On Being Banned From Speaking At Glastonbury
Daniel Ellsberg recently died. He was not afraid. When the government was lying to the people, he knew his duty and be damned with the consequences. Watch the video on you tube* – it’s suggested he could be imprisoned for the rest of his life for making the Pentagon Papers public, detailing the US government’s systematic lying on the death project of Vietnam (sound familiar?). He doesn’t even flinch. There is no PR guy whispering in his ear (“don’t say that”). There is no self pity – thousands are suffering and will suffer far more than him. It is the right thing to do. Period.
The last Great American Liberal. Another now extinct species.
What are we left with? The dregs: Ed Milliband and Justin Rowlatt. A week or so back Ed received instructions from Labour Party Stalinists that he could not go to Glastonbury because he might mix with today’s truth tellers – Just Stop Oil people – arrested and imprisoned for speaking out on today’s great lie: the covering up of the carbon emissions mass murder project. The BBC does the same with that other pleasant chap: Justin Rowlatt, its environment correspondent. What did both of them do? You guessed it. They submitted to the pressure. Justin could have done a Gary Lineker on the bosses and would have won right – “The BBC has just sacked its environment correspondent for going to Glastonbury” – I don’t think so! Ed could have gone Dale Vince on the Labour Party and said I don’t care about the fucking taboids bullying me (sometimes it’s good to swear Ed). And he would have won. “The Labour Party has just sacked it’s shadow climate secretary for going to Glastonbury” I don’t think so! Though on this one I would not put anything past the psychotic bunker that is the Labour Party Mind.
The reason why the conventional “climate movement” has been such a disaster is not because of Ed and Justin themselves, but because the movement still thinks that these miserable cowards are somehow “on our side”. They are absolutely not. They smudge, underplay, compromise, dampen, distort, distract and outright lie. On the greatest crime – the greatest evil, that is about crash down on us. They belong to organisations that plan this evil and then lie about this evil week in week out, year after year. What is more disgusting than that?
As someone told me recently: when someone “starves” (nice-quick-word-don’t-need-to-think-about-it-too-much), they first see their animals die, then they see their children die, and then they die themselves ; slowly, agonizingly, alone. To engage in “policies” which continue produce oil and gas production, in full scientific knowledge that they will submit millions and soon hundreds of millions of people to this level of torture and then death, is pure evil. Period.
Did anyone mention Rosebank?
This is what those in our public life do. Shit on the weakest in our global communities in order to maintain their careers and status. Milliband and Rowlatt are the polar opposite of Ellsberg.
Liberals once used to be revolutionaries when they needed to be – when things got really bad. A few such people are probably reading this post, but in 2023, 99% of them have sold their souls to death. A death which starts with the death of thinking as Hannah Arendt pointed out. I did a little experiment with Justin last year at Glastonbury. I produced convincing evidence that taking a stand against BBC complicity in mass murder was his most effective option. He entertained the evidence (and my nice graph) for less than a minute and then walked off. I did a video on You Tube about it – you can look it up. The rot sets in when people stop thinking – not least about what it actually really means to make people die of starvation.
Revolution is brutal and savage – but it is now inevitable because people like Ed and Justin refused to make a stand. From now on it’s a matter of you being with us or against us – there is no middle ground. This is not rhetoric – it’s sociological determinism. Revolution splits brother from sister, family from family, community from community, splits a nation down the middle. But here’s the rub: the longer you delay it, like a cancer, the worse it plays out. In the next two to three years we have a short window to create a nonviolent democratic variant – to create assemblies and resistance communities to ready ourselves for when the hundreds dying of extreme heat (see the news from India last week) turn, in a matter of days, to millions. And like September 1914, nothing will be the same again. Global panic will spread like a pandemic. Because the truth will finally come out. We are in a global gas chamber, there is no escape – hell is “locked in”, and the people that duped us into trusting our murderers were our friends Ed and Justin.
Now do you get it? Ed and Justin are not and never will be our friends. They are worse than our enemies. They are bad but worse they lie about being bad.
Every successful revolution has two basic rules: destroy liberal reformism, the “middle ground”, and subvert the security forces. It’s the same every time. Some things don’t change.
Oh stop being unpleasant Roger – just shut up, it’ll be over by Christmas.
“Can’t we all just get along” as one nice lady put it to me after my Glastonbury talk last year. I said nothing. Sometimes you succumb to false compassion.
I should have said “think about watching your kids starve to death each day for several weeks, and connect the dots from there”.
Glastonbury won’t exist 10 years from now. They didn’t connect the dots either.
It’s revolution or endless death now.
Ellsburg was the real opposition. Just Stop Oil is the real opposition.
Are you the real opposition?
No really I am asking you – yes you reading this post.
Do I sound mad? Absolutely I am mad. I am disgusted to the core of my being.
*”From the archives: Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers leaker, turns himself in to authorities in 1971.” You Tube.