Extinction Rebellion

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Consider then the following from Nelson Strategic Consulting Strategies ~ regarding ‘critical (reflective) thinking’ (as being one’s ability to think objectively without the influence of one’s own biases, prejudices, personal feelings, or opinions and come to a conclusion solely on factual, objective information) and it’s obstructive opposite:

Groupthink is a phenomenon that acts as a barrier to good governance. It is a form of self censorship that causes a failure of critical thinking when the desire for group consensus overrides ones ability or desire to critique / challenge a position, present alternatives or express an unpopular opinion. It is often in play when groups reach consensus without critically examining an issue; there is an illusion of agreement or consensus: “it appears as everyone agrees, so let’s move on.”

Along with a paraphrase of the headline for the above paragraph quotation ~ consider then the 8th technique of the 17 listed to use as a guard against groupthink, and promote ‘critical (reflective) thinking’ instead; as follows:

PROTECTING AGAINST GROUPTHINK: THE 8TH TECHNIQUE OF 17
8. Devil’s Advocate: Appoint or ask someone to play the role of Devil’s Advocate for each issue.

According to Wikipedia then; a “Devil’s Advocate” is:

The advocatus diaboli (Latin for Devil's advocate) is a former official position within the Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith: one who "argued against the canonization (sainthood) of a candidate in order to uncover any character flaws or misrepresentation of the evidence favoring canonization".

So as a Devil’s Advocate my accepted role would have been to address that your report of in Australia you ‘have some dumb Extinction Rebellion members’ was a ‘circular argument’ (a logical fallacy that supposes if the premise is true, the conclusion must be true) with the premise being those ‘who enjoy being on the news’, and the conclusion being because they are the ‘“look at me, look at me” crowd’.

There was no mention of the XR protesters (or the XR organisation) having or not having informed the authorities of the protest in advance ~ so that the authorities had or did not have the opportunity to make alternative arrangements for the emergency services, and also had or did not have the chance to agree to meet the conditions for calling off the protests ~ or else get a legal injunction against those protests.

Although it was reported that ‘One person couldn't reach his dying father before he passed away’, one of the reasons for the road-block protest as being to campaign against pollution was not reported ~ despite it being the fourth principle or declaration of the XR organisation.

Were the obstructed motorists in Australia already knowledgeable of or informed by way of the media or the ‘road-block’ protestors themselves to turn off their car’s ignition to prevent ‘engine idling’, and as such prevent increased carbon emissions as pollution?

So with no example of me being a ‘Devil’s Advocate’ previously in that sense, let us consider the more colloquial sense as according to Wikipedia then:

[A] Devil's advocate is someone who takes a position they do not necessarily agree with for the sake of debate or to explore the thought further.

Four months before I was born ~ an older brother of a year and a half died from Bronchial Pneumonia, and since then a brother ten years younger than I ~ suffers from Asthma, as have also several friends that I have known through the course of my life.

The subject of air pollution has therefore been of long-standing relevance to me, as without it people in general and those with respiratory conditions would have a much better quality of life, so protests against air pollution and pollution in general have been and will continue to be in spirit supported by me ~ in that pollution doesn’t just effect humans, but the vast majority of other species of life on this planet also.

This is not then an argumentative or contrary position that I have taken just to debate or explore further your point of view, but one of decades-long relevance (in the familial and social sense) that allowed me to correct you where you were incorrect about the road-block protests not just being '“Look at me, look at me”' groupings, and to inform you where you were uninformed about them more inclusively being campaigns against environmental pollution.

So no example of ‘Devil’s Advocacy’ in that respect either.

Extinction Rebellion Blockades Freedom of the Press

Nearly 200 [Extinction Rebellion] activists used vehicles and bamboo structures to block roads outside major printing works at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and Knowsley, near Liverpool.

The presses print The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, along with Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp titles including the Sun and the Times.

