. That’s how far this woke insanity has come.
