They can’t deal with anyone who isn’t as hysterical as them

WHEN I went undercover as a new Extinction Rebellion recruit in April last year, I was confronted by a mass of wide-eyed, overwhelmingly middle-class idealists intent on forging a better world.

Now, with their tactic of ‘lockingon’ or glueing themselves to the ground irritatingly familiar to many weary city dwellers, their ranks have attracted a rag-tag group of seasoned activists eager to attach themselves to the XR cause.

As their latest stunt to silence Friday night’s newspaper presses – a vital engine of democracy – shows, their tactics have become even more sinister and risk ruining a previously peaceful campaign.

Underlining the new threat, Rupert Read, an Extinction Rebellion leader, warned last week that ‘parasitic’ hard-Left groups were trying to piggyback on climate protests to further political causes.

The academic said political groups, including the Socialist Workers Party and Young Communist League were seeking to further their own aims through XR. The organisation’s new form of non-violent civil disobedience is one that has become so effective that even the Metropolitan Police have admitted it is beyond ‘anything we have seen before’.

A lot of my time with XR was bizarre. I was encouraged to call alcohol ‘suppression juice’ while, during an exercise on getting arrested, one rebel was concerned about whether there would be vegan food in jail.

Over lockdown, while millions of school children were left without lessons, XR activists managed to set up an online academy to train members. It is clear that in the last 18 months, they have gone on an ideological journey and are beginning to splinter.

One branch, XR Catalysers, is seeking to ‘identify UK society’s dominant power centres, obtain introductions to key “influencers” within them, and nurture dialogue with them’.

The group has always made much of its de-centralised structure, meaning anyone who wants to set up a local XR action group can do so – but this loose structure creates a problem when members go ‘off message’. Co-founder Roger Hallam, 54, ran into trouble for comparing climate change to the Holocaust and recently suggested that MPs who he declares ‘culpable’ for climate change ‘should have a bullet through their heads.’

He founded a fringe group called Beyond Politics in June, believing ‘immediate high-level direct action’ is needed ‘to bring down this genocidal Government.’

He is currently on hunger strike in jail following his arrest last month for conspiring to cause criminal damage ahead of the current demonstrations.

Despite this, he is still a key member of XR’s team who recently complained it had ‘gone to the middle ground’.

To rectify this, Hallam, a former organic farmer, proposed: ‘We have to be super super radical in order to maximise the probability of maintaining a semi-organised society in the next 30 to 50 years.’

As new recruits, we were asked early on how far we were willing to go for the movement and to identify ourselves as ‘arrestable’ or ‘non-arrestable’ – a key signifier of our dedication.

For XR’s co-founder Roger Hallam, those with ‘skin in the game’ – careers, families or other attachments – will never be free to offer the level of unwavering dedication to the cause that he desires.

And therein lies the problem. There are aspects of Extinction Rebellion’s objectives that are laudable, but the troubling issue is the unswerving adherence of its hardcore activists. It is a case of fullblooded hysteria or nothing.

Not only will they not brook any discussion, they won’t even listen to any diverging opinions.