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Their portrayal and constant vilification by the British media is disgraceful but entirely expected from an industry that the private side of is beholden to fossil fuel companies, the public side of is beholden to a right-wing one-party state, and is made up of people who think that their drive-thru morning coffee being inconvenienced is fascism but banning protest and sending refugees to off shore concentration camps isn’t.
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Plenty of people in Just Stop Oil are earnest, good-hearted, and occasionally brave people who see a untold climate misery coming and feel compelled to do something, sometimes even going as far as realising electoralism is mostly a waste of time in a country that lacks genuinely democratic institutions. That they face frequent assault not just from police, but by vigilantes and public mobs, with no protection from authorities, as well as absurdly harsh prison sentences for minor disturbances is a damning indictment of the system and society.
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Just Stop Oil itself is effectively a lobbying group, pitched as a grass roots activist organisation, that is wielded almost exclusively by green capitalist hedge funds whose fundamental goal is profit. Its part of a new model of so called ‘activist funds’ which seek to make a greater return by either forcing legislation they’re already prepared to take advantage of, or breaking the old money stranglehold to short their positions and carve out space for themselves. Either way this is the capital class wrestling with itself over market share, not a genuinely proletarian or radical movement for climate justice.
It’s like 4am here so I hope that isn’t too garbled.