Andreas Malm, a radical climate activist and author, discussed the potential for accidents and deaths in extreme climate activism, including the blowing up of pipelines, in a recent interview with The New York Times.
He expressed support for sabotage on a larger scale, acknowledging the possibility of accidents but justifying it as a response to a violent system.
Malm was pressed as to how “it’s hard to think that deaths don’t become inevitable if there is more sabotage” in blowing pipelines up. (Trending: Bombshell UFO Footage Released To The Public)
Andreas Malm, Swedish climate activist, associate professor of human ecology at Lund University and pro-Palestinian activist emotional speech about Palestine. pic.twitter.com/V27DhQgkSI
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“Sure, if you have a thousand pipeline explosions per year, if it takes on that extreme scale. But we are some distance from that, unfortunately,” Malm said.
“Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents. But what do I know? I haven’t personally blown up a pipeline, and I can’t foretell the future.”
“We live in representative democracies where certain liberties are respected. We vote for the policies and the people we want to represent us. And if we don’t get the things we want, it doesn’t give us license to then say, ‘We’re now engaging in destructive behavior.’ Right? Either we’re against political violence or not,” Malm’s interviewer stated.
“We can’t say we’re for it when it’s something we care about and against it when it’s something we think is wrong,” the interviewer added.
“Of course we can. Why not?” Malm said.
“That is moral hypocrisy,” the interviewer said.
“I disagree,” Malm said.
“The idea that if you object to your enemy’s use of a method, you therefore also have to reject your own use of this method would lead to absurd conclusions. The far right is very good at running electoral campaigns. Should we thereby conclude that we shouldn’t run electoral campaigns?” Malm added.
Malm also mentioned showing his young child scenes from the film adaptation of his book, and clarified his stance on violence, emphasizing a focus on property violence rather than violence against people.
“There were a couple of scenes that stayed with them, particularly when people were wounded. They found this fascinating. They know that their father is a little politically crazy, if I can put it that way,” Malm said.
“Political history is replete with movements that have conducted sabotage without taking the next step,” he said.
“But the risk is there. One driver of that risk is that the climate crisis itself is exacerbating all the time. It’s hard-wired to get worse. So people might well get more desperate… We might smash things, which people are doing here and there, but no one is seriously considering that you should get a gun and shoot people… The point that’s important to make is that the reason that people contemplate escalation is that there are no risk-free options left.”
He admitted to not living a “zero-carbon lifestyle” and raised questions about the climate movement’s potential response to a Trump victory in the 2024 election.
“No one who lives in a capitalist society can do so,” he said.
“What should the climate movement do then?” he asked of a Trump victory. “Should it accept this as the outcome of a democratic election and protest in the mildest of forms? Or should it radicalize and consider something like property destruction?”
“I admit that this is a difficult question, but I imagine that a measured response to it would need to take into account how democracy works in a country like the United States and whether allowing fossil-fuel companies to wreck the planet because they profit from it can count as a form of democracy and should therefore be respected,” he said.
Malm’s views have previously been expressed in a guest essay in The New York Times, where he supported disruptive tactics and property destruction.
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