Just Stop Oil activists have found their way back into the headlines, and onto our sports pitches.
After being removed from the field at Lord’s by Jonny Bairstow, activists interrupted play twice at Wimbledon.
Underneath the orange powder and the inconvenience of their slow marches lies a deeply troubling worldview – and one that could lead to significant trouble. [emphasis, links added]
Read into the group’s core beliefs, and it quickly becomes clear that its actions are driven by visions of a near future doomsday.
Representatives throw terms such as “genocide” around, making it impossible not just to take them seriously but to engage with them meaningfully.
How can you reason with people who believe the world as we know it is coming to an end, or that billions will die? How can you talk people out of averting an apocalypse?
It is this worldview that drives their actions. While Just Stop Oil claims to represent humanity, it pays little attention to unpopular reactions to its protests.
This isn’t particularly surprising; if you genuinely believed the world was on the absolute brink of collapse, blocking a road seems like a small step in response.
If an ambulance can’t reach a patient in time, that’s deeply sad. But the potential death of billions is an unimaginably vaster tragedy that must be averted.
These apocalyptic warnings provide space for something much darker to emerge. How far would you go to prevent something truly terrible from happening not just to your family but to all of humanity?
Groups with a simple black-and-white vision of the world are often willing to cross significant boundaries to achieve their goals.
The January 6 rioters who broke into the US Congress to stop a “rigged” election are a good example; they were “saving the country” from “corrupt elites”; interrupting a vote was surely worthwhile.
No doubt any Just Stop Oil supporters reading this will be quivering with rage at the thought of being compared to Trump’s supporters. Indeed, Trump’s Q-Anon-adjacent supporters probably wouldn’t be very happy about being compared to Just Stop Oil activists.
But the common ground is there nonetheless; an unwillingness to compromise on their beliefs, even if it brings them closer to their supposed goal and apocalyptic visions of what might come to pass if they don’t win.
These trends make both groups infuriating – and sometimes, potentially dangerous.
There is no indication that Just Stop Oil intends to go beyond splashing paint around, sitting on roads, or generally making a nuisance of themselves.
But there is a heady mixture of apocalyptic beliefs and calls for action beginning to coalesce, which should be a warning sign for potential escalation.
If these ideas spread beyond the well-meaning activists currently manning the organization, the consequences could be dire. Rarely do people fighting “genocide” stop at the boundaries of polite political debate.
Read more at Telegraph
Like i have said before all these Anti Fossil Fuels fools should take up living in a Grass Hut without all those convinces they have become used to lets see how long they could last