ACFM - #ACFM Microdose: Extinction Rebellion

Episode Date: October 13, 2019

The #ACFM crew discuss some of the issues and ideas raised by the ongoing Extinction Rebellion protests in London (and around the world). Links to some of the talks and texts discussed in the show: https://rebellion.earth Gail Bradbrook video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wUJFrvnGk Why Civil Resistance Works: https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/IS3301_pp007-044_Stephan_Chenoweth.pdf Graham Jones – Shock Doctrine of the Left: http://politybooks.com/jones10052018/ Roger […]

My older daughter when I was pregnant asked me what was going to happen when she had a baby and I couldn't answer her. You know, they were supposed to protect us and they didn't. The climate protesters are massively overprivileged and kind of posth. For me, a lot of people dancing in the street, probably, you know, off their head and, you know, dreadlocks. You made? It's not a protest, it's just a filthy. On the point of cooperative, non-cooperative crusties, I wear that badge with kind. Welcome to ACFM, the home of the weird left.

This is our microdose on Extinction Rebellion. We wanted to record an episode while it was actually happening. I'm Nadia Idol, and I'm joined as usual by Jeremy Gilbert. Hello. And Keir Milburn. Hello? So today we're going to talk about Extinction Rebellion, and this mostly came up because Jeremy wanted to,

wanted to talk about this. And so we've come together and made this quick recording. So, Jeremy, do you want to start by telling us why did you want to talk about Extinction Rebellion on our Acid podcast? Well, because there's obviously like a lot of overlaps between things we are interested in and things that Extinction Rebellion are doing.

I mean, their whole aesthetic is almost sort of aggressively and quite sort of beautifully, sort of psychedelic. The sort of mythology, I mean, it's not what it's true, about XR is that it started off with Gail Bradbrook having an I-Husker trip and having a, you know, having a psychedelic experience

in which he conceived of this political movement. Who's that, sorry? Could you clarify? So Gail Bradbrook is, along with Roger Hannam, is one of the two founders of Extinction Rebellion.

And Roger Hannan is the person that's probably quite likely better known to our listeners because he was interviewed extensively and yeah on Alex Doherty's politics theory other podcast for example which is a good resource but Gail Bradbrook is the other big

just sort of lead sort of theorist of extinction rebellion and I mean the best if you want to see there's a video on YouTube with her talking about ecology and strategy from last month which goes into a lot of the thought informing it and it is all it's very psychedelic

there's obviously a big ethic of collective joy involved in their practice. It's addressing a whole set of issues which obviously has to be central to any kind of radical political agenda for us. And yet in other ways, obviously, it clearly,

clearly it's different from our sort of politics and it's, I'd be interesting to sort of think about what it is they're doing and what it is they're not doing like from our point of view. And I suppose my

Feeling about it in a way is, I mean, what I would say is that, I mean, obviously, Extinction Rebellion, which is a big kind of nonviolent, broad-based protest movement, basically advocating for civil disobedience and mass arrests as a way of pushing towards, you know, its government action or some kind of political action on climate change is it's very, very acid. It's not very, but it's not, you know, it's not very communist. It's not definitely not communist at all. So it seems to represent something quite akin to us, but also something quite different. And it seems to represent in some ways the political manifestation of what I would call sort of acid liberalism, whereby their basic understanding of politics and political change and distributions of power is, I would say,

although it is very radical, and although they actually have a radical critique of existing systems of government, government is basically coming from a position which is sort of liberal. It basically thinks that political change is about the aggregation of different individuals or preferences and actions and it doesn't really, they're not interested either in notions like class power and they're basically against or party politics. And I think their rejection of party politics seems to be partly based on this really intelligent understanding of the deep limitations of representative democracy that have revealed themselves over the past few decades. But I worry that it also, I think it seems to be based on a sort of radical liberal rejection

of the idea of sort of, you know, large blocks of people acting together in their collective interests. Maybe some of that's unfair, maybe some of it isn't. But I mean, that's just how it appears at first glance. So those are the reasons why I think it's worth us talking about it. We could go back to, let's go back to Gail Bradbrook's trip as well, because she took Ayahuasca, and this is what, in an interview that she did a couple of, a while after that, after Exxar had been established, she said, she said this about it. It was a real intense experience. I actually prayed for what I called the codes of social change. I thought there must be something I don't understand. And within a month, my prayer was literally answered. That's one of the limitations or drawbacks of Exxar is that there is this idea. that they have got this the codes of social change right that they have they've worked it out and it's all based on this this this book by um erika um cheer with um chunner with sorry erika chenna with uh and they think

