Extinction Rebellion, Worst New Movement of the 21st Century.

this video is a critique of extinction
rebellion and it is not just based on reading the information on the website it is not just based on watching the YouTube videos in the YouTube channel it is not just based on attending a lecture delivered by their leader and main spokesperson actually got to talk to the guy even though it was via Skype they took questions from the audience I got up I stated my question heard his answer so in some small measure I got the interview or cross-examine the leader of this organization and let me tell you something even though this video is a critique of extinction rebellion it's gonna give you a much more positive impression of this absolutely awful social movement that if you went and took a look at the propaganda materials they're producing for themselves my name is Tina Russell and I'm the vision Kinko's nature for extinction rebellion and I have said many times between Roger and Gail this is why perhaps I'm here talking to you about to introduce part of the debrief which was very special for a great number of people extinction rebellion is about moral leadership and it's about more Olympic ability it's about truth-telling when we show our leadership and we stand with others in that leadership how do we navigate so that we hold each other in our in our most exquisite leadership there's a moment where Gale speaks about someone in our movement Ronin describing them as the Sun in the moon and in that mo in that moment in that narrative which I think some people have heard a few times the rest of us can wonder who we are and I think that's why I I'm so happy to be able to speak to you because I want to say to people that are watching this that we are Co leaders and that if there is a Sun in the moon then you are the stars came together to basically recreate what it means to be on the basis of the social science and on the basis of spirituality ISM very sort of inputs and and there's a certain brutality in that because we went out into the public sphere and said if you don't like it then start your own social movement and you're we're holding all of this together how could I possibly indict them how could I possibly make them look more ridiculous more terrible than this kind of material they're producing with themselves they openly talk about themselves being a spiritual movement they wear this medallion that makes them look like a cult their main claim to fame the main thing they are proud of is that they've gotten more than 1000 people arrested so as of April 22nd 2019 more than 1,000 people have been arrested in the United Kingdom basically in England at their protests oh all the red flags are here and if you actually read the text on their website carefully it's gonna give you a very very negative impression organization now the first thing I said to him when I asked my question was thank you for your lecture by the way this is somewhere on the internet different it was multiple people filmed me talking to this guy and I'm sure it's been uploaded to multiple YouTube channels but the first thing I said to him was look the presentation you just gave perhaps because you're addressing your comments to an audience of people all of whom want to make the world a better place open want to solve these problems the presentation just gave gave me a much better impression than anything I read on your website or anything I saw on your YouTube channel listening to the same guy give lectures on his YouTube channel gave me an absolute the terrible impression of this organization what it's about and made me feel that I was very much their enemy and I should mention the other thing that's in framing this discourse for many people and was the final question to face is the extent to which extinction rebellion is onion ante vegan or not vegan enough I actually felt II handled that question reasonably well it's certainly not the most outstanding problem with this social movement you know once in a while there's like a little piece of rhetoric that seems to take on a life of its own it seems to overpower the minds of the people presenting that rhetoric it's like a runaway freight train it's like the Train is more powerful than the tracks that's going on or it's like the tool becomes more powerful than the purpose the tool was meant to be put to and the results are pathetic and dangerous like there's been this idea bouncing around the vegan demi-monde for maybe 20 years that oh the the future is social science research the future is moving away from methods of protests that are just based on like passion or opinion or creativity or the arts or I know or politics or law oh yeah politics politics and science those are tips everything's no no now we're gonna we're gonna wipe the chalkboard clean and we're gonna start again with the findings of social science research I said you know this rhetoric has gotten old people I mean if anyone found it convincing say as recently as two thousand fifteen when direct action ever we're we're really taking that seriously by now it's like an old pair of socks that have holes worn through it I think most people even if they're not really doing any independent research they've started to guess that this is kind of a snake hole salesman you're kind of suspicious okay you're now you're gonna tell me about slavery and Mahatma Gandhi and how social science research has proven that your method is effective not what people of the Ethical Treatment of Animals is doing not what Greenpeace is doing not with the government you alone have come to the conclusions from your examination of social science research and yet somehow each of the organization's each of the cult groups frankly that makes this claim they come to completely different conclusions well gee it's kind of like I've been back in the dark ages it seems like every version of Christianity and every version of Islam they were really certain they'd studied the sacred tax and come to the correct conclusions and they were willing to kill the followers of all the other forms of Christianity all the other forms of law they were certain that their views were backed up by the Bible or in Islam's case backed up by the Quran and yet mysteriously it seems like you know these are not really scientific conclusions they they came to so when I got in the microphone I guess last things first here I said to in the most polite way possible after thanking him for his presentation after telling him that his presentation gave me a much much more positive view of his organization than horses Asians on propaganda did I said well you know um it does seem to me that when you make these claims about social science research and about what's effective you know there is some cherry-picking involved here the method you have put forward for this new movement extinction rebellion abbreviated as XR the the it's identical to what's happening right now in Hong Kong it the math physics agonism Hong Kong protests they shut down the highways they shut down major roads they shut down the airport it's exactly his form of mass occupy nonviolent nonviolent but just barely nonviolent protests and I said you know what um if I were gambling man I tell you that in Hong Kong it's