See what?
Extinction Rebellion
- Thread starter Jeremiah18.17
- Start date
See what?
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
why people would hate XR
Because they're run by a bunch of posh arrogant clowns with no real answers, solutions or even coherent politics with a strategy cobbled together by some know nothing dickhead who thinks he's some kind of messiah because he read half a shit book about political movements once.
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
would the dickhead be Rupert Read? I think XR are a mixed bag, but the delusion they are non-ideological and the naive advocacy of ‘sortition’ shows their overall strategy to be, putting it delicately, woeful.
Read seems to have moved away from the Chenoweth stuff, which was very much Hallam's bag. He has effectively ousted Hallam in a palace coup.
XR is a weird sprawling mix. It's not decentralised but it's not exactly top down either.
Hearse Pileup
Horse Pickup, isle 5
I don't hate them, I think some of the actions they are doing are pretty good, but their refusal to criticise capitalism makes me very dubious.
Gotta admit they have good visual communication skills though.
Gotta admit they have good visual communication skills though.
How to write about XR
It's that time of year again. Extinction Rebellion are out on the streets embarrassing us all, protesting all the things we hate but getting it so so wrong. The readership of your post Marxist blog “Why does nobody like me?” are demanding your hot take. Here's how.
The Climate Crisis - It's so massive, so bed wettingly terrifying that it's worth just brushing past in your first paragraph. Rueful shakes of the head and phrases like “Of course we ALL understand...” will serve you well here. Make the point that you were initially sympathetic to XR s aims before becoming disillusioned.
Class -Put class at the centre of your critique, ignore any issues your background might cause and emphasise whatever shit job you might be doing for six months while you wait for the right PhD to come up. Sprinkle a few names like Tarquin or Tabitha about and definitely mention Waitrose. For a final flourish intimate that all XR will immediately fly to Goa after the Rebellion. So get in a few good digs about face paint and hula hoops.
Eco Fascism – extremely important this one. You must be very worried about it. Behind Gail Bradbrook lurks the ghost of Josef Goebbels. Without your searing critique the face painted Waitrose Mums (see above) will be rounding people up in football stadiums by the end of the year.
Experienced activists - XR didn't listen to you or put you in charge. You barely know any of them and the networking opportunities are dire. Cloak this by expressing fear that XR haven't listened to seasoned veterans such as yourself and this lack of experience in the trenches will prevent them from building the kind of successful social movement you have a dozen times at least.
The Police – XR love the police. Just get straight in there and say you saw Roger Hallam tongue wrestling with Cressida Dick out the back of Scotland Yard. Nobody will check. This will buy you credibility with PoC and you might even be invited to join a drill crew. “Structural” is a good word here. Gloss over any door knocking you may have done promising the proles 10,000 extra Babylon last December. 1312!
Violence – You are very much in favour of it. XR shouldn't be sitting in the road , they should be shooting capitalists in the head. Unless that makes people late for work or something.
Conclusion – Any old commie fridge magnet shite. “Militant” , “working class communities”, “strong links to unions”, “class based approach”. You know the score
Good luck.
It's that time of year again. Extinction Rebellion are out on the streets embarrassing us all, protesting all the things we hate but getting it so so wrong. The readership of your post Marxist blog “Why does nobody like me?” are demanding your hot take. Here's how.
The Climate Crisis - It's so massive, so bed wettingly terrifying that it's worth just brushing past in your first paragraph. Rueful shakes of the head and phrases like “Of course we ALL understand...” will serve you well here. Make the point that you were initially sympathetic to XR s aims before becoming disillusioned.
Class -Put class at the centre of your critique, ignore any issues your background might cause and emphasise whatever shit job you might be doing for six months while you wait for the right PhD to come up. Sprinkle a few names like Tarquin or Tabitha about and definitely mention Waitrose. For a final flourish intimate that all XR will immediately fly to Goa after the Rebellion. So get in a few good digs about face paint and hula hoops.
Eco Fascism – extremely important this one. You must be very worried about it. Behind Gail Bradbrook lurks the ghost of Josef Goebbels. Without your searing critique the face painted Waitrose Mums (see above) will be rounding people up in football stadiums by the end of the year.
Experienced activists - XR didn't listen to you or put you in charge. You barely know any of them and the networking opportunities are dire. Cloak this by expressing fear that XR haven't listened to seasoned veterans such as yourself and this lack of experience in the trenches will prevent them from building the kind of successful social movement you have a dozen times at least.
The Police – XR love the police. Just get straight in there and say you saw Roger Hallam tongue wrestling with Cressida Dick out the back of Scotland Yard. Nobody will check. This will buy you credibility with PoC and you might even be invited to join a drill crew. “Structural” is a good word here. Gloss over any door knocking you may have done promising the proles 10,000 extra Babylon last December. 1312!