you know basically that's the codes that is how you do it there will be a political revolution in this in this october so this month according to roger hallam in that that um politics theory of a interview he did, you know, and in some ways, right, I think we can, we can sort of link, we can sort of link that to, in a way, I think, like, Extinction Rebellion acts a bit like an acid trip for a certain section of society, right? Because, like, one of the things acid does, well, we, like, one of the interesting things we're interested about acid is that, like, this sense of connectedness with everything, which can act as a real tool of anti-individualization, that doesn't seem to be taken effect on Gayle Bradbrook,

but the practice is that anti-individualization. But the other thing it does is it can act as a sort of shock. It can shock you out of habitual modes of thought, do you know what I mean? And it's particularly useful for those things, those things that you realize, but you carry around just out of view, do you know what I mean? Those things that you sort of understand intellectually, but you can't actually live your life with those in full view.

I mean, the most obvious one that we would carry around with this is our own mortality, right? We all intellectually understand that, but you can't go through life with that in your view, do you know? And I think climate change acts as a little bit like that, right? It's one of those things where that we, for a lot of people, they understand the seriousness, the immediacy of the climate crisis. And yet when you look around, it's as, you know, when you look at yourself, your own patterns of behavior, it's as though you don't believe that. Do you know what I mean? And so it's that thing of like, right, X-R is going to force this group of people to bring that to the front of their consciousnesses, right? Which is a powerful thing, you know, and I want to say, Extinction Rebellion is a good thing.

You know, it's better that it happened, that it didn't happen. But that is a real limitation, right? The real limitation for me is that idea that it's brought that the sort of the revelation mode of social changes. It's brought to the front of your consciousness. then they've got the codes. They found those codes. Gail Bradbrook did a trip, then she found the codes. So the thing that's missing from Extinction Rebellion is this idea that, you know, change is complicated. And in fact, what you need to do is develop the abilities to analyze society and strategize. You need to develop those in the people, you know, across the mass, basically.

And they don't do that. They are consciously against that, which leads it to be a sort of higher hierarchical organization, or tends it to be hierarchical or is it organization, I think local groups are sort of rebellion against that now. Yeah, really interesting. There's only really one thing I want to say about Extinction Rebellion. Well, maybe two things. The first one is how I've interacted with Extinction Rebellion, which is, and what it's changed in me. So, you know, Like you guys, I've been an activist involved in many movements in the UK for like most of my life. And when I saw the imagery of the protests that were taking place in April, and I was just basically, I was really busy with work doing stuff on the NHS at the time.

But I came across these pictures of basically Oxford Circus being occupied with this big boat that they had. And those images had a really profound effect on me because it reminded me of reclaim the streets. It reminded me of stuff that I'd been involved in, you know, whatever, 17, 18 years before and or even, you know, the Iraq war when they were demonstrating day in, day out. And it somehow has affected my relationship to exactly what you were saying, Kim,

about how present climate change is in me. Like, I've never been engaged on climate change. Like, I'll be honest, people get really pissed off when I say this, but it just hasn't engaged me. Like, public services and workers' rights is the stuff that I've always worked and cared about, anti-war stuff. And, you know, I knew climate change was important,

but even though I was working in organisations that worked on climate change, like, it never really got to me. Yet somehow by seeing that the protest images with the joy, with the holding public space, it had an effect on me, and I think about climate change differently, and I think about myself within climate change differently and my actions differently on an individual level, which I didn't expect, and that's kind of not my, not my worldview. That's the first thing. The second thing, and so I went down, so I went down to the Marble Arch thing in April, and I thought, wow, this is really brilliant, like in

terms of how I felt in the space and I thought that tactically what they were doing was really good and interesting, not having known any of the background or any of the problems, which, to be fair, like, I don't really want to talk about because I haven't formed an opinion on in terms of like the problems and the tactics and a lot of the issues and the ideology are not behind XR. But the other thing that I want to talk about is one, this is the first sort of sustained set

of demonstrations happening in London which I've not been a part of and I think that's interesting like the reason why I want to hold back a more sophisticated critique is I've not been a part of it and I've not been able to go down yet this time

but also just the left's response like I think we have to take stock and be aware of the fact that extinction rebellion has engaged thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people, which the left has not. And so with all of its issues, we have to have at least that humility of understanding that something has worked there. And, you know, it's coming across, like you said, Jeremy, in quite an acid way, in quite a collective joy way, in quite a free way, and quite a collective way. and it has engaged so, so many people, and their vantage point and their viewpoint is fundamentally different.

