alt Hacker NewsMuch of fringe politics is a social club/hobby. You can really see this in action when fringe groups stumble upon an opportunity to grow support among the mainstream, but then they choose to squander it on counter-signaling to drive away people who aren’t perfectly aligned.
The “Just Stop Oil” people are a great example of this. There’s a lot of headwind behind green energy and moving away from oil, but the activists suck all that air out of the room with destructive stunts and focus the story on themselves.
The way people talk about Just Stop Oil is interesting. People often say, "Just Stop Oil is doing activism wrong," but I never hear anyone talk about orgs that "do activism right" because the public never talks about them at all.
Like them or not, Just Stop Oil is very good at making headlines and stirring up controversy, which is their goal. If you go into a party with a megaphone and shout about beavers, everyone will eventually be talking and thinking about beavers. Conservatives use this strategy to manufacture controversies like "critical race theory" all the time. As a radical group, simply being in the headlines benefits them.