Thread by @calum_mcgeown

With further reflection on @ExtinctionR's #TheBigOne, the obstensive failure to even get taken seriously by status quo actors may yet prove to be a significant strategic success. By clearly showing what won't work, it'll force more of us to consider what might 🧵 ...

This is less about winning hearts & minds as about preaching to the choir. If it is a success, it'll be to the extent that it challenges liberal ideas & ideals of what 'legitimate' activism looks like, in terms of what's actually achievable through our current institutional setup

This means channeling more people into disruptive activism. There's simply not the time remaining to make & disseminate the evidenced & well-reasoned arguments for necessarily radical social change in the hope of bringing everyone onboard (politicians & economic elites included)

Of course, XR have been saying this all along. That's why they advocated and engaged in civil disobedience in the first place. But it should also cause XR & the wider climate movement to reflect on strategy & demands. What does 'system change' mean & how can it be achieved?

Side note: see this excellent open access article by @berglund_oscar and @djbailey231 on precisely this question:

'Whose system, what change? A critical political economy approach to the UK climate movement'

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

While XR took early criticism for failing to name capitalism, it's become more willing to do so. But that still needs incorporated into strategy. The repressive measures taken by the state against even 'legitimate' protest should serve to demonstrate the demands it won't 'grant'

Citizens' Assemblies (CAs) aren't the way out of this mess. Regardless of the buy-in required in the first place, there's no way *capitalist* states will relinquish the level of power needed to make CAs genuinely effective. I've written on this previously
greeneuropeanjournal.eu/citizens-assem…

So is it possible to accommodate democratic reponses to the planetary crisis? Yes. But we need more pervasive, systemic notions of democracy and democratisation that look to our workplaces, energy system, transit system, healthcare, education, research, media, etc.

It's in these everyday spheres of production & consumption that we stand the best chance of building the power needed to reorient & restructure society away from ecocidal capitalism in ways that marry sustainability goals with social justice. It means *disempowering* capitalists.

Obviously we can't expect to bypass the state in all this. And XR & JSO's demand to end all new oil and gas licensing is a clear one, a smart one. But it doesn't address the fundamental causes of the planetary crisis - capitalist accumulation through profiteering & endless growth

What happens next will be the big test. Can the broad coalition XR sought to bring together be oriented in a more radical trajectory? Anti-capitalism is a revolutionary project. Our planetary crisis makes it a necessary one. It needs its revolutionaries.