if for­eign­ers know any­thing about for­mer pres­i­dent mohamed nasheed, it’s that he’s an envi­ron­men­tal hero and a cham­pi­on of democ­ra­cy.

he is nei­ther of those things. that applies to his par­ty (MDP), past and present.

cur­rent­ly appoint­ed the sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the cli­mate vul­ner­a­ble forum (Cvf), this self-pro­claimed right wing cap­i­tal­ist and thatcherite reagan­omist rabid­ly hogs and dom­i­nates the inter­na­tion­al stage cam­eras and media, and the west­ern impe­r­i­al sys­tem absolute­ly loves it.

why would­n’t they?

this com­prador labour aristro­crat sym­bi­ot­i­cal­ly laun­ders their colo­nial rep­u­ta­tion in exchange for ele­vat­ing his own glob­al sta­tus after all.

it’s not just nasheed; every oth­er cor­rupt, right-wing mal­di­vian politi­cian deceives the world in this exact same way.

the cur­rent pres­i­dent mohamed muiz­zu mas­quer­ades as a defend­er of the envi­ron­ment abroad while utter­ly destroy­ing it at home too. nasheed and his par­ty did the exact same thing from 2008 — 2012 and 2018 — 2023 (sheet 8). I don’t even need to tell you about pres­i­dents yameen and mau­moon in their despot­ic admin­is­tra­tions.

grass­roots envi­ron­men­tal­ists get side­lined and their voic­es erased.

there is a diverse body of envi­ron­men­tal­ists — most of them aligned with the work­ing class with a dialec­ti­cal mate­ri­al­ism core — at the bot­tom. things like project thi­maaveshi, mal­dives whale shark research, small island geo­graph­ic soci­ety (sigs), save the beach, and many oth­ers come to mind.

the era­sure of these voic­es is extreme­ly dan­ger­ous, because it is pre­cise­ly these voic­es that are often crit­i­cal of our gov­ern­ment admin­is­tra­tions, not allied to any par­ties or politi­cians, and intent on call­ing out the hypocrisy of our politi­cians and the care­less idio­cy of the glob­al north’s aid organ­is­ers in help­ing these cor­rupt neolib­er­als cash out while destroy­ing the envi­ron­ment any­way.

thanks, guys. very cool. maybe at least read up about them a lit­tle bit? i mean, we do lyri­cal­ly ridicule and crit­i­cise them in eng­lish, you know? it’s not that hard.

these peo­ple are not heroes. every sin­gle one of them has utter­ly dec­i­mat­ed the mal­di­vian envi­ron­ment for cor­po­rate gain all the while preach­ing about how it’s the low­est lying coun­try in the world and the impend­ing effects of glob­al warm­ing.

it’s the bare god-damn min­i­mum. if seas rise, we’re doomed. any idiot can fig­ure that out.

this brings us to the fun­da­men­tal flaw of green cap­i­tal­ism: the expec­ta­tion to safe­guard the envi­ron­ment can­not coex­ist with the expec­ta­tion of end­less eco­nom­ic growth at all costs for the elite class. cap­i­tal­ism, by its very nature, seeks prof­its by any means nec­es­sary. it cir­cum­vents the law and bypass­es ethics — and infil­trates the gov­ern­ment and reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies — to gen­er­ate share­hold­er wealth in radioac­tive quan­ti­ties.

either these politi­cians are stu­pid (unlike­ly) or know exact­ly what they’re doing.

even a child would realise that dec­i­mat­ing our man­grove shore pro­tec­tions, dump­ing sand into our lagoons to “reclaim” land, bull­doz­ing our trees down, enabling dan­ger­ous tourist/fishing marine prac­tices, and so on would wors­en our envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis and has­ten its col­lapse. they’re not dumb enough not to know this. they’re doing this on pur­pose.

nev­er mind that mod­ern schol­ars of dialec­ti­cal mate­ri­al­ism and post-growth eco­nom­ics have empir­i­cal­ly and thor­ough­ly proven (this is your indict­ment, mohamed ‘island pres­i­dent’ nasheed) that green cap­i­tal­ism sim­ply can­not work, either on a glob­al scale or even on indi­vid­ual nation­al scales. it’s sci­ence, you cap­i­tal­ist bar­bar­ians.

post-growth anti-cap­i­tal­ist schol­ars have exten­sive­ly worked on solu­tions, polit­i­cal frame­works, and social blue­prints for this, and in some coun­tries, these things are being imple­ment­ed either on nation­al lev­els or at grass­roots lev­els. don’t let the world fill you with despair; rejoice in the knowl­edge that the solu­tions and projects imple­ment­ing them are in great abun­dance. here’s hick­el and varo­ufak­is’s recent expla­na­tion.

let me put this in sim­ple words for you.

imag­ine we’re all liv­ing in the same house. there’s a house fire. nasheed and all the oth­er par­ty-pol­i­tics bar­bar­ians are run­ning around scream­ing “fire! fire!”. they’re also blockad­ing all the roads and mak­ing sure the firetrucks can’t get in, because the more the fire dam­ages our house, the more mon­ey they can make from insur­ance pay­outs.

we’re the peo­ple try­ing to tie these morons up, clear the roads up, get the firetrucks in, and get these idiots impris­oned for insur­ance fraud.

see how the dots con­nect? hm?

so let’s call this sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly ill­ter­ate, cor­rupt, delib­er­ate­ly destruc­tive, lying scum­bag mal­di­vian politi­cians what they are:

eco-mod­ernists.

they’re cap­i­tal­is­m’s van­guard against the envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice move­ment. they are, in spir­it, allied to the glob­al petro-cap­i­tal­ist order. they rein­force cap­i­tal­ism and the west­ern stan­dard of infi­nite growth on a finite plan­et because they are loy­al to cap­i­tal and mate­r­i­al things above all else. nature is but a resource to be ruled over, extract­ed, and con­sumed.

post-growth eco­nom­ics is the oppo­si­tion to green cap­i­tal­ism. we are the resis­tance that they like to think they are.

to any­one in the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty read­ing this, i’m beg­ging you, i’m plead­ing you, stop cel­e­brat­ing these politi­cians. lis­ten to us. our pol­i­tics aren’t black and white. read about these peo­ple, call them out, and stop plat­form­ing them. plat­form our cit­i­zen sci­en­tists, grass­roots activists, and oth­er such mem­bers of the pub­lic, please, and make sure you don’t let them creep their par­ty pol­i­tics cells into your ranks either.

do your due fuck­ing dili­gence.