A close friend of mine had this experience with Oliver Goldsmith, James' brother, editor of the Ecologist. She was researching a programme about ecology, that was critical of the environmental movement. After it went out, many of those interviewed complained to the watchdog, the Independent Television Council that they had not been alerted to the slant of the programme.
Oliver Goldsmith insisted that he had not been told what it was about. When asked, my friend said, yes, you were told, I spent the afternoon talking to you. Goldsmith insisted that he had never met this person. But, says my friend, I have four pages of notes on your thoughts. Up to this point, all the discussion had been through lawyers, but now Goldsmith rang up direct and started screaming down the phone, why are you telling these lies about me, we have never met. Yes we have, says my friend I have the notes. You forged them he says. But don't you remember you gave me a plate of plums? At this point Goldsmith goes ballistic: I'll destroy you. You'll never work again. I'll have you followed. I am a very rich man and I can break you just like that. It's true of course, Oliver Goldsmith is very rich, having inherited his brother's fortune - and his willingness to use threats.
In message <v04210119b40d765ce11a@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>[Angela asked me to forward these after running them through my handy
>reformatter - ungarble it!, a Macintosh desk accessory. Normally I
>wouldn't post something this big, but I think this analysis is
>extremely important, with all the anti-WTO agitation going on. For an
>old LBO rant on similar topics, see
><http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/Globalization.html>.]
>
>Millionaire Goldsmith supports the Left and the extreme Right
>
>All over Europe New Right ideologists are seeking contact with Left
>wing activists to build together on a movement against, for instance,
>the destruction of nature or against "globalisation". (1) In this way
>the extreme Right also hopes to become accepted again. The British
>ecologist Edward Goldsmith supports them at that. He sponsors and
>works together with dozens of progressive organisations and is one of
>the driving forces behind the international campaign-networks against
>"free trade". At the same time he is becoming a more important factor
>within the extreme Right.
>
>Being mentioned together with Leftist intellectuals and activists, is
>the first step in the New Right strategy. This spring the extreme
>Right celebrated the many Left wing signatures on their nationalist
>petition against the Kosovo war. (2) Around the same time Goldsmith
>also joined the Left and the extreme Right on a petition: his
>"Ecologist's declaration on climate change". (3) In the Netherlands
>the petition was signed by members of organisations like A SEED,
>Aktie Strohalm, Corporate Europe Observatory en Stichting Aarde.
>
>By signing they came out shoulder to shoulder with co-signer Philippe
>de Villiers, the leader of the French extreme Right party Mouvement
>Pour la France (MPF). This rigidly catholic of noble blood is a
>prominent member of the French New Right. He wants to completely
>close all borders, forbid abortion and reintroduce the death penalty.
>The MPF was founded in 1994 with 3,5 million dollar donated by the
>late James Goldsmith, Edwards extremely rich brother. (4) De Villiers
>succeeds in making the extreme Right attractive to the rich, who
>still consider it somewhat indecent to vote for Le Pen's Front
>National. At the Euro-elections in 1994 and 1998 De Villiers got
>around 13% of the votes. Nowadays De Villiers shares his party
>leadership with ex-minister Pasqua, famous for his completely inhuman
>anti-migration policy making. (5)
>
>Goldsmith regularly introduces extreme Right activists in all kinds
>of initiatives, as if they represent one of the accepted political
>ideologies. He actively breaks through the anti-fascist cordon
>sanitaire that has in many countries been laid around the extreme
>Right. Two recent examples. Goldsmith is owner and chief-editor of
>the magazine The Ecologist, which organized a congress on the May
>26th, 1999, together with the International Society for Ecology and
>Culture (ISEC). Goldsmith allowed the British New Right ideologist
>Roger Scruton to join the recommending committee. Scruton is the
>editor of the New Right magazine Salisbury Review, which this spring
>published an article by Alexandra Colen. (6) She is a leader of the
>Belgium extreme Right party Vlaams Blok.