[Their goal was to censor the Press and to control what the Press published. Essentially destroying Freedom of the Press]

Whitehall sources said Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have asked officials to take a "fresh look" at how the group is classified under the law, after the Prime Minister described its blockading of major printing presses as "completely unacceptable".

Extinction Rebellion could be treated as an organised crime group as part of a major crackdown on its activities that may also include new protections for MPs, judges and the press, The Telegraph can disclose.

Ministers are also considering new powers making it easier for police to stop demonstrators from entering particular areas, bolstering protections for parts of the UK's critical national infrastructure, and explicitly outlawing disruption to "tenets of democracy", such as MPs voting in Parliament, judges attending court, and the printing and distribution of the free press.

By Saturday night, 80 people had been arrested after the blockades resulted in delays to the distribution of several national publications to shops across the country.



Source: [url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/05/extinction-rebellion-facing-organised-crime-curbs/[/url]

For around a year Extinction Rebellion managed to grip many young, vulnerable idealists in many ways that religious cults operate. What were some of the manipulative tools they used? In the heady days of 2019, Extinction Rebellion:

* postulated an end-of-days apocalypse within ten years

* provided a simplified salvation pathway and virtue reinforcement

* identified a dogmatic “us vs them” war on evil

* created a fun, carnival atmosphere with communal chants at their events

* developed a series of pagan-like spiritual rituals and iconic priestesses

But this cult was a shallow, abusive front. The objective of the organisers was to overthrow the capitalist state, and an army of brainwashed young people simultaneously dancing, chanting and weeping in the streets proved, on paper, to be the perfect distraction. Add a few ageing celebrities, some clever street pranks and a cocktail of virtue signalling opportunities … the strategy was brilliant.

Cults grow on the far, narrow edges of religious belief systems.
Within every religion there are extremes – the zealots, the dogmatists, the fundamentalists, the manipulative cult gurus… I have written often how environmentalism is our new religion with a wide range of believers practising a variety of rituals (like recycling, culinary sacrifices, carbon emission cuts…), preaching of Armageddon (climate change), offering redemption from original sin (consumption) with a collection of angels, saints and demons every church needs to “iconicise”. This Church of Nature grew out of the ashes of the decline of traditional religious faith in a more affluent West. We did not grow too sophisticated for religion; it just donned different cloaks and occupied different temples.

Religion provides meaning in life, virtues, inspiration; it also protects the believers in a communal context from their deepest fears and concerns. Most in the congregation of the Church of Nature want to live decent lives and feel good about themselves. They listen to the sermons against consumption but do enjoy some of life’s finer pleasures. They donate when the collection basket comes around, but are not active in the campaigns.

On the extreme of the Church of Nature lie the cult organisations that dictate to the true believers, crusaders and missionaries: the zealots who provide the religious oxygen for the clergy to breathe and the fires to burn. But the problem with fire and brimstone is that when outrage and condemnation burn out of control, they can bring temples down.

Extinction Rebellion’s death-cult tactics discredited climate science, pushed environmentalism to the hard (anti-capitalist) left and offered little common ground for political compromise. When these groups used children to shame adults (How dare you!), political discourse was abandoned in favour of media spectacle.

In 2019 the Extinction Rebellion cult became the story and the Church of Nature lost its moderate members. This has seriously hurt the entire activist movement as cynicism and disenchantment does not translate into donations or further engagement within the wider Church.

Extinction Rebellion had reached its cult zenith well before the COVID-19 pandemic took their issue off the front pages, silencing their media marketing machinery. Perhaps the turning point was Canning Town Tube Station where morning commuters turned into an angry mob beating up two XR hippies who had tried to stop their train. That same day the two-week October blockade of London was quietly called off well-short of their campaign objectives.

