After Extinction Rebellion activists blocked a subway in London by climbing onto the roof of a train, passengers reacted furious and dragged activists from the roof or chased them on the roof. The action was then seen by the media as a “backlash” or “failure” [0]. Personally I do not share this view based on my understanding of the XR tactics and strategy and goals which has been outlined in its manual “This is not a drill” [1]. Since I find there is confusion about how the Extinction Rebellion protests “work”, I would like to lay out my understanding of it:
Extinction Rebellion is pursuing three goals or “demands” [3]:
- Tell the truth: Government must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.
- Act Now: Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.
- Beyond Politics: Government must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.
The strategy to achieve this goal is based on “civil disobedience” or non-violent direct action, which was shown to be an effective means to drive social change in historical examples like the fall of the German Wall [4], the American Civil Rights movement [5], or the independence movement of India [6]. Non-violent direct action is a passive aggressive act without physical violence on the side of the protesters to provoke an explicit conflict with the existing system which often but not necessarily involves breaking a law. This has the effect of:
- making the conflict explicit
- making clear who the bad guys and the good guys are based on the strong human norm that a person (“attacker”) who uses physical violence is “bad” and the attacked person (“victim”) who does not use physical violence is “good”.
- creating media attention influencing mass opinion leading to solidarity with the protesters as “victims”
- creating an exponential growth of mass action
- exponential growth of mass participation increases the economic and political costs of the existing system to a tipping point were the system needs to be change to a less costly system in line with the demands of the activists
The complexity of applying NVDA to the goals of Extinction Rebellion is that the faulty systems based on fossil fuels and capitalism are omnipresent and the overall society needs to be changed.
The tactics of Extinction Rebellion is to move to the places which are most crucial for the current system, ie the capital cities, financial districts, essential infrastructure, and not necessarily to direct targets, such airports, oil tankers, cargo ships, large animals farms, or big corporations to have a direct effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The rationale here is that the problems are of such a large scale that behaviour change of individuals or companies will not be successful in avoiding a climate and ecological catastrophy and government action is needed. As explained in other articles, Extinction Rebellions tactic is not to win the opinion of the public directly (eg otherwise they could just hand out sweets, flowers, and free hugs), but to break through apathy, raise awareness, create anger, and direct the anger at the root of the problem.
The following example may illustrate the principle: Imagine you are traveling with your family on a motorway and you have a terrible accident which leaves your children severly injured on the side of the road requiring urgent medical help. You are still able to act and the only means available is to try to stop other cars passing by to call for help via mobile phone, rescue the kids, secure the accident site, etc. However, the drivers pass by the accident without noticing, noticing to late, or deciding to drive on because they have other priorities. Therefore, you walk on the road and try to block the cars and ask them for help. The drivers react angrily because you created inconvenience for them, put their lives and cars at risk, and ask them to do something stressful, ie get dirty, rescue bloody bodies, etc. After explaining the situation to the angry drivers, there are two possible outcomes: A) The drivers understand your situation, share the same social norms of the priority of first aid, and do their best to help B) The drivers do not understand your situation, or do not share the same social norms, or do not want to help because they have other priorities.
Extinction Rebellion assumes that the protesters and society still share social norms, which makes the angry public re-direct their anger towards the political and business leaders and protect the protesters and join their purpose (cf “It is not the rebels who are causing the trouble, it is the trouble causing the rebels.” – Anonymous).
Therefore, the action mentioned in the introduction which blocked the subway of the public was in my opinion not well-performed and not very successful, because it targeted not the “elite” (eg financial district), and was ended early because of the intervention of the angry mob. In addition, the purpose of the blockade and the strategy was not communicated well enough. However, the action was still in line with the general strategy of Extinction Rebellion [1], only that the “car drivers” were stopped, and decided to shout at the person “seeking for help” instead of seeing the “car accident” and offering understanding and “first aid”.
References:
[2] https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/314/314671/this-is-not-a-drill/9780141991443.html
[3] https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/demands/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_independence_movement
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