>
>The Ecologist also monthly prints an advertisement for the Australian
>antisemitic conspiracy fanzine Nexus. There is even a "special offer"
>for Ecologist readers subscribing to Nexus. (7) This spring Nexus
>published a very long article on "jewish capital" and the powerful
>position it is supposed to have had in the history of Europe. (8)
>
>Visiting the New Right
>
>Edward Goldsmith not only promotes the New Right, he also likes to
>visit them. He is by now a very welcome guest in New Right circles in
>Belgium and France. On November 27th, 1994, he gave his first lecture
>at a colloquium organized bij GRECE, the think tank connected to the
>French Front National. (9) This 28th GRECE-colloquium was in fact a
>25th birthday party of the organisation, and Goldsmith was the guest
>of honour. GRECE-director Alain de Benoist and Goldsmith really got
>along well and the British millionaire became a regular visitor to De
>Benoist's meetings. (10) "A good guy, this Benoist, there's nothing
>wrong with him", says Goldsmith. (11) He read a lot of Benoist's
>"very interesting" books and articles and believes the ideas of GRECE
>"have changed very much these last dozen years". (12) With this type
>of comments Goldsmith actively supports the extreme Right aspirations
>to be accepted.
>
>On November 11th, 1997, Goldsmith was the main guest on the third
>TeKoS-colloquium in Antwerp, Belgium. TeKoS is a daughter
>organisation of GRECE, and closely connected to the Vlaams Blok. "How
>are we going to survive decadence?", the discussion was named. Fellow
>lecturers were De Benoist and TeKoS chief editor Luc Pauwels. Pauwels
>was among the Founders of the Vlaams Blok.
>
>Goldsmiths lecture was translated for TeKoS magazine by Guy de
>Martelaere, probably Belgiums biggest Goldsmith fan. Before he
>already translated a lot of Goldsmiths articles published in The
>Ecologist, and even Goldsmiths magnum opus The Way. In his own New
>Right ecology magazine Gwenved De Martelaere publishes often on
>Goldsmith. (13) In the spring of 1998 the millionaire also gave an
>interview to De Martelaeres collegues of the Flemish-nationalist and
>ecologist magazine Vrijbuiter. (14)
>
>Visiting the Bushmen
>
>On January 11th, 1998, Goldsmith gave a lecture in Paris at the first
>colloquium of the New Right ecology organisation Le recours aux
>forÍts, titled: "L'ecologie contre le progrËs?" Among the other
>lecturers were again Alain de Benoist and also members of De
>Villiers' MPF. (15) "Le recours aux forÍts" means "return to the
>forest". Many extreme Right ideologists believe that "the
>Indo-Germans" (meaning: Aryans) are "by nature forestdwellers",
>whereas "the Semites are desert peoples". Le recours aux forÍts was
>founded by GRECE. The think tank wants to use the ecology and
>neo-pagan movements to make Blut-und-Boden (Blood-and-soil) popular
>again.
>
>Le recours aux forÍts-director Laurent Ozon is also head of the
>ecology branch of GRECE, called La nouvelle Ècologie. (16) Just like
>Front National leader MÈgret, Ozon is a product of De Benoist's New
>Right education institute La nouvelle Ècole. He regularly writes in
>De Benoist's magazines Krisis and Elements. (10) Ozon has become a
>faithful follower of Goldsmith and quotes him continuously in his own
>writings. (17) He also interviewed Goldsmith and published numerous
>articles of the millionaire in the Le recours aux forÍts- magazine.
>Every issue of this magazine also contains articles by De Benoist and
>several members of the Front National. (18)
>
>Laurent Ozon and Goldsmith became good friends. Together they
>regularly visit the meetings organized by De Benoist. (10) Ozon asked
>Goldsmith to run at the European elections in june 1999 by way of the
>Mouvement Ecologiste Independante (MEI), a Right wing ecological
>party with about 1.000 members. (9) Goldsmith made Ozon his spokesman
>en let him handle the negotiations with the MEI on his participation.
>Goldsmith voiced only one condition: his old pal Antione Waechter was
>to head the party's list.