And what I don't understand is some people on the left expecting that Extinction Rebellion will tomorrow take on a left perspective if we just throw it at them, if you see what I mean? Like, it just doesn't make sense to me. And then my final point, wrapping that all up, really, is that what I think is a really important acid perspective effectively is that a movement pushing against capitalism and the state, whether consciously or unconsciously, whether it's something they articulate or not,

is an ecology. Like what we're doing is an ecology, and the pun is not intended, but now it's going to be intended. We are in an ecology, and the left is only part of that. and what I'd like to see from everyone is more movement appreciation, really. We don't have to accept or agree with other people, but I have a lot of movement appreciation for Extinction Rebellion, even though I've not been a part of it, and I don't really understand it.

So that's really all I have to say. Yeah, I agree with every word of that, and I would say, actually, I don't want to critique them. I do want to explore a little bit the differences between our position and theirs, but because I think those differences are potentially complementary, in a broader ecology, you know, of a kind of multifaceted movement against, you know, as you say, capitalism and its state forms. So it's a really helpful clarification, actually, because I do want to think about the ways in which, you know, our position is different, but that's not for the sake of saying our position is even necessarily better. I mean, I think, because I think part of the issue is that they're mobilising, exactly as you say, they're mobilising a quite specific constituency who is a bit different from us and our constituency if we have one.

I mean, not that we can claim to be some kind of a movement like XR. I'm not making that claim about us, but I sort of think that I think we represent a sort of urban left hippie politics, and they represent something different. They're mostly not from cities. They're mostly, they are coming mostly from kind of very white, you know, kind of liberal backgrounds and constituencies. And that's not a criticism. That's to say, it's absolutely genius, actually, the way they found of mobilising people. Okay. So why are you, because I didn't know this, are you saying that most people from XR are not, like the London demonstrations that happen, you're saying they're not from Greater London. I don't know this. Well, anecdot. Yeah, anecdot. This is what I've heard from people involved is, yeah, and they're mostly not from London. I mean, there's a very big London presence, and like you and I are both on our local Extinction Rebell and WhatsApp groups, and like the one in Wolf and Forest is fantastic, and it's fantastic the way in which it's very open. Anyone can get involved. There's lots of stuff for families and children to do, which is all brilliant and very, very different from the earliest of, earlier sort of protest movements like reclaim the streets. And there's a real advance on that. So that is all, yeah, that is all for.

fantastic. I agree with that. We should perhaps make a... Sorry, Jeremy, do you want to go on? Yeah, can we just come back and say, because I think people listening, I might still be wondering, I mean, when Keir said, they think they've got the codes to social change, but what is it, what do they think those codes are? Like, what specifically is the theory of change they're working with? Yeah, so based...

Good question. I mean, but it's all written out. They've got a real clear, a clear idea of how change comes about, and it's, it's drawn from this, this, um, this, uh, text by Chenoweth. Um, the, um, it's called this, civil resistance is what works or something like that. I can't remember what the book is now. And it is this idea, if you get a certain percentage of the population to rebel, then, then the system will fall. And they sort of use models such as, you know, the fall of these Germany or whatever, right? These sorts of models, uh, but primarily sort of like,

authoritarian states where you just get enough of people to sort of like be an open rebellion and then then the state will fall. So they literally, my understanding, having read the stuff, is they literally think basically, yeah, you have to get systemic change, you have to get a certain percent of the population between rebellion, that what counts as being in rebellion is more than anything overwhelmingly getting arrested. And that, you know, and that therefore, they do literally think that, The way you get massive change is you get a certain number of people arrested.

And that's how you know. I mean, they're not so stupid to think that is the direct causal thing. Honestly, I think some of them do, to be honest. They think that it's just if a certain number of people get arrested, change automatically happens. But that is sort of symptomatic. And I've got to say, I am going to criticize this and say, look, that journey with stuff is very problematic.

It's based on extremely selective readings. I agree with that. Very specific historical case studies. it's not at all appropriate to use that methodology to inform something like Extincter Rebellion because what they do not do is or any just basically credible methodology would do which is not only to look at very disparate instances of apparently successful change but also to look at instances where people are trying to do things as close as possible to what XR are doing and where they haven't worked, and they don't pay any attention to that at all.

