Extinction Rebellion has declared war on free speech and democracy

Blockading newspaper printers is a display of the tyrannical impulse: in short, mob rule

Imust say I didn’t think it would come to this. I really believed that the leadership of this mob had more political nous than to try to shut down the press. Arrogance and purblind narcissism have always been a feature of professional activism but there has generally been a recognition of the parameters within which public debate is conducted in a free society.

But I suppose we should have seen it coming. The move from thinking that your opponents are not just wrong but wilfully wicked to believing that they must be eliminated is a very short leap. Eventually, carried to its logical conclusion, it ends in the terrible ideological crimes of the 20th century when it becomes permissible not just to prohibit the dissenting opinions but to eliminate the dissenters themselves.

Yes, boys and girls, this is the real thing: the tyrannical impulse that, given its way, would prohibit the expression not just of disagreement with the prevailing orthodoxy but even a considered and careful critique of it – which is pretty much all that the newspapers which are now being blockaded were engaged in. Welcome to the new Dark Age.

Presumably, the next step would be for all proposed newspaper copy on the subject of climate change to be submitted for prior approval to ... whom? The keepers of the Accepted Doctrine? And to whom will they be responsible? Themselves?

And what happens when they – as radical movements always do – have schisms and splits over points of doctrine? Will they appeal to a higher authority, as the medieval papacy believed it could, and resolve their differences behind closed doors while we all await their judgement?

Of course, the press could easily adopt the opposite solution. Perhaps it has not occurred to these thugs that the easiest way to avoid their totalitarian diktat is simply never to cover the subject at all. If every word that is published on climate change must be submitted to the censors, then we can undermine their power quite easily, by not printing anything about it. That would mean the end of climate change as a public issue, of course (which is precisely what the XR protesters claim they are promoting). This is not something most newspapers would wish to bring about. But given the choice between silence and submission to tyranny …

And what a revenge that would be, because publicity is what this is all about. Extinction Rebellion (XR) has lost out big time in the race for front-page headlines since the Covid epidemic. Hence this desperate, stupid move against the press with which newspapers will have to engage in a very publicity-worthy fight.

In fact, XR has not only lost the star role on the public stage for the duration of the present emergency, it has also actually lost some credibility. Many commentators have pointed out that even the drastic decline in air travel – severe enough to bring about the collapse of the airline industry and all the employment that it entails – has not made much of a dent in the level of carbon emissions. So what exactly would it take to produce the falls that XR is demanding? A return to pre-industrialisation with all the poverty and social backwardness that went with it? An end to the social and geographical mobility that modern economic freedom has enabled?

Given what even this tiny reduction in pollution has cost, socially and economically, the prospect of what XR proposes is devastating. Yes indeed, it’s been a bad six months for the eco warriors, who once looked as if they could take over the world with their child saints and their apocalyptic warnings. And, of course, as the demonstrators have made clear, this is not just about climate anymore: they are blockading the distribution of newspapers with which they disagree on a whole range of subjects: the usual litany of causes – immigration, wealth distribution, capitalism, blah-blah.

In other words, they will shut down any form of public platform that does not agree with their views.

How did we get here? Is this a monumental failure of education? Have we managed to produce a generation – or at least a notable proportion of a generation – who know absolutely nothing about what democracy entails? Have the most fundamental principles of free speech been denigrated to such an extent that there is a whole cohort of young people who can be led into such absurd and pernicious behaviour?

Earlier generations of protesters who fought against racism in the United States or what they believed to be evil wars were often militant and they sometimes broke existing laws when they believed them to be unjust. But they did not, as a rule, try to shut down debate and free speech. (Indeed, the original Berkeley student revolution was called the Free Speech Movement.) Argument was what it was all about. Without argument, democracy is dead and what takes its place is something much, much worse.

No, it is not just self-interest that makes the newspapers enraged about this display of idiocy. Thomas Jefferson, one of the great authors of modern democracy, said that if he had to choose between having elections without newspapers or newspapers without elections, he would take the newspapers without the elections. Because without public debate and the liberty to disseminate differing opinions, there is no future for democractic societies. They are the rock on which liberty rests. Even when the opinions are offensive or contentious – in fact, even more so when they are, as in the Charlie Hebdo case – the right to voice them must be protected to the death.

Is this a monumental failure of education? Have we produced a generation who know abosolutely nothing about what democracy entails?