Once the coronavirus lockdowns began to bite and people got to appreciate the consequences of Extinction Rebellion’s demands (no jobs, no travel, no shops…) and the absence of any social interaction that the rebels could disrupt, the organisation went into hibernation. I attended an XR Zoom conference in May, 2020 where their main gurus unveiled their strategy for the next wave of post-COVID-19 campaigns. By the time their philosopher-in-chief, Rupert Read, took to the microphone, there were only 42 listeners on the view-counter. Today Extinction Rebellion’s various twitter pages have little interaction or post engagement.

A cult with no following is merely a club. The revolution has faded to what was just a flash in the pan – an embarrassing footnote in the history of the climate campaign. Extinction Rebellion has, well, gone extinct.

Source: [url=https://risk-monger.com/2020/08/28/cult-reawakening-an-extinction-rebellion-post-mortem/[/url]

At the start of this month the green extremists of Extinction Rebellion (XR) promised 10 days of disruption in the heart of London. Because what our deserted capital clearly needs at the moment is to be brought to even more of a standstill. In the days so far XR have blocked roads and bridges, prevented ambulances from getting to hospitals and defaced private and public property. All a normal day’s non-work for the middle-class’s favourite new radical cause.



Then last night they chose a new target, specifically hitting the printing presses of a number of national newspapers. All are newspapers of the right. All were prevented from getting their newspapers out in the early hours of this morning because of an XR-enforced blockade. The group accuses the papers of failing to report on Climate Change.

Such celebrations, like the attacks themselves, are a disgrace. They constitute one of the most serious assaults imaginable on the principles of a free press. Newspapers cannot be told what to run by lobbying groups like XR. Owners and editors should not fear that unless they toe the line of a particular group – any group – then their businesses will be disrupted or destroyed.

But this is the situation that XR is working to bring about. A situation where certain newspapers are targeted solely because of their proprietors or political stance. It is a monstrous attack on the principles of freedom of speech, and no less totalitarian because it is perpetrated by a group from the far-left than it would be if it came from the far-right. If any left-wing papers were targeted in such a fashion then we would be unanimous in our condemnation and it would be inconceivable that any Member of Parliament would applaud such a move. But certain politicians, celebrities and activists of the left have spent recent years encouraging the extremists of XR to take precisely such action.

It is striking how many of XR’s activists are well-to-do, often grown-up, people in search of a cause. Walking around their encampment in Westminster earlier this week I was struck over-hearing one nice-seeming woman in late middle-age asking another activist if the day before was also his first time getting arrested. Such fanatics have been common throughout London history – Pepys would have recognised them – and this time they consist in large part of bored, well-off people who seek a cause to give meaning to their lives.

But they are also actively recruiting from the younger generation. It is no surprise that Cambridge University was once again the site of XR protests and defacements this week. On our campuses, as in our schools, children are taught that they are likely to die before they grow up. Telling children such things would ordinarily constitute child abuse. But the children’s crusade, led by Greta Thunberg, has terrorised a new generation.

What we are facing here are fanatics: members of an apocalyptic, end-times cult. A cult dedicated to immiserating our society and intimidating anybody who stands in their way. It is high time that they were stopped. It is time that the police move in to arrest them and disrupt their activities. It is time for our politicians and public figures to unite in deprecating their actions. And it is time that we unify again around a core principle: that open debate is the best way to have any difficult question out, and that ceding control to radicals of any stripe is not just where debate stops. It is where a free society ends.

Source: The green fanatics have terrorised a generation of children. Now they're turning on the free press

Last edited by jimmy m on 07 Sep 2020, 2:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A free press is the cornerstone of British society. The freedom to publish, without fear nor favour, and to inform debate on events that affect each and every one of us is absolutely vital.

I was disgusted to see over the weekend that this institution, and the values we hold dear as a tolerant and free country, were threatened by Extinction Rebellion because it did not fit with their agenda.

While Extinction Rebellion claim to be an environmental rights campaign group, their actions speak louder than their words, and their continued guerrilla tactics show that they do not believe in peaceful protest – but instead seek to undermine and cause damage to our society, disrupting the hard working individuals who are trying to keep this country moving forwards.