They don't have an analysis based on any historical awareness of the fact that there have been lots of attempts to engage mobilisations like XR or comparable to XR that haven't worked, and they don't have an idea why those things haven't worked. And their selective examples are very much, as Kitsa, they're from this liberal canon of very particular types of change, in which basically, indeed, authoritarian states have been pushed in a liberal direction. So they're very selective. And actually, that is a real problem

because actually what we need to challenge climate change is not to push our authoritarian state in a liberal direction. It's to push our highly liberal but highly undemocratic state in a socialist direction.

Yeah, but isn't that, and this comes back to the point of what I was saying, of why I think parts of the left don't get this, is that that, it's almost like it's a meta-vicious, logically, because what you've just said, Jeremy, kind of only seems to make sense to people

who, I mean, I hope it's wider than that, but what authoritarianism is and what liberalism is only seems to make sense to, like, as defining concepts, to people on the left in the way that we view it. So, so what I don't, I just think that they see things differently. Like, I'm not saying it's right. I think it's wrong. But they, so I agree with you, but they're, there, they're, vantage point, the way they look out into the world and analyze it, is fundamentally different because they don't have a power analysis that we do. Yeah. Yeah, well, you're right. But I also think we've all got this sense, haven't we, that despite we, we would all agree, the sort of on paper, it sort of looks like a car crash, you know, that the theory is bad and there are real

imitations to it. In practice, what's kind of extraordinary is what they're actually doing is fantastic. And I think it seems to me that what Extinct and Rebellion is actually doing in practice is something which completely exceeds the limits of its theory and the limits of the theoretical positions taken by its leadership. So creative. There's another line of, there's another line of theory

though that informs them. So, you know, the chenna with stuff, that's just not been proved because they've not changed, they've not brought down the government, right? And I've got a prediction that Roger Hallam's going to be wrong and they wouldn't have brought down the government by the end of October. Yeah, we're putting money up. We're saying it

here now. Mind you, Brexit, Martin, you might claim that. Well, that's what I was going to say. Like, who's going to be able to say what brings down the government if it comes down? They're not saying they're going to bring down the government. He's a bit of a political system of parliamentary government is going to collapse by December. We know that. For other reasons.

Let me just go back there because, like, that genoist stuff, like, that's not proven, like, whether that works or not, it's not been proven. What they've been successful at is, is this, like, really. quick mobilisation of large numbers. And the theory they get in that from is a theory of movement building which they get from a US group who train social movements called momentum. So that's not linked

to the UK momentum linked to the Labour Party. It's got a very specific form of like this is how you rapidly, rapidly grow and it's got stuff like you work out the DNA of a movement and you go around and you do trainings in the DNA of the movement so you can keep the core of the movement together. The best iteration

of that, the most useful iteration of that theory is the shock doctrine of of the left by Graham Jones, who uses that and he uses it in a really interesting way and links it to. That's a book. That's a book, yeah, but complexity science. It's really worth engaging with. But the problem, so one of the problems with XR is that the DNA of the organization is that there's one mode of social change.

This is it. You follow this and this will happen, right? And so what, you two are absolutely right, right? we need to think about the left and social movements and, you know, any movement of radical transformation as an ecology of organisations fulfilling different functions, you know, and the purpose is to try and get those functions into the formation in which change can happen, you know. Like that DNA of exile that they've been trying to train people in is specifically against the idea that there's an ecology of different organisations, right? That's a big problem for us.

that doesn't mean that you can't, you can't analyze them and incorporate them into an analysis and the ecology. You know, the ecology also includes groups who are actively hostile to you and you have to take into account their strengths and limitations and try to form stuff around. Yeah, that's completely, I mean, the whole, the momentum, I've done some work using those models of the momentum US models and it is, and it is movement DNA, not organizational DNA, which is interesting. So the concept of movement DNA and what I said about, what would I say, about movement ecology and movement appreciation, those are concepts that the Momentum US uses and that neon here in the UK uses. And I've been on these big trainings. And that is, in fact, interestingly, like talking to groups on the left that are working on really difficult issues, that is one of the most difficult things to get people to pull back on.

