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As Europe criminalizes environmental protest, some activists turn to sabotage
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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If the police is though on peaceful protestors they'll turn into violent protestors.
it's funny because last month I've read Malm's how to blow up a pipeline a book where, considering that peaceful actions doesn't work he calls for violent protest regarding climate.
I think that's the spirit of the text, but he's very careful not to actually call for violent protest. Instead, he repeatedly just says that it should be considered for obvious reasons. The text has a "won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest" effect. Regardless, he makes a compelling argument and the violence he considers is purely against property and not people so, unless you're a property fetishist, the degree of violence being considered is nothing compared to the violence of climate change.
Indeed, this is an important point, when talking about violence, he talks mostly about attacking equipement owned by fossilf-fuel companies so mostly victimless violence not about performing a Luigi Mangione
Now that you mentioned it, here is a link for the book and the audiobook
I'm all for better climate policy, but "because peaceful protest doesn't work" is a pretty bad justification. My peaceful protest to mandate wearing a colander in public won't work, but that doesn't mean that violent protest is justified.
Granted, I haven't read the book, so it might make a more nuanced argument.
A stronger argument is that you need to have a free and democratic opportunity to provide input. This is an easy case to make e.g. for slaves, or people under an apartheid regime. It might be possible to make the argument when it comes to e.g. multi-national companies having outsized influence on legislation, or other countries in which you can't vote instating policies that affect you.
Equating the climate crisis to forcing people to wear a colander is beyond braindead.
It's pretty hard to have a good discussion if you're evaluating comparisons against standards that are not relevant to the point being made. My point was not to say that the climate crisis is as unimportant as needing to wear a colander; my point was that "it doesn't work" is a bad argument, because you can also use it to justify something as ridiculous as wearing a colander.