Violence – You are very much in favour of it. XR shouldn't be sitting in the road , they should be shooting capitalists in the head. Unless that makes people late for work or something.
Conclusion – Any old commie fridge magnet shite. “Militant” , “working class communities”, “strong links to unions”, “class based approach”. You know the score
Good luck.
Hearse Pileup
Horse Pickup, isle 5
I have friends in XR and believe in the work they're doing, I'm just less trustful of XR the entity in general.
It's precisely this kind of sneering that makes me hate them. There's no attempt at all to engage with any criticism, it's all haha we're so much wittier and cleverer and beyond politics than you boring olds going on about capitalism all the time. It's fucking distilled hipster neoliberalism, all brand, no substance, on top of a load of guilt driven middle class self sacrifice that only serves to fuel the superiority complex.
Agree with this, it's the leadership and the way they dominate, promote and present the movement that is the problem.
I wrote that because I'm just fed up of the relentless sneering criticism XR draw.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
I dislike XR because whether they know it or not, they agitate for eco-austerity. They want the government to declare an emergency, presumably granting them extraordinary powers in the process. They seem to talk a lot about Citizens' Assemblies, but for this to work effectively relies on the cooperation of the very same political structures that XR claims to want to move beyond. What would ensure that the current political order doesn't just use such assemblies as a democratic figleaf for making ordinary people pay for the environmental damage of capital?
Also their antics on the ground do not exactly fill me with confidence. Like that ridiculous incident in which some XR protestors apparently decided that the best place for an action was on the rail network. You know, the common form of public transport that most people are at least vaguely aware is more environmentally friendly than going by car. I think I've heard the excuse that targeting the rail network would reach a wider audience, but this is also an audience which you've just directly inconvenienced while they were on their way to work. I'm no expert on human psychology, but my instincts tell me that most people aren't going to be in a very receptive mindset if you've just annoyed them.
Also their antics on the ground do not exactly fill me with confidence. Like that ridiculous incident in which some XR protestors apparently decided that the best place for an action was on the rail network. You know, the common form of public transport that most people are at least vaguely aware is more environmentally friendly than going by car. I think I've heard the excuse that targeting the rail network would reach a wider audience, but this is also an audience which you've just directly inconvenienced while they were on their way to work. I'm no expert on human psychology, but my instincts tell me that most people aren't going to be in a very receptive mindset if you've just annoyed them.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
I mostly agree with the first paragraph, though it's often a problem with all movements; recuperation of radical demands into something that fits capital rather than anything else. I guess an issue is whether there's something inherent with what XR are asking/doing that makes it more likely, and what they then do if that becomes more of something materially real. I expect they'd be split along clearer political lines if it did become a serious issue which would probably be a good thing. I agree that the bits of XR that are the weakest are the bits you mention, the citizen's assemblies in particular, and I do think they need to make more of a political point that they are against that kind of eco-austerity.
The second bit I'm less convinced by. The action you mention was totally shit for a whole host of reasons, but from what I understand most of XR were against it, and a few people went on and did it anyway against the wishes of the group/movement. I think that's partly a problem with their decision making and structure, but it's also a problem for any movement or group that gets beyond a certain size and popularity, and plenty of shit stuff happens in riots and revolutions to take a extreme example.
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Hearse Pileup
Horse Pickup, isle 5
True, but I don't think it's helped by their decentralised-but-not organisation model. On top of which, as you already mentioned, this cuts both ways because they can dissasociate themselves from all percieved-harmful actions; whether helpful or not. Their refusal as an organisation to see climate change (and resisting it) as political is myopic at best, and willfully negligent/counterproductive at worst.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
the tyranny of faux structurelessness
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Yeah, their organisational model is a bit problematic, but structure/organistional form/whatever is something all political organisations on the left really struggle with, and they're no different in that way. I do totally agree that one of the most important and valid criticisms of them is the 'beyond politics/we're not political' stuff they come out with, but that is controversial within XR too isn't it, and some of the XR groups clearly don't abide by that in reality?
I do think a more interesting discussions would be what stuff they've got right. Why have they got hundreds of thousands of people on the streets all over the world, when many of us struggle to get 10 people to lots of our events?
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Hearse Pileup
Horse Pickup, isle 5
I think good visual communications plays a big role, I can't help thinking that some of this comes from their very willingness to be 'beyond politics' - makes designers less antsy about getting involved.
I also think the environment is a good rallying point because it's something people can't really push back on that easily. Literally saving the planet is a hard cause to disagree with. I also think that encouraging this kind of self-organising structure with a loose set of central principles helps strengthen a network of activist groups. I have friends who are very involved with BLM and XR; but we've had these exact kind of discussions too about problems with the main organising body.
