Extinction Rebellion
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It is the Daily Mail and the source is the Times which is behind a paywall so I cannot verify the context but Roger Hallam has called for a ‘World War Two mobilisation’ of society, [similar to the GND being on par with FDR] with rationing and the confiscation of private property and Nuremberg-style trials.
He added that ‘maybe we should put a bullet in the head’ as punishment.
If accurately reported then he has fully justified XR being placed on the list of extremists
“How do you know we are not on this list? Have you seen it?”
No worries; the SPGB is in the clear… 😆
Even if he was tricked into saying it by some scumbag journalist, that would be in accordance with Hallam’s previously expressed views. He has said rationing must be imposed on people and commandeering private property (which all governments give themselves the power to do in time of war, and do) would be expected by him to deal with a climate emergency in which he thinks millions are going to die. It’s a Nuremberg trial and shooting those found guilty that the scumbag journalist would have tricked him into saying. But he always has come across as a raving nutcase and it is possible that this was one of his ravings.
Why haven’t XR dumped him? The trouble for them is that their other leaders share his end-of-the-world-is-nigh analysis, from which false premise he has drawn some conclusions as to what this means would have to be done. Did somebody say ecofascism? The dictatorship of the 3.5 percent?
A Socialist Party member in mid-Wales has been in touch with the local XR branch there and has had an email published in their latest Minutes (see item 7). Hope this link works for everybody.
Extinction Rebellion will blockade the area around parliament on 1 September in protest at the lack of green policies in the government’s plans to rebuild the UK economy after coronavirus…
… the activist group is preparing to peacefully block access to the area until the government agrees that the first thing they will do on their return is to debate XR’s three demands: To tell the truth about the crisis; act now; and set up a citizen’s assembly.
Despite the trials and tribulations of one of its founders, XR shows it is still active and engaged in campaigning
From those who tried to stop workers going to work by tube, more on how to put people off and lose friends. Disrupt people returning from holiday.
Their actions are neither necessary nor logical. Everybody knows now about the threatened climate crisis and it doesn’t help to exaggerate it as that will tend to make people either sceptical or resigned. Illogical because capitalist governments are doing what they can afford to in the context of international competition to deal with it, and no amount of jumping up and down will, given capitalism, be able to make them do much more. The problem will only be able to be dealt with rationally within the framework of a socialist world of common ownership and production directly for use and not for sale on a market with a view to profit.
Once again their antics risk impeding socialist activity, in this case comrades getting to head office to send out the September Socialist Standard. That reminds me, I must fill up today in case they won’t let me tomorrow or Monday.
“Extinction Rebellion will blockade the area around parliament on 1 September in protest at the lack of green policies in the government’s plans to rebuild the UK economy after coronavirus…”
This to me shows the true colours of this group, well intentioned reformers. The rebuilding of the UK economy will be ok, as long as there are a few more green policies involved. They effectively support the property owning status quo and attempt to get rid of the symptoms of environmental damage not the cause, all the while doing a great deal to piss their fellow workers off by disrupting their lives. If they went after the environmental depredations of the ruling class I would have a bit of sympathy for them, why not disrupt the “glorious 12th”many of the grouse moors in the UK are manmade semi deserts which were once forest land, surely an action like that would move the debate into who benefits from environmental destruction.
On Roger Hallam from that link mentioned in the climate crisis thread:
”Alarmism, doomism and Roger Hallam
What most scientists had not foreseen with an eye so fixated on the artillery of denialism, was the sustained and one would presume well-intentioned misuse of science from the other end of the spectrum, by those who do accept the reality of climate change. When Extinction Rebellion began in England, it conveyed a sense of being witnesses to the cascade of plant and animal extinctions that are escalating around the world as many habitats become less habitable. There is no scientific quibble with that. However, the narrative soon escalated to human death on a massive and imminent scale. As the prominent co-founder Roger Hallam saw it, the burning question had become: ‘How do we avoid extinction?’
His 2019 manifesto, Common Sense for the 21st Century(9), was written in his own name but widely hailed as representing the views of Extinction Rebellion and heavily promoted by the organisation’s London HQ. Referencing his claim to ‘one recent scientific opinion’, he warns of 6 to 7 billion people dead as a result of climate change ‘within the next generation or two’. The paper cited as his authority in the footnotes makes no such claim(10). It is purely Hallam’s extrapolation of a 5°C world, given what Common Sense calls ‘the central role of methane in a climate emergency . . . with the system spiralling out of our control and the likelihood of global collapse within a decade or two’. He reiterated the mass dieback claim in a BBC News interview feature, trenchantly insisting: ‘I am talking about the slaughter, death and starvation of 6 billion people this century – that’s what the science predicts.’(11)
Climate Feedback, a website more used to taking on deniers than alarmists, invited an expert panel to give their opinions on this prediction. The responses ranged from ‘an illustration of a worst-case scenario’ to ‘wild speculation’. Ken Caldeira, senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution, put it bluntly: ‘I know of no climate model simulation or analysis in the quality peer-reviewed literature that provides any indication’ that there is a substantial probability, above zero, of 6 billion deaths this century.”
The X (for extinction) R followers are no doubt sincere and well-intentioned but their leaders are crackpots.
Another own goal by XR:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-54038591
What on Earth did they think they were doing?
They must have known how their actions would be reported and interpreted as an attempt to suppress papers that didn’t support their point of view ( as in fact to a certain extent it was) to the detriment of their message about the urgent need to do something about global warming.
It seems they don’t care and are more concerned about getting a good feeling from going to prison for bearing witness to their Truth.
The latest stunt is not as stupidly disruptive as their antics on the trains last year, but it’s a pretty pointless action nonetheless. We should debate XR where possible. I think somebody affiliated to SW branch was going to see about setting up a meeting with them in our region – I’ll chase that up.
True there is no free press. As Marx even before he became a socialist and was still a bourgeois democrat pointed out. the first condition for a free press is that the press should not be a money-making business. A condition that is certainly not met by any of the national newspapers ( not just the Murdoch group).
But a second condition must be that the neither the state nor anyone else tries to stop anyone expressing their opinion, however obnoxious or mistaken.
XR are arguing in effect that the situation is so dangerous that this condition should be suspended if only for a day.
Not an intelligent move but one that will further piss people off with them.
Incidentally there was a reference in that link to “the rapidly-heating planet”. Fortunately it’s only an incrementally-heating planet but of course even this is a move in the wrong direction and a matter for concern.
Rather than “the rapidly-heating planet”, would it be more accurate instead to say “the rapidly-melting planet”
The State’s back-lash. A similar response to Trump’s wish to re-classify Antifa as terrorists, Johnson wants XR defined as a criminal enterprise.
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