Alongside a free press, peaceful protest is a right that is enjoyed by all in this great country, but it is unacceptable for groups to hide behind this while committing criminal acts that prevent the public from going about their day to day lives.

It is not tolerable for groups to attack democracy by claiming they are little more than peaceful protesters.

Last year hundreds of thousands of businesses and commuters were unable to work or travel as the group blocked major transit routes, and police forces had to divert resources to arrest and oversee protests designed, not to send a message, but to cause the most disruption possible.

It’s even more disgraceful to see these tactics revived at a time when this country faces the grave threat of coronavirus.

Our brave officers have been on the streets every day doing their bit to keep us safe throughout this pandemic and stop the spread of this deadly disease.

The actions of these protesters have shown contempt for the police and the British public. Not only in thinking they are above the law but also putting additional pressure on our emergency services when we face a threat to public health.

Police forces across the country are manned by fearless individuals who put themselves in danger to keep us all safe.

Yet more and more of their time and valuable resources are spent policing the actions of protesters whose actions have become criminal.

My message to these individuals is clear – as you plot and scheme to curtail our freedoms you are committing criminal acts and be in no doubt you will face the full force of the law. You will be punished for your actions.

So far 80 protesters have been arrested while targeting printing presses for causing a public nuisance and aggravated trespass, while in recent weeks a further 655 arrests have been made by the Metropolitan Police for breaching the Public Order Act.

I am proud of the work the police are doing in enforcing the rule of law, but the figures show that Extinction Rebellion care more about disrupting society than protecting the environment.

While we are working to get our great country moving again after months of lockdown, as a Government we will not stand by and allow the livelihoods of hard working people to be undermined by a minority acting with contempt, seeking to grind the economic well-being of our nation into the ground under the pretence of tacking climate change.

We must defend ourselves against this attack on capitalism, our way of life and ultimately our freedoms.

Source: Eco zealots could face FIVE YEARS in jail: Priti Patel threatens to change law to make Extinction Rebellion a criminal gang so tougher sentences can be handed out

Extinction Rebellion Fracturing

It was a disastrous interview that had viewers glued to their screens. The Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman Zion Lights was asked where the group had obtained figures which it claimed showed that climate change would kill “billions of people . . . in the next 10 to 20 years”.

Ms Lights, a leading figure in the group, had to admit that the figures were “disputed”. The BBC’s Andrew Neil, sensing blood, pounced, accusing her of “scaring people with rhetoric”.



Looking back, Ms Lights, 36, who has since left the organisation and become a campaigner for nuclear energy, said her experience in “XR” had left her “exhausted”, and is candid about what she perceives as its misgivings.

“What people didn’t know when they watched that was I had been in this massive battle internally with XR for six weeks over that figure,” she told The Times. “A lot of us, me and a lot of scientists, said ‘it is not OK, you cannot make up figures, people need to be reined in’. But there was a cult following of the founder, Roger Hallam, who had made up the figure.

“They would say ‘no, we’ve found a scientist who supports it’. But that’s not how science works. I came off the show and I was exhausted, part of me just died. I have a master’s in science communication. I just said to them, ‘Oh my god, I can’t do it’. ”

It’s an extraordinary claim and gives a rare insight into the fractious arguments behind the scenes that have until now been kept largely from the public.

Ms Lights, a mother of two, left XR in June having grown disillusioned at what she said was its refusal to acknowledge that its numbers were not backed by evidence. She told The Times that since leaving she had received death threats and abuse from members who called her “turncoat scum” and a “nuclear shill”.

A group spokeswoman said claims of an internal battle about the figures were “total nonsense”, and that Mr Hallam’s claim, which came from his own research, related to the likely number of deaths by the end of the century.

The Times has spoken to XR insiders who have laid bare a series of allegations including racism, bullying and a cult-like following of Mr Hallam that resulted in accusations of financial mismanagement.

Source: Climate fight campaigners quit as Extinction Rebellion starts to split