Mob tactics expose how these fanatics hate our democracy
ASENSE of dislocation hangs over our society, battered by Covid, relentless protests and the embittered woke campaign against our heritage. Now comes a new threat in the form of environmental extremism.
In recent days, the group Extinction Rebellion has brought chaos to some of our major cities with its rolling programme of disruption. Activists in central London obstructed roads, glued themselves to Parliament’s entrances, and paralysed traffic.
But worse than these irresponsible antics was the attempt on Friday night to close down a large part of the British newspaper industry. In a disturbing escalation of Extinction Rebellion’s campaign to inflict mayhem, more than 100 zealots used vehicles and bamboo structures to block roads outside the printworks at Broxbourne in Hertfordshire and Knowsley near Liverpool.
Despite 80 arrests by the police, the production and distribution of much of the national press were severely delayed. Not only were customers denied their usual papers, but thousands of newsagents, vital to the British economy, suffered losses.
EXTINCTION Rebellion justified this sinister intervention by claiming that British papers are allied “to a failing authoritarian Government”. That accusation is as absurd as it is hypocritical. Our press is famously among the most independent, rumbustious and sceptical in the world.
The real authoritarians are the green fanatics, who label any challenge to their creed as “climate change denial” and seek to turn all news outlets into mouthpieces for their propaganda. They prefer to silence their opponents by bullying and blackmail rather than engaging in debate.
Indeed, the attack on the printworks represents the cancel culture at its worst. A free press is a pillar of an open, civilised society but that means nothing to these nihilists.
It is telling that many of the Extinction Rebellion campaigners are also involved with organisations on the fundamentalist far Left, such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Communist League. In one demo at Parliament Square last week, eco- protesters were holding a banner which read, “Socialism not Extinction”, alongside the former Soviet logo of the hammer and sickle.
No one elected any of Extinction Rebellion’s members. Yet that lack of a democratic mandate does not diminish their determination to impose their radical agenda. That is why they want to bypass Parliament by appointing their own “Citizens Assembly” to enact their programme. One of Extinction’s founders, Roger
Hallam, even declares that “high level direct action” is “a duty to bring down this genocidal government”. This is the same senior activist who says that opponents of green programmes in business or Parliament “need a bullet through their heads”.
Those words characterise the inhumanity of Extinction Rebellion. It is a doomsday cult that constantly warns of a looming apocalypse if we do not change our evil ways. Last year Gail Bradbrook, another of Extinction’s founders, moaned her two boys, 10 and 13, “won’t have enough to eat in a few years”. They certainly won’t if Extinction’s policy of severe austerity is enacted.
The eco- lunatics would drag us into a new dark age with their war on technological progress and economic growth, epitomised by their impossible demand for zero carbon emissions by 2025. The celebrities who back Extinction, such as Stephen Fry and the author Margaret Attwood, might feel they are signalling their own virtue with such support. But in reality they are acting as cheerleaders of a misanthropic, antidemocratic cause.
THE eco- zealots refuse to recognise how much western governments are doing to combat climate change. Britain is committed to zero carbon emissions by 2050. In the first quarter of this year, renewables such as wind and solar power made up almost half our energy generation.
Equally nonsensical are Extinction’s claims about media complicity in official inaction. Newspapers have done a tremendous job on highlighting the problem, as epitomised by the impressive catalogue of environmental reports in this paper by my colleague John Ingham.
The real danger to the planet comes not from Britain, but from superpowers in the East, especially India and China, whose appetite for coal- fired power stations remains unquenched.
That is where the eco mob should really focus their anger.
‘ The eco- lunatics’ war on progress would drag us into a new dark age’