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- Date published:
12:28 pm, April 20th, 2026 - 22 comments
Categories: climate change, Left -
Tags: fascism, ideological blinkers, resilience, Rupert Read, Vlad Vexler
By Vlad Vexler, Rupert Read, originally published by Resilence.org April 14, 2026, crossposted with permission.
The climate crisis impacts everything: our economies, our environment, war and peace, the survival of democracy, our understanding of science and the well-being of generations to come. Yet, even among those who accept this reality, there is deep disagreement on what a constructive climate movement should look like.
This is why, despite our differing views on climate politics, the two of us share a growing concern about the direction of the climate movement. A project that ought to be broad, open and compassionate has come to be dominated by a narrow set of ideological demands which leave little room for genuine diversity of political perspective. Increasingly, participation in the climate movement has come with an ideological entry fee—where new participants must adhere to specific views beyond climate issues.
Those who want to participate are expected to accept a “package deal” of positions on issues such as race, gender and social justice. These issues are important in their own right. But when agreement on them becomes a condition of entry into climate activism and action, the movement closes the door to a majority of people who share its concern. This ideological gatekeeping undermines the very purpose of a movement that should be uniting us against a shared threat.
When movements become inward-looking, they tend to repel allies, flatten internal debate and deepen the political divisions already tearing our societies apart. We’ve seen this firsthand. Rupert Read, who helped launch Extinction Rebellion, recalls how the movement was initially conceived as a space beyond party politics: a coalition broad enough to bring together people with divergent political views around a common cause. But over time, Extinction Rebellion drifted toward an intransigent form of hyper-identity politics. A strong focus on racial justice, international justice, plus gender identity rights began to function as a kind of gatekeeping mechanism, silencing members and potential supporters who did not share every part of the agenda.
This shift showed itself in three ways. First, members were often asked to adopt the slogan “No climate justice without racial justice,” which, in practice, meant aligning with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement’s specific outlook. As a result, even those who supported racial justice but had reservations about BLM’s approach were pushed to the margins.
Second, calls to “center the Global South” translated into expectations that Western participants should express collective guilt, defer to non-Western voices and adopt hyper-‘progressive’ immigration positions that command relatively little civic support across the West. Third, a similar dynamic emerged over trans rights, with members often expected to affirm contentious claims – for instance, that trans women are indistinguishable from biological women across all contexts, including sport, prisons and debates about male-on-female violence. As a result, even those broadly supportive of racial justice, global justice and trans rights could feel excluded unless they endorsed the approved formulation.
This pattern of ideological exclusion is not unique to Extinction Rebellion—far from it. Similar tendencies could be seen developing in other groups in the climate movement, such as the School Strike for Climate (also known as Fridays for Future). The result is what Vlad Vexler has called depoliticization: a curious spectacle in which, as the world burns, activists devote themselves to enforcing inward-looking ideological conformity rather than building broad coalitions required for political change. In this way, the movement undermines its own aims, as rigid adherence to a fixed set of positions overtakes practical progress.
The consequences extend beyond the loss of potential allies. When a movement starts to feel closed off and ideologically policed, it creates fractures that other political forces can exploit. So far, ‘eco-fascism’—where far-right groups use environmental concerns to justify exclusionary, authoritarian politics—is rare. The far-right remains uncertain about climate change, sometimes combining denial with reluctance to pursue the forms of climate adaptation and protection its constituency increasingly needs.
We predict a reversal in the 2030s. As climate denial mostly recedes on the right, hard-right pro-climate movements may emerge. For them, ecological concern could become a vehicle for white nationalism, opposition to democratic institutions and authoritarianism. This would be a bitter irony if it arose because the climate movement failed to engage a broad political spectrum.
At this critical moment, the climate movement faces a choice: broaden its appeal or risk continued division by insisting on narrow terms of entry. Recognising the urgency of the crisis does not require ideological conformity. The climate crisis affects everyone, regardless of race, class or political ideology, and a movement that acknowledges this diversity will be more effective.
