In that same period, Bartkus’ rhetoric on alternative social media sites was dark. “I would not acknowledge reproduction as a human right, but instead as a form of rape,” IndictEvolution wrote on Lemmy.World in July 2023. “I am also not bothered by infanticide as long as it is done humanely…”
What bothers me is that there’s real problems in the world stemming from our political economy and the fixation on human growth is missing a far more consequential component- capitalist mode of production.
That particular political economy is what requires that the market is ever-increasing in size or else it collapses. From my position it’s disappointing that someone looking for answers like this person was instead spiraled off into misanthropy rather than finding their way to more effective criticisms for that current political economy which is killing us.
These aren’t new revelations, they have been getting expressed for over a hundred years at this point. Young people landing on antinatalism to me looks like it’s a consequence of many decades of red scare and purges of anything critical of capitalism in education and culture, leaving people looking for answers anywhere they can find them.