It was on July 4, 2025, that Kamala Harris received her first true “3 a.m. phone call” as President. The time was 3:26, in fact, and on the line was the Director of National Intelligence (and Harris’s fellow Californian) Adam Schiff. “Madam President,” Schiff began, his tone instantly telegraphing the direness of the situation, “we have some urgent intelligence from Russia.” Given the circumstances, “urgent” was an understatement.
Minutes earlier, the US Intelligence Community had received word from the Kremlin that a group of radical climate activists calling itself Extinction Now had infiltrated the central-control station at Russia’s newest nuclear plant, in Kaliningrad. The group’s demand was as simple as it was psychotic: Russia, along with all other developed nations, had to cease the production and consumption of fossil fuels and nuclear energy within 24 hours.
Failing this, they would shut down the reactor coolant and "set off a nuclear explosion that will make Chernobyl look like child’s play”. Yes, a blast of such magnitude would do “some environmental harm” but “if it means helping eradicate the pandemic of human life that has plagued our little, blue gem of a planet, so be it.”
[su_membership_ad]
This was not merely a European headache; the White House soon received word of similar infiltrations at nuclear facilities in France, Canada, China — and the US. Ditching the old green mantra, Extinction Now thought (and acted) globally.
Harris’s political life flashed before her. She wouldn’t be in the White House had it not been for Trump’s third-party challenge to the GOP nominee, Ron DeSantis, which had divided the Right. Moreover, a polarised public hadn't indulged her with the honeymoon period new presidents expect. And her legitimacy was under a permanent cloud, owing to dramatic changes to US electoral laws, including votes for illegal immigrants, imposed by executive order by her predecessor and ex-boss, Joe Biden.
But why should she be sorry for that decision? Media, academe, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, corporate America and the nation’s professional class as a whole all adored her. What did it matter to her that a smattering of malcontents — whose conspiracy-laden views were increasingly invisible to the non-deplorables, thanks to the efforts of Messrs. Dorsey and Zuckerberg — objected to the new regime?
[su_unherd_related fttitle="More from this series" author="Douglas Coupland"]https://staging.unherd.com/2021/07/is-this-the-end-of-the-world/[/su_unherd_related]
Meanwhile, there were other burning questions blazing that night at the White House residence: how had America’s top-flight spy agencies missed the threat from Extinction Now? Why hadn’t the Russians, let alone allies such as Britain and France, warned Washington? Was there some scientific or technical solution? If not, was there a military option? If the West were forced to meet the Extinction Now demand, how should she level with the public?
No one among the Cabinet members and other high officials assembled in the White House Situation Room could give the President a straight answer. It fell to a nerdy-looking National Security Council staffer, standing in the pews surrounding the principals’ table, to voice the grim truth. This staffer seemed to have sensed that something truly apocalyptic was afoot, and so felt bold enough to unburden himself of opinions that under normal circumstances would have almost certainly ended his career.
He began to read from hastily jotted notes on a pad. “Madam President,” he said, as a hush fell over the room, “the reason America’s Intelligence Community missed the militarisation of Extinction Now and other extreme green groups isn’t complicated: the vast majority of our spooks spend their days analysing their identities along intersectional lines of race, gender and sexuality.
“As you know, the CIA now specifically recruits for people with gender-identity and anxiety disorders. Madam President, the last time our office requested a CIA report on jihadist groups operating in the Sahel, they protested that the Council was racist, xenophobic, fascist and triggering. Six employees requested indefinite compassionate leave as a result of our request.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="Suggested reading" author="Mary Harrington"]https://staging.unherd.com/2021/03/the-woke-battle-for-cultural-imperialism/[/su_unherd_related]“As for Russia and our allies,” the staffer went on, “the other great powers have been trying to warn you about the rise of hard-line greens. The trouble is, they can’t get through. You’ve put Karen Attiah in charge of European policy, remember? Before joining your administration, she had a knack for enraging the French by knocking out ill-informed jeremiads applying the parochial obsessions of US wokesters to global problems. She cast Macron almost as a fascist! The French — and not just the French — now see critical race theory as a tool of American imperialism designed to undermine their national cohesion; trust is low.
“And it was you, Madam President, who as Vice President oversaw the reorganisation of the Intelligence Community, installing a directorate for diversity, inclusion and equity at each agency. And the DIE directors at the various agencies have been working overtime to filter any intelligence from Russia, France, Britain and the like out of your daily briefings — on the grounds that these powers cling to the 'dark vestiges of the past', as you yourself put it in your Inaugural Address.”