We propose adopting two principles that will enable such pluralism.
The first is straightforward: activists should resist the temptation to use identity politics as a barrier to entry. The stakes are too high to exclude potential allies over disagreements on broader social or political positions not directly related to climate action.
The second principle is pluralism in strategy and tone. There are genuine disagreements about how climate activism should speak and act. Some favour sounding the alarm at full volume; others advocate for a more measured approach. Some view sweeping transformation as essential; others lean towards making more incremental progress. Some prioritise ‘mitigation’, reducing future climate harm; others prioritise adaptation, preparing for impacts we can no longer avoid.
Each side in these debates has something to offer. The aim should not be to impose a single message or tactic, but to find an approach capable of speaking in many registers to many audiences. As climate politics enters a critical phase, exclusion is a luxury we cannot afford. We need all hands on deck.
Climate action, together with the defence of democracy against authoritarianism, is among the defining collective tasks of our age. The two challenges are closely linked. Unless we preserve, reform and supplement our democratic institutions, meaningful climate policy will be impossible. And unless we moderate the impacts of the climate crisis, the social shocks ahead may wash away our democracies.
The stakes are too high to be immobilised by polarisation. We need to work through disagreement and act together in defence of a shared future—across differences.
Dr. Rupert Read is Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project, co-editor of Deep Adaptation, and co-author of Transformative Adaptation.
Vlad Vexler is a London-based philosopher and political analyst. His academic work focuses on political freedom, and covers geopolitics, post-truth politics, the decline of Western democracies, Russian politics and the climate crisis.
hat tip Sanctuary for posting this link last week.
Intellectualising the threat results in fracturing and dividing.
If a tiger's loose and is hunting you down, sitting down to argue about who left the enclosure door open doth butter no parsnips.
Good points.
I think the thesis could be expanded to the wider left i.e being less exclusionary, tolerating some tactics that aren't exactly in sync with your own.
On today's call by the Greens for electrification of New Zealand I couldn't agree more. The phrasing, perhaps, could be put in the context of 'this will save you money'.
Trump's folly in Iran is going to cause us massive pain in the months leading up to Christmas. Financial relief regardless of what format takes will be a vote winner.
By using the Rewire Aotearoa report, the Greens could hammer home the simple message that electrification will save you money.
The climate impacts will take care of themselves.
Didn't they say that the GP electrification policy would save money? or would you have preferred it to be phrased differently or more emphatically?
RNZ:
Stuff:
Yes, I read the announcement and heard Marama Davidson interviewed this morning.
I realise that they outlined the economic benefit.
What I am getting at is making that the key or only thrust of the policy. For whatever reason there are far too many folk out there that run a mile and will have nothing to do with anythinhg that is considered 'woke'. For a sizeable number of them, CC mitigation is woke.
Mention of CC mitigation makes another sector of the community switch off, it's too hard, I will have to go without, the farmers/Chinese/Politicians have to change first…
Mention of relief from the cost of living crisis is way more electorally attractive.
If the electrification of Aotearoa is done at a scale and the electricty market is reformed we will all be better off.
I really don't care to labelled 'left' or 'right' or for that matter any other broad label. I'm not a sheep, cow or any other herbivore who follows a judas goat.
I have my own positions that I have developed from a lot of experience dealing with the diversity of people and even more reading.
Consequently I have a complete contempt for the basic thesis of this post.
I've been a supporter of labour and the general green movement for a very long time. I have been interested in various factors of geological and human climate change since I did read history on the causes of war while deciding if I wanted to get military training. It was one of the factors the led me to getting a BSc in earth sciences.
What I haven't run across was people in the main line left or green communities trying significiant exclusion based on my pro-business, managerial, 'war-mongering', science based, climate change orientated, meat eating, tech-geek, and generally abrasive individualism.
I do get that from some smaller political (ie what I'd define as micro-cult) communities, and of course it tends to show up on forums like this. Where you aren't a real leftie unless you are a sheeple in a cult.
