UK’s Extinction Rebellion pauses radical tactics

LONDON

Extinction Rebellion climate campaigners have announced a temporary halt to public disruption in the U.K. as they seek broader support, even as other activist groups vow to maintain radical tactics.

A loosely linked network that originated in the U.K. in 2018, Extinction Rebellion has pushed businesses and the government to take action on the climate crisis with eye-catching but non-violent acts of civil disobedience that have led to mass arrests.   

XR, as it is also known, has spawned more radical groups such as Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, whose recent stunts include throwing soup at the glass covering Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery.

But in a surprise twist on New Year’s Eve, Extinction Rebellion announced in a post: “We quit.”It said it was trying a different approach and would “temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic.” 

Spokeswoman Marijn van de Geer concurred with an interviewer’s suggestion on a television chat show that the “tactics have alienated the public.”

“We’ve listened to the public. They say over and over again, ‘We support what you stand for but we don’t like how you do it,’” she said this week.

Other related groups expressed solidarity but vowed to keep up disruptive tactics.

Just Stop Oil, which wants a halt to new oil and gas projects and has blocked busy roads for hours by climbing onto gantries, responded by saying: “We must move from disobedience into civil resistance.”

Animal Rebellion, which has freed laboratory test dogs and spilled milk in supermarkets, said it was “committed to continuing its nonviolent actions, whether that involves disruption or not.”

Extinction Rebellion’s shift in tactics appears to be “a way of trying to engage more people with less risky but still radical activism”, Oscar Berglund, a lecturer at the University of Bristol who researches climate change activism, told AFP.