kind of undget that movement appreciation. Like you said exactly, Keir, the people disagreeing with you are in the same ecology, trying to get the same, to fight the same thing. And so it is very interesting what you said, that, of course, it seems like Christian Rebellion is not doing that. It's like, no, this is just us. And, yeah, I don't know much about it. Well, I think, because also, I mean, yeah, I've been exposed to some of that momentum

stuff as well. And it's, I mean, I mean, one of their things is also movement generosity, isn't it? Which is the idea that you have to, you have to try to take a non-sectarian and a kind of productive and helpful attitude towards other people who share some of your, at least some of your values and objectives. And I think, I mean, X-I would say, I mean, one thing that's really important to recognize about Extinction Rebellion is it is internally proliferating. You know, so within extinction rebellion, lots of different groups and different tendencies are emerging. and they seem to be able to share a common space quite effectively. And we should especially give a shout out to the global climate justice camp, which is, you know, some friends of ours have been involved in,

which I'll be speaking at on Sunday, is it the 13th? 6 o'clock. This will probably go out after that. Probably go out after that. I'm going to be talking about neoliberalism, climate change, etc. So there is space, definitely space opening up from within and from Extinction Rebellion. for a more sort of sustained anti-capitalist critique, four and more, and indeed, they themselves, I mean, to be fair,

it's not like, I mean, Gayle, I mean, Bradbrook has a critique of neoliberalism, which he has a critique of capitalism. I mean, the problem for me is that they don't seem to really have any grasp on recent history. They don't really seem to, a, they don't know anything, seem to know anything about even things like reclaimed the streets. They don't seem to know there have been a succession of radical equality movements with quite similar objectives and methods. And they don't seem to know, they really don't seem to have their heads around, the basic points continuously made by people like Naomi Klein and George Mumboe, that it's not, although we can say, like, as they, a lot of extinct rebellion people would say, oh, well, yeah, our entire civilisation has been built on carbon, you know, excessive carbon use since deforestation began 5,000 years ago, or, you know, it's all based on capitalism and the only alternative is some kind of sort of primitiveist rejection.

of it. Despite all that being true on certain levels, it's also true that, you know, basically the reason we haven't been able to do anything about climate change over the past few decades is because, it's precisely because the neoliberalism in the 1990s particularly aggressively destroyed all of the sort of international regulatory frameworks that had been created in the post-war period that could have been used to actually implement, you know, drastic global carbon emission reductions. So there's a really specific, politics and that makes to me that makes their position that for example they're against all party politics and they're above all party politics it makes it very problematic on the one hand

on the other hand I would say at this stage in their sort of struggle and development I mean fair play to them they're probably doing the right thing because they wouldn't have got all these kind of liberals from tautness like to come out to London to demonstrate if they just if they were saying we support the green new deal we support labour as green we support the green new deal we're yeah we're broke all being we're anti-Torri or anti-liberal. They wouldn't have got Boris Johnson's dad, you know, talking for them. And I mean, the issue that comes up here, you know, in so many different ways is always just, you know, the nature of coalition building and coalition politics. That's what I was really wanted to say in relation to what you were saying about the problems with the sort of movement DNA model and the organizational DNA model.

I mean, if your idea is just, will you have a blueprint and you're going to keep replicating that blueprint and that's the only way. you're going to grow, if that is all you're going to do, then the problem is, then you don't take, you never take account of the fact that, you know, every movement is a coalition of multiple forces and of different types, some of which will have different organisational models, some of which will have different constituencies. And that really echoes, I mean, I've been asked, I mean, one of the reasons I wanted to do this recording actually is because I've been asked very specifically several times by several people who are, who listen to our podcast, who are interested in what we do, who come to my part,

parties, and they specifically want to know, well, what is your take on X? What do you think about it? And the thing I've ended up saying to them each time, actually, after having discussed it for a while, is, well, I think right now, when I said, for example, this October X I should just keep doing exactly what it's doing. But also, at some point, it is going to have to confront the fact that it cannot realise its objectives alone. It can only realise its objectives as part of a broader ecology of movements, organisations. And that is going to have to have to include large sections of the trade union movement. It's going to have to include people within political parties. Probably it's going to have to include making alliances with

the radical left in Labour, but also people in the Green Party, even whatever remnants of the radical liberal tradition might be left in the liberal Democrats, you know, people in the nationalist parties, you know, rather than just having this blanket rejection, for example, of party politics. But I don't think it's that. And I think if XR, you know, keep managing just to keep going for another year or so, it will both experience the limitations of not being that. It will find that sooner or later, it's not getting any new people,

it's not getting any bigger, and it will have to confront that. But for now, at this stage, I would say, I mean, if, you know, there's no reason they should be interested in what we think they should do. I think they probably should just be doing exactly what they're doing because at this stage in their struggle, in their development, it's working really well.

