Extinction Rebellion leaders have dismissed the idea that protests for climate action have anything to do with “socialist ideology.” But refusing to take political positions — and to relate green politics to the interests of the social majority — will reduce environmentalism to an ineffective moral protest.
by Mark Montegriffo
Part 2 - Against “Politics”?
Historically, movements in the liberal tradition that have attempted to be broad and “popularist” — to borrow the language of XR’s founder Roger Hallam — often find themselves politically unmoored when the initial shine wears off. Movements that operate on an “all things to all people” basis are at threat of dissolving upon contact with reality.
Evading questions of their class and social interests, and representation thereof strips a movement of its political content. You cannot expect to be politically relevant for very long if being politically ambiguous or apolitical is a fundamental component of a movement. In their recent communications — explicitly dismissing the notion that the movement is socialist — Extinction Rebellion are again committing themselves to this fate.
Just to be clear we are not a socialist movement. We do not trust any single ideology, we trust the people, chosen by sortition (like jury service) to find the best future for us all through a #CitizensAssembly A banner saying ‘socialism or extinction’ does not represent us 🙏🏽🙏
— Extinction Rebellion UK 🌍 (@XRebellionUK) September 1, 2020
Activists that do define their political analysis as originating from socialist thought perhaps should not be surprised by the group’s repudiation of the “socialism or extinction” banners during its protests. When a movement says it is not a socialist movement, it does more than insult the activists within it who are socialists. It strips it of serious radical and political content, and hints at its lack of interest in gaining a working-class majority to its side.
This, indeed, is a constituency the group did much to alienate in its recent past. In an action at a London tube station, Extinction Rebellion activists climbed to the roof of the train, keeping commuters from accessing the (relatively environmentally friendly) public transport. A physical confrontation broke out and was caught on the group’s social media livestream.
Extinction Rebellion issued an apology for the action and the disruption to commuters. It further fueled perceptions of the group as white, middle-class, and out of touch with working-class people. A recent Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity study on the class composition of Extinction Rebellion “rebels” lends weight to this perception.
In Tribune’s Politics Theory Other podcast interview from last year, Hallam identifies Extinction Rebellion as fitting into a gap between “the radical left and the NGO left,” dismissing the former as “Calvinistic” and the latter as “corporatist.”
This explanation is not only reductive and simplistic, but it also places the group in the same political no-man’s-land that has hamstrung populist movements, from Podemos in Spain to Five Star in Italy. In the interview, Hallam further expanded on this claim to stand against politics per se:
my main orientation isn’t really political — it is more sociological and structural. That’s the starting point … it’s simply impossible for the main social institutions of a society to be able to adapt quickly to rapid change. … particularly, the Labour Party isn’t going to cope. What we’re looking at is a complete collapse in the credibility of the political class. The political class is heading for extinction in terms of credibility. There’s no conception of a mass extinction event. … Extinction Rebellion is mainly morally mobilised.
There are potentially some ideological components to be teased out from Hallam’s thoughts, albeit fairly broad ones. There is a recognition of the limits of electoralism from a populist perspective, as well as an acknowledgement of the need to keep up a grassroots movement with climate breakdown on the horizon. It is telling, though, that Hallam is dismissive of political intervention, and goes as far as saying that the mobilizing force of the movement is primarily out of a sense of morality.
For Hallam, “politics” is not about relations of power and material conditions, but rather a colloquial understanding of the word that denotes unpleasantness and dirtiness. While unpleasant and dirty it may be, political and ideological clarity that places anti-capitalism and anti-racism at its center will give the movement the maturity it lacks, and help it connect to those constituencies that it has tended to alienate. To borrow a line attributed to Chico Mendes, “environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening.” Extinction Rebellion without socialism is just mass arrests.
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