The other day Michael Deacon wrote in the Telegraph about Just Stop Oil’s antics and likened them to a cult. He was right in every way, but his analysis didn’t quite go far enough.
As a writer I have long indulged the conceit that I am a sort of historian. This has left me with a lifelong sense that I am a voyeur at a car crash, a passive witness to an endless cascade of confusion, stupidity and brutality, punctuated by moments of brilliance and invention, that defines our existence.
There is a long history of cults stretching back over thousands of years. A common, but not ubiquitous, feature is the notion that the world is about to end, usually as a punishment for human misdemeanours, and sometimes accompanied conveniently by a date. When the date passes and the world fails to end, the cult is obliged to reinvent itself or disappear. Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion are not so foolish as to name the day our evil way of life will destroy the planet, though they are obsessed with the five minutes to midnight idea. The day the Earth catches fire is depicted as being merely imminent. Both organisations predicate their ideologies on the basis that this will be as a consequence of humanity’s failure to take action to avert the crisis.
With this devastating prospect, the gloves of course are off. With such a catastrophe looming, any action they take is legitimate, however crass (such as throwing soup over a painting) or stupid (like hanging off a bridge). Underpinning all this is the defining feature of the incipient totalitarian state: an intolerance of diversity of thought. Everyone must be coerced into their way of thinking, their views must be those held by the entire population, and any action is justified to force that to happen.
One only need look at some of Extinction Rebellion’s ramblings to see the truth about them. They profess to want ‘direct democracy’, a vision in which they will not stop until their ‘demands are met’. This flagrant abuse of the word ‘democracy’ is as lost on them as it was under former totalitarian regimes.
The underlying foundation is the reactionary fantasy of some pre-industrial utopia where everyone lived a life of sustainable sanctity, all the while overlooking the crippling effects of starvation and disease and being subject to – guess what? – the vagaries of the climate.
I of course would be an enemy in their eyes. But I have no problem with the idea that climate is changing. But it has always changed, and a central part of human ingenuity is the ability to adapt to a constantly changing climate. No-one has yet demonstrated to me how much of the current rate of change is attributable to human activity, or the extent to which changing that activity would have any effect on slowing down that change. These are crucial questions, but usually ignored in the race to create a sense of millenarian doom and turn our world upside down in the pursuit of the Net Zero fantasy.
I have also invested thousands of pounds in solar panels and batteries. They have almost annihilated my electricity bills and, given the worthlessness of savings, make obvious sense if one has the capital to spend. I’m all for increasing renewables, but I profoundly object to being confronted by eco gangsters, bent on panicking everyone into futile gestures. Having just spent a month travelling in the American West where I saw precisely one (unused) EV charging point, I now know the truth meaning of Britain’s Net Zero targets – set against the rest of the world, they will make Net Zero difference.
That doesn’t mean we don’t do everything we can to change the way we live and improve how we do things, but in a measured and considered way and not in a panic. Panic will get us nowhere except somewhere worse than we already are.
The Dartford Bridge stunt also has to be seen for what it really was. Early Christian martyrs competed with each other to be tortured and killed in the most extravagantly awful fashion. Ostensibly, they were dying for their faith, and some certainly thought they were, but they had fallen over themselves to make sure the Roman authorities did their worst. These high-end martyrs were not doing this for the sake of impressing the wider Roman public. Their real purpose was showcasing their righteousness to other Christians like St Jerome who regaled others with titillating tales of hideous deaths. The worst thing that could have happened to them was if they had been ignored.
Competitive martyrdom was a real phenomenon. The Dartford Bridge stunt fell into the same category. The two idiots involved were showing off to their eco chums, upping the stakes, raising the bar for the other saints among their ranks who – if they want to be eco celebs – will have to come up with something even more insane and dangerous if they want prestige and fame within the movements.
