Clown world: Extinction Rebellion is a carnival for middle classes who love to dress up as activists

Muslima said:

I know a protest when I see one. Walking around in London today it is evident that the tens of thousands of adults playing at being children are not so much protesting but putting on a performance of protest.

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Yes, too bad we can have peacefull protests instead of burning some cars, beating up foreigners and looting some property that takes our fancy.

Like the good folk in Iraq. They know how to put up a protest. Bet the author would be proud.

Nearly 100 dead in Iraqi demonstrations

Muslima said:

I know a protest when I see one. Walking around in London today it is evident that the tens of thousands of adults playing at being children are not so much protesting but putting on a performance of protest.
Unlike normal protest the men and women wearing uniforms in London today, are not there to police but to be helpful and assist this very noisy and very colorful performance.

For their part the chanters of apocalyptic slogans and the boisterous participants declaring that they know what’s best for everyone, have rehearsed their role for this mass expensive street theatre. Queuing up to get arrested is all part of this drama. There are even celebrities lurking about to provide a sense of the occasion.
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Clown world: Extinction Rebellion is a carnival for middle classes who love to dress up as activists

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Your indifference to a global problem is noted and promptly condemned.
Your skilled use of understated rhetoric, no matter how misdirected, is acknowledged and applauded.
Your focus on the central issues rather than ancillary matter, in future, is encouraged (with minimal expectation).

Muslima said:

I know a protest when I see one. Walking around in London today it is evident that the tens of thousands of adults playing at being children are not so much protesting but putting on a performance of protest.
Unlike normal protest the men and women wearing uniforms in London today, are not there to police but to be helpful and assist this very noisy and very colorful performance.

For their part the chanters of apocalyptic slogans and the boisterous participants declaring that they know what’s best for everyone, have rehearsed their role for this mass expensive street theatre. Queuing up to get arrested is all part of this drama. There are even celebrities lurking about to provide a sense of the occasion.
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Clown world: Extinction Rebellion is a carnival for middle classes who love to dress up as activists

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That's not really a news article, it's little more than an opinion piece. From the interviews I've seen, the participants feel very strongly about environmental issues and genuinely want to do something about it. Frank Furedi can wind his neck in, with his sweeping generalizations and over-inflated sense of moral and intellectual superiority.

"Extinction Rebellion now possesses the kind of moral authority previously associated with the Church and the institutions of the state." That's an astute critique. The moral rage of these days (as impotent as it might be) does seem to have taken the place of religion and the high ideas of western civilization.

In my own opinion (which isn't worth all that much), the moral/political rage on all sides is a new kind of moral authority or religion, which provides identity and purpose. The next election promises a new messiah. The new place of worship is at the feet of whichever 24 hour news source aligns with one's own political proclivities. Hope is the promise of the state or the revolution, whichever one the suppliant believes in most. As one of the current high priests of this new religion likes to put it, "Sad, very sad."

Looks like a cult religion, does it not? Modern environmentalism is just that same old nature-worshiping paganism that the world always falls into when it abandons God.

nonaeroterraqueous said:

Looks like a cult religion, does it not? Modern environmentalism is just that same old nature-worshiping paganism that the world always falls into when it abandons God.

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It does look like more fun than the show currently being put on for God.

They're a positive menace to their own cause.

They have DEMANDS and they'll cause as much disruption to ordinary people as they want to until their demands are met.

Their demands are:

1) Declare a climate emergency
2) Become a net zero carbon emitter in six years
3) Set up Citizen's Assemblies, randomly selected people reflective of the populace of the country (helped by "professional facilitators")

or

1) Meaningless.
2) Possible only by crippling just about the entire economy (seriously, it's on a par with what the UK did in the 1830s, when they effectively bought every slave in the British Empire and freed them all, which cost so much that they finished paying it off in 2015), barely, maybe.
3) At best pointless, at worst given the inevitable choice of "facilitator" a brand new Committee of Public Safety.