>
>Goldsmith and Waechter go back a long time. They have known each
>other since a meeting in 1973, when Waechter started Les Verts, the
>French Green Party. (19) He left the party again in 1994, finding it
>too much turned to the Left. His new habitat became GRECE. He wrote
>several articles in Le recours aux forÍts (15) and was one of the
>lecturers on the second Le recours aux forÍts colloquium on January
>24th, 1999. (9)
>
>The governing board of MEI quickly gave in to Goldsmiths plans,
>hearing that the millionaire would bring a lot of money. (10)
>Goldsmith swiftly delivered an European election programm. (19)
>However, after some turmoil in the French press on Waechter's extreme
>Right ideas, Goldsmith withdrew from the party on February 16th,
>1999. "A compelling speaker", the editors of the Dutch New Right
>magazine Studie, Opbouw, Strijd (study, organize, struggle, SOS)
>wrote, after witnessing a lecture by Ozon at the 1997 GRECE summer
>university. In the next issue they published an article by Ozon and
>advised their readers to get to know his other works, and that of
>Waechter and Goldsmith, and also the magazines Le recours aux forÍts
>and The Ecologist. (20)
>
>An European wide fanclub.
>
>For some 30 years Goldsmith has been promoting the same totalitarian
>ecological worldview. (21) The last couple of years more and more
>prominent New right ideologists are embracing his ideas, including
>Robert Steuckers. This Belgian is the driving force and secretary
>general of the European network of New Right think tanks called
>Synergies EuropÈennes (SE). Starting in 1981, Steuckers was assistant
>and assumed successor to De Benoist. In 1993, after an internal
>disagreement he left GRECE together with a small group of followers
>and founded SE. Steuckers thinks that the New Right should not only
>discuss ideology, but also engage in the reality of politics and
>power. (22) Nowadays he is trying to break, European wide, the cordon
>sanitaire by stimulating alliances between nationalist groups and old
>communist parties and trade unions. SE already build sections in
>France, Belgium, Portugal, Russia, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania,
>Yugoslavia, Italy and Germany. The political projects of De Benoist
>and Steuckers seem to really enhance each other, and their
>organisations do work together regularly. SE member Robert Cousty,
>for instance, was cofounder of Le recours aux forÍts, which is mainly
>a GRECE project. (23) The international sections of SE are really
>getting into Edward Goldsmiths thinking. (24) His book The Way is
>becoming almost compulsary in those circles. (25) All sorts of
>ecological, regionalist and spiritual groupings are also merging into
>the SE network these days. (26) Examples are the ecofascist
>Unabh”ngigen ÷kologen Deutschlands and the Arbeitskreis Gr¸ne Trommel
>from Hamburg. They also see Goldsmiths work as fundamentally
>important. (23) Steuckers is also very active in the pagan movement
>and also feels attracted to Goldsmith because of his propaganda for
>pagan religions. "The time of the cross has gone. The sun wheel will
>return, and we will be liberated from the jewish God, and our people
>will get back its honour", says Steuckers. (27)
>
>Eric Krebbers
>
>De Fabel van de illegaal
>September 1999
>
>
>Notes:
>(1) Krebbers, Met "nieuw-rechts" tegen de globalisering?, October 1998. In:
>De Fabel van de illegaal 31.
>(2) Krebbers, Nieuw-rechts anti-oorlogscomitÈ verleidt linkse
>intellectuelen, July 1999. In: De Fabel van de illegaal 35.
>(3) The Ecologist, Declaration on Climate Change, March 1999.
>(4) Van der Velpen, Zwarte horizonten, 1995.
>(5) Bresson, Pasqua et Villiers unissent leurs maigres bataillons. In:
>Liberation, April 10th, 1999.
>(6) Colen, A cry for help. In: Salisbury review, spring 1999.
>(7) Special offer to Nexusreaders. In: The Ecologist 3, May 1998.
>Nexus-adds are also in The Ecologist 3 & 4, May and July 1999.
>(8) Carmack, Central Banking and the private control of money, part 1,
>December 1998-January 1999. In: Nexus 1. Part 2, February-March 1999. In:
>Nexus 2.
>(9) Silence, Waechter, Goldsmith etc, April 1999. In: Silence 243.
>(10) Chombeau, La dÈrive extrÈmiste d'Antoine Waechter. In: Le Monde,
>February 18th, 1999.
>(11) Remark from Goldsmith, speaking to the author by telephone.
