Extinction Rebellion is a demonstration-based environment movement with the aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to encourage governments to take action concerning mitigating the continuously declining climate system change.

The organization was founded in May, 2018 and established in October of that same year in the United Kingdom by activists from another campaign group called Rising Up! On their website, they claim to be a decentralized, international and politically non-partisan movement aimed at persuading governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency. 

Among their demands are for the government to tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency and communicate the urgency for change. They demand that the government act to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also for the government to create a Citizen’s Assembly on climate and ecological justice. 

On the surface they seem to be an organization aimed solely at sensitizing people and governments on the effects of human activities on climate changes. However, certain documents were released recently revealing the funding side of the activist group. Among the list of funders is George Soros, which raises eyebrows.

George Soros is a Hungarian-born American investor who is a billionaire and a philanthropist. He has been dubbed the “most generous giver” by Forbes because he had donated more than $32 billion dollars to the Open Society Foundations, which is about 64 percent of his original fortune and it is this same organization that he founded. He is known for giving to political causes, being the largest donor to Joe Biden’s campaign in the 2020 US presidential elections as well as humanitarian causes including donating 35 million dollars to the state of New York for underprivileged children.

George Soros is affiliated with the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, a Southern African group collaborating on issues concerning the rule of law, democracy and human rights. He is a major financier of the Drug Policy Alliance that promotes cannabis legalization and also supports the causes of The Project on Death in America, a project geared towards transforming the experience of dying and bereavement. George Soros seems to have his hand in almost every cookie jar of philanthropy.

On George Soros’ Open Society Foundations website is the motto to “work to build vibrant and Inclusive Democracies whose Governments are accountable to their citizens.” The foundation is active in 120 countries around the world and give thousands of grants to groups and individuals who promote their values through a unique network that is guided by local voices and global expertise.

The recent document leak exposing George Soros’, among others funding of Extinction Rebellion causes questions to rise. It is however questionable that an organization which claims to support climate change would receive funding from such a controversial source. It would appear that the organization is using its advocacy for better climate care as a cover for its real political aspirations. George Soros, who has publicly declared the election of the Modi government in India is “creating a Hindu nationalist state, imposing punitive measures on Kashmir, a semi-autonomous Muslim region, and threatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship” and is the ‘biggest and most frightening setback’ to open societies in India.

A document called the toolkit was released and shortly after, the Delhi violence followed. This raises the questions of if the toolkit and the violence that followed may have been orchestrated from outside of India by financially and socially influential people. Since it became public knowledge that they were involved in spreading the farmer’s protest through its social media, Extinction Rebellion immediately tried to downplay its role in the farmer’s protest by deleting posts and tweets from its India chapter’s social media accounts and making them private.

A couple of days before the Indian Republic Day, Extinction Rebellion social media accounts were buzzing with hashtags and tweets asking “Why is India allowing big corporate bail-outs and tax rebates but not small farmer bail-outs and loan waivers?” These tweets were sent from all over the world. It had first been tweeted by Gail Bradbook, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and then retweeted by various other chapters. The question asked in these tweets is something directly from the Toolkit. This seems to confirm Extinction Rebellion’s involvement in the creation of the toolkit. 

Extinction Rebellion created and spread the toolkit through volunteers including Nikita Jacob who has been jailed without bail and other volunteers from the organization’s India chapter and through their social media platforms. The baffling part of this is the fact that the tweets were not sending out accurate information. While they claim that India is not giving loan bail outs to farmers, the truth is India often waives farmer loans. Loan waivers have nothing to do with farm laws. 

It goes, almost without saying that Extinction Rebellion may have taken this stance against farm laws, which are actually beneficial to the environment and in essence the climate, which they claim to be in support of because George Soros, a major financier of their organization had also taken a stand against the democratically elected Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and his policies.

Something to consider about the Extinction Rebellion is the fact that it has raised over a million pounds in little over a year. It seems suspicious that an organization so small and with a cause so common would raise such an amount and still have more than half still left in the bank. Most of their funds come in through PayPal and WePay and come from donors like Joe Corre, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Furka Holding, a company operating out of Russia. It is unclear why it would donate to the cause of an anti-capitalist group. Other donors are European Climate Foundation, Greenpeace and Tides Foundation.

Some of the Extinction Rebellion’s actions and demonstrations in the past have disrupted lives and the economy in an attempt to influence public policy and overthrow democratic system of government. The Extinction Rebellion needs to give a reason why they receive so much foreign funding and George Soros’ involvement as they claim all their finances are public and transparent, however only their funding spreadsheets show his name and not their banking spreadsheet. We need to know how exactly George Soros is involved with the Extinction Rebellion and its cause.

This is not the first time George Soro’s has been behind a well orchestrated political movement, as it turns out that he also founded ‘Black Lives Matter’ in which came increasingly popular during the time of George Floyd’s death. Whilst on the outside it seems that these movements are ‘for good’, there is no doubt that a more sinister agenda is at play here as these politically motivated movements and demonstrations will eventually change and create new laws and we all know climate change is an important topic for these groups.

Sources: Extinction Rebellion, The Daily Switch, The Evidence