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    I'm afraid that I'm "too white" (a silly phrase used constantly in this piece) to be allowed to Archived Message

    Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym on May 6, 2019, 9:07 am, in reply to "XR have changed the conversation By Leila Deen "

    point to the quite obvious - serious - questions about who's behind XR, and helping it on with organisational leadership (yes, that deeply unfashionable thing!) and funding (also always an utterly key indicator). And what are the real purposes of these background helpers? See Cory Morningstar's dissection, for example, here:

    http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/

    These are issues which need to be addressed as a priority by any seriously-committed green activist.

    Any activism against any of the Synergising Global Crises which is having a noticeable, undoubtable effect on public mood and understanding is an unalloyed good. The idealistic activists who did that recently in London and elsewhere are greatly to be commended, and should continue at full blast (not fade away as a flash in the pan - like, say, Occupy did...?) They should, for example, continue to act against the undead third-runway lunacy at Heathrow. (But will their funders actually support that particular action?)

    There remain legitimate, and urgent, questions about who might be trying to astroturf any such movement, for the basest of actually anti-responsible, BAU gangster-capitalist purposes; purposes which, it scarcely needs saying, run directly counter to the actual aims of the sincere, principled activists getting themselves arrested on the frontline.

    I'm inclined to say: bugger id-pol irrelevancies about the precise colour-tinge of the activists! Just get on with it, with whoever will join in, regardless of their particular ethnic strand (or gender 'choice' - sic! - preference, or any of the rest of it). And, at one and the same time, be sharply aware of any hint of astroturfing by people who are actually your enemies and would-be steerers; tell them uncompromisingly to take their money and their entrees to the 'elite' counsels of the 'great and the good', and piss off. Because we've sussed 'em!

    If you don't take this uncompromising attitude to the dirty deceitful steerers, you risk ending up like Greenpeace, where the central (full-time, middle-class-salaried-careerist) leadership are now mainly preoccupied with raising money, and dickering with fundamentally-evil bigbiz 'partners' for 'deals', rather than taking serious villainy-disrupting direct action, as the original activist Greenpeace did; now an 'environmentalist' outfit where the rank-and-file headquarters office plankton spend their time arguing with would-be supporters about why it's absolutely right and proper for Greenpeace to support the Shite Helmet racketeers up to their terrorist-assisting tricks in Syria. Sic, ffs! Been there, done that, finally severed all connection with GP because of it.

    That's where ignoring these entirely legitimate questions about astroturfing co-opters gets you. GP of all outfits coopted and emasculated by gangster-capitalist, commercially-profitable, Fourth Industrial Revolution narrative-hucksters. Mam Gaia must be so pleased!

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