Far from being a grassroots-driven, spontaneous protest against climate change, the Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an internationally funded, highly planned organisation that pays its supporters to protest, or more accurately, rebel. And it is determined to overthrow democracy.

Paul Homewood’s article, “Is George Soros Funding Extinction Rebellion?”, on the Not a Lot of People Know That website, reveals the documents from XR’s database that were accessed by “an enterprising individual”. The documents show that large, powerful donors have contributed to the £1.032 million ($A1.94 million) XR raised in the 12 months to July 2019.

Major donors and the amounts donated were:

• £121,140. Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, a London-based hedge fund that uses hundreds of millions of dollars of its investors’ money to promote abortion and long-term contraception for teenage girls, and will spend half a billion dollars over the next five years on “climate action”.
• £50,000. Joe Corré, son of English fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, who herself is worth $US50 million.
• £50,000. Furka Holdings, owned by Alasdair Breach, director of the Bank of Georgia and former Goldman Sachs economist based in Moscow. He previously held chief economist and head of research and managing director positions at Brunswick UBS (later UBS Russia).
• £20,000. The European Climate Foundation.
• £10,000. Greenpeace.
• £7,454. Tides Foundation, a far-left American charity that funds a wide range of left-wing causes.
• George Soros, whose net worth is $US8.3 billion. Despite trumpeting their “public and transparent” credentials, XR’s funding spreadsheet shows a payment received from Soros but leaves the amount column blank, so we have no idea how much he gave.

Since the above figures were cited in August, XR has received further donations: £300,000 from rock band Radiohead, another £10,000 from Greenpeace, and £50,000 from one of Britain’s wealthiest men, Sir Christopher Hohn. Aileen Getty of Getty oil-fame donated £485,000 to the Climate Emergency Fund, which has given more than £320,000 to XR in the last six months.

The UK Daily Mail reported that XR activists were being paid £400 a week to lead the protests, with the protestors being paid a total of £200,000 since the start of the scheme. With the cost of payments increasing by at least £40,000 a month, activists are targeting “high net worth individuals” for more funds.

XR uses Glass Frog, an online business tool that uses a concept called “holacracy”. According to Glass Frog’s website, holacracy enables “one rule book that everyone refer[s] to, including the CEO …, offers a concrete, actionable rule-set … [and] provide[s] a framework that helps you customise the specific processes you need for your business”.

Thus, XR is highly structured and organised, even if its protestors appear to be a rag-tag assembly of nutters.

So, what are XR’s demands?

• Governments must declare a climate and ecological emergency.
• Net zero emissions by 2025 and halting biodiversity loss.
• Governments must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.

But XR’s demands go way further than just tackling “climate-change”. They ultimately seek a total collapse of democracy, after which devotees of their worldview will then hold the reins of power.

James Delingpole writes in Breitbart, exposing a private briefing document which lists XR’s aims. One of those aims is “to build structure, community and test prototypes in preparation for the coming structural collapse of the regimes of Western ‘democracies’ – now seen as inevitable due to stored up crisis. Thus preparing a foundation to transform society and resist fascism/other extremes. This includes creating rising from the wreckage: a Citizens Assembly based on sortition [drawing lots].”

The document lays out another of XR’s aims as “to show to radical people (and internationally) that it is possible to have an ‘impossible’ plan and carry out a rebellion – however small (or large!) and thus increase the ‘Overton window’ of acceptable discourse on the ecological crisis”. The “Overton window” is the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse.

Indicative of the anarchic tactics of XR, co-founder Gail Bradbrook incited mass-disobedience in a radio interview, saying: “the kinds of things people could do is refusing to pay taxes or take in loans from the finance system with no intention of paying it back … I mean, there’s all sorts of possibilities.”

Fellow XR co-founder Roger Hallam was studying a PhD in civil disobedience at Kings College, London, until recently and was jailed for six weeks for protesting in London.

One of the aspects of the XR protests that stands out is the theatrical nature of them. Protestors donning medieval red costumes while striking apocalyptic poses; rows of highly choreographed fake-moustache wearing men in brightly coloured air-marshal uniforms brandishing batons promoting a ban on air travel; a choreographed group on Manly Beach with their heads buried in the sand; the list goes on. It is no wonder that the costs incurred in choreographing and paying the protestors in London was up £20,000 a day according to XR finance co-ordinator Andrew Medhurst.

Whether by design or because it makes for arresting news footage, the media has helped XR’s cause by giving blanket coverage of the protests. The UK Parliament capitulated to XR’s ultimatums by declaring a climate emergency and vowing to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, albeit 25 years later than what XR demanded. Let’s hope the Australian federal and state governments have more sense than to give in to the demands of highly-organised anarchists.

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