And therein lies a very interesting prospect. Since the world is unlikely to end any time soon, and no government worth its salt can possibly give in to these tactics and blackmail, the eco warriors are going to become gradually more frustrated.
By boxing themselves into a corner with uncompromising demands, they are presented only with either giving up and losing face or having to push their campaigns ever further.
They have probably also reached already the maximum extent to which their tactics can garner wider support. A story has emerged of a woman who died after a road accident, the ambulance allegedly having been held up in the congestion caused by the Dartford Bridge protest. There is only so far the public will stomach the movement’s claims that such outcomes are an acceptable price to pay.
All this makes it almost inevitable that the eco movements will begin to splinter, breaking up into factions among which will be some extremists who believe they must resort to outright violence to get their way. Since the groups include some youthful hotheads and, as we all know, ‘there is no sinner like a young saint’, I’d say this is a virtually inevitable outcome.
It is precisely the direction the women’s suffrage movement took over a century ago, dividing into two organisations: the suffragists and the suffragettes. The suffragettes (the Women’s Social and Political Union) under the leadership of among others Christabel Pankhurst resorted to violence, justifying it with quasi-religious binary thinking by depicting the battle as one between good and evil, in which the government is the prime force of evil (exactly how the eco movements depict their campaigns). The war the suffragettes waged was thus a ‘just war’, the justification wheeled out across history to beat someone else up when they don’t do what you want.
Arguments have raged ever since about the impact of the suffragettes’ violent acts, but the arrival of the Great War changed everything and it is now simply not possible to determine whether suffragette violence led to women being given the vote.
The prospect of violence will horrify the ranks of retired vicars and other comfortably-off leisure protesters with their plastic boxes of sandwiches whose only ambition is to warm the cockles of their hearts with an afternoon of righteous zeal in the middle of the road while destroying other people’s businesses and preventing those selfish enough to be ill from getting to hospital. The sight of violence breaking out in eco protests (whether by the eco warriors or by their victims), or even eco suicides, will traumatise the moderate wing.
This is a serious prospect, and another is that if the protests are dragged out long enough the movements will lose momentum and simply dwindle. We can at least hope for that, but in the meantime these useful idiots are playing directly into the hands of an ever more controlling state. One of the most likely outcomes in the near future as a result of economically damaging protests is more state surveillance of everyone, and more restrictive laws on wider freedoms, such as being able to look at paintings in galleries without having to stand a long distance away.
There is one conspicuous difference between the eco warriors and early Christians though. The early Christian martyrs were only focused on their own salvation. Everyone else could go to hell (literally). The eco warriors are the ultimate narcissistic cult. Everyone must be recast in their image and fall down in abeyance before their righteousness. Their Inquisitorial intolerance is a frightening facet of the human condition.
I’ll finish with a story about a friend I’ve known for 48 years. She castigated us recently for our recent trip to the U.S. since she is now an Extinction Rebellion supporter and goes on marches and demonstrations. In the same breath she proudly showed us the architectural plans for the £200,000 extension she is having built and which will cover half her garden in concrete, cement and bricks. She was wholly oblivious to the irony. Oh, and she won’t have solar panels ‘because I don’t like the look of them’. No doubt her zeal will keep her warm when electricity gets too expensive. That’s your middle-class eco warrior. You really couldn’t make it up.
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Oh that really is Trajik!
I’m a long in the tooth university lecturer and this piece is, I’m afraid, right on the money. Just one anecdote from the coalface: recently a more ‘senior’ colleague – a much younger guy who’s been rapidly promoted to a full professorship (no issue with that – his career’s none of my business but with that elevated role surely comes an expectation of competence) questioned the wording on some coursework I set. The word he queried was ‘manifest’ as in ‘to make manifest’. I replied, ‘it means to reveal outwardly or make apparent. I use this term often and somehow most students have managed to cope with it’. He replied, ‘well that’s ok as long as the students are comfortable with it”. Once I’d retrieved my lower jaw from the floor, I responded, ‘I introduce them to concepts, theoretical positions and empirical contexts that they may be unfamiliar with in my lectures too but I guess that’s the whole point of providing and receiving an education’.
