Climate Warriors Are Descending into Further Radicalism

A cross Europe, radical self-declared climate activists are blocking roads and vandalizing businesses, banks, and government institutions. Some have glued themselves to world-heritage works of art. Paintings by Van Gogh, Monet, and Vermeer, valued at hundreds of millions of euros, have been attacked and damaged by groups such as Just Stop Oil and Last Generation, who believe these acts are justified in the pursuit of urgent ecological ends.

Environmentalist groups gain huge publicity through such tactics, but will that be enough for their radical fringes? How might their tactics evolve?

Until recently, the authorities in many countries had taken a tolerant view of environmentalist protests. In the U.K., the group Just Stop Oil is demanding the cancellation of new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea. After having spray-painted car dealerships and department stores, in recent months the activists have similarly targeted the Home Office, the headquarters of the security agency MI5, and the Bank of England. Others have blocked traffic in and around London. The British public has been patient with these stunts, but anger is growing.

In Berlin, the city’s governing red–green–red (socialist and environmentalist) coalition openly sympathized with the climate activists of Last Generation. But after weeks of road blockages in the city — which included an incident in which rescue services were held up by protesters while trying to get to the site of a fatal traffic crash, generating national headlines — Germany’s minister of the interior has finally condemned climate protesters who break the law and endanger lives.

One controversial German activist, Tadzio Müller, had warned in Der Spiegel a year ago that some youth activists are rapidly radicalizing and might set up a “green RAF,” a militant group in the style of the Cold War–era Red Army Faction in West Germany. Müller claimed that this possibility might materialize as an “act of self-defense.” Now, even Germany’s security services are worried about possible acts of sabotage this winter.

The tendency toward further escalation and outright extremism among the most radical anti–fossil-fuel protesters is indeed concerning. Swedish Marxist activist-academic Andreas Malm gained notoriety with his book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, in which he discusses ever more aggressive tactics and acts of sabotage against oil companies and governments. Forty-four-year-old Malm, a lecturer at Lund University, has been allowed to spread his message in major news outlets in Germany such as Der Spiegel.

Incidentally, it was also Der Spiegel that allowed Ulrike Meinhof, then-emerging chief intellectual of the nascent Red Army Faction terrorist group in 1970, to publish her pamphlet Natürlich kann geschossen werden (German for “Of Course We Can Shoot”). The RAF grew from the fringes of the 1968 student-protest movement. At first, it staged acts of damage to property, but, gradually, it moved on from violence against objects to violence against persons whom it deemed to be representatives of their hated capitalist system. In the course of two and a half decades, members of the RAF killed more than 30 business representatives, politicians, prosecutors, security personnel, bank clerks, and other innocents.

Eco-warrior Malm now contends that “only sabotage and criminal mischief” can help to stop climate change, praising an attack by around 20 masked, armed persons in British Columbia in February 2022 on a pipeline-construction site that destroyed trucks and building machinery. His influence is noticeable. Leading German activist Luisa Neubauer, a regular on public-TV talk shows and member of the Greens Party, echoed Malm’s credo and said, “Of course we are thinking about how to blow up a pipeline.” She later claimed that this was a joke.

Malm and others emphasize that they do not intend to attack representatives of the fossil-fuel industry — they are aware that violent acts could be counterproductive by turning public debate against them. However, some German climate activists have already fought with police in attempts to halt road construction in forested areas and tried to storm mines to stop coal exploitation (in an ironic twist, the ruling coalition in Germany, which includes the Greens, has reactivated coal power plants this winter to avoid blackouts caused by the energy shortage in Europe).

For some activists, environmental concerns serve as a pretext for other kinds of left-wing ideological pursuits. This was so in the 1970s, too, when the newly founded Greens attracted activists from various communist groups. Even Greta Thunberg, the youthful icon of the movement, has recently, and unsurprisingly, hinted at a hard-left turn by announcing that she will fight to dismantle the West’s “oppressive and racist capitalist” system. What is needed is a “system-wide transformation,” she said at a recent book launch in London.

Climate concerns have become mainstream in Europe and the U.S., but the increasing radicalization of some activists might indicate a turning point for the climate movement. An apocalyptic ideology can quickly grow weary of protests and road blockages and drift toward terrorism.

Bettina Röhl, daughter of RAF founder Ulrike Meinhof and a best-selling author, said recently in Germany’s Bild tabloid newspaper that segments of radical climate groups are “on the way of the RAF.” Bild also revealed that Last Generation in Berlin closely cooperates with the left-wing extremist group Rote Hilfe (Red Help), which is being monitored by security agencies as a threat to the constitutional order. Red Help encourages its members to be unafraid of going to jail.

The governing Greens Party has vehemently protested against any kind of comparison to the RAF, calling such historical references tasteless. It remains the party’s responsibility to rein in its most hard-line activists, who are inching toward an uncertain and dangerous destination — one that risks tainting the entire ecological movement.