Cults try to rigidify ideology and beliefs into unthinking conformances. I seldom see that in anything except small and usually quite noisy corners of political spectrum
The mainline political communities tend to just figure out where to agree to disagree and to take the help and support from whatever I choose to offer or provide. They are the epitome of live and let live in political terms. Communities of diverse opinons and priorities.
Which in essence is what that quote says.
However I'd argue that the 'critical phase' is long past. The substantive damage has already been done and is currently circulation in the heat accumulation and gases in the ocean currents. That is why we're getting the current extremes, and worse to coming in the coming El Nino.
What we are doing now is trying to reduce the escalation of future damage toward the end of this century and over the following thousands of years.
XR and SS4C are two of the most successful climate protest movements and both have experienced exactly what was described in the post (Rupert Read was an XR founder). That you haven't experienced any exclusion on the basis of "pro-business, managerial, 'war-mongering', science based, climate change orientated, meat eating, tech-geek, and generally abrasive individualism" doesn't mean the post thesis is wrong, it just means you aren't the target and/or in the groups where those things might matter.
SS4C Auckland's collapse was probably for similar dynamics (from memory the organisers stepped aside to let Māori lead out of some confusion that Pākehā can't do Good things in that space).
Outside of politics, I've known people to be rejected by peer groups for eating meat. People who were vegan, well accepted, starting eating meat, found themselves ostracised. Again, this is a well known dynamic (of the same kind) in certain circles, just not yours.
A more local, small example was the people jumping on me when I critiqued Swarbrick's position as GP co-leader on anti-semitism. It's not the push back against the criticism that's the problem (that is welcome and necessary), it's the assumptions made, often inaccurate, that sort people into Good and Bad, and the bad people get told off or ostracised (or in the case of TS, people respond to arguments that weren't even made)
I think Labour is more tolerant than the Greens (generalising about members), because Labourites understand the pragmatics of politics better than those in the GP who are highly ideological and rate ideology as more important than winning elections.
I'd agree that they have been successfully noisy protest movements.
I wouldn't class them as being successful climate change movements in terms of outcomes. In fact I'd probably argue that they are mostly the opposite. I suspect they mostly act like a distraction to changing outcomes.
The most successful climate change movement there has been is probably the combination of scientists who have been publishing on climate change theory and measuring climate change since the 1960 and 1970s. A sustained effort for an exceptionally difficult societal issue.
The most successful part of that was probably their impetus in getting the sensors on the geo and weather satellites, followed by the dispersed network of ocean and sea based sensors.
I actually only noticed the opposite. The repeated alarms by meat eaters about people being vegans. I usually have fun squashing that; whilst also stirring the vegans about their understanding of potential dietary deficiencies (and getting the inverse same in return).
That is pretty much what I don't like. That people have an opinion and make up 'facts' without bothering to check if they actually were correct.
For instance that facebook post that got put up here at one stage about a 'shortage' of female toilets at Queenstown airport, when just looking at a layout map at either the airport or on the net would have cleared that presumption up in minutes. Or the continued repitition myth of trans rapists in womens prisons. I only ever found two reported world wide, neither of whom had been rapists in prison or otherwise after transitioning. But other people who actually committed assaults inside female prisons weren't mentioned.
I wouldn't say so. What I see is ideologues in both parties joining and then leaving when they find it hard work to get any or enough agreement. They usually wind up in smaller groups that then fracture endlessly. Like New Labour in the 1990s, or almost every christian or morals based party in NZ since the formation of parliament here.
Inside the Labour party, when I had more time to be active, I'd see activist and supporters spalling off pretty continuously usually over some pretty trivial single issue points. My observations on the Greens staring with the Values party in the 1970s is pretty much the same.
The people who remain and who tend to guide overall change are the ones who accept that political change actually takes decades (usually about 2-3). Short-term protest and fracturing cults doesn't work except if they convince enough activists inside mainstream parties that there is a actual problem, workable solutions, and they start lobby for it.