>(12) Letter from Goldsmith to Silence, July 6th, 1999.
>(13) De Martelaere, Nieuws en korte beschouwingen, January 1998. In:
>Gwenved 23.
>(14) Van den Broele, Edward Goldsmith: menselijk, al te menselijk, spring
>1998. In: Vrijbuiter 3.
>(15) M.P., L'autre sensibilitÈ Ècologiste, January 1999. In: Silence 240.
>(16) Schmid, Der Krieg der Petitionen, April 1999. In:Jungle World 15.
>(17) Ozon, Ecologie et liberalisme, December 1998. In: Silence 238.
>(18) Lipietz, Virage nouvelle droite?, February 1999. In: Silence 241.
>(19) MEI internet-site.
>(20) Ozon, De inzet van de ecologie, 1997. In: S.O.S. 12.
>(21) Krebbers, Goldsmith en zijn Gaiaanse hiÎrarchie, August 1999.
>(22) Speit, Schicksal und Tiefe, March 1999. In: Jenseits des nationalismus.
>(23) A.K., Waechter le vert-brun, November 17th, 1998. In: Charlie Hebdo.
>(24) Cremet, "Neue" Rechte: jetzt generationen¸bergreifend, June 1997. In:
>AK 403.
>(25) De Zutter, Terug naar de "racistische" natuur. In: De Morgen, May
>27th, 1999.
>(26) Cremet, F¸r eine Allianz der "Roten" und der "Weissen", March 1999.
>In: Jenseits des Nationalismus.
>(27) De Zutter, "Politieke soldaten tegen de multi-raciale maatschappij".
>In: De Morgen May 26th, 1999.
>
>
>------------------------
>
>Goldsmith and his Gaian hierarchy
>
>For some 30 years now the British millionaire Goldsmith has been
>promoting the same totalitarian ecological worldview. Dozens of
>west-European organisations on ecology, indigenous peoples,
>biotechnology, nuclear energy and "globalisation", have nevertheless
>cherished their good contacts with him. Five years ago Goldsmith
>became active in New Right circles, among the intellectuals who want
>to renew their extreme Right ideology. There, Goldsmith's writings
>have by now become compulsory. Just like Goldsmith, they want to
>"restore the natural social order" and the "traditional relations
>between people".
>
>Confronted with Goldsmith's extreme Right activities, some of his
>Left wing contacts in the Netherlands said the millionaire had become
>"old and senile". However, Goldsmith wrote his hunderds of articles
>and books from the same, very consistent New Right point of view. His
>choise to also work together with fascists is a logical consequence
>to his thinking. The model of the general Basic to all of Goldsmith's
>work is his fascistoid longing for a "stable society". That would
>have to be organized according to "the natural laws of Gaia", or
>"Mother Earth". To Goldsmith there exists but "a single order" and "a
>single set of laws, whose generalities apply equally well to
>biological organisms, vernacular societies and ecosystems and to Gaia
>herself." Of which the most important law is "that a natural system
>is organized hierarchically", writes Goldsmith. This law should also
>be central for society: "All behaviour, including the evolutionary
>process itself, must be controlled with the aid of a dynamic model
>analogous to that used by the general".
>
>Goldsmith says he gets his inspiration "from the world-view of
>vernacular societies". "By seeing his body, his house and his
>settlement as reflecting the same critical order, which is also that
>of his society of the natural world and of the cosmos itself, it
>becomes clear to vernacular man that his life is subject to the same
>single law that governs the cosmic hierarchy."
>
>The millionaire regrets the "progress" by which this knowledge is
>getting lost, because "traditional man" knew very well "that the
>world is hierarchically organized" European medieval and feudal times
>also inspire Goldsmith. The "stable society" at that time was
>governed, according to Goldsmith, by the "natural principle" of
>"hierarchical mutualism". That almost all people were enslaved at the
>time, doesn't bother him. "Medieval serfs were bound to their land,
>but their relationship to their lord was one of mutual obligations
>rather than of sheer economic expediency, and in exchange they
>normally had security of tenure." So, also nobility had their
>obligations, the millionaire assures us, "noblesse oblige". The
>feudal system was following the "generalized natural law", that says
>that "the relationship between things and beings at different
>echelons in the hierarchy of the cosmos is not symmetrical. Vital
>power flows downwards to vitalize and hence sanctify things and
>beings at the lower echelons, though it will only do so if the latter
>fulfil their obligations towards the higher echelons and hence
>towards the cosmos a a whole."
