Why I Am Opposed to Extinction Rebellion

i think XR are approaching the climate crisis from completely the wrong angle. their approach is not going to work because the people they're trying to involve are the people who are actually frightened of the possibility of extinction. that will never build into a movement which changes anything. i think they've conflated the idea that you 'accept' extinction with 'i am absolutely consumed with dread about the future'.

do you see what i mean? it's one thing to say 'it's bad for human life to get wiped out' (which we all agree with, and agree that it's on the cards that it will), but it's another thing to be frenetically trying to collect people who feel deeply traumatised about this dystopia.

and XR aren't really trying to convince anyone who doesn't feel this way already anyway - because you actually can't. anyone who isn't already on XR's wavelength about ''the world is fucked'', can't really be converted to the old 60s ultra-left mentality of ''we're all gonna be nuked tomorrow!!''

and so when people said to me ''comrade, we could go into XR and truly make it good, and give it direction, and like... transform it into the force which kicks off the revolution'', i ran through a few thoughts:

• i will choose to believe you are not cynical and you actually do want to do as you say. you are not going into it because it's ''on the scene of the left'', and you're trying to recruit for an organisation or convert people, or like, ''take over XR'' for your feifdom of the left. like i genuinely DO NOT think this, and i think y'all have good intentions.

• we're going into XR because we have shared aims, and their minimum program is enough to be ''radical'' and acceptable

but at what point are you or i gonna speak up at a meeting and say, ''okay. /actually/ it would be better if we did MORE than just XR's program''? does that happen through/inside XR or outside XR?

and it's at this point i think, actually, i think i have pretty good evidence no-one who XR is designed to attract is ever going to agree with going beyond XR.

on this point i want to make it clear that i don't agree that it's because XR is a liberal and NGO funded organisation/movement. which it is - but on this point i don't give a shit. whatever. if it was possible in a particular instance to radicalise liberals and NGOs i'd fucken do it.

but with XR, i don't think so, because: the.. 'attitude' of the people who get involved in XR, as i said, isn't that they also agree with us that capitalism is destroying the world, it's that these people aren't /interested/ in a mass movement. XR ... 'selects' or 'attracts' people whose jam is that the world is ending, and that, actually, not everyone has to be involved.

hence the whole ''only 3.5% of the world'' needs to be mobilised - this is the program of a movement of spreading a feeling of complete trauma and panic.

i personally don't approach the very likely chance that i, or everyone i love gets murdered because civilisation gets destroyed, from this angle.

like, who gives a fuck if it happens and XR is still around then and they go around saying ''i fucking told you so''. how hypocritical is that? you were never interested in working with /me/ anyway. or anyone besides yourselves.

i suppose the most charitable i can be to XR is: i would absolutely get involved in XR if we all said what we were actually thinking: actually XR isn't acceptable to me right now! it /isn't/ good enough.

and then, we asked the next question - why?

seriously: fuck motivating people with panic and alarm and... images of dystopia. i will never ever truly understand why i solved a problem if i was scared of it. if i did at all.