Doomsday cults have always been marked by their passion for desperately bizarre public attention-seeking. The mediaeval flagellants paraded themselves in a kind of grotesque theatre of piety, dressing in ritualistic robes and whipping their flesh into a bloody pulp in order to publicly affirm their superior virtue. The Moonies stage elaborate mass weddings. Jim Jones’ “Peoples Temple” took its monstrous theatre to the ultimate level, staging the infamous Guyana mass suicide in 1978.
It’s impossible not to think of these outbreaks of mass, public religious lunacy when observing the attention-seeking antics of the Krazy Klimate Kult, the “Extinction Rebellion” nutcases.
Like drug-addled hippies, XR-ers believe in fantasies of collective consciousness, pacifism and a pre-political state where mother nature is pregnant with an eternal harvest. It’s like a David Attenborough documentary without the kill scene. Set against this utopia is an equally illusory but sinister version of reality where evil white men are killing the Earth with CO2. XR believes it is engaged in a battle between life and death.
Climate activists have spent the past week protesting in low-emission nations of the West while ignoring the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters […]Why don’t they protest against China for producing 27.2 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions? Perhaps they could try locking themselves to the nearest United Nations office for refusing to hold China to account.
Logic and facts have little place in XR’s eschatological fantasies. Like all death cultists, they are utterly convinced of the “truth” of their revelation, and no reasoning will sway them.
Like all doomsday cults, XR believers frame martyrdom as a high calling […]The development of a will to martyrdom is rarely a good sign, but it is especially problematic among members of groups who share the belief in a doomsday scenario. If XR activists think the world will enter a death spiral after 2025, they have nothing to lose. Already, some appear to be suffering the effects of mass hysteria. Footage from protests has shown activists breaking down, weeping and wailing after chaining or gluing themselves to things […]as the collective’s emotional state deteriorates, its members seem less willing to consider counterintuitive facts.
This is classic cult behaviour – and very concerning. Cults have a habit of falling into downward spirals. The Flagellants weren’t content just to literally whip themselves into a frenzy: anyone who refused to join in was accused of being in league with the devil. Flagellants had a habit of murdering their opponents. The Jim Jones cult, a melange of messianic social justice and paranoid millenarianism, went from murder to mass suicide.
The widening gulf between XR theory and reality is a reason the public has begun to turn against the group […] Without a democratic mandate or a rational plan for conservation, XR activists can only shout and stamp their feet. They use resistance tactics to bypass democracy because they have no hope of implementing their policies by democratic means. Over time, they are becoming more militant and people are tiring of the soap opera.
theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-is-australia-the-target-of-climate-ecocult/news-story/f32620b9e3de97367418957513afe5ab
When even Red Dan Andrews in Victoria and the Labor government in Queensland are turning on them, you know these cultists are beyond the pale.
More than 40 climate activists are facing up to five years imprisonment in Victoria after a week of chaotic protests that reportedly cost the state at least $3 million.
Victoria Police North West Metro Commander Tim Hansen said the response to Extinction Rebellion’s week of action, which threw Melbourne into chaos after protesters blocked key intersections and roads, racking up a total of 16,000 patrol hours involving officers from the public order response team, the mounted branch, highway patrol, brawler vans, search and rescue as well as logistic advisers and drones operators […]The Herald Sun reports the cost to the taxpayer will exceed $3 million.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/victoria-climate-protests-cost-state-3-million
Of course, cultists feed on a persecution complex. So, don’t expect them to go away soon.