Is it Climate Change or Genocide?

'What we're dealing with is a social project by the global elites to have billions of people die in order to maintain their power.'

Extinction Rebellion protesters blocking traffic on Whitehall at the bottom of Trafalgar Square during a 2019 rally in London. Image credit: Matt Dunham/Associated Press

“Climate change was a very sophisticated analysis by corporate PR people in the 1990s when they re-fashioned this crisis in terms of a technical phrase, the “climate” and “change.” What we're dealing with has nothing to do with climate and it's certainly not looking at change.

What we're dealing with is a social project by the global elites to have billions of people die in order to maintain their power. In other words, it's a subset of class struggle.”
—Roger Hallam

In a Links post for paid subscribers, I recently featured the first quotation above by Extinction Rebellion co-founder Roger Hallam. He’s quite a controversial figure in the climate movement; he and the groups he creates take seriously the fact that “billions will die,” call the death that’s coming a “genocide,” and recommend strong, non-violent, disruptive responses.

Hallam is currently serving a five-year jail term for, technically, “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance,” i.e., disrupting traffic on Greater London’s ring road for four straight days.

But that’s just technically his crime. He’s actually in jail for being a longtime pest, the way Socrates was tried and executed for being a gadfly. As Judge Hehir said to Hallam and the other defendants during sentencing, “Each of you some time ago has crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic. You have appointed yourselves as sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change.”

His real crime is crossing “a line.” For that, five years for Hallam and four for his co-conspirators. The sentence itself is proof that Hallam is right — that elite resistance to climate solutions is all about power and control.

By the way, evidence for the conspiracy came from a journalist. The Daily Mail: “A journalist from the Sun newspaper, who had joined the [Zoom planning] call pretending to be interested in the protest, managed to record some of it and passed the recordings on to the police.”

Again, a perfect illustration of Hallam’s point. Here the elites are joined by their retainers, the compliant free press, which seems to see its job as message control.

‘Climate Change’ or ‘Genocide’? It’s All in the Frame

But rather than deal with Hallam the man, let’s look at his ideas — in particular, the one in the quote above, said in the course of the following video interview. This was recorded in 2023, prior to his recent jailing. I’ve cued it to start at the quote.

His full comment is this (lightly edited for clarity):

Let's go back to a few fundamentals, right? Climate change was a very sophisticated … analysis by corporate PR people in the 1990s when they re-fashioned this crisis in terms of a technical phrase, the “climate” and “change.” What we're dealing with has nothing to do with climate and it's certainly not looking at change.

What we're dealing with is a social project by the global elites to have billions of people die in order to maintain their power. In other words, it's a subset of class struggle, and it needs to be seen as a subset of a wider narrative that's been going on, you know, since the Industrial Revolution and arguably for before that. […]

What we need to talk about is the process of oppression and the process of genocide and how that happens historically and how it's been replicated in this last chapter of humanity that we face potentially.

Is the problem we currently face best understood as “climate change,” a technical issue with a technical solution? Or is it best understood as elite resistance to a change that would diminish their power — a resistance that will lead inevitably to “genocide,” a global mass death, all so the current elites can stay in power?

That’s the question Roger Hallam asks us to ask.

As a Class the Rich Always Kill

I know there are many in the country who don’t think climate change is an issue, but this group is getting smaller. People more and more see that more severe weather now comes faster, stronger, more often.

For example: ‘On borrowed time’: World marks new global heat record in March (Aljazeera).

Or locally, news like this: Sacramento records 45th day of 100-degree heat, setting new record for most in a year (CBS News).

Floods, fires, loss of homes and insurance are great convincers. So what should these people be told? What are they being told now?

Let’s use Hallam’s language. What we’re told now — the “liberal frame” that climate change is a technical problem — distracts us from identifying actors, doers, and perps; humans responsible, people who get and remain very very rich from fossil fuel sale; people whose power would be lost if technology changed; people whose seat at the feast of government bribes (aka “campaign contributions”) would be taken away if the flow of money stopped.

Instead of identifying actors — Who is doing this to us? — the liberal frame encourages technical questions: How should this be addressed? With what technology? Where should the technology be applied? How much money should be spent in the attempt? How much is too much?

In Hallam’s view, the liberal elite, which he explicitly says includes the interviewer, has been duped by the corporate elite into retracting from the analysis the simplest historical fact — that as a class, the rich will always murder to keep and grow their wealth.

The massacre of the Hutu people in Congo (source)

Cargo plan for the slave ship “Brookes”. By using space to the utmost on this not particularly large ship, 452 enslaved laborers could be taken on board. Each adult man was only allotted 182 centimeters x 41 centimeters (71 inches by 16 inches) to lie on and only 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) up to the next layer of people. The enslaved laborers lay here for months on the journey to the West Indies (Thomas Clarkson, The History of the African Slave-Trade, vol. 2, 1808).

Hallem:

Well, I think the liberal class in 1990 allowed itself to be duped by the corporate class into using the frame of the corporate class. That's the first thing to say. And I think the left space also allowed itself to be duped, to think that the climate was something separate, the environment was something separate, than the social confrontation of the last 200 years. It’s not another chapter in that confrontation. And it’s the last chapter in that confrontation.

“Duped” or “bribed”? That’s a separate discussion. The fact is, in no mainstream analysis of climate change are individuals — wealthy and powerful ones — held to account for their deeds or motivation.

Global Genocide

A decision by, say, ten individuals at Exxon, all at the top, to monetize enough carbon reserves to drive atmospheric CO2 from 425 to 800 ppm is a choice, by them, to stay wealthy despite the result.

If you think the result includes mass death, a global genocide, then you think those ten fit Hallam’s description perfectly. Should the “climate change” problem be described with them as the cause? Hallam does.

If he’s right, then what should be done? Should these actors and their enablers be hid or exposed, protected or forced to stop? Is the CEO of Exxon another Pol Pot, or someone who should be honored, feted and praised?

Tables for members of the “Oh, it’s you, senator” club (source)

You can’t solve a problem if you can’t name the cause.

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