Thread: Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods and the Far Right. If you follow #cycling and #activetravel Twitter, you'll know how there's always been some antagonism between cyclists on one side and a loose alliance of cabbies and football casuals on the other. 1/

Insults and memes are exchanged, neither side learns much from the other, then everyone moves on. However, you may have noticed something different about this antagonism recently. That "loose alliance" of pro-car anti-cycling loudmouths is changing. 2/

Following a government directive, piecemeal projects have sprung up around the country aimed at giving road space to active travel users, and away from motor vehicles. Most famously, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods have been created by blocking residential roads to through traffic.3/

It's not surprising there is fierce opposition to these schemes, but the level of malignant vandalism has alarmed some. It turns out the worst of the destruction isn't being done by "concerned residents" but by at least one far-right group. 4/ https://twitter.com/Jo_Earlsfield/status/1300191367013036032

I had a "discussion" earlier with an anti-LTNer who is also a Covid denier and a supporter of Q - A n o n, the pro-Trump conspiracy theorists. The right-wing Spiked columnist Rob Lyons was yesterday given column inches in the Telegraph to tell us that 5/

LTNs are part of a global conspiracy to "take civilisation back to a pre-industrial age". Remember, this isn't Breitbart, it's the Daily Telegraph. 6/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/29/trendy-urbanist-ideas-could-disastrous-cities/?WT.mc_id=tmgliveapp_androidshare_Av1dgJsmLg37

It's not unusual to find social media comments linking LTNs to broader conspiracies about globalists threats: A g e n d a 2 1 and so on. To conclude, transport policy is no longer a cultural knockabout between progressives and conservatives; it's being full-on hijacked 7/

by the far right. Why the right are so keen on traffic-filled streets and dirty air is complex, but I'd suggest an unholy trinity of resistance to change, bone-headed might-is-right authoritarianism, and toxic masculinity. This from @Nate_Powell_Art is 8/ https://popula.com/2019/02/24/about-face/

essential reading on the subject of how the big heavy car symbolises the power of authoritarian capitalism, and how it has been pressed into service as a weapon in the streets of the USA. Liberals getting on your nerves? Run them over with your big proto-military truck. 9/

Grumpy cabbies and thick football supporters make for good sport on Twitter, but there is absolutely no fun to be had debating a person who thinks Covid19 isn't real, or B L M is part of a plot to erase the white race. This shit just got real. /end