In response to the apparent lack of enough alarmist press coverage of the heat wave in Britain, Extinction Rebellion climate change activists smashed windows of media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s headquarters in London.
At around 6:30 on Tuesday morning, several eco-warriors gathered outside Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch’s News UK building at London Bridge, with two activists smashing glass windows with hammers, while others spray-painted “Tell the truth” and “40 Degrees = Death” on the building.
In a press release, Extinction Rebellion (XR) said that they targetted Murdoch’s building over The Sun newspaper’s coverage of the recent heatwave, including showing people enjoying themselves on the beach and eating ice cream rather than focusing on what they call a climate crisis.
One of the XR eco-warriors, Caspar Hughes said: “We are being betrayed by our press. My son is 15 years old, which means he’s facing possible societal collapse by the time he reaches his thirties. He and I will live and die in a world where famine will be measured in billions, war, disease and extreme weather will be far more commonplace.
“The biggest issue stopping government, business and civil society from responding sensibly to the climate and ecological crises is the billionaire-owned media. If Murdoch, Rothermere and Dacre supported Net Zero Policy the rest of us would follow suit.
“Currently they are key destroyers of what little hope we have left to secure a safe, secure future for ourselves and our children. It is long past time for them to bring their power to bear as we try to stop our civilisation from collapsing in the coming decades.”
Former Daily Mail and The Sun journalist turned Extinction Rebellion activist Steve Tooze added: “These newspapers have spent 30 life-or-death years denying or ignoring the climate crisis to ensure that Business As Usual keeps the money flowing into their already obscenely-bloated bank accounts. As a result, millions of us still have no clue about the terrifying dangers that threaten us.”
It is not the first time that Extinction Rebellion activists have taken to bashing windows in London, with nine women breaking at least 19 windows at the HSBC bank’s headquarters last April over its connections to the fossil fuel industry. The Earth Day ‘protest’ was justified by the leftist group thusly: “Better broken windows than broken promises”.
It is also not the first time that XR has specifically targeted Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. In September of 2020, a group of green radicals blocked the entrances to two major printing plants, causing disruption to the distribution of the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers The Sun and The Times as well as other major papers including the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and the Financial Times.
The action was widely criticised as an attack on the free press and was a pivotal turning point in that it spurred Home Secretary Priti Patel to push forward a series of draconian policing powers to deal with disruptive protests, which some have warned will be used to clamp down on all means of protests.
However, to date, the government has been unable to curb the increasingly disruptive protests staged by XR and other climate change groups such as Insulate Britain, both of which have taken to glueing themselves to roads and highways throughout the country to protest the alleged climate crisis.
Extinction Rebellion has also taken to blocking oil tankers and depots despite the impact on normal families already struggling under the cost of living crisis which has seen massive spikes in energy costs.
XR also announced on Tuesday that they would once again be protesting “en masse” in London in September.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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