Pray for Windsor. From today, Extinction Rebellion is descending on Windsor Home Park for ‘three days of creative, peaceful action to propose democratic renewal’. It sounds like a mini festival – offering a mix of politics, camping and amateur dramatics. There will be a ‘Massembly’, in which the assembled extreme greens will discuss and vote on how to ‘upgrade democracy’, followed by a ‘performance-action’, which will ‘dramatise the death and revival of democracy through theatre, large-scale puppetry and communal song’. Say what you will about XR, it knows its target audience.
Residents are at a higher risk of cringing themselves into a coma than being obstructed by this gaggle of art students and crusties
There are concerns about the camp disrupting life in genteel Windsor, perhaps by going over its allotted time frame and breaching beyond the area of the park it has been allotted. Local MP Jack Rankin has told the council to brace itself for legal action. But I dare say residents are at a higher risk of cringing themselves into a coma than being obstructed by this gaggle of art students and crusties. Extinction Rebellion has, for some time, presented itself as more reasonable and less disruptive, in contrast to the various Judean People’s Front splinter groups it spawned, from Insulate Britain to Just Stop Oil.
If anything, this ‘Upgrade Democracy’ stunt reminds us how unradical, how privileged, how lame, frankly, much of the eco-activist movement is. To say that Extinction Rebellion is dominated by the southern middle classes isn’t a slur – it’s an objective fact. An academic study from a few years ago found that 85 per cent of XR activists have degrees and three-quarters live below the Severn-Wash line. The street theatre, the pun-tastic placards, the superabundance of free time – all of it speaks to the class base of modern-day greenism.
It makes sense. Extreme environmentalism is a luxury most people can’t afford. It’s a hell of a lot easier to support swingeing cuts to living standards if you were raised in a wealthy family. The gilets jaunes, the populist French protest movement against Emmanuel Macron’s punishing green taxes, had a great slogan that summed up the class divide on environmental issues perfectly: ‘They’re worried about the end of the world, we’re worried about the end of the month.’ That XR is now setting up shop in achingly posh Windsor is perhaps a tacit admission that the working classes have had enough of its insufferable, hectoring antics.
XR et al are determined to dress up their campaign for national impoverishment as a grassroots, democratic movement. The activists improbably claim that their ‘Massembly’ in Windsor tomorrow will be ‘one of the largest participatory, democratic events ever held in the UK’. Since it was founded in 2018, XR has called for ‘citizens’ assemblies’ to resolve the so-called climate crisis in a ‘democratic’ fashion. But no one is buying it. Those assemblies would be fig-leaf exercises, in which the policy – net zero – is already decided, and the only thing up for discussion is how we should get there. That part of the festivities this weekend will involve XR delivering letters to the King, our unelected head of state, rather exposes the faux-democratic cant.
Environmentalism cannot abide democracy. Ordinary people, quite understandably, expect politics to be about making their lives freer, more prosperous – a better lot for them and future generations. Environmentalism, by contrast, insists that Things Must Only Get Worse – that we must put up with less material comfort, less mobility, a halt on human progress, basically, all to quell the apocalyptic fever dreams of the technocratic elites and the perma-protesting bourgeoisie, whose only real beef with mainstream politicians is that they are not ushering in eco-austerity fast enough. The public must never be given a real, democratic choice on net zero, because greens all know, deep down, what the answer would be.
So enjoy your little camping trip in Windsor, guys, but will you please drop the ‘democratic’ pretence?
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