Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
“Thanos did nothing wrong” has become one of the most common mantras on the Internet in recent days, and it just sparked one of the biggest events in Reddit history, but most people still don’t understand what all of the commotion is about. So let me try to break it down very simply.
In the most recent Avengers movie, the story centers around a super-villain named Thanos that intends to wipe out half of all life in the universe. He does not want to do this just to be evil, but rather his plan is to get population growth under control so that those that remain will be able to enjoy happy, sustainable lives.
If that sounds uncomfortably close to something that you have heard before, that is because it is. Population control is a major theme on the radical left, and many of them truly believe that humanity’s population must be greatly reduced “to stop global warming” and “to save the planet”. In the film, Thanos truly believes that he is doing the right thing, but since he is the villain everyone in the audience is theoretically supposed to be rooting for him to be defeated. But instead of being universally hated, Thanos has become the big breakout star from this movie. Large numbers of people are insisting that “Thanos did nothing wrong” and are embracing his population control philosophy.
Of course population control is not exactly a new idea. It was one of the main reasons why ancient civilizations conducted human sacrifice rituals, and several centuries ago it was given a more modern spin by Thomas Malthus. So the truth is that the philosophy that Thanos is promoting is simply “repackaged” for a new generation, and this is a point that G. Shane Morris made in an article earlier this year…
“Infinity War” casts its big baddie as a champion of yet another progressive pet cause: Population control. Thanos, who has teased audiences with sinister grins and cryptic statements in years of after-credit scenes, has finally revealed his true motive: He wants to wipe out half the galaxy’s population to make sure the other half has plenty to eat.
We watch during his obligatory villain speech as Thanos explains why he needs the power of the Infinity Stones: to teleport from planet to planet, killing billions in order to defuse the population bomb that desolated his home world. He does so on the assumption that Thomas Malthus first propounded: that each species has limited resources at its disposal, and the only way to keep from exhausting them is to check population growth.
The movie has been out for several months now, but the debate about Thanos has really heated up in recent days. July 9th was one of the biggest days in Reddit history, and it was...