>
>Abhorring unnatural colours
>
>Now and again Goldsmith quotes the anarchist Kropotkin. At the
>beginning of the century he said: "Nature is the first ethical
>teacher of man". Just like Goldsmith Kropotkin also tried to extract
>his political ideals from nature. His books, with beautiful titles
>like "mutual aid", inspired millions of anarchists all over the
>world. But, fascist or anarchist, it cannot be liberating for an
>ideologist to project his political ideals and analysis on "nature"
>trying to win political arguments, and aquire power.
>
>One can probably find analogies in nature to every type of human
>society and behaviour. So this type of argument proves nothing. But
>it does promote analysing the world using nonsense dualities like
>between "the natural" and "the artificial". Goldsmiths trick is to
>simply attach eco-labels saying "natural" or "natural law" to his
>extreme Right preferences. He is very honest about that: "There is no
>reason to suppose that ecological knowledge - in its different
>variants - is any more objective, less value-laden or less
>purposeful. It is, or should be, designed purposefully to rationalize
>the world-view of ecology and the associated ecological society
>geared as it must be to maintaining the critical order of the cosmos."
>
>The ecologist Goldsmith doesn't only think about the destruction of
>nature. He writes about almost every part of society. According to
>him the same laws apply to "all natural systems, such as the family,
>the community and the eciological system". Sometimes he draws
>conclusions from his analysis which - on first sight - seem
>liberating to society. For example, he argues against nuclear energy
>and the bio-industries, and also wants to take medical science out of
>the hands of capitalism. This might explain why some people on the
>Left do not recognize Goldsmith as the New Right ideologist he is.
>Most of the time however, his conclusions and recommendations for a
>new society are very clearly extreme Right. In some cases, he seems
>afraid to openly draw the inescapable extreme Right conclusion from
>his own reasoning, and leaves it the reader to conclude.
>
>His rapidly growing following in extreme Right circles do not really
>need more than that. They know where Goldsmith is heading. For
>example, they probably immediately start dreaming of the nazi-culture
>ministry during World War 2, when Goldsmith writes that "a Gothic
>cathedral, for instance, is beautiful; for its vault is that of the
>forest, its pillars the forest trees. On the other hand, we abhor
>what is foreign to nature: unnatural colours, the straight lines of
>modern buildings." It is not accidental that Goldsmith recently
>sproke on a New Right congress, entitled: "How can we survive
>decadence?"
>
>The elimination of mutations
>
>"Natural systems are not geared to change but towards the avoidance
>of change. Change occurs, not because it is desirable per se, but
>because in certain conditions, it is judged to be necessary, as a
>means of preventing predictably larger and more disruptive changes.
>This must be true of social evolution as well as biological
>evolution." Goldsmith's "stable society" is clearly geared against
>the Left-revolutionary politics of a combined anti-capitalism,
>anti-racism and anti- patriarchal struggle. "Nature" has even told
>Goldsmith that "persistant conflicts" should not be allowed.
>
>Goldsmith does not want to end capitalism, but wants to "try to come
>to a series of losely knit economies, geared to the local community,
>and led by smaller firms, which foremost, although not exclusively,
>produce for the local or regional market". Alternative money systems
>like LETS can therefore count on his support. But, a young Belgian
>nazi once asked him, "do you really think that your ideas can be
>realized within these crowded peoples?" Goldsmith: "To be honest, no.
>However, I fear that we will be speaking of much smaller
>populations." Afther which he started to explain that the current
>"overpopulation" will be reduced by "epidemics" and other natural
>desasters. Whether the millionaire will be sad about that remains a
>question. However, he did once write that "humanity is a parasite".
>
>Goldsmith often uses the words "population explosion". He probably
>took the idea from the racist population professor Paul Ehrlich, his
>old friend, who got world wide fame with his book "The Population
>Explosion". In the beginning of the 70's Goldsmith paid for the
>translation of the book in Dutch.
