A further, less openly advertised aspect of XR’s embrace of the “beyond politics” principle is that it bans the creation of community groups organized explicitly around political identity. Community groups—small gatherings of “rebels” who meet regularly—are a key part of XR organizing, especially in the protest off-season. Many are based on geography, but others are based on affinities: There’s a group for Quakers, a group for Baroque musicians, and a group for people who want to make skeletons out of newspaper. Not long ago, a friend of mine affiliated with the London-based group Left Culture Club attempted to start an XR socialist subgroup and quickly incurred the ire of the central XR media team. In a phone call, he was told that such a move would contravene XR’s stated “beyond politics” stance but also make it more difficult to accomplish their strategic goals, which, the spokesperson argued, require the cooperation of big business. Yet in an official email encouraging people to join affinity groups, XR’s list of approved spin-offs included XR Police and XR Landlords. The fact that the group fails to see that these two positions are themselves inherently and inextricably political bespeaks the degree to which theoretical attempts at apolitical stances will invariably, in practice, favor those already in power.
-- https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/10/extinction-rebellion-has-a-politics-problem
debored wrote (edited )
Lol "protest off-season"