The climate activist with Extinction Rebellion admitted in a scathing interview on Good Morning Britain on Wednesday that the group’s radical protests had alienated the public.
Marijn van de Geer, media director of Britain’s far-left climate group, said they would temporarily abandon disruptive protests in 2023 to attract more supporters, including those who fear arrest.
Van de Geer said they realized their activism had repelled less “privileged” supporters who were wary of the police.
“As a white, middle-class man in a very privileged position, my experience of being arrested was very normal, but there are other people who may have had very different experiences and have very different relationships with being arrested. They are with us. Tactics that are automatically excluded from joining us on the street,” Van de Geer told hosts Suzanne Reid and Richard Madeley.
Extinction Rebellion’s media co-ordinator grilled on Good Morning Britain.
NYC CLIMATE PROMOTERS blocked an intersection and climbed atop a subway station.
The climate group’s radical protests have included activists clinging to public buildings and roads, blocking newspaper deliveries, smashing windows and spraying government buildings with fake blood.
But the GMB hosts insisted that their disruptive protests had also not received public support.
“There’s another factor why he doesn’t have much public support,” Madeley said. While the public shares concerns about global warming, he said climate activists’ “tactics alienate the public.”
WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 22: An environmental activist with the group Extinction Rebellion DC holds up the Wilson Building as part of an Earth Day rally against fossil fuels on April 22, 2022 in Washington, DC. The group is protesting Washington Gas’ use of methane and planned expansion of gas infrastructure.
((Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images))
Van de Geer agreed that the decision was the result of “listening” to those concerns.
“We listened to the public,” he said. They say over and over, “We support what you stand for, we just don’t like how you do it.”
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Reid in turn grilled the activist about the group’s other strange ways. He played a 2019 clip of the show’s activist being interviewed in a broccoli headgear.
“What was that about?” Reid scoffed. “What purpose does it serve?”
Van de Geer distanced his group from Animal Rebellion, but the broadcaster kept up the pressure.
People carry signs during the March for Science, in partnership with Extinction Rebellion NYC and other organizations, on April 23, 2022, in New York City, the day after Earth Day.
((Photo by Bryan R. Smith / AFP) (Photo by BRYAN R. SMITH / AFP via Getty Images))
– When you say “we left”, you are admitting this failure, isn’t it? he talked about the group’s change of tactics.
But the climate activist rejected Reid’s assessment. Van de Geer said their protests would be aimed at positions of authority rather than demonstrations such as roadblocks that would “inconvenience the public”.
Before the interview ended, Mandela hit the activist again.
“It hasn’t worked at all in terms of governments changing policy, right? There hasn’t been a single … change,” he said. “Didn’t the government admit it?”
“No, it’s a problem and that’s why we can’t stop,” Van de Geer said.
Just Stop Oil, which Van de Geer called the “more radical wing” of the Extinction Rebellion, made headlines in October for defacing popular images to protest fossil fuels.