[su_unherd_related fttitle="Suggested reading" author="Ayaan Hirsi Ali"]https://staging.unherd.com/2021/07/why-islamism-became-woke/[/su_unherd_related]
The staffer explained that a scientific-technical solution was out of reach: “Given the direction of grant money these days, our top physicists now devote most of their energies to exploring the connection between the cosmos and the idea of racial blackness and to interrogating the use of terms such as ‘black holes’ among mostly white, heterosexist scientists. And our scientists are increasingly — how should I put this delicately? — inadequate, their departments flooded with race-and-gender theorists since the elimination of selective testing.
“And Madam President, you might as well forget about a military solution. Many in the top brass, as you can probably guess, have been busy naming and renaming bases — Guantanamo Bay has been renamed Naval Base Mumia Abu Jamal, though its, er, mission has hardly changed — and redesigning flags and insignia to remove any trace of the stars and stripes. The generals love CRT. As for the specific infiltration units we’d need for this particular job, those guys have been working remotely since the rolling Covid lockdowns became the norm. They haven’t trained for years and are frankly hideously overweight.
“Madam President," the staffer was winding up, "your best bet is to level with the public and tell the people you’re going along with Extinction Now. We can hope a pre-emptive US surrender will dissuade them from blowing up our reactors, at least. Turn the Russians into the villains here and insist democracy itself is at stake.”
Within hours, more than half of American residential homes and small businesses would lose power. Gas queues would stretch for miles. Shoppers fighting over basic supplies in grocery stores would resort to armed struggle. Riots would break out in red states and blue, though the federal government and media would strictly refer to the latter as “social-justice gatherings”.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="More from this series" author="Jamie Bartlett"]https://staging.unherd.com/2021/07/this-is-how-democracy-dies/[/su_unherd_related]Americans, and the West as a whole, would be foolish to underestimate the security risks posed by woke ideology to our societies — even setting aside the important question of its origin: whether it represents the working out of liberal principles or some foreign ideological invasion, from a source extrinsic to liberal order itself (I believe it’s mostly the former).
Wokeness serves two functions for today’s ruling elites. The first is a kind of ideological control directed against Western working classes: wokeness covers over concrete class and economic injustices — massive wealth inequality, health precarity, stagnant wages and so on — with a thick fog of mystification. It creates an impression of furious change and even revolutionary activity. Yet what is in fact taking place is mostly intra-elite competition and redistribution: a disabled trans woman may be on the board, but workers still have to relieve themselves in bottles for lack of sufficient breaks. Wokeness, moreover, is a powerful regulatory mechanism for the HR department, replacing the old factory discipline with a far more invasive psychological apparatus having to do with workers’ use of language and, in essence, their manners.
But there is a second function, and it’s this one that threatens to upset the whole applecart. As Oliver Bateman has astutely argued, woke censorship also serves to insulate elites themselves from reality. The owners of capital and the dull-witted “meritocrats” who service them would prefer not to be exposed to the discontents of workers — but also to other realities that call their rule into question, whether diplomatic or environmental or military. The system must go on. Wokeness creates a filter for uncomfortable facts.
To take a real-world example: US elites spent decades courting China and inviting the Beijing regime into the international economic order, often at the expense of workers in the American heartland. Then it turned out that the Chinese may have been responsible for unleashing a novel virus that cost millions of lives and untold economic damage (much of it borne by the Western poor).
But rather than face this reality and all it implied head-on, elites deployed wokeness as an insulating mechanism. Linking the virus to its origins was xenophobic in the early days of the pandemic (witness the World Health Organisation’s virus-naming agonies), and suggesting the possibility of a lab leak was likewise racist and “unscientific” to boot. Facebook aggressively censored any lab-leak claims, including a column in the New York Post, where I work. Economic interdependence with China is paramount, and wokeness helps block elites’ own view of its downsides.
You can see how easily this principle, taken to its logical conclusion, could usher in the next cataclysm, one far more serious than Covid-19.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeHa ha. This article is hysterical. Worth the subscription to Unherd all by itself.
Still, there’s much truth (however painful) in this article. You know the old saying: many a true word is said in jest.
Article in today’s DT – Yeonmi Park.
“But her time at Columbia [University] left her feeling uneasy…she mentioned she would like to read Jane Austen. Her instructor told her Austen was a “bigoted whitesup remac ist- by reading classical literature you are being brainwashed subconsciously”….several coursemates objected to studying…”bigots like Mozart and Beerhoven”….
