With a few notable exceptions—such as looting stores and setting cars on fire in the name of racial justice—contemporary protests and demonstrations are generally benign. They are prescribed by organized groups: you show up at the designated time, get handed an “I’m angry about this” sign, and proceed in a ritualistic manner down a route approved by the state. All the while you yell slogans until you get tired, bored, or distracted by the $50 anti-capitalist t-shirts sold at the merchandise stalls. 

Recently, one area of outrage—environmental activism—has seen a paradigm shift. While researching the increasing radicalism of the green movement a few years ago, I attended an “activist workshop” held by a group called Extinction Rebellion (XR). Throughout the course of a warm spring day—which one attendee told me was caused by climate change—I discovered a great deal about the organization and their principles. “The earth is dying,” said a man with a bushy grey beard before pulling out an ancient projector. It became apparent after what seemed like an hour-long slide show that fossil fuels and the large corporations that extract them were the issue. “We are in a climate emergency, and the government is to blame for allowing it to happen.”

Everything about it was very British. In other words, everyone was very polite and kind. After a slice of cake, it was time for the second module: tactics. We were told about their latest strategies and what to do in the event of an arrest. As it happens, they want you to get arrested in order to squander police time and resources. There was a reason for this, as I quickly discovered. Something major was rumored to be approaching. It was never stated explicitly—but it was implied.

A few weeks later XR brought London to a standstill. The group blocked traffic at Marble Arch, Oxford Circus, Waterloo Bridge, and Piccadilly Circus for 11 days while occupying London. Protestors positioned a big pink boat bearing the slogan “Tell the Truth” at the busy intersection of Oxford Street and Regent Street. Demonstrators descended upon a few locations thought to be the cause of the climate emergency. Activists, among them Simon Bramwell, the co-founder of XR, smashed the rotating glass door of Shell’s headquarters, causing thousands of pounds’ worth of damage. Others glued themselves to the London Stock Exchange’s entrance. In total, over 1,000 people were arrested. At a cost of £10 million, more than 10,000 police officers were deployed on the streets of the capital.

As the years have gone by, new organizations like Insulate Britain and Animal Rebellion have arisen, employing the same methods and making similar demands. But the most well-known and notorious is Just Stop Oil (JSO). 

One thing JSO has lifted from XR’s playbook is screwing up other people’s lives in increasingly stupid ways. This has included, but not been limited to, defacing Stonehenge, trying to smash the case containing Magna Carta, and disrupting Formula One racing, Wimbledon tennis, test cricket, a rugby union final, and that most British of events, the Chelsea Flower Show. For some reason, West End musicals were seen as being an environmental offender. It’s unclear what a performance of Les Miserables has to do with carbon emissions, but little of it makes any sense. 

Of course, the idea is to infuriate and frustrate as many people as possible to garner press attention. Because they are aware that thousands of people will be present, they select well-known landmarks or major sporting events. It brings attention to their cause. Activists, who are frequently invited to appear on news programs to defend their positions, would rather spend their time telling us that we are all going to die if we continue to use fossil fuels. 

Unlike previous eco-group iterations, they tend to target the infrastructure of everyday life rather than the polluters. Greenpeace used to engage in controversial direct action that was dangerous, risking the activists’ lives, but its ostensible aim was to go after the alleged perpetrator. Greenpeace would direct their boats to interfere with Japanese or Norwegian whaling vessels, would climb trees targeted for cutting, and, in an infamous but forgotten incident, actually had their ship Rainbow Warrior sunk by French agents to prevent it from interfering with nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific. What we have now in the form of JSO is relatively safe, indirect action. Soft targets are selected over traditional hard targets, the same tactic that terrorist organizations use.

It is much safer and easier to target an unsuspecting art gallery or museum than it is to attempt to climb an oil rig from a boat in rough waters. The real threat posed by activists is no longer themselves; rather, it is the working public who don’t have the time, money, or resources to spend all day whining about cows’ methane emissions.

Its most recent campaign is a war against airplanes, an industry that accounts for only 8 percent of emissions in the United Kingdom. To interfere with summer vacations, the group has threatened to use “all means necessary.” To prevent travelers from entering the departure lounge at Gatwick Airport’s Southern Terminal, seven JSO protestors locked themselves to suitcases. In a humorous video, a determined group of vacationers can be seen stepping over the stern-faced yet miserable group. Eight people were arrested by the police on ”suspicion of interfering with public infrastructure.”

Attempting to sabotage the vacation of regular people has a sadistic and cruel quality. This is an attack on normal tourists, some of whom would have saved all year for a break in the sun; this is not the private jet-owning class. All these environmental groups, but especially JSO, are hostile toward the working class and lecture the public about how foolish it is for them to want to enjoy life.

There’s a definite class dynamic at play. Once the domain of hippies, vegans, and cranks, the luxury belief class now makes up the majority of those who take part in environmental demonstrations. The fact that 85 percent of them have a university degree—more than twice the national average—and a third have advanced postgraduate degrees is symptomatic of elite overproduction. Middle-class guilt—elite discontent as opposed to mass discontent—fuels climate activism. The elite, unable or unwilling to articulate its sense of importance in material provisions, is increasingly burdened by a sense of shame over wealth and resort to ideology. 

Take Phoebe Plummer, the poster girl who grew up in a £4 million Chelsea mansion and has a posh, aristocratic accent. Plummer, who is on bail awaiting sentencing after she threw soup over a Van Gogh painting, vandalized Heathrow Airport recently, spray-painting orange over the information screens and the floor of terminal 5’s departure lounge. 

Environmental groups are obsessed with aviation. Yet as with anything related to the green movement, hypocrisy inevitably surfaces. Two-time Oscar winner Emma Thompson took a break from shouting at petrol to read some poetry on top of the pink boat that was blocking London. To attend this protest, she flew in a luxury cabin on British Airways from New York despite her insistence that “we should fly less.”

Why does this group participate in safe, if extremely irritating, performative activism? According to Roger Hallam, the founder of XR and JSO, up to six billion people will die due to climate change in the coming decades. Sensible moderates believe that technological progress and adaptation are enough to avert any problem. Amid hysteria around climate change, it is rarely reported that deaths from climate-related disasters have decreased by 99 percent over the last 100 years despite a four-fold increase in the population. Radical greens and Hallam’s acolytes do not see things this way. For them, rising temperatures mean the world will collapse due to an impending catastrophe. Mankind must be punished for its selfish behavior. Failure to atone for the sins of air pollution will bring about Judgement Day. They genuinely believe that hot weather is an indictment against humanity.

Because of this, the righteousness of their cause requires them to take whatever action is necessary to inform the ignorant gas guzzling masses. This is how these groups justify their vandalism. For the eco cultists—as that is what they are—averting the coming apocalypse is more important than anything else. When faced with the planet’s impending heat death, we have to follow their instructions.  

There has been some pushback. Roger Hallam was recently sentenced to five years in prison and four other individuals to four years in prison after it was found that they had conspired to obstruct traffic on the M25 motorway. Like all fanatical groups, unfortunately, I fear it will encourage martyrdom. We have not seen the last of Just Stop Oil.