>
>When his "stable society" is finally realized, Goldsmith thinks
>"forces" should be developped, that keep the population stable, just
>like the "forces that keep the bodytemperature stable". A "council of
>men" could operate "population control" by some system of "licensing
>marriage" for young men. And women can still always become a nun. The
>Afghan Taliban are going to be jaleous. In Goldsmith brave new world
>also "asocialized and delinquent inhabitants of urban slums" will not
>be tolerated anymore.
>
>"Social abberations" will be disposed of. Who is included in this
>category remains still unclear, but "a society, by means of its
>specific cultural pattern, is capable of maintaining itself on its
>path by correcting any diversions from it." Just like in nature,
>where "once mutations do occur, special mechanisms, that are
>perfected during the course of evolution, exist for assuring their
>elimination." Frightning? "But what is so special about the
>individual organism?", Goldsmith asks rhetorically.
>
>Excluding foreign bodies
>
>Goldsmith's small societies will "in essence be exclusive". "Indeed,
>one cannot build a community with thousands of people", the
>millionaire admits willingly. "It is not surprising that systems
>which are sufficiently differentiated, such as biological organisms
>and societies, will tend to develop mechanisms that will enable them
>to exclude foreign bodies likely to menace their integrity. At the
>biological level, such devices are known as rejection mechanisms.
>Experience with organ transplants was revealed that to suppress these
>mechanisms is to increase one hundredfold the patient's
>susceptibility to cancer, i.e. to the anarchic proliferation of
>cells. Mechanisms of this kind are essential at all levels of
>organization.
>
>Of the 3,000 simple societies so far examined by anthropologists, all
>appear to have laws of exogamy and endogamy. Marriage is forbidden
>within a restricted family circle, but also ouside the cultural
>group, the object being to avoid cultural hybridization and hence the
>production of sub-systems that are differentiated parts neither of
>one system nor of another. What is today regarded as prejudice
>against people of different ethnic groups is a normal and necessary
>feature of human cultural behaviour, and is absent only among members
>of a cultural system already far along the road to disintegration.
>The notion of the universal brotherhood of man is therefore totally
>incompatible with the systemic approach to human cultural systems. It
>is as absurd as the notion that the cells, making up a vast number of
>different biological organisms, can be shuffled and still give rise
>to viable biological systems. Industrial countries tend to develop
>labour shortages and to import labour from elsewhere. In this way
>quite large ethnic minorities are being built up in many countries.
>In addition, economic development is tending towards the development
>of ever-larger political units, which often embrace ethnic groups
>with little in common with each other. All this is creating a very
>unstable situation, one which can only lead to civil wars and to the
>massacre of minorities singled out as scapegoats when inevitable
>economic and social crises occur." Says Goldsmith, in his typical way
>reasoning.
>
>Apartheid and forced migration
>
>Goldsmith usually writes about political conflicts as if they are
>"natural" or "ethnic" problems. He says that "different ethnic
>groups" cannot live together in one country. "The only way to do this
>is for the different national groups to be allowed to develop
>seperately". Goldsmith believes for example, that Rwanda's Tutsi's
>and Hutu's "should quite clearly be separated". Except for apartheid,
>Goldsmith also considers forced migration a solution. He admires
>Ataturk, who "separated Greeks and Turks very succesfully, although
>there was a terrible outcry at the time and it undoubtedly caused
>considerable inconvenience to the people who were forced to migrate.
>But should we not be willing to accept measures of inconvenience in
>order to establish a stable society?"
>
>"Practically all the European states of today are artificial
>creations made up of nations whose seperate identity is largely
>ignored", Goldsmith writes. He thinks that peace will only be
>possible in Europe once its "territory were split up into its natural
>ecological and ethnic regions". The nationalists in former Yugoslavia
>have already started this grand project. "In Europe, people are now
>slowly beginning to see the light. In Belgium for instance, a new
>project is being studied to devide the country into four regions, one
>Walloon, one Flemish, one German and one composed of the ethnically
>mixed population of Brussels." By claiming that Flemish and Walloon
>people constitute different biological "ethnics", Goldsmith positions
>himself even more to the right than the extreme Right Vlaams Blok.
