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.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Those up to no good always want their faces covered
And those who think they will spread the virus without a mask should really think, and stay at home.
It’s a shame that England won’t in practice be much different – at least on public transport I’m expecting all the operating companies to mandate masks, led by TFL. Otherwise England could be the control group for the study of the efficacy of mask mandates. Pick a few towns and regions in the two countries with similar climate, geography, demographics, vaccination rates and current “case” rates and then see which one fares better over time.
From the people Ice spoken to, they all want masks on tubes and buses to continue and say they will use them regardless. They’re scared shitless of this thing
Not shitless. They are full of the stuff.
‘Witless’ is the word.
Muzzle will be part of the T&C of carriage. That’s contract law and British Transport Police have no remit in contract law. No statute and they have no power.
And what of cross-border public transport? Will you have to muzzle up/free-face as you cross the border?
I live in Hereford; the train to Shrewsbury is run by Arriva Trains Wales. Will I have to be muzzled to make a journey that is entirely in England?
They cannot make face nappies part of the conditions of carriage. Firstly, because the conditions of carriage are national, not a Welsh Assembly responsibility. Secondly, it would have to include an exemption clause, which renders it pointless. You only have to look at the situation with airlines and support animals to see that.
You say “cannot” as though that has any meaning to these lunatic despots.
The question is not who will allow them, it is who will stop them.
It’s who will and does defy the
Me, for one.
Who can stop them, not who will. The government has a monopoly of violence and no tyranny in history has lacked thugs willing to do its dirty work. There are dark days ahead.
It’s quite likely the National conditions of carriage will mandate masks
TFL will lead the way and others will follow
It will also include an exemption clause which will make it pointless, just as it did in the so called ‘mask mandate’
This is to protect the train operator from the public rather than to protect the public from ‘the virus’.
I think this is the most likely scenario
The logical answer it to declare oneself as ‘exempt’; they have no right to inquire as to why, and they never have done.
Which is exactly what makes a mockery of the whole mask mandate, as it can’t be enforced, and nor should it. TFL etc. should also take note of the latest landmark Danish study on masks that concluded no benefit.
That’s already been done in the States. Masks mandates make no difference. They don’t work for reasons explained by Fauci.
Yet I know intelligent, frightened people who think they do.
It’s already occurred with North Dakota and South Dakota – no difference in the proportion of cases!
Indeed
The US doesn’t exist according to our media
Covid is a total scam, masks can only have a down side.
This is no longer about public health – this is about power and a reluctance to relinquish that power..
Remove the words “no longer” for full accuracy.
Level 0 = masks
New Normal.
Level -1 = no masks
Abnormal.
That so many people are happily obedient enough to stretch bacteria-ridden snot rags over their faces in public will be the everlasting legacy of these times.
I’ve heard that some mask wearers have been hospitalised due to mask fibres being found in their lungs.
The whole point of everything now is to abolish, or render meaningless by diluting, or making statistically insignificant every imaginable control group, so that they can continue to implement and justify every absurdity already tried out, or still to be dreamed up in the future.
Build Back Better
But they’ve failed in the Stares. Stay strong.
I live in Hereford; I using some Prof Fergusson-type modelling; I predict an increase of Welsh people shopping in Bristol, Gloucester, Ross, Hereford, Shrewsbury, Chester.
Local car-boot sales have been full of traders from South Wales since English boots opened and Welsh ones remain shut.
You presuppose that most English traders won’t continue to mandate muzzles anyway. I fully expect all large retailers to do so, if they know what’s good for them.
Oi, stop kicking. “if they know what’s good for them” refers to the calls that they’ll receive from their masters: it’s not my position.
Sainsbury’s have already said it will be personal choice. Asda have said they’ll want folk to wear them. I’ve been using Asda Hereford for 10 years; on 19 Jul, I will go in and if I am told I need to wear a face nappy, I’ll ask to see the duty manager and they’ll be politely informed that my trade will be going to Sainsbury’s until their attitude changes.
Drakeford and his rapist son should wear masks of shame forever.
“…to help keep us all safe.” Glad to see they’re following The Science…wait a minute…
“Safe” is literally my most hated word right now. Every time I hear or read “stay safe!” a bit of me dies. I decide if I want to be safe, no one else decides for me! But we all know that SAFE = CONTROL.
I get the urge to physically attack people who tell me to stay safe.
Hear, hear. ‘Safe’ has become an obscenity.
I detest that phrase – “keeping everyone safe” – and its variants so much that I have actually had a bit of a rant at colleagues who have used it. I have asked them to explain how these measures are keeping people at risk of suicide or self-harm “safe”. How they are keeping victims of domestic violence who are cooped up with their abusers “safe”. How they are keeping the chronically lonely “safe”. How they are keeping kids and students whose educations are being blighted “safe”.
No answers are forthcoming, of course.
More proof if any were needed that this is a cult
Two cults and two leaders who each believe they are the one true god
The adherents have zany theories about the magical life giving properties of a cheap piece of paper imported from China
Based on exactly the same ‘data’ and science’ (produced by the high priests) the argument goes that if you behave in exactly the same way in two different locations the outcomes will not be the same.
if one follows that thinking to its logical conclusion then changing location will save your life
As an aside there has been speculation over the year as to who built Offa’s Dyke and why. Perhaps they were visionaries. Did they know that one day we would need to be able to define which side of a line maskless death would occur
Makes no fucking difference.
