Greg Vish

I was in Extinction Rebellion for several years. I produced over 60 videos for them and helped with several protests. I can tell you directly: It was never about the climate. It was about controlling you. Specifically, it was about mobilising 3.5% of the population into permanent revolutionary protest in order to trigger a Communist revolution. (Per Trotsky, Sharp, Hallam, Mao) This was told to me directly by some of the leaders of the organisation. I tried to organise some programs to help businesses lower their carbon footprints without lowering profit margins or impacting the GDP, and I was told in no uncertain terms that *solutions* were counter to the goals of the movement and that I should stop. It was then that I started to realise their true motives, and understand that perhaps I was being taken for a ride. I learned that Communist countries have had some of the WORST environmental records in existence. What XR was proposing - degrowth, agitation, "decolonisation", post-capitalism and every other agitprop buzzword - would effectively drop civilisation back to a pre-renewable era and force developing nations into a protracted industrial age, leading to ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more carbon emissions than the incremental improvements found by market innovations. Population density is a critical function of renewable energy infrastructure. You don't have a factory. You have a market ecosystem. That's how technology works. It blew my mind that they didn't understand this. After years of pushing against fossil fuels, they were suddenly vehemently opposed to Elon Musk and his EVs. It was mind boggling to witness. I realised that Musk had singlehandedly done more to reduce emissions than the entire climate activist movement combined. And it's not close. Mentioning this, I was met with bewilderment and anger. It was very hard to come away from that experience with much sympathy for the activist left movement. At their best they were devoid of ideas and completely incapable of making meaningful technological or engineering innovations. At their worst, they were actively working against their own stated goals in order to maximise agitation and mobilise discontent toward a destructive revolutionary movement that would ultimately lead to measurably worse outcomes. Applying Occam's Razor, it became apparent to me that the goal is Communist revolution, and all these random causes - climate, gender relativism, immigration, BLM, defunding police, Islamisation etc etc etc weren't about triumphing over injustices, but about agitating blocs of useful idiots into a perpetual state of protest in order to seize power and control in the name of Marxist Revolution. I thought they were creators and visionaries. I was wrong. True change comes from the builders. Yes there are problems on this earth, but they'll only be solved by you tackling those problems, building useful things and helping to push the species forward. If you're smart enough to contribute, you belong amongst the builders.