It does bring up another thing, another problem, right, which is a problem I'm interested in, which is, like, how should people like us relate to something like that, you know, and not in, not in a sort of like critique way, but as how should movement veterans, veterans have passed sort of ecological movements relate to something new that they're sort of not invited to. I don't know that we're not invited. Because I was. I don't think that's true. Yeah, I don't think that's true. That was a rhetorical flourish, a rhetorical flourish. No, no, sure, but it's an important point, though, because I do, I.

And it is a really good thing about XR. Like, reclaimed the streets, you had to get an invite. You know, people didn't feel invited a lot of the time. You know, you had to get an invite. That was a problem with it. Yeah. You know, with XR, I have felt invited by it. And thousands of people have felt invited by it.

And that's a brilliant thing about it. I know, but it's a, it's. And I think, no, no, you're right. The distinction to make, though, is that, like, there is XR. There is a tight, very small leadership in London. and then there's the rest of XR, do you know what I mean, who don't have access to the bank accounts, et cetera, and can't decide on the direction of the movement.

That's like, it's a hierarchical movement, and the only way to get a non-hierarchical movement is to have a real focus on building analytical and strategic abilities throughout the organisation. Do you know what I mean? So in that interview on PTO with Roger Hallam, you know, the radical left is not invited. No, well, Hallam, I mean, specifically.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, the claims he, I mean, he hates the left. He doesn't understand anything about it. He reproduces a set of caricatures about the left, which come directly from the conservative right. You know, he doesn't know anything about the history of the left. Every claim he makes about the left is easily disprovable and is, you know, so I think, but I think we have to bruck it off Hanam. I mean, if you take Hanam's, then his claims about the movement about the left seriously,

then the whole thing would just be a disaster. But we cannot deny that there are droves of people. not be the majority, I hope they're not, who both from being affected by mainstream media, but like to not totally patronise them, their experience of left groups has been just a bunch of internal looking, joyless cranks. That's been their experience. I agree. You know what I mean? So if that's what, if I, if we, if I can just make a comment about form over content here, which is my big thing with almost anything political, and then I am happy to have other people

like pull me back to content on that, is that if your experience, I mean, where I live, there's like, like you said with where you live, Jeremy, there's not very much happening in the suburbs, and suddenly there's this XR group that has, like, you know, loads of people in it. And those people, I think it's the other way around, have felt not invited into the left.

Now that might not be my left, you know, the left is very broad in terms of how it goes about having meetings, how it talks, the atmosphere, etc. But, you know, why I'm really enthused by what XR is doing is that it's fun and it's engaging and there are kids and there's giant octopuses and kangaroos on stilts. Like, that's fun, cool stuff. Do you know what I mean? It's not the same as sitting, being invited to a meeting. that starts by like a droning and a panel talking in this unaccessible language. Now, this is not me being down on the left. I'm just saying, or, you know, even some of those panel-type meetings, which I think are important, it's just that not everyone is the same as well, and there are people who their

experience of the left has not been one that has engaged them, right? No, I complete, yeah, that's all completely right. And that's completely true. But I would say, I think we would all agree with this, that one of the things that is very important for people to understand is that the reason the left is like that is not, as Hallam says, and as the right says, because of some intrinsic problem with the very concept of the left.

It's because all those formations that people experience in their contacts with the, you know, so-called left, all those formations, those little groups, you know, you know, impenetral meetings, etc, they are the residue of the left having suffered terrible defeats, you know, in the, you know, from the mid-70s onwards for several decades, terrible defeats that left it too weak to actually develop anything else. And, and the thing that got defeated, the thing that got smashed up, you know, was the thing which is still responsible for almost everything that makes life livable and tolerable for us today.