I am not participating in the strikes and left the UCU a few years ago since it diverted from its core purpose of protecting members’ pay and conditions and veered into ever more exotic social justice obsessions.
Another academic here. I concur, academia is now run by people who, a few years ago, would not have passed A Levels.
I have also left the UCU. I was driven away by their cheerleading for lockdowns and their support for the genderwang insanity.
Me too. The final straw was their disgraceful lack of support for Kathleen Stock.
Great piece Busqueros. The UCU’s wokehunting of Kathleen Stock and other heterodox thinkers tells you all you need to know. As does their economically illiterate pursuit of gold plated pensions in a funding black hole. Their embrace of lockdown was a lazy academics dream and their totalitarian approach on climate change. Their opportunistic alliance with the lumpen identitarian NUS means they eschew every aspect of professionalism.
You’ve neatly summed up the reasons for my decision to leave the UCU.
TRADEGY! When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on, it’s TRADEGY. When the morning cries and you don’t know why, it’s hard to bear, with no one to love you, you’re goin’ nowhere’ ~ the Brothers Gibb
Remember the times…
An excellent riposte 👏
Curious how times have changed: I did another Masters degree a few years back and, because papers were ‘rinsed’ through a marking system, could be marked down for any spelling and grammatical errors, plus incorrect citing of sources in the bibliography however minor (missing bracket, etc). That said, the rot was setting in even then: not only was I told I couldn’t ‘prove’ certain historical truths which could be evidenced (!), but also that my final dissertation wasn’t supposed to ‘create new knowledge’ – in diametric opposition to previous post grad work. Another jaw on floor moment. (The paper caused much consternation amongst the external examiners on exactly this point but eventually won through due to a robust defence by my supervisor.) If this is the way edgukashun is going, I really do fear for the future of humanity.
That’s the postmodern historian at work: We don’t know for certain that what we used to call historical sources are trustworthy because we didn’t experience anything ourself and hence, free speculation about anything is called for! Much less work, anyway. Reading is tedious.
Quite so 👍 (OMG – since the last computer update this emoji now comes in a range of colours. Are they going to do the same for all the faces too?)
I left my OU history degree course (something I’d wanted to do as a retirement project) because the tutor who marked a piece of work did not know the difference between “uninterested” and “disinterested”. As I said to him; “If you don’t know the difference, we are not going to get on.” I left soon afterwards.
I feel your disappointment! I wanted to do a retirement PhD – I did get an offer which was initially stymied by the plandemic but now I consider I had a lucky break, given how far down the woke drain academia seems to have gone. Perhaps our more erudite DS readers could set up an independent non-woke uni where free speech and critical thinking are still encouraged!
While the ‘West’ sinks into the mire of its own making..other countries, quite rightly eschew this nonsense….
Russia has nearly twice as many Engineering/construction and manufacturing graduates than America..Iran, meanwhile has just as many as the US…even though Iran has a tiny minority of population in respect to the USA…(plus a majority of them in Iraq are women…believe it or not!)
China tops the STEM graduates list..along with other ‘Global South’ countries plus India and Russia and Iran….as for Maths..again the Global South comes out on top.
Does anyone think for a moment that children don’t know how to spell the most basic words in these countries…?
A massive global change is coming, and sadly the West is in decline in every sphere….and people like these selfish idiots will be the first to blame anyone but themselves….
In many ways that’s actually quite comforting, if the nihilistic jabbawokery of the US, UK and other infected countries can be kept at bay!
One only has to look at the cognitive decline of Resident Biden to see our fall from grace. Lord help us🙏
Who doesn’t love an illiterate nonce with a third in Feminist Underwater Basket-Weaving Theory awarded by the Polyversity of the Central Black Country (formerly Walsall Tech)?