[the idea] that white people are responsible for the crimes of their ancestors…struck her as bizarrely similar to the North Korean principle of “guilt by association”, in which 3 generations of a family are punished if one person betrays the state…”
Etc
Yes, the US us doomed and so are we because we are importing this nonsense even though our circumstances are totally different to those of the US.
A final thought. Again in today’s DT, an article on South Africa and the corruption in the ANC. The author comments that the ANC’s view that it was “our time to eat” and “captured the state” by placing acolytes in the police, security agencies, public services and nationalised enterprises, with the current riots being an attempt by those acolytes to jeep on the gravy train by derail Ramaphosa’s attempts to clean up the corruption
We are not quite as bad as South Africa, but the parallels are there and it is very worrying.
Scotland under the SNP is half way to South Africa already.
I live in Scotland and completely refute that life here under Emperor Kranky is corrupt, nepotistic or that the SNP runs the country like a complete shambles. Due to her unerring, stunning and brave rule we are the most fan-dabbie-dozzy country in the world. Also if you have anything to sell to the SNP please apply to the Calmac Ferry purchasing department for your free £100 million.
Or: ‘Nicola Sturgeon is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.’
Great article –
Kamala Harris – 5 watt politician in a 100 watt job. Even her own Democrat party didn’t want her, she only got 2% of their vote.
Harris is pathetic. It’s tragic.
She has a nice chortle .
As much as this seems to ridiculous to be true, I must remind myself that most incidents I read about wokeness seem outlandish and ridiculous. Indeed the cult of wokeness can easily destroy America.
I fear it already has….
We need to wean ourselves off social media. The cost is just too high.
WE should, on the other hand this far left woke and anti Western and European ideology exists in the university system and over time those ideas will become the norm of society. Particularly as America becomes less white.
On July 4, I deleted my account on Facebook, or as I call it, Zuckerberg’s Army of the Damned.
BUT WHAT IF…………?
Why bother what if, the reality is sufficient that there is no need to make up completely fictional and fantastically unlikely scenarios destroying the world’s societies. Here is the world:
Covid = money
Tech = deflationary money
Printing = inflationary money
Job market not recovering = Stagflation money
Equities = hugely inflated P/E money
Covid Response, = tens of Trillions of $ Money created out of air
Covid medical = Trillions of $ for the highly corrupt, and corrupting Medical Industrial Complex. Political money
China CBC (digital yuan) = money
Inflation, deflation, recession, tapering, interest, debt, Treasuries, FED, ECB, = money
Green energy/renewables = money
Afghanistan, Iran Iraq, Syria… = Money
‘Unfunded Mandates’ = money not affordable
Pensions with no interest = no money
Tax = money
On and on – this point in history it is ALL ABOUT MONEY (because money, Fiat money, all the worlds currencies, are mere paper, like the Emperor’s new clothes, and they are a house of cards, and if they topple it will be BAD).
The world is entirely about money, it is on a knife edge, ready to plunge into ultimate financial disater, but the whole topic is NOT discussed here. Now it is like 1938, and the MSM will not discuss Germany, Italy, and Japan, which were about to crash the world into the worst disaster yet seen; Well the way the worlds $300,000,000,000,000 of debt, the National Central Bank money printing (as it were) threatens to bring down the global Reserve Currency, and thus the global house of cards, is on par with that threat – REAL Global threat, but that is never talked of here.
Write on that.
The solution is simple. The media need to stop promoting green nonsense and report that 97% of scientists are wrong, learn some basic physics and get back to cheap, reliable energy provided by coal.
Firstly that solution isn’t simple. Secondly green ideology isn’t the real problem here.
Is that suggestion serious, or are you being satirical?
The article turned out to be a lot more fun than the jaded headline.
A very readable and not that fanciful account. As I understand it the US Navy is more concerned about woke ideology than it is about fighting wars and sailing ships.
“US elites spent decades courting China and inviting the Beijing regime into the international economic order, often at the expense of workers in the American heartland. ” This is true but it isn’t the first time. Antony Sutton described in detail how the USA built tbe USSR in the same manner. Including helping them with MIRV technology. Wrap your mind around that. Sutton also saw kissinger and then Nixon go to China. He immediately understood what that meant. He stated China would overtake the USA by 2000. I think he was 20 years off. He thought it was about greed, power, increasing their influence over the world. Maybe they were just trying to perfect an effecient totalitarian system? The USSR was a failure but they think they got it right with China? Will we all live like the Chinese from now on?