And it was the thing that if it hadn't got smashed up, would have been able to address climate change. And when I say the thing, I mean basically the apparatus of the social democratic state and the labor movement and the broader, you know, popular left, the broader popular working class left and its kind of alliances with sections of the professional classes, et cetera, that all developed over the course of the 19th and 20th century. and that is why it's absolutely crucial to sort of consciousness raise that's why understanding history is crucial to consciousness raising and I would say to come back to Keir's question how can we relate to it I would say well I would say two I would say two things firstly we relate to it positively sort of lovingly supportively you know I support it I do everything I can you know my little way to support them and I you know I'm very happy to go and give a talk at Extincter rebellion and you know I've and I'm really happy to support it and to and really to support it uncritically, but also what we can do.

The thing we can do, I think, it is to try to, when we get the opportunity, if anybody asks us, or if we get any sort of do so, is to try to bring a bit of historical perspective to it, because it is crucial. In fact, you know, we can talk about theory and understanding history, but the two things become inseparable. I mean, the theoretical problems with the Extincter rebellion are absolutely about them having a really, really weak grasp of the actual history of social and political change over the past hundred years. And if they had a better, I think they would have a better theory, if they had a

better understanding of history. And I think if they had a better understanding of history, they would be able, they would then have a much more movement generous attitude to the left, actually. They would, they would not have this actually very parsimonious, sectarian, moralizing and, you know, and also, you know, and also if they were like, they would be open to the, the, the other experience of the left, which is currently very much alive, which is, you know, people around the world transformed and stuff like that. I mean, that is not, that that is a very kind of open, creative, fun, inclusive area of the left, you know. Yeah, exactly. That, you know, which we massively support and are part of. Yeah, we do. I mean, we are, we come from the

world transformed and the world transformed. And every claim made by people like Hallam about the left is disproved by the existence of the world transformed so and I think you know the work but I think we're very much in the same space I mean I mean I suppose this comes back to the initial question why do we want to talk about this because there's obviously there's also something very similar in the vibe the aesthetic you know the intentions and the experience of both the world transformed and extinction rebellion I think and there are plenty of people here into both I mean there are people there are plenty of people at our you know at our assy you know I see Corbyness Night at Royal Transformity,

who were also who are involved in Extinction Rebenian, for example, or at least several people. So I think, and I think, you know, we definitely want to promote that. But when I was talking about, like, what attitude we should take is also, like, a self-critique of myself, you know, it's an undermining of my own criticisms of Ex-R.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, sure, yeah. You know, because it's that thing of, you know, well, I'm conscious, I don't want to over- code this new thing with my own experiences. Do you know what I mean? So what, but then again, I've sort of been down this cycle before. Do you know what I mean? I was involved, I was quite heavily involved with the climate camp movement when it first started. But I had a similar thing then actually, right? So when it first started to get discussed the climate camp, I argued against

it. Do you know what I mean? I said, no, I think this is the wrong way to go. But then when people decided to do it, I said, well, I'll engage in a critical way, but I'll support it as much as possible, you know, because... Just say what climate camp was for people you think. So climate camp, it ran from 2006, I think, up until 2010, and it was a movement of, you know, so camps were formed, and they were usually formed around a piece of, you know, like a coal-powered station. So I was quite involved in setting up the first camp, which is at Drax, which is the biggest

coal-powered, power station. Yeah, that's what I was tripping up on, coal-powered. power station in Europe. Cold burning? Should it be cold burning? Cool burning? Anyway, we know what you mean. Go on. Yeah, we're against it. Anyway, and so the idea would be a, it'd be a camp for a week

and there'd be sort of like lots of education, etc. But the idea would be then to go through some direct action, you know. And it's sort of, in fact, this sort of relates to the sort of non-violent bit because it was violently attacked, basically. You know, there were, there were a several undercover cop police police officers in it who got revealed and it became part of this this sort of like the incredible police repression around the one at kings north power station and that sort of cracked in fact it was a death of Ian Tomlinson on a demonstration in london that sort of cracked open this this thing and like

made policing of protests a really big scandal and i think people forget just about how successful the climate camp was around 2009 2010 because that was the last time when climate change was like this really huge, huge, huge issue, basically, one of the best, the most prominent issue politically. Yeah, and it wasn't overtaken by austerity. And then that faded. It was overtaken by austerity, yeah, but it also, it ended almost immediately in 2010 because there was this big UN climate meeting, the COP 15 in Copenhagen, everyone went there. And basically, I think the whole climate camp movement realized that its strategy of change. really devolved down to like militant lobbying of a load of governments who just basically weren't