I was at school in the ’70s and university in the ’80s. Teachers and lecturers were quite unsympathetic – which was the best way to toughen us up and prepare us for working life.
One lad in the year above received a mark of minus 2 in his end of year latin exam; he answered every question incorrectly and had 2 marks deducted for untidiness. Happy days!
That’s still my teaching philosophy: show ‘em no mercy, give ‘em no hope and let them prove themselves from that point. The university may enforce no standards but I bloody well do! I am routinely thwarted by the blob of administrators, passive external examiners and #bekind colleagues for the failures but at least I’ve expressed my view and it’s on the record. It’s about the only straw left for old boilers like me to cling to in the current climate.
You get my vote!
Strangely, when you talk to people about the teachers they had at school, it is often the authoritarian ones that they mention most fondly and whom they say had the most positive influences on them.
I got the top grade in o-level Latin. I failed with a grade F; the rest of the year were unclassified. I was always surprised the Latin master didn’t top himself.
The photograph was taken on 30th November 2021, according to Getty Images and Alamy, who now license it as a stock photograph. During those six months many people must have pointed out the spelling error and the leaflet creators can hardly have failed to spot it. So I tend to agree with the author that the underlying reason for its publication is that the UCU believe that insisting on good English is “elitist”.
Curiously, the London School of Economics crop the photo which avoids the mis-spelling! Perhaps they have standards?
It’s still on UCU’s website under resources
I left UCU for the same reasons as the other contributors to the discussion – trans ideology, lockdowns and general unthinking wokery. But not knowing how to spell…..
When comprehensive education was introduced in the late 1960s there was a march opposing it with students holding a banner which read’ Save our grammer schools’ Rather undermined the message as does the UCU leaflet.
Couldn’t find a leaflet, but the poster shown in the attached image demonstrates their lack of basic skills!
I find it particularly amusing that the ‘Tradegy’ banner is being held up just in front of one reading ‘Knowledge is Power’.
Get with the programme: correct spelling is White Supremacy, White Privilege, racist, patriarchal… and transphobic.
Yeah, it’s so gay.
The red placards are misspelled too. They should read “On shirk for fair pay”.
Every young person comes out of school now calling every single thing in life “perfect”. ———–In shops and stores they ask if you want a receipt and what ever you reply their answer is always “perfect”. ————-“Do you need a bag”? —“No thanks”—-“Perfect”. —————–Someone obviously never taught them what the word perfect actually means. It means flawless or faultless eg a perfect circle. ——————It does not me an “OK, or “Thankyou”. ————–This linguistic virus has spread like a speeding bullet all over the western world.
“This linguistic virus”
Indeed, and it damn well pisses me off too.
“Have a nice day.”
I bloody hope not.
“Perfect.”
Some of them barely speak.
I am glad you noticed this. In any restaurant or shop or infact anywhere where there is interaction with the public you will hear the waitress or shop assistant or whoever say “perfect” in every single communication. If ever there was an example of people allowing themselves to be turned into sheep this is it, and I really only started to notice this in the last 5-10 years. But it is now so widespread that they are all doing it. I never hear “thankyou”. I never hear “Ok then” . —–I only ever hear “perfect”
I usually observe that there has only ever been one “perfect” person.
And they nailed him to a cross.
Luckily, everyone knows how to spell “Down with this sort of thing” and “Careful now.”
All thanks to the sainted Tony Bliar, who sits on the right hand of whoever shovels the most money into his capacious pockets.
If you decide that, in order to reduce the youth unemployment figures, 50% of school leavers must go to ‘University’ then the obvious result is that you’ll get thickos ‘teaching’ thickos. And to afford it all the amoral, venal bar steward made the students take on a load of debt for the privilege of this crap education.
At last!
Someone correctly pointing out the foundational genius who destroyed academia!
Absolutely correct, DevonBB!