This is important, so it's a bit long. First, only the OP can know what she perceived to be her experience with the XR-supporting individuals at the event in her village. It may truly be that there were people behaving inappropriately and in an offensive, racist or intimidating manner. Clearly not acceptable or defensible.
However, this thread has contained a lot of anecdotal extrapolation of the perceived motives of people around XR in general advocating for urgent action over and engagement with the climate crisis we ALL face. Unlike a political party, which has official members and salaried representatives including MPs, XR is a collective where anyone can claim to act in their name or represent them voluntarily. Any such large group of people, official or unofficial, will inevitably include some who behave inappropriately - whether it's cash-for-questions, expenses scandals, anti-Semetism, misleading the public... why should we exempt XR from being vulnerable to the existence of such 'bad apples'?
At the same time, why should we condemn an entire movement if such undesirable behaviour occurs (exceptionally) within it?
The recurring theme of 'people like this', (insert your preferred "othering" here - privileged, middle-class, unemployed, benefits cheats, white, hippy, workshy, Marxist, lefty, groupie, you name it), 'people like this with - and here's the important part - nothing better to do' is concerning.
Think about it - we have an existential crisis which our political and asset classes are making very little progress on tackling, or worse still are denying, and a group of people who have chosen to say 'challenging this situation is the best use of my time, not for selfish reasons but because future generations are going to have to endure the consequences of me deciding I had something BETTER to do'. Something better to do than trying to alert people to impending societal and ecological (and therefore economic) collapse? Like...
I fear that the sometimes immature response to perceived 'lecturing' - akin to a teenage middle finger when challenged ("I'm NOT going to tidy my planet and you can go to hell because I'm gonna show you I LIKE sentencing my children to hardship and deprivation") - is going to overshadow a more mature response to perceived criticism or threat, which is to ask 'if they have a good point, how am I going to react in a more useful and appropriate and grown-up way?'
If given a choice, do we really still think that acquiescing and allowing ourselves to be led over a cliff edge to oblivion by incompetent, willfully ignorant (but elected) officials with enormous interests in the status quo beats seeing if the sincere, well-informed and capable people of XR might have something more appropriate and useful to say? That they might be helping US get a better say?
Obsessing over whether an individual XR supporter was seen without a reusable coffee cup is not really grounds (pardon the pun) for denouncing them, surely? They repeatedly make the point that we are ALL trapped in and by the current system and we ALL need to be enabled to make more sustainable and radical, paradigm-shifting choices. No-one is saying this stuff is easy, quite the contrary. We should be scared. We should be agitated into taking action.
XR seems to be saying - we all need to get involved. That doesn't mean travelling to a demo in another town if you can't afford to. The internet is pretty affordable for most of us in the UK - we're all here on MumsNet for free right? Phoning is pretty cheap for most of us - so have a conversation. Not gossip, not name-calling, not moaning (I know we Brits love a moan) - a meaningful, grown-up conversation.
This video gives a fair flavour of the movement. I for one feel it's time to stop and listen to them, and maybe talk about the really big issue we're all not talking about enough. Thanks for reading.