interested and weren't going to do anything and then at that level what do you do you know what I mean which is a problem which is a problem that XR are going to face in a different form when that strategy does not work well what do you do then do you know I mean do you just does the whole organization just dissolve that you know that's that's a problem that I think people outside XR have got to address as well as people inside XR well I think I think that's all right but I think it's also important to say, and we haven't quite said this yet, XR, to my mind, has had one enormous effect this year, one enormous success which climate camp never came close to. And that is, I don't think, I don't think the trade unions would have basically backed down from their

hostility to Labour adopting the Green New Deal as part of its platform at conference. Had they not been basically spooked by the scale and success of Exxar. Yeah, I agree. Into realizing that there was a broad public while outside their traditional constituency who are getting very agitated about climate change. And I think XR themselves, I think, are clueless that that is the big effect they've had

and that will go down in history as their big success this year. But despite that, that is the truth. That is the case. And I think that kind of exemplifies the whole situation actually. sooner or later, if they're going to keep being effective, they're going to have to realize, well, that was their victory, and that we need more victories like that. But the irony of it is the paradoxes, I think,

and I said we're saying this to someone at TWT, the paradox is that, well, actually, one reason they had that success is sort of because they're not in a position to conceptualise that as being what they were aiming for. Because I think they partly, one reason that they did really spute the union leadership is precisely because there are all these people

to the union leadership they know the left they know us very well indeed they know TWT they know what we want they know we're a bunch of hippies you know and they're not really scared of us but to them

I'm not a hippie I'm a punk yeah to them to them you know to them X are this kind of are they are this mysterious mob like coming out of the suburbs and the home counties

in the West country that they didn't even know existed and they didn't know we're ever going to be politically mobilisable. And I think that has really spooked them and that gave us the kind of radical left within the Labour movement a real opening to push for the Green New Deal agenda. And that is real collective agency being exercised irrespective of anybody's individual conscious intentions, which of course is exactly what I've been saying for years is how social change actually happened. There's also a perfect, a perfect example of that's how eco, that's how he could, that's thinking about it in terms of an ecology where a group just does something, it has some other

effect, and if you can, you know, capture that effect, then it can make change in a realm that the original group was not even thinking about, you know, that's how an ecology of social movements works. That's exactly right. And I think this is stuff I've been sort of trying to write about and think about and theorize since the 90s. And I would say, and again, I suppose I would say that the experience of things like reclaimed the streets, things like the rave movement in the 90s, all kinds of other things, that's

very, led me to this very firm conclusion that, as I keep saying, that is how things work up to a point, but also there also will come a point in the next year or so, where if XR isn't to burn itself out, is to go on being a really effective part of that broader ecology, it will have to become a bit more conscious of that role and a bit more conscious of the need for a sort of strategic orientation towards, you know, being part of a broad-based coalition. Do you know, that sort of reminds me of the discussion we've been having about consciousness raising and me and the consciousness raising workshops me and Nadia have been doing where we say this is really effective for this but like in the form that we've been doing them

they only do one function of consciousness raising and there's a gap between you know what you need to do in order to get you know a much a much fuller understanding of where you sit in the world and how to change it you know perhaps that's that is what you know we could look at what xR's doing is one of the first functions of consciousness raising, but there has to be other elements of that in order to, there has to be an additional analysis, not just that bringing that hidden knowledge of climate crisis to the fore and using that as a moral imperative for action.

There needs to be some other level of analysis added to that. But also just, you know, again, relating to the point I was making earlier, just the extent at which these experiences will change, people and, you know, radicalize them in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the definition of, of radical. Um, and how different that experience is, I mean, literally going down to the demonstrations, like the parties that are playing drum and bass in London, like the other night, and all of the different creative activities that are going on, like the liberatory effect that it has on the people who are engaged in it. And of course,

there are a lot of people not engaged in it, but with the people who are engaged in it and part of it, like, you cannot take that experience. from your body and it will have an effect when you go back to wherever you're from and it's not the same as an A to B March. It's just not. It's just not. And that's what reminds me of like the late 90s and early 2000s is that you you felt like you were taking up space doing something in a completely different way. And why it's important today is it completely contradicts the kind of Westminster Village, like mainstream media, also journalistic and, you know, MP vision of all of these people sitting with their iPads, like commuting, like super tech, like amazing

vision of London that doesn't actually exist, well, it exists for very few. Like, it contradicts that in experience. So not only are people, people are like living a different kind of person. that is not represented in the discourse by being part of those demonstrations. And I think that's a really powerful thing.