Hollywood stars bankroll anti-capitalist eco-warriors who blockaded Burning Man
These aren’t your ordinary anti-capitalist climate crusaders.
Extinction Rebellion, the radical environmentalists who tried to blockade traffic to the Burning Man counterculture festival Sunday — only to be rammed aside by tribal police — are funded by some of the biggest names in Hollywood, along with an heir to the Getty fortune and outdoor retailer Patagonia.
The group calls itself part of a “decentralized, international and politically non-partisan movement” demanding climate action — and until now has largely stuck to causing disruption in Europe.
Under its banner, protesters have superglued themselves to the speaker’s chair in the British Parliament, blockaded busy roads — often by affixing to each other and the asphalt — and even attached themselves to the top of a plane. Allied groups in Europe have vandalized a Walmart heir’s superyacht.
On Sunday, the eco-warriors from Extinction Rebellion, known as XR, were one of a group of activists called Seven Circles who went after Burning Man festival-goers, setting up a blockade of a road into Black Rock City, Nev., to protest against capitalism.
They wanted Burning Man leadership to ban private jets, as well as single-use plastics and “unnecessary propane burning,” according to a statement released Sunday by Seven Circles. The festival ends by literally burning a tower.
“The time has come,” said XR organizer Mun Chong. “Burning Man should aim to have the same type of political impact that Woodstock had on counterculture. If we are honest about system change, it needs to start at ‘home.’
“Ban the lowest hanging fruit immediately: private jets. No single individual should have the luxury of emitting 10 to 20 times more carbon pollution than a commercial airline passenger. Burners, rebel with us.”
The protest, however, ended when rangers from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Police Department smashed through the barriers before detaining demonstrators at gunpoint, which XR called “horrifying.”
XR, which was founded in the UK, receives most of its funding from individual donations.
But it is sharing in millions of dollars in grants being given out by the Climate Emergency Fund, whose founders include Rory Kennedy, the documentary-maker daughter of Robert F. Kennedy.
She set it up in 2019, with its first financial injection coming from oil heiress Aileen Getty, a British-born granddaughter of the oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty.
The effort supporting “disruptive climate activism” awarded $5.1 million in grants to 44 groups last year, according to its website. The fund says it does not finance violence, but lets recipients decide how to spend the money.
The movement to mobilize climate activists is also attracting some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Adam McKay, director of “Don’t Look Up” and “The Big Short.” McKay, 55, pledged $4 million to CEF last September, Bloomberg previously reported.
“These direct action groups get by with so little that $4 million is just such a game-changer,” CEF executive director Margaret Klein Salamon told Bloomberg in April.
More than 2,000 donors contributed to CEF last year, according to its annual report, including Disney heir Abigail Disney and actor Jeremy Strong, of HBO’s “Succession.” Private planes featured frequently in the hit show.
McKay’s $4 million promise helped the nonprofit quadruple its total value of grants doled out to climate agitators between 2021 and last year, Bloomberg reported.
CEF, which has funded 27 groups thus far in 2023, solely supports climate advocacy organizations that hold disruptive protests, but does not fund violence, Salamon told Bloomberg.
XR, which is primarily funded by the public, received $362,701 in donations in 2022, according to its annual report. CEF was one of its three largest contributors.
One of the others was Patagonia, the outdoor clothing retailer whose vests are favored by Wall Street workers, and a French movie company called Pulp Films. Their collective donations totaled $73,000.
It’s unclear how XR uses the funds. One of its co-founders, Clare Farrell, had praised CEF, telling Bloomberg: “There’s not enough funders, in my view, like Climate Emergency Fund, who are intentionally funding frontline boots on the ground, the people who show up, the people who take risks.”
XR claimed in December it would stop disturbing the peace, particularly in the United Kingdom, where it has faced a backlash over protests that have caused chaos, and in one case shut down an electrically powered light rail network in London.
“We recognize and celebrate the power of disruption to raise the alarm and believe that constantly evolving tactics is a necessary approach,” Extinction Rebellion activists wrote in a post titled “We Quit.”
“What’s needed now most is to disrupt the abuse of power and imbalance, to bring about a transition to a fair society that works together to end the fossil fuel era,” the Dec. 31 statement continued. “Our politicians, addicted to greed and bloated on profits won’t do it without pressure.”
It issued a report claiming that it would “prioritize attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks,” but still went ahead with Sunday’s action in Nevada.
The group defines telling the truth, to “act now” and to “go beyond politics” as its core demands, according to its 2022 annual report.
“We are unprepared for the danger our future holds,” the report reads. “We face floods, wildfires, extreme weather, crop failure, mass displacement and the breakdown of society. The time for denial is over. It is time to act.”
