How Extinction Rebellion scored another own-goal
Robert Conquest, the 20th-century British historian, set down three laws of politics. The first was that everyone is conservative about what he knows best. The second was that any organisation not explicitly Right-wing sooner or later becomes Left-wing.
The law that rings truest of all today, however, is the third. Which is that the simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
In recent years, many political events have seemed utterly incomprehensible. But when examined through the prism of Conquest’s Third Law, all becomes clear.
The history of the Labour Party, for example, makes much more sense if you assume that, in 2015, the party was hijacked not by Marxists, but by undercover Tories in fake beards. The plot required extraordinary dedication and stamina, but in December last year it ended in triumphant success.
Equally, the current row over free school meals makes more sense if you assume that many Tory MPS are actually undercover Marxists. By deliberately making the most ridiculous possible objections to extending free school meals, these infiltrators aim to make the Right look as clueless about poverty as the Left claims.
On Sky News the other morning, for instance, a supposed Tory minister going by the name of Nadhim Zahawi claimed that what the poorest children really wanted wasn’t food, it was “activities”.
Come off it. No real minister would believe something that daft. “Mum, I’m hungry.”
“Shut up and eat your paintball…”
The most self-defeating organisation of our times, however, must be Extinction Rebellion. Its stunts are so counterproductive, they might have been devised by people hell-bent on tarnishing the environmentalist cause.
Take its latest masterclass in public relations. On Sunday, a gang of Extinction Rebellion activists strode around, uninvited, to Sir David Attenborough’s house – to tell him he was undermining their fight against climate change.
In an interview a few weeks earlier, Sir David had politely ventured to suggest that, while he shared Extinction Rebellion’s anxiety about climate change, breaking the law wasn’t necessarily the optimal way to win public support. The group criticised his comments at the time. But now activists had decided to go further, by confronting him in person.
Unfortunately for them, however, Sir David wasn’t able to come to the door – because, as his daughter explained to them, he’s 94 years old, and is a little bit concerned about a bug that’s going around. So the activists left a letter, pompously informing him that he risked “contributing to the erasure of the voices and sacrifices of front-line Earth protectors”. They also left him a delightful gift: a little olive tree, decorated with photographs of murdered environmentalists.
What an absurd thing to do. Imagine the meeting where they concocted this brainwave.
“Right, everyone. For some reason, the British public seem to have formed the impression that we’re sanctimonious, out of touch and extremely annoying. A pack of posh student nitwits. A bunch of Gap-yah Jemimas and Trust-fund Mungos. We urgently need to dispel that unfair and inaccurate image, so that the public will sympathise with our aims and listen to our plans. Any ideas?”
“I know. How about we pointlessly harass the best-loved man in the country in the middle of a pandemic?”
“Brilliant. Upsetting Britain’s greatest national treasure. That’s just what we need to boost our popularity. People will love it. I was going to suggest pushing Mary Berry into a pond, or kneecapping Paddington Bear. But we can save those for another time.”
It’s not as if the Attenborough incident is a one-off misjudgment. The evidence shows a consistent pattern of foot-in-mouth imbecility. Remember the time last autumn when they attempted to halt the London Underground? Seriously – an environmental group, discouraging people from using public transport. Imagine the brainstorming meeting for that one. “Today: wreck the Tube. Tomorrow: smash up a wind farm and set light to a recycling plant.”
Then there was the stunt from earlier this year, when they blockaded the printing presses that produce several national newspapers, including this one. Curiously enough, this action did not earn Extinction Rebellion many glowing reviews in the press. It was also roundly condemned in Parliament – although it did at least win the endorsement of the SNP’S Kenny Macaskill. These activists, he told the Commons, weren’t enemies of free speech. They were simply “a group of young people” who “care about the environment”.
Fair enough, I suppose. Maybe during next year’s Holyrood elections a group of unionists could block the printing of SNP leaflets. Purely to help the environment, of course. Think of all the trees it would save.
Of course, you might argue that Extinction Rebellion activists wouldn’t consider any of their stunts to be own-goals, because they have no interest in being popular. They aren’t trying to win over their critics through charm and sweet reason. They’re radicals, who believe that the only way to make the world do their bidding is to cause as much disruption as possible.
This may well be their thinking. But Robert Conquest, I suspect, would have posited a different theory.
In short: that every member of Extinction Rebellion is actually an executive from Exxonmobil in disguise.
‘Whatever next? Smash up a wind farm and set light to a recycling plant’