Civil War Inside Extinction Rebellion: Reds vs Greenies, by Lucas Rosas.

The split came out into the open during a “drown in” protest held by the group late last month in the inner city Melbourne suburb of Northcote when a speech was made by Tamil Refugee Council spokesperson Aran Mylvaganam.

Aran was an electoral candidate for the “Victorian Socialists” party as well as being a well-known associate of the Revolutionary Trotskyist group Socialist Alternative. In his speech Aran went a little bit further than the passionate environmentalists that make up the core of the Extinction Rebellion network were comfortable with, essentially calling for the abolition of borders, the closing of detention centres and a Marxist overthrow of the government and the confiscation of private property. …

Melbourne, Monday

Leading figures amonsgt the more greenie Extinction Rebellion organisers brought their concerns up with their Socialist Alternative comrades, politely suggesting that in future speakers be vetted so that the overall message of climate change wasn’t lost in a call to recreate the October Revolution of 1917. The response from Socialist Alternative was to freak out and denounce everyone. …

Presumably these [Extinction Rebellion] leaders didn’t feel they could get behind a man publicly calling for Australia to become a new version of the early Soviet Union. …

The Extinction Rebellion organisers in Mackay and the Whitsundays outright refused to co-operate with the Marxists and shunned them completely after they simply refused to shut up about how “so-called Australia”, the police and Capitalism were evil.

On Monday at the Extinction Rebellion “Spring Rebellion” event in Brisbane the Socialist Alternative contingent led by prominent UQ Marxist Priya De (most famous for declaring “Fuck Australia”) gathered together with red flags in a formation they describe as their “Red Bloc” and started chants in favour of open borders and against the evil racist police.