The systemic crisis holding the "West” in an ever tighter grip is leaving a trail of destruction. Evidently, it is the wholesale adoption of Neoliberalism which has caused the crisis in the first place. It is Neoliberalism that has prompted "Western” governments to engage in the massive privatization of utilities, transportation, education and health care, causing prices for gas, water, electricity, train tickets, college education and medical treatments to rise and rise.
Needless to say, it was only a matter of time before science (including scientific and scholarly research) would also be made to enjoy the benefits of Neoliberalism. As governments began to withdraw most of the funding for research (traditionally done in Europe through Academies of Science and organizations such as the French CNRS), the doors were thrown open for corporate funding. As anybody can imagine, when a company decides to pay for research, it wants to have a say in the way research is conducted. Moreover, when the results should run counter to the expectations or wishes of the company, it would be bad for business to publish these. This consideration puts constraints on the research, which thus becomes compromised. The next step is predictably that corporations will turn the research around: they will want the research to fit the results that are needed for business. Today, most research in the "West” is being conducted according to these corrupt tenets. The outside world, however, is made to believe that everything is fine and dandy and that there is nothing wrong with the prevalent research practices.
In a broader sense, the advent of Neoliberalism has brought a power to the business world that it had only enjoyed in countries like Germany and Italy during a dark period of history. What we are seeing today in the "West” is again the total subservience of the state to the interests of big business. To be sure, this state of affairs has also been familiar to the citizens of Argentina, Chile and some other Latin American nations since the days of neoliberal military dictatorship in the 1970s.
In order to understand the role of science in a fascist state, it is best to look at Germany in the years 1933-1945. Thanks to the leadership of German science, education and research established during the late 19th century, German research and technology was at least ten to fifteen years ahead of its counterparts in the Anglosphere. Nazi ideology, however, was essentially at odds with traditional German science, since it was partly based on fake science: racial theory according to which Jews were inferior. Fake disciplines like craniometry (measuring skulls) consequently enjoyed great prestige. Thus, nazi anti-Jewish policies were supposedly scientific. Nazi officials, soldiers, camp guards and generally all state servants were told to "follow the science,” and many had no qualms about it, since after all it was science that dictated their actions.
The reason why such "science” was not science was that contrary arguments were not allowed. Nazi "science” was actually based on erroneous premises and held together by faulty interpretations and logical fallacies. In other words, in the final analysis it was not science but politics.
A fundamental characteristic of science (the "hard” sciences) is that it is built on hard evidence. Science looks for, and works on the basis of objective truth: lo certo (what is certain), as Giambattista Vico put it. It is the kind of evidence that can be demonstrated by way of mathematical calculations and often also through experiments. An example would be the law of gravity. When you drop an object it falls and when you jump from a high building, you die. You cannot dispute with scientific and practical evidence. Ignoring the laws of science can be dangerous and can even cost you your life. If, for instance "most scientists” would doubt the law of gravity, objects would still fall and people jumping from high buildings would still die. Therefore, science is anything but democratic. Ultimately, the opinion of "most” or "the majority” of specialists in any field of science is utterly insignificant. The only thing that counts is hard evidence, not opinion.
The corruption of science in the "West” as a result of Neoliberalism and corporate financing has turned science into politics and scientists into political prisoners (though most of them do not realize this). Therefore, the situation in which the sciences and scientists find themselves today is not essentially different from Nazi Germany.
Like the German Nazi government, today's "Western” governments loudly proclaim they are "following the science” while engaged in policies that are destructive and murderous. Of course it is the prestige of science and scientists that allows politicians to hide behind scientists. This prestige was established in the second half of the 19th century, when most of the scientific discoveries and breakthroughs were made that sustain modern life from a material point of view. In the public mind, the bespectacled, stern-looking scientist in his white lab coat still emerges whenever the word "scientist” is uttered.
In a sense, the situation in many of today's "Western” nations was envisaged by French philosopher Auguste Comte, the father of sociology and the founder of Positivism, whose ideal society was one where scientists and "experts” would make all key decisions. The Brazilian military were so enamored with this concept that when in 1889 they deposed the Emperor, they chose Comte's motto "Order and Progress” as the national motto and embroidered it on the Brazilian flag.
If science were impervious to corporate corruption and political manipulation, Comte's positivist model of governance might actually have its merits, especially in times of crisis. But that is not the situation we have on our hands today.
If anything, science in the "West” today is more corrupted and politicized than in Nazi Germany. After all, at that time it was only sociology and anthropology, which are rather disciplines masquerading as science, and not true science.
The US and its vassal states (EU/NATO, Japan, Australia, New Zealand) entirely subscribe to the reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Based on the erroneous premise that "climate change,” not supported by any evidence whatsoever, is anthropogenic, the IPCC advocates robust government interference to drastically reduce carbon (CO2) and nitrogen emissions. Although the biggest verified influence on the earth's climate is the sun, the IPCC keeps telling us that it is mankind. Cattle herds (allegedly producing excess nitrogen) must be reduced and the consumption of meat and dairy products must be seriously curtailed if not forbidden althogether. People should travel less, switch to using electric cars, and forced to reduce their "carbon footprint” in every imaginable way. The IPCC also wants us to switch to wind and solar energy, ignoring inconvenient truths. Such as the fact that each windmill needs up to 800 liters of lubricating oil a year, and the fact that windmills are lethal for insect life, bird life and marine life (as in the North Sea, where thousands of windmills have been put up). And then there is the problem of getting rid of used and broken windmills. It is impossible to recycle the material for other uses, so old windmills literally need to be buried somewhere.
The entire "Green Agenda” is based on fake science and especially harmful, if not lethal to human life. An open debate of the IPCC reports and recommendations has been made impossible because the media and the political authorities will immediately ban any scientist critical of the IPCC's conclusions. Whoever questions the IPCC directives is branded a "climate denier.”
Like the IPCC, the Word Health Organization also seems to have embarked upon a course that is bound to destroy and kill people. Like the IPCC, the WHO bases its directives and recommendations on "science” and the advice of "experts.” Like the IPCC, the WHO wants us all to "follow the science,” and our governments never stop citing this deceitful mantra.
Hence when the Covid "pamdemic” was declared, we were all supposed to half suffocate ourselves by wearing face masks, and to take a vaccination with a hastily brewed toxic concoction, with over a thousand harmful side effects, including death. In the meantime, an open public debate on the nature of the "lethal” Covid virus and if and how to fight it was made impossible by the political authorities and the media. Critical journalists and activists were jailed, physicians who questioned the WHO directives were delicensed and jailed and whoever else questioned the official Covid narrative was banned from corporate social media, deplatformed and made an outcast.
It is not difficult to see that with the killing of scientific debate and logic upon government orders, language itself is a victim. The signs are visible all around us. We are in the midst of an Orwellian, some would say, Satanic inversion of meaning. What the ruling elites (under whose auspices and upon whose directives the current changes are taking place) don't seem to realize is that when words come to mean the opposite of what they originally meant, communication becomes impossible.
It would be shortsighted to assume that only the proles would suffer from not being able to communicate. It is amazing that those who preside over the collapse of science (and eventually, communication), don't seem to realize that their handiwork will inexorably lead to violence. Indeed, when words and language lose their meaning, violence is just around the corner.
Their fate might be the same as that of the evil scientists and rich villains of third-rate Hollywood movies: they will perish along with much of the societies they set out to destroy in the name of "science.”