not gonna work they're protesting for democracy and democracy is not what they're gonna get it's not gonna be that he's either facing off against China's red army and they're gonna lose eight you know I know a lot of other examples that people don't like to discuss and don't get included Cambodia comes to mind um but you know there are so many all around the world there of course there's so many nobody's talking about here like oh oh gee you want to talk about the abolition of slavery hmm why doesn't China count did you know China has its own history of the abolition of slavery oh you didn't know that oh so you didn't actually read any books or do any social all right I'm sorry you're a version of the history of the abolition of slavery it's the product of your ideology going back and picking and choosing things from history that reinforces your biases you know what you want is oh my god sorry China I mean look I also think the history of slavery in Haiti is very important but admittedly Haiti is one small island in the Caribbean we can learn a lot from studying the history of how slavery got abolishing slavery you can learn a lot it'll give you nightmares people it's real violent it's a real gory it's real fascinating okay admittedly Haiti is after all one small island in the Caribbean China China was a pretty big part of planet Earth's inhabited landmass still is still but you know if we're talking about the history of the abolition of slavery could it be could it be that this is um Eurocentric could it be could it be that you're taking a really simple stereotyped notion of what happened the United States and you're just ignoring like the Civil War you're constructing this story about nonviolent protest and disruption and ignoring you know the fact that there was actually a civil war that was involved in it which could it be could it be that you're choosing someone like Martin Luther King jr. you're saying Martin Luther King jr. is a hero but you're ignoring how he died um you're ignoring that the things you say he accomplished were actually accomplished by Lyndon Johnson after the assassination of John F Kennedy like hmm it's there are some huge gaps and these narratives you're presenting about social science research and learning the lessons of history it sounds like instead you just have an ideology the same way the Communists did in the past and then you're trying to vindicate that ideologies through the very selected very biased reading of history and the Christians did that before to believe oh man the Christians could interpret history to back up all their all their fantasies about what society wasn't you say hey when I got up on the microphone to talk to this guy leader and communications director for extinction rebellion I said it was well you know you look at hong kong which seems to be exactly your method you look at cambodia and there are a lot of other examples people aren't thinking about here and there aren't included in these generalizations and you know what I really just don't feel that there's like some kind of self-evident empirical fact here that your methods are backed up by socialism I said it in the really in the nicest way possible it was a lot nicer there that I'm being in this video you know what he said back to me he said uh well you know you're right um like at least forty four percent of the time these methods don't work it's close to 50/50 it's but it's at least like thirty four percent of the time you concede he concedes for a person that doesn't work and yeah you know what like Hong Kong in Cambodia yeah probably not probably your claim to fame is you got a thousand people arrested and went to prison in England right okay so this is one thousand and sixty five people have been arrested obviously in England the authorities are probably going to be very kind to these people probably not very many of them are going to are gonna really do hard time in prison because the British authorities will Pro is say well you had good intentions you know probably sympathetic was you let's just say I pathetically said a thousand people to jail maybe they spent only one night in jail but still they have a criminal record they got to get a lawyer and deal cut yeah and you're telling me you completely accept there's at least a forty four percent chance that this is for nothing you know that's a contrast from the ultra confident over-the-top rhetoric you've been presenting even in this same lecture in this same presentation you gave to all the people in this audience today here in Toronto okay look guys I took a lot of notes during this lecture I listened to what he had to say let's do it from his perspective civil disobedience Gandhi I wrote this all down here I I feel like this is a nice video a little bit more than ten minutes long we just leave it there um there were a lot of snake oil salesmen going on here in vegan activism in ecological activism and this guy has already been cross-examined oh I'll give the link below this video if you want to know the classic vegan perspective on this group gary france aione has already gone after them with his fangs and teeth read saying that they're anti vegan and they kind of are from their perspective what they say is they are a quote unquote broadchurch there's supposedly inclusive of meat eaters and hunters and everyone else and they see themselves as just a short-term protest strategy to quote unquote save the planet there's a short-term emergency and they want everyone to participate in these mass protests that want tens of thousands of people to get arrested not just one thousand they want tens of thousands of people to occupy bridges and highways and airports and shut down cities and they think that's gonna make a difference and they're peddling an over-the-top doomsday scenario interpretation of the science on climate change which is dubious kind of a story for another video but they present this all-or-nothing Manicheans struggle either plan earth is gonna survive or it's not so who cares if you're vegan what really matters is whether or not you're willing to sign up for their crazy cult where this magic amulet and accept the leadership of these two people who they refer to as the Sun and the moon of their spiritual organization where you can either respect their leadership or get out and start your own movement as I played in the clip yeah that sounds great oh yeah right right and it's just like direct action ever oh yeah at the same time it's completely non hierarchical it's completely horizontal and participatory and kohli yeah right yeah this doesn't sound like one person is it are two people or a church at all uh-huh yeah I've kind of heard this story before guys and yeah all the claims it's the same rhetoric if the same [ __ ] excuses down to generalizations about Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King jr. and social science research man we live in dangerous times because people want to feel like they're part of the solution and they are signing up to become part of the problem people are in between ideologies they're desperate for answers and they don't want to live with the gnawing doubt of just carrying with them the questions I mean people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know