There’s been a series of protests going on in London for the few weeks or so, headed by a movement known as Extinction Rebellion, a group that has been gaining its fair share of fame and notoriety in the last year or so. The movement can best be described as environmentalism-without-adjectives in that, ostensibly, it has very little in the way of central, cogent, defining ideology other than a small set of demands. They’re not communists, they’re not socialists (god I wish they were either of those things), they’re not anarchists, they’re not fascists, they probably aren’t even social democrats as far as I know, and indeed they don’t like to consider themselves on the left or the right and consider the traditional political spectrum to be divisive. Honestly, that’s good for my sake because it means I don’t have to treat them as serious leftists, even though unfortunately a lot of the right already do.
I have several issues with the movement, issues that extend far beyond their bizarre appropriation of Greek pagan aesthetics for shock value purposes (those red robed guys from a while back). One of the biggest issues I have with them is that they are fundamentally opposed to the working class. Think about it: if they’re serious about this climate emergency, why don’t they disrupt the lives of the wealthy elite rather than the average worker in London? Why can’t they try and shut down some fossil fuel-based power plant instead of the London Underground? And while we’re at it why not disrupt the actual meeting places and events of climate deniers rather than do this weird mass breastfeeding protest to whine about YouTube letting some asshole make videos on their platform? It is a fact that just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of the emissions that pollute the atmosphere, that’s the lion’s share of the emissions that the average joe isn’t responsible for. Instead of punishing ordinary people for the fact that their choices can’t possibly dislodge that, they should be actively disrupting the operations of those 100 companies. Instead of making the lives of the people more inconvenient, they should be making things more inconvenient for the rich. But of course they won’t do that, because they don’t actually care about the working class, and I might add they themselves are bankrolled by the rich and function as a capitalist operation. That honestly is why I find the right-wing criticism of them to be so laughable: if only they were anti-capitalist, if only they could be counted as part of the working class movement, if only they were genuine political radicals.
Then there’s their overall confused take on the way climate change is treated by the government and the media. Wales has declared a climate emergency, though admittedly the rest of Britain hasn’t, but they constantly whine about the government not saying enough about climate change. Now, granted, when Theresa May entered office, the government basically scrapped a department that was dedicated to tackling climate change: that was a major step in the wrong direction for us. But then they whine about how the BBC isn’t being honest about the scale of the climate change crisis. They never specify what they’re not covering.
But my biggest crticism of all is their image of rebellion (I know, strange for a Luciferian to criticize, but bear with me for a moment). Who or what are these guys rebelling against exactly? Certainly not the government, that’s for sure. Oh they’ll talk quite the game about the government not doing enough and that this why they need to rebel, but when it comes to the police, their primary praxis seems to consist of worshipping the ground that the cops walk on! They’ve celebrated somebody, possibly one of their own members, getting arrested for some unspecified reason, they shout about how much they love the police even as they’re busy arresting fellow protestors, and they even encourage protestors to hand themselves over to the police after graffitying hand prints. This is just the height of bootlicking scumfuckery from a supposedly radical movement. This is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. I can understand and even get behind the idea of the movement telling its members that they should just be prepared to face jail time in pursuit of their cause and be prepared to get into conflict with the authorities in that path – hell, if they were actually prepared to fight the powers that be in any form, they would be pretty interesting. But instead they’re kissing the asses of the police while they lock up their comrades for the high crime of peaceful protest. And the worst part about it is they justify their handing themselves over with some stupid selfish spiel about “moral responsibility”. Their turning themselves in is framed as an acting out a principle of holding themselves accountable for their own actions. I ask, accountable to whom? The people who are oppressing peaceful demonstration? The government you say is betraying the planet? The system that is killing our species? You disgust me!
In short, Extinction Rebellion is the worst protest movement I have ever seen. In the eleven years of my life in which I’ve considered myself politically conscious, I have never seen such an insufferable, pathetic, shameful movement, whatever the cause.
Aleph's Heretical Domain 