Personally I think the better you can educate your peers to self-organise, the more strength a movement has - even if its goals dilute somewhat.
I think it's undeniable that, despite any criticisms I'm making, XR have moved the needle on these issues more than anything I can think of in recent memory. With the potential exception of Black Lives Matter - though I think public opinion probably sways against BLM slightly more than XR. If that's something you care about - I'm not sure it always needs to be if the work you're doing is necessary for your direct community.
The latest from Hallam's splinter group which has some support from local XR groups seems to be that parliamentary democracy should be abolished and that everything should be decided by Citizen's Assemblies led by 'experts' and based on sortition. When you ask who picks the experts, and who decides what's up for debate, all you get back are a load of slogans about power to the people man. Whilst patently ridiculous I think this really shows where the beyond politics nonsense leads. An undemocratic all powerful administration wielding power through assemblies rubber stamping decisions made by state appointed experts on a sector by sector basis really does start to look uncomfortably similar to Fascism.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
I don't know if this is fair. Our politicians mostly aren't experts are they? Not even ministers. So at the moment we have a parliament/executive that makes decisions informed by experts, and he's suggesting that instead we have randomly selected groups of people doing that instead, with the idea that that would undermine the powerful interest groups that hold the party politics-dominated processes in stasis during a time of existential crisis.
It's got problems as a system but I can see the political logic behind it and I think you're unnecessarily reading the worst possible interpretation into it. Or perhaps I should say: I don't agree with you that it would be less democratic than our current system.
Of course it would be. It's complete disenfranchisement, you don't even get a vote anymore you get a lottery ticket. A remote chance of being expected to attend a committee discussing building regulations or something else you know nothing about whilst a state appointed expert tells you what to decide. And so there's still a state, there has to be, because this isn't bottom up consensus led politics coming from workers or communities, it's top down edicts which will have to be enforced. Who makes the decisions about that? The power of the state does not depend on the charade in Parliament, all that does is swap the actors round now and then. How does this hidden dictatorship respond to resistance either from us or capital? How does it respond to a general strike or a war? How does it respond to assembly decisons it doesn't like? How long before the rhetoric of crisis is used to suspend the assemblies in the national interest?
It's a blueprint for dictatorship, presumably led by the last ones standing when the system is introduced, which in Roger Hallam's daft mind is the Beyond Politics Party after a glorious election win. If I noticed that I'm sure he has. And it's such a shit plan lol.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
Wait a minute, there's a "Beyond Politics" party that runs in elections? That seems... muddle-headed, to say the least.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
never mind that seeming muddle-headed, have you noticed the phenomenon of people from one political party attacking other politicians for playing politics?
eg Success of free food for kids leaves bitter taste
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
How fucking dumb do you have to be to accuse a fellow politician of "playing politics"... that's literally what they get paid to fucking do. Cunts.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
I'm still not clear on why this new system is so much more objectionable than the current system. You think the parliamentary system is good at responding to resistance from us? How does my vote every four years put me in charge of the state at the moment? How did the parliament-led state respond to a general strike? How is the dictatorship of hippies worse than the dictatorship of capital we live under? I'm happy to see critique of RH's ideas but not on the basis it would be so terrible compared to parliamentary democracy.
Of course, if you compare RH's system to the perfect system you have in your head, it's definitely not as good as that, but most people will be comparing it to the parliamentary democracy we have.
Are you seriously arguing we'd be better off under a dictatorship? How do we win anything under that system? What's the point of protests and strikes if decisons are made by unaccountable committees? What kind of monstrously violent state structures would be required to keep the inevitable dissent in check?
Yes the current system is shit, but it is a system forged out of compromises due to centuries of class antagonism. What if a committee decides to scrap social security to save money and the administration decides the debate is now closed, permanently? How do we get rid of them? How do we get rid of a Thatcher? Or a Mussolini? Or Roger Hallam? You think he will schedule a committee for his own demise? The only people outside of such a state to have power would be capitalists, who in the absence of economic revolution will be needed to pay for everything. And even if by some miracle an assembly decided to abolish private property how does that work when capital says fuck off? Without a mass working class movement it can only be achieved by top down ultra-violence, and if we've got a mass working class movement capable of abolishing capitalism then we don't need a bunch of hippies scheduling assemblies on our behalf. So about the best you could say about his plans is that oh well if it swings left we'll get something like Stalinism. And given 'beyond politics' seems to mean capitalism without politicians it's very unlikely to swing left.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Sorry, I just don't see it. It's just another system of representation - with sortition attempting to get a cross-section of the population's views rather than through voting for parties (not a system known for picking up the nuances of people's views itself). All systems of representation have problems, but at a large scale it's difficult to get away from it altogether.
