A “recipe for transnational socialism” (check). A “master plan” (check). Blueprints for a top-secret superhighway from Mexico to Alaska (check). A trojan horse (check), containing people intent upon carrying off a coup de tat (check), elaborately planned by a shadowy elite (check).

Pat Boone and Maude Barlow are smarter than we thought. Even Ron Paul’s on to us.

Clearly, they will all have to be killed.

So the Heathrow climate camp draws to a close, and participants look to the next life-changing, history-making experience.

I wish I wasn’t so cynical, but personal experience has left me so. During the 80s I was a part of this counter-culture, spent a year living at the peace camp outside the Molesworth cruise missile base in Cambridgeshire, and have forgotten how many court appearances I made.

Do I regret it? Partly. Not so much for what I sacrificed in my life, but rather the time and energy that could have been more constructively spent doing other things. What remains is a middle-aged anarchist with a rather jaundiced view of radical activism.

My current prejudice against collectivist activism has been reinforced by the attitudes of narcissistic climate campers and their few media supporters. Now we’ve pretty much done Johann Hari to death, so I’ll not revisit his silly article in Saturday’s Independent (a “…keenly aware tabloid for immature members of the middle class” - © 2007 G Szirtes, poet of this parish). That leaves George Monbiot, who praises the Heathrow climate camp in today’s Guardian.

I should be careful here, as despite my criticism of his politics I have enormous respect for George’s environmental journalism, and we’ve had some friendly email correspondence.

Today’s article, however, is pilgerism combined with methodist revivalism, what with its fanciful talk of a new political movement being born. Many commenters are uncomplimentary. Take Derek Gray for example…

“Monbiot is right about climate change and his recent book Heat is excellent, precise, worrying and free of sentimentality.

Unfortunately, he just can’t resist resorting to Pilgerism in this piece and if he could just jettison some of the narcissistic protest kitsch he’d be taken a lot more seriously and not have all those daft labels like ‘Moonbat’ thrown at him. Just as when he wrote that appalling piece about the Greenham Common women.

Any protest has to be sober, organised, and dignified and not have loads of clowns milling about with painted faces ‘we-ing’ about and getting off on the thrill of being harassed by the police.

“The problem with protests like the one at Heathrow is that they always get hijacked by idiots who want to use the occasion to cause trouble or people who just enjoy protesting and who have the feeling of psychotic self righteousness.”

The “thrill of being harassed by the police”? Well yes, there is certainly an element of this in professional protest politics. Being roughed up by police and soldiers at military bases, and having police officers lie on oath in court when giving evidence, simply reinforces one’s sense of psychotic self-righteousness. Been there, seen that, got the t-shirt.

Now, following this week-long silly season spectacle, Heathrow Airport returns to normal levels of chaos and confusion. The end result is that a few hundred young people add another entry to their activist CVs, and polish up their haloes.

I understand why humans like to see patterns, and even the evolutionary argument for why this has come about. However what is it about people of the left? They love arguing about whether event X such fits in with the thoughts of movement Y or person Z. Usually long after the particular milieu that brought about the thoughts of movement Y or person Z has any relevance to a changing world.

Two examples, Dave Osler arguing for revolutionary socialism as a way to analyse international politics and Shiraz Socialist arguing that Max Shachtman’s analysis of the Soviet Union would have led to a call for troops out of Iraq.

In fact, analysis appears to be preferable to action, as well as to the duty, obligations and solidarity owed to other humans.

Germany is nice to foreigners as long as they don’t move. A little jostle while dancing - and a lynch mob of 50 Germans, shouting “Ausländer raus” and “National resistance rules this place”, hunts the man and his fellow Indians through town, beats them up badly and even attacks the place they seek refuge in.

Of course, nobody intervenes. Of course, it takes the arrival of 70 policemen to stop the mob action. Of course, almost every citizen of the town who is interviewed for TV is outraged about how the incident is getting so much attention now. They say things like: “Those wogs should live their lives and leave us alone.” And of course, the mayor says, this could have happened anywhere: “Everybody has his first time.”