Those who don’t wear them now will continue to ignore the legislation (like me). Meanwhile, the longer this is perpetuated, the more angry people get as it becomes common knowledge that this whole thing is a pre-planned and pre-meditated collusion between the pharmacutical companies and the World Health Organisation, using a US created bio-weapon.
………that this whole thing is a pre-planned and pre-meditated collusion between the pharmacutical companies and the World Health Organisation, using a US created bio-weapon.
And as Doc David Martin has told Reiner Fuellmich, he has evidence relating to 73 US patents which clearly show that there was nothing novel about the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus.
The coronavirus “pandemic” has been planned for decades and while in itself it is largely hype, its real purpose is to scare or coerce the great bulk of the global population into allowing themselves to be injected with the likely purposely lethal Covid vaccines.
I can’t find the words to describe just how much I loathe that man. Living in Wales and having only recently plucked up the courage to ditch the lanyard in shops, I can now expect to get hassled every time I go shopping, Welsh shopkeepers and assistants assuming that the unmasked are English and need reminding of the Welsh rules. The anxiety Drakeford refers to is his own, but I think ultimately the decision to keep the masks is a political one, to further drive home the idea that Wales is independent of uk government control, and the UK is a defunct concept. These power-crazed morons are playing god.
I ditched the lanyard two months ago. You have nothing to fear at all. Shopkeepers are all too happy to see customers, they don’t care. I am now declining to register too, since I see providing a false name and phone number (which they are undoubtedly aware happens a large majority of the time), is an exercise in futility.
Believe me, I’ve been enjoying every minute of being lanyard-free. Never stopped, never questioned. But I expect that to change, when the English and Welsh “rules” on mask-wearing in shops part company. I’m expecting the Welsh to stop assuming that all unmasked are “exempt”, instead suspecting they’re English and ignorant of the local rules.
Have never given my details for track and trace. And I feel more determined than ever to resist engaging with this shitshow.
This is Cold War thinking, replace the bogeyman Soviet bloc with a bogeyman virus. Replace the subject of the 2 minute hate (can’t remember the name offhand) in 1984 with SARS-CoV-2 as the enemy of the state.
Emmanuel Goldstein, the figure behind every plot against the State (who almost certainly didn’t exist).
Thank you for reminding me, it’s a while since I read the book.
Very soon the subject of the 2 minute hate will be those of us who harbour crazy, subversive thoughts, such as that our own immune system are perfectly adequate for the vast majority of people, and that wearing a loose, damp, bacteria laden muzzle can only have deleterious health effects.
Don’t you simply loathe the phantom mouth that appears when these goons try to speak from under their nappies?
Cameltoe
Dungford has certainly not gone away.
May it please his controllers, the powers of Hell, to remedy that forthwith, immediately, and without delay.
Garden forks and rope available at B&Q!
This is going to work really well on trains, isn’t it? The Transport for Wales train opeerator (controlled by the Welsh government) operates most of the services in adjacent parts of England, including the Marches line which goes down the border and is the main operator at several sizeable English places (Shrewsbury, Hereford). And it weaves in and out of Wales. So what’s the law? People have to check on a map whether they have to wear a mask or not at that particular point?
Of course, it’s highly likely that the train operator will try to insist on masks as a condition of using their services, even well outside Wales (they go as far as Manchester). Let’s hope that the English train operators don’t try the same trick – I’m not hopeful, though.
I live in Hereford and posted about this earlier. Point is, if muzzles are a T&C of carriage, then that’s contract law and no police force in the country has the power to enforce contract law. There may well be a Statutory Instrument for muzzles in Wales, but BTP can only enforce it while the transport device (there’s plenty of x-border buses too) is in Wales.
There’s a precedent: IIRC smoking was banned in indoor public places (including trains) in Scotland about a year or two before England. The train companies which ran services across the border and which still had smoking carriages (I think there was only one company) banned smoking on the whole service, despite it being legal, as the alternative would have been everyone having to stub out their fags when the train crossed into Scotland.
If Cymruzombies are worried and anxious about going out, they can bloody well stay in.
I saw a good few out and about today, outdoors, including one man on a bicycle! I can only put it down to mask-induced oxygen deprivation having caused brain damage.
Asda in Caldicot empty those inside muzzled.Where are all the shoppers weird.Are they cowering indoors or fuming with rage like me?
That’s my September holiday in Wales cancelled, it looks like England again.
It really isn’t that bad
Don’t do the BBC. Masks don’t work and in any event Sars-Cov-2 is simply a massive scam. See David Martin giving evidence to Reiner Fuellmich. https://www.bitchute.com/video/anNY7jqPAiiD/
https://planetlockdownfilm.com/full-interviews/
“In this interview with Sucharit Bhakdi he disc[r]ibes a study just released regarding children and masks stating that they are intolerable and unhealthy.” And more regarding vaxx and clotting.
Won’t the mask be their undoing? First, policy on mask use flip-flopped at the start; second, aren’t there now studies confirming not only uselessness but harm (Bhakdi above et al.). Their stance looks increasingly like purposed deceptiveness.
Spineless bed wetter’s…get a life.
In Wales we have the worst waiting lists , poor health outcomes compared with England. Drakeford is a pleasant man who is in search of a good tailor and a scientific background!
Drakeford would prefer to have his hand over our mouths
just like his son
It’s the Welsh govt that are the danger to people, not the virus.