The anti-apartheid movement, anti-nuclear weapons, conservationist, homosexual reform, civil unions, Maori restitution and the general anti-climate change being reasonably recent examples.
The religious freedom, anti-slavery, rules of war, labour rights, female equality and other historical movements have all followed similar paths and time frames.
In my view it is the impatient, excessively ambitious, religiously ideological , and intolerant who act as relatively ineffective chop that does little to effect real change.
Idealogy is often used in a pejorative context. I would prefer Kiwi Green MPs to (continue to) hold at least some principles more dear than winning elections.
Imho, unprincipled self-serving pollies – who don't care for/about 'bottom feeders', 'dropkicks', pay equity and ecological overshoot – are the immediate poly-threat.
funnily enough I consider being able to hold principles and work pragmatically to be a core Green kaupapa. It is how the NZ Greens function. Their charter container 4 principles that are the foundation of everything else. You sometimes hear them talking about being able to compromise on policy but not principles and that this is how they hold their integrity.
https://www.greens.org.nz/charter
I'm curious why you would see my statement that some people in the Greens are highly ideological and hold that more dear than winning elections as somehow meaning that we should abandon principles. It makes me think you didn't understand the point about solidarity.
I've lived in conservative communities enough to know that when the storm hits, the politics don't matter, people pull together and help each other out. People who might laugh at the GP charter, but hold strong ethical principles of their own. Those people have a right to have a say how NZ responds to the climate crisis.
Are you familiar with citizens assemblies? If we're not going to work with people who have different values and principles, how do you see democracy working? People with the numbers get to tell the others what to do? How's that working out?
Apologies – I wasn't clear.
The point I was trying to make is that 'ideology/ideological' and 'principles/principled' are not necessarily neutral terms. 'Ideology', in particular, is often used pejoratively (e.g. far-right ideology; Green ideology); 'principles' less often. Hence my preference (as a Greenie lefty) for 'Green principles' over 'Green ideology', but it's not a biggie.
Yes, familiar with citizen assemblies – I've posted links to successful trials of citizen assemblies here before.
It works OK, in the short-term, when you belong to the group/s that have the numbers. In the longer term, perhaps not so much.
The deeper problem isn’t necessarily gatekeeping.
It’s our old left tendency toward splittism and substituting ideological purity for sound political strategy. When movements struggle to achieve their goals, they retreat into enforcing ideological alignment instead of doing the harder work of building coalitions and winning support.
That points to a deeper misdiagnosis.
The issue isn’t that the ideas aren’t ‘good’ enough, or that people need to be pushed into agreement. It’s that we haven’t done the political work to translate those ideas into something that can build broad support. That means framing, sequencing, compromise, and coalition-building. In other words, politics.
For a generation of activists that grew up watching The Simpsons, it’s a little ironic. We’ve become the political equivalent of Principal Skinner asking if he’s out of touch. Then concluding it’s the voters who are wrong.
agree that gatekeeping isn't inherently a problem. It's not a free for all.
Also agree about the problem with not building narratives and approaches for broad support. However the post is pointing to something else. I think of it as the neoliberalisation of left/green politics, which has led to the rise of ideology trumping solidarity. It's like Rik from the Young Ones was put in charge. I assume in parts of the left like unions there are still functional practices of solidarity, but elsewhere solidarity and calling in has been replaced with purity or exile.
It's no use using term "climate change" now.
When people have to pay the price of oil, diesel and petrol at the station and they feel the financial pain, they get to understand the necessity and cost of change.
When they price fertiliser, and milk, cheese, flour and anything else needing fertiliser towards a food supply crisis, they get to understand the necessity and cost of change.
When they see the price of air tickets, freight, ferries, carbon-based electricity, and petroleum-fuelled public transport rise, they get to understand the necessity of change.