She is a brainless drone. Gates, big pharma, the WEF, and the tech overlords are the enemy. They own Harris. Russians are serious about security and protecting their people unlike the Western countries. This scenario isn’t plausible.
Wow. This is one of the best pieces I’ve read in UnHerd. I hope Ahmari uses it as the basis for what will surely be a bestselling dystopian novel!
One thing wokeness lacks is a clear leader. Ultra collectivist societies always revolve around a single personality: Hitler, Stalin, Mao …
Wokeness looks likely to destroy itself through competition for leadership status. But can Harris become the Supreme Wokestress? Currently it seems unlikely. But so does the insanity of the wokeness that has overtaken the reasoning faculties of many intelligent, decent people.
The signs to watch out for are the fetishising and pledging of allegiance to “Heil Harris, Supreme Wokestress of the USA and the World”. Then we will be in such trouble that I would put my trust in the youth of China before the youth of America. Already they are probably less brainwashed and are aware of the warning of the Red Guards.
Markle is surely heading towards queen of woke. President would not be enough
Interesting possible future.
Allowing illegals to vote by EO would certainly be a tipping point in the red/blue balance, but such an action would also likely provoke a constitutional crisis. Many red state governors, led by DeSantis, would probably not permit such federal over-reach in their states. In many purple states some Democrat officials might be tempted to implement such a policy (despite 2022 midterm red wave) but I would expect violent resistance by many citizens – an ACTUAL insurrection!
Wonderful explication of just how knotted up so many of them must be. They really don’t know what they are really doing.
Thanks UnHerd for such a great presence. This 72 yo Australian needs you!
Fantastic article, except that KH stands little to no chance of being democratically elected as the next US president. But yet again, we may have said the same thing about a guy named Trump in 2015. So we’ll see …
Mid terms will scupper the Democrats. They’ll be caretakers until 2024 and then the world will be a different place. Obama was the same – ‘yes we can’ but never did. Put more trust in the American public and keep an eye on the voting machines.
Don’t forget Mad Mutti, another globalist: “Wir schaffen das!” Who spent 16 years having fun with her wrecking ball in Europe and its environs. Even the incapable can wreak devastation.
To the first half of this I say “Sohrab take a pill.” The last thing we need is more hysteria.
No indeed – we must keep our heads firmly buried in the sand.
Shut him down… shut him down… shut.t.t…
Brilliant. What is not discussed in most of the comments below and has been passed over – and that is a pity – is the observation on the disunity on the ‘Right’ being one of the precipitating factors that brings about the fictional (?) cataclysm/climax.
Brilliant. What has not been discussed in the comments below and mostly passed over – and that is a pity – is the article’s reference to the lack of unity on the ‘Right’ that brings about the cataclysmic climax that it imagines. Well done!
So, in the end, it is all about the failure of leaders to put society above self – it just comes in different garbs, different ideologies, arguments and slogans.
Initially I thought it was a Freddie Forsyth novel plagiarised by the author. Frightening to discover this is a probable not just a possible scenario. Woke GB be aware
This piece is exaggerated hyperbole, and simply wrong. It assumes, par example, that the United States will still exist in 2025, something that is extremely unlikely. Although I advocate a peaceful dissolution of the individual states that are in no way “united” or “indivisible,” as the Pledge of Allegiance goes, the USA is on the brink of Civil War. And I mean a real, shooting, Civil War, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, etc.
Look at two states–really one failed stated and one former state–that have divided their people along racial and ethnic lines: Lebanon and (the former) Yugoslavia. Perhaps an astute reader can tell me how those states failed or ended?
Lock and load.
This is what happens when the editor takes a long weekend.
I know that one of the functions of “Unherd” is to think the unthinkable and say the unsayable. However there are occasions when the unthinkable is not thought and the unsayable not said because they are specious nonsense.
But congratulations for getting half way through before saying “woke”
I kinda fancy that a President Kamala would be more conservative than many imagine. Maybe preferable to Biden.
Maybe. Only Nixon can go to China.
heh. My comment is down to 0 likes after starting strongly with 3 or 4..
Not a lot of voter love for our Kamala it seems.
Gone negative now! This is exciting.
She could outcackle Cruela Devill, apart from that I’m sure she’d be as warm and cuddly as my pet crocodile… tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock. Excuse me, Mr. Pence! I’m ticking now… BANG!