Now gardening is racist

Here’s my WND column from the weekend, entitled “Now gardening is racist.”

For those unable to access the website, here’s the text.

In yet another example of liberal lunacy, some environmentalists are slamming gardeners and wildlife biologists for being racist.

Breitbart notes, “A consultant for New Scientist magazine, Fred Pearce argues that foreign flora and fauna are being ‘demonised’ unfairly while the problematic species which are native to Britain are given a free pass. … Pearce decried the language used to describe ‘invasive species’ as ‘very xenophobic,’ stating it ‘suggests that anything foreign is bad. ‘It is terrifyingly similar to the language which can be used about immigrants invading the country,’ added the environmentalist, who claims scientists are more likely to present species as dangerous if they are foreign in his book ‘The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation.’ …‘True environmentalists … should be applauding the aliens.’”

Pearce isn’t the first to equate gardening with racism. “In 2014,” continued Breitbart, “academic Ben Pitcher claimed that people who enjoy talking about gardening are closet racists who use the hobby as a covert way to promote white identity” and claimed using terms like “invasive” and “non-native” showed gardeners’ opposition to migrants and is “saturated with racial meanings.”

Okay fine. You wanna equate gardening with racism? Then let’s do it – and see where it goes.

I have spent the last ten years cultivating a huge vegetable and fruit garden through sheer hard work. And make no mistake – it’s work. I put many, many hours each summer into cultivating strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, pears, apples, grapes, plums, cherries, watermelon, cantaloupe, hazelnuts, walnuts, corn, green beans, dried beans (several types), peas, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, red bell peppers, carrots, lettuce, sage, oregano, basil, horseradish, cayenne peppers, garlic, parsley, rosemary, spearmint, seed poppies, and thyme.

All these food plants (with the exception of the trees) are in raised beds. I’m quite proud of my garden. It’s the first thing we show visitors.

Of course, weeds grow in any garden, which I diligently work to remove. In small amounts, most weeds don’t damage vegetables. Gardens can take a small amount of “weed pressure,” as it’s called, without damaging the primary crop. It’s only when weeds overgrow a bed that the crop suffers.

Sometimes I even find a volunteer vegetable plant in the “wrong” place, growing from the previous year’s seed. This kind of diversity is always welcome. Even though the volunteer is not where it’s “supposed” to be, it still contributes to the garden and produces a useful result.

Learning to garden has been something of an uphill battle for me, and I’ve made many mistakes. One year I naïvely mulched many beds with old hay, thinking I was doing the right thing. But old hay often contains foreign (to my garden) seeds, and to my horror I found I had inadvertently introduced a bunch of invasive weeds. One particularly pernicious specimen was a type of aggressive grass that sends out root runners and spreads vegetatively. Left alone, it soon dominates a bed, forming dense mats, crowding out everything else, and causing the vegetables to either grow thin or die.

Uprooting this grass is delicate and difficult. Unless every little bit of root is carefully dug up and removed, it snaps and regrows new plants from the snapped pieces. For years I’ve fought this grass and slowly I’m winning. But it’s still a fight. And that doesn’t count other weeds that invade my garden which, given the opportunity, would take over. It’s a constant battle.

Am I racist? Are my actions or my language “promoting white identity”? Of course not. I’m simply describing my gardening challenges as we strive for food self-sufficiency on our farm. If you interpret it any other way – now listen to this very, very carefully – that’s your racism showing, not mine.

Now let’s look beyond gardening. Let’s look at nature. I have a background in wildlife biology, and invasive species putting pressure on native plants and animals is a huge issue among biologists. Take Australia, for example. Here’s a continent that had been geographically isolated from the outside world for a long, long time. It contains perhaps the finest examples of unique, not-found-anywhere-else flora and fauna on the planet. But as soon as invasive species were introduced – either deliberately or by accident – they spread and flourished and out-competed the native plants and animals, sometimes to the point of extinction. The only sane way to keep this from happening everywhere is to limit the introduction of species that spread easily.

Because, you see, not all alien species become aggressive invaders. Some plants and animals assimilate beautifully and would never dream of taking over. Australia is in no danger of being taken over by non-native chickens, for example, even though chickens are everywhere.

It’s those plants and animals which don’t assimilate – which, instead, take over a garden or an ecosystem in an aggressive and destructive fashion, causing populations to become threatened or go extinct – that are the problem.

Now consider the words of historian Bill Federer:

After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Communist labor organizers, community organizers, agitators, and agent provocateurs infiltrated other countries, including the United States. They utilized the tactic of psychological projection or “blame-shifting,” in which the attacker blames the victim.

Sigmund Freud wrote in “Case Histories II” (PFL 9, p. 132) of “psychological projection” where humans resort to the defensive mechanism of denying in themselves the existence of unpleasant behavior while attributing that exact behavior to others. A rude person constantly accuses others of being rude.

Marx is attributed with the phrase “Accuse the victim of what you do” or “Accuse your opponent of what you are guilty of.” If you are lying, accuse your opponent it. If you are racist, accuse your opponent it. If you are sexually immoral, accuse your opponent it. If you are engaging in voter fraud, accuse your opponent it. If you are disseminating “fake news”, accuse your opponent of spreading it. If you are receiving millions from globalist and Hollywood elites, accuse your opponent of being controlled by the rich.

I will continue the fight to defend my garden from invasive species so it can flourish and provide us with food. I presume Australia will attempt to do the same, to save its native species of plants and animals from extinction.

All you liberals out there can interpret this as you will.

As for Pearce and Pitcher, they can take their racism and false accusations – and shove it.