Monbiot: If defending life on Earth is extremist, we must own that label
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/22/defending-life-earth-extremist-police-extinction-rebellion?CMP=share_btn_fbIf defending life on Earth is extremist, we must own that label
George Monbiot
Police say climate groups such as Extinction Rebellion are a ‘threat’. They’d have done the same for the suffragettes and Martin Luther King
Wed 22 Jan 2020
It’s not an “error” or an “accident”, as the police now claim. It’s a pattern. First, the Guardian revealed that counter-terrorism police in south-east England have listed Extinction Rebellion (XR) and the youth climate strikes as forms of “ideological extremism”. Then teachers and officials around the country reported that they had been told, in briefings by the anti-radicalisation Prevent programme, to look out for people expressing support for XR and Greenpeace.
Then the Guardian found a Counter Terrorism Policing guide to the signs and symbols used by various groups. Alongside terrorists and violent extremist organisations, the guide listed Greenpeace, XR, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, CND, the Socialist party, Stop the War and other peaceful green and left organisations. Then the newspaper discovered that City of London police had listed XR as a “key threat” in its counter-terrorism assessment.
There’s a long history in the UK of attempts to associate peaceful protest with extremism or terrorism. In 2008, for example, the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) produced a list of “domestic extremists”. Among them was Dr Peter Harbour, a retired physicist and university lecturer, who had committed the cardinal sin of marching and petitioning against an attempt by the energy company npower (then RWE npower) to drain a beautiful local lake and fill it with pulverised fly ash. Acpo sought to smear peace campaigners, Greenpeace and Climate Camp with the same charge.
The police have always protected established power against those who challenge it, regardless of the nature of that challenge. And they have long sought to criminalise peaceful dissent. Part of the reason is ideological: illiberal and undemocratic attitudes infest policing in this country. Part of it is empire-building: if police units can convince the government and the media of imminent threats that only they can contain, they can argue for more funding.
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to capsize or kick holes in the boat.
Extremists are called that for real reasons, and it's not a flattering term because those reasons are always dysfunctional. In 2016 too many who join oppositional groups were peaceful activists all right: they voted peacefully against the Democratic Party even as they demanded action! Or didn't vote at all, imagining all establishment was their enemy. The very definition of tragically dysfunctional.
As for all the more normal new enthusiasts, thank heavens even if tragically late. Most are sensible people who will do what they should now. But, they also include too many who imagine they're the vanguard of awareness and everyone else is the enemy to overcome, or posture that way for political advantage. In 2016, too many believed the Republican and dissident-left lies about the Democrats and thus also unintentially voted against action on climate by voting against Democrats, or also by not voting at all. They helped the bastards win. Still.
Reality is that many millions of smart, aware Americans have voted smart for decades as they watched the growing effects of global warming, many since they were first able to vote because this has been going on for a very long time. For me that was at the end of the 1960s. Democratic President Johnson first issued notice to congress of the huge actions that must be taken to stop global warming in 1965.
But it took another half century for the required STRONG MAJORITY of Americans to start genuinely believing and caring, when accelerating climate disasters slapped us in the face with reality. (Imo, couldn't have happened without HVAC and municipal snowplows.)
But, it's only in the last 5 years that Americans of all ages, including the youngest who are rightfully alarmed and angry, have begun calling for action. Most of that's been in the last two, and the climate party's only gotten big and noisy in the last year, including most newly energized extremists, as our planet that's been burning for some time became much worse.
Well, the people are finally on it, even if many are running into the fire instead of for the hoses.