Extremism Won’t Motivate Anyone…

If you have a bag of sweets, and I walk up and scream in your face, demanding you give me some, would it work? No, of course not, you’d slap me in the face. And quite rightly, too. Being in someone’s face is not a way to get a viable, reasoned response. Instead it will send you to A&E in most cases. I understand the notion of making noise and by proxy, making people aware of something. This is what peaceful protestors have done for years. If there is an injustice or an imbalance in the world, people muster and make the fight known. Good on them. People who, however, take this notion and instead turn it into extremism can get lost. It’s the sweets thing I mentioned. You or I will not care about the validity of a cause or concern if someone forces it upon us. There is a responsibility, as the agent of whatever cause, to deliver the message in a clear and motivating way. That’s how you get results. Extremism isn’t doing anything other than annoying people.

But what, Chris, has this got to do with cars? I hear you ask. Well, a lot actually. The news that lit a fire under me, motivating me to write this, came the other day. You may have seen it too. A splinter group of professional human speed-bumps, Insulate Britain, has appeared. They go by the name of the Tyre Extinguishers. They target SUVs and let the tyres down. This is of course a brilliant display of the intelligence behind this operation, as that’s deflating. Not extinguishing. If cars were on fire, and these people were putting out said fires, they’d be heroes. But they’re not, so they’re not.

I could easily dedicate this post to the Tyre Extingu… no, sorry, I can’t do it. The Tyre Deflaters, but I’ll spare you. In short, I get their distaste for SUVs. They don’t tickle my pickle, either. But their mission statement based around the fact SUVs are bad for the environment, too big, so on and so forth all falls on deaf ears. Have they seen a new Fiesta? It looks like a Mondeo swallowed an old Fiesta. They’re not small. And SUVs are marginally harsher on the environment, but I’m willing to bet that calling the AA out in their diesel van, to run a compressor, to inflate four tyres, is far worse. Or what about the people who don’t notice (because who expects all four tyres to be flat) and drive on them, thus ruining them. That’s four new rubber tyres. Last time I checked, rubber does not come from hemp or geese. Anyway.

Getting back to my point, this is extremism, and it bothers me. Not because as a Brit it’s my legal obligation to be offended by such things, but also because it doesn’t work. If you engage, educate and enlighten, people will listen. If you have an axe to grind with SUVs, explain why, explain what better options might be, explain your reasoning. If you anger people – and interfering with someone’s personal property will anger people – you get belligerence. You get anger. Your arguments, no matter how valid at a base level, will be ignored and trodden on by utter contempt. In the case of things we own, like SUVs, all these air bandits are going to do is make people want to keep them. Why? Because that’ll teach the extremists. Well done.

I also worry about how far this will spread. I have heard, from friends, about abuse being hurled at classic cars. Thankfully words were the only thing sent through the air, but will that be the case forever? Will extremism notice our older or classic cars and make them a target? I don’t want to go to prison. I like my bed and my cats and the fact I can have a brew whenever I like. I don’t want to be locked up for beating someone in a high-vis to death with their own shoes because they damaged my car. It’s a powder keg waiting to go off.

The killer is that, as is the current case with SUVs, their extremism, their shouting and blockades and flat tyres will be justified via false information. We’ll be told that because our cars are old, three penguins die every time we hit 3,000rpm. And despite this being wrong (it’s actually two penguins) we won’t be able to reason with them, because they’re extremists. They won’t listen to the fact we, on average, do 1,200 miles a year. They won’t care that in cradle to grave figures, classic cars are actually better than some modern cars in terms of carbon footprint. They won’t listen, because facts are not something that fit within their self-serving, angry rhetoric.

I guess I just needed to get all that off my chest. There is nothing we can do right now other than hope this extremism doesn’t spread into the world of classic cars. I don’t think we’re a viable target, frankly. We look after our cars, we seldom drive them for thousands of miles, we prop up a massive industry that has a significant bearing on the economy, and we’re keeping automotive and to a degree, social history alive. We’re not buying SUVs (not that it’s an issue if we are) and we’re certainly not changing cars every three years to keep up with the Joneses. We’re the good guys here, right?