The eco-extremist group Extinction Rebellion are a bunch of “criminals” who are intent on “undermining functioning society”, according to Home Secretary Priti Patel.
Following the climate change alarmist organisation’s assault on British newspapers, which they claim peddle false information about allegedly man-made climate change, Extinction Rebellion is facing tougher enforcement from the government.
Reports have even suggested that XR may be classified by the government as a criminal organisation and would be subject to policing from Britain’s equivalent to the FBI, the National Crime Agency (NCA).
At the annual meeting of the Police Superintendents’ Association on Tuesday, the Home Secretary pledged, according to The Times, to crack down on Extinction Rebellion, saying: “I refuse point-blank to allow that kind of anarchy on our streets.”
Ms Patel said that new police powers would be required to stop XR from carrying out their “completely unacceptable and disruptive” assaults on British society and the economy.
“I just think it’s wrong, completely wrong,” the Home Secretary said, going on to note: “We saw an organisation deploy extreme tactics, guerrilla tactics, to bring very significant disruption. [They] undermined a functioning society, not just with getting newspapers out, but attacking people’s jobs and livelihoods, attacking critical parts of our economy.”
“These are tactics that are deployed to cause maximum damage to society — blocking of roads, for example. Last week we saw ambulances and blue lights not even being able to get through to hospitals… threatening people’s lives in addition to the economic wellbeing of our society at a time when actually we’re trying to get society up and running all over again.”
During Extinction Rebellion’s ten-day ‘We Want to Live’ series of ‘direct actions’, hundreds of eco-warriors have been arrested in London and across the UK. The group began by shutting down parliament last Tuesday, blocking the roads in an attempt to bar MPs from entering.
You can watch some of the protesters being arrested outside parliament in a Breitbart London exclusive video here:
Kurt Zindulka / Breitbart NewsDespite their extremist tactics, Extinction Rebellion has received support from left-wing members of the Labour Party, including the youngest Member of Parliament, Nadia Whittome, who gave a speech at an XR protest calling for a Green New Deal in the UK.
Following XR’s blockade of roads surrounding the print works responsible for publishing several British newspapers, Labour MP Dawn Butler tweeted out support for the assault on the press. She later deleted the post but claimed that it was an accident and that she was not pressured by the party leadership to do so.
“I support Extinction Rebellion, not everything they do, but at the end of the day, they were making a point and a statement. We have a right to protest,” Butler told the BBC’s Politics Live.
Ms Butler went on to criticise the proposal to treat XR as a criminal organisation, saying: “We have a right to free protest in this country and that shouldn’t be interfered with, as implied by the government yesterday.”
Labour MP Diane Abbott also came to the defence of Extinction Rebellion, even going as far as comparing the attack on newspapers to actions taken by the suffragette movement that campaigned for women to have the right to vote in the early 20th century.
“These are legal tactics and we don’t want to talk as if it’s not illegal to take direct actions because direct action has been legal since the time of the suffragettes,” Abbott told Sky News.
The latest XR campaign has ostensibly been for the purpose of pressuring parliament to pass the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill. However, the group has increasingly become an ‘intersectional’ movement, joining forces with the likes of Black Lives Matter activists, who have called for reparations during Extinction Rebellion protests.
Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka
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