>
>But for Goldsmith, nothing goes too far. He also considers the
>Northern Irish catholics and protestants as "two distict ethnic
>groups, of different origin, with different manners and traditions
>and different motivations and capacities". Was Goldsmith thinking of
>Ataturk when he concluded that "the only remaining solution is to
>seperate them territorially"?
>
>More statues of religious leaders
>
>To Goldsmith the family is, just like the small community, a
>"fundamental, we might even say just as natural unit of social
>organisation". Everybody should "naturally" be at home within "a
>family, within which the mother is the most essential member."
>Goldsmith: "A mother looks after her children; a father provides for
>his wife and also helps bring up the children." Single mothers are
>"far removed from the norm", and Goldsmith even considers male
>extramarital relationships bad for the "Gaian hierarchy". According
>to him, women have " a very important rÙle, in the social cohesion,
>as well as from the viewpoint of the conservation of the natural
>environment. They haven't got machismo and competitiveness, those
>typical male traits. You know, one should accept the differences
>between man and woman, just like the differences between ethnics and
>cultures". Goldsmith doesn't feel much for feminism.
>
>Goldsmith's political project is not based on science or rationality.
>"I do not believe in a society based on reason or the contract", he
>says. On this issue he agreeingly quotes Alexis Carrel: "Scientific
>civilisation has destroyed the soul of the world". Already in 1935,
>Carrel called for euthanasia institutes, in which "anti-social
>people" could be eliminated using "appropiate gases". This ideologist
>got a high position in fascist Vichy-France. Nowadays National Front
>leader Le Pen sees Carrel as a guide to social and political thought
>and tries to rehabilitate the man and his ideas. By quoting Carrel
>positively, Goldsmith is assisting Le Pen.
>
>Inhabitants of Goldsmith's future "stable society" will not be
>influenced rationally, but rather more religiously and "emotionally
>motivated". "It is only within the context of a cosmic or ecological
>religion that people can be made to realise that the destruction of
>God's creation is a sin." In this way Goldsmith want to turn everyone
>into a sinner, in the hands of a totalitarian religion. For every
>living being will inescapably destroy little pieces of nature. The
>new man will get to fill his time with "ritual activities", so that
>"everyone is properly imbued with the worldview" and "mythology" of
>society. And to get us proud of our own community again, Goldsmith
>wants to fill all squares up with statues of religious and other
>leaders.
>
>Eric Krebbers
>
>De Fabel van de illegaal
>September 1999
>
>
>Literature:
>- Goldsmith, De ecologische krisis, oorzaak en aanpak, 1970. In: The
>Ecologist 1. (Translation in: TeKoS 85, 1997.)
>- Goldsmith, Basic principles of cultural ecology, 1971. In: The Ecologist 5.
>- Goldsmith, Limits of Growth in Natural Systems, 1971. In: Goldsmith
>(ed.), Can Britain Survive?, 1971.
>- Goldsmith, Ethnocracy: The lesson from Africa, 1980. In: The Ecologist 4.
>- Goldsmith, The Way, 1996.
>- Ullrich Melle, Verscheidenheid, verbondenheid en zelfverwerkelijking,
>1996. In: Voeten in de Aarde, Janssens en Melle, 1996.
>- Goldsmith, Letter to George Monbiot and others, 1997.
>- Goldsmith, Tegen de "vooruitgang": gezin gemeenschap, demokratie, 1997.
>In: Pauwels (ed.), Hoe overleven we de dekadentie?, 1997.
>- Goldsmith, Ultimate freedom, 1998. In: Fourth World Review 92.
>- Van den Broele, Collier, Edward Goldsmith: menselijk, al te menselijk?,
>1998. In: Vrijbuiter, spring 1998.
>- Goldsmith, Letter to Silence, 1999.
>- Paul Gimeno, Een interview met Goldsmith. In: Oikos 3.
>-
><http://www.syllepse.net/livres/Carrel.htm>http://www.syllepse.net/liv
>res/Carrel.htm
>- Krebbers, Millionaire Goldsmith supports the Left and the extreme Right,
>August 1999.
-- Jim heartfield