Same for property insurance prices and town insurance abandonment, coastal property prices, flood plain property prices
We shouldn't need the whole of the world economy under threat from a fuel supply war to do more for climate change than all the COPs put together, but price is the only sure way to make it personal enough to act.
one term we need next is Just Transition. It tells us that we have to transition from the way we organise society currently, and we have to do so in a just way for all people (and the rest of life)
I see more potential for good change with the current crisis than what happened with the pandemic, but I also think the resistance to change will be very strong and there's a strong possibility that good change will be blocked. Hence the post talking about the utter necessity of pluralism and making movements big enough for everyone. If NZ had build on our awareness of climate action and tied it to Just Transition, voting would be a factor.
We are starting to see some of the harder transitions taking place since COVID, with uneven civic guidance.
South Dunedin have had intensive work and now budgets for the community to get to grips with their vulnerability. There's cause for optimism that there is a credible plan in place that citizens as property owners can react to.
Westport is another with strong civic engagement and reasonable central government attention.
The Milford plan was worked on really carefully by dedicated locals, but this govenrment has just trashed it.
Gisborne and over East Cape is honestly a disaster that this government is responsible for. They had the TREC Alliance set up to really get them right, and prepare for the shrinking of Gisborne and Wairoa both, but again this government has gutted the entire programme and now it's just price signals set by EQC and other insurers.
The Auckland Unitary Plan fiasco which has enabled both higher density and decreased development in flood plains has been just ruined by the government legislating over the top of Plan Change 120 while it was being consutled on, and on top fo the deal the same government had struck just two years earlier.
The worst must surely be the Wellington region. It's an economic cot case, remains the most taxpayer-subsidised per person per job and per property in the country, has had massive defensive infrastructure built and underway, but is beset with water and transport governance chaos which no one has improved.
And then you have the industrial cataclysms that have beset Kaitaia, Hastings, Nelson, Tokoroa, Kinleth, Timaru, Ruapehu and many more – inside just 2 years – and you get to a lot of regions that no longer have the economic power to do much at all except pack up and leave.
I am not remotely optimistic right now that regions, cities, or towns in New Zealand are reacting anywhere near fast enough for what is clearly happening.
this would make a good post.
I think the authors confuse "movement" with "organisation" (they are not alone in this).
If they want to form an organisation to work on climate action which is not ideological then they are welcome to. If they don't like some aspects of Greenpeace or Extinction rebellion then they can find some other vehicle. Nobody is excluded from contributing in their own way.
If it is just another excuse to not put pressure on carbon emitters, and to let politicians continue to enable fossil fuel use then they are not genuine.
There is a reason that many groups look beyond the immediate need to cut carbon emissions. "Climate Justice" recognises that there are deeper reasons that stop us cutting out fossil fuels and that we do need look at inequalities and power imbalances.
However, for people that don't want to look deeper, but just want to stop carbon emissions they can still use whatever leverage they have. Nobody is stopping anyone from writing letters and lobbying politicians, divesting from oil companies or being activist investors, switching to riding bicycles or putting solar panels on their roof. None of these actions require a commitment to any social policies.
Rupert Read, one of the post authors, was a spokesperson for XR. Maybe reread with that in mind. XR's main power was that it was a populist movement. It's turned into something else, maybe that's ok, or maybe the issues being discussed on the post are real.
It's not enough to go 'we've got this organisation, go away if you don't like it'. Climate change is urgent and serious. We have to call people in.
Seems like an effort to take the red out of the watermelon. That is to state that environmentalists and the climate concerned must not entertain social justice while doing so, or at least do it in their spare time.
Rather than racists and transphobes being excluded from exercising their climate credentials, this is conservative blue/greens attempting to eliminate progressive values from being spoken about in the same breath.
This seems pertinent.
After a quiet period here on TS there’s been a tsunami of Posts & comments & events that have overtaken this important Post.
As a very brief comment, for the record, public outcries of aggrievance, movements, and political parties are different (political) beasts at different stages of political evolution, so to speak – they can overlap.
There are some interesting points of connection & opposition with free speech proto-fascism that could be explored.