Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The snobbery of Extinction Rebellion’s Amazon blockade

(Photo: Getty)

Every week brings fresh proof of what a bunch of bourgeois snobs Extinction Rebellion are. The latest exhibit is their blockading of Amazon’s main distribution centres. The eco-loons and their apologists are dressing this up as a principled stand against venal capitalism. Pull the other one. This is just a noisy middle-class moan about the greedy masses and all the ‘crap’ we’re planning to buy on Black Friday.

Yes, not content with irritating deliverymen, builders and other productive members of the working classes by plonking themselves on the M25 and other major roads a few weeks ago, now XR is trying to stop us from getting the things we’ve ordered off Amazon. First they stop people from getting to work, then they try to dictate what we’re allowed to spend our hard-earned wages on. Anyone else getting the impression that they just don’t like the masses very much?

XR activists have swarmed on 13 Amazon sites across the UK, including the largest Amazon distribution centre, in Fife. They’re locking themselves to the gates so that those evil Amazon delivery trucks full of the tat that the brainwashed throng have bought won’t be able to get out.

Anti-consumerism is snobbery masquerading as radicalism

It’s no coincidence that they’re doing this on Black Friday, the start of the Christmas shopping season and a day when there are loads of bargains to be had. Nothing horrifies the self-righteous middle classes more than frenzies of consumerism. XR is determined to punish us for our brainless bargain-hunting by delaying our deliveries. This will, of course, do precisely nothing for the environment, but it will cause annoyance to hard-working people, which seems to be XR’s chief aim these days.

The least convincing claim being made by XR today is that it is targeting Amazon partly to draw attention to its exploitation of its workforce.

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