Not entirely comfortable doing this, but Twitter is where I think my thoughts out loud, and I recently read (*) "How To Blow Up A Pipeline" by Andreas Malm, and I have ... thoughts. A 🧵, obviously.
😍 First of all, I LOVED it, which I was not expecting. It is a thoughtful ...
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😍 First of all, I LOVED it, which I was not expecting. It is a thoughtful ...
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careful book, interested in people and ideas and history. It is much less a rah-rah manifesto, and much more a "what have people done in the past, what can we do now, let's think through pros and cons, ok?" kind of book. It is lovely. Read it. It is not long, 3 main chapters.
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My guess is you will love it too.
Chapter 1 is an overview of resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure from past struggles, the vast majority of which was anticolonial, not climate-motivated. It is super interesting. It demonstrates that fossil fuel infrastructure is ...
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Chapter 1 is an overview of resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure from past struggles, the vast majority of which was anticolonial, not climate-motivated. It is super interesting. It demonstrates that fossil fuel infrastructure is ...
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uniquely vulnerable to vandalism and sabotage, on extraction, transformation, transport and points of use, and that the industry fears it greatly.
Chapter 2 is an exploration of the pros & cons of rigid non-violence espoused by 99.9999% of the climate movement.
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Chapter 2 is an exploration of the pros & cons of rigid non-violence espoused by 99.9999% of the climate movement.
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I really wish everyone in the climate sphere would read at least this chapter, especially everyone in or around Extinction Rebellion and Fridays For Future. Malm does a great job of summarising the positions, moral, practical and scientific for non-violence.
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Malm immediately accepts that damage to property is violence, although quite different from terrorism and any kind of violence against people.
He then proceeds to challenge each argument for non-violence reasonably thoroughly (some caveats below).
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He then proceeds to challenge each argument for non-violence reasonably thoroughly (some caveats below).
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He is particularly good at summarising the historical political science eviscerating the Chenoweth/Stefan overstating of the effectiveness of non-violence. This has been done before, but his is a great summary, and every person who stood by XR's 3.5% mantra owes to themselves
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to read this chapter and reflect. Seriously, do it. You want to have this information to make informed decisions for yourself.
Chapter 3 is a DELIGHTFUL takedown of doomers Roy Scranton, Derrick Jensen and Paul Kingsnorth, among others. I am just sad he didn't get around ...
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Chapter 3 is a DELIGHTFUL takedown of doomers Roy Scranton, Derrick Jensen and Paul Kingsnorth, among others. I am just sad he didn't get around ...
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to Jem Bendell, who fits right in, down to the faux-Buddhism and insistance on privileged white men being able to keep flying around the world. This chapter argues for action, against despair, and again is a must-read for its exposure of the weaknesses of the pro-despair camp.
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So all in all, a great book. I have some caveats, obviously, and they are major.
Caveat 1⃣ is a refusal by Malm to engage with what constitutes fossil capital, beyond calling it that. His analysis of the intersections of economy, fossil fuels and political power is ...
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Caveat 1⃣ is a refusal by Malm to engage with what constitutes fossil capital, beyond calling it that. His analysis of the intersections of economy, fossil fuels and political power is ...
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too coarse to be useful, and it leads him to just two variants of resistance: mass popular nonviolent action, and "violent" sabotage. This is a MAJOR weakness. Here I am going to fucking BEG everyone in the climate movement to read 2 more books and listen to 1 podcast. BEG.🙏
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The two books are "We Make Our Own History" by @ceesa_ma and @alfgunvald , and "More Heat Than Life" by @DrJeremyWalker . The podcast is of course @WeAreDrilled by the incomparable @amywestervelt , including all seasons, miss none. DO THIS. Please. Why?
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@ceesa_ma @alfgunvald @DrJeremyWalker @WeAreDrilled @amywestervelt Quite briefly, "We Make Our Own History" explains power and capital as "social movements from above". As a result of this more detailed understaning, it provides ways of thinking about disruption of fossil capital far beyond violent/nonviolent.
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@ceesa_ma @alfgunvald @DrJeremyWalker @WeAreDrilled @amywestervelt "More Heat Than Life" studies the connection between fossil industry and political power, including the economic and cultural takeovers via the Atlas Network. READ IT (free copy in replies to linked tweet). And of course Drilled podcast charts ...
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@ceesa_ma @alfgunvald @DrJeremyWalker @WeAreDrilled @amywestervelt the shenanigans of the industry, past and present, from century-old public relations alliances to present-day Guyana takeover, better than anyone, all hail our queen @amywestervelt for this work. We all need to know this to build an intelligent resistance.
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Caveat 2⃣ , Malm is too cavalier about the repression and blowback awaiting fossil fuel infrastructure sabotage. The repression against eco-vandalism was already in the post 9/11 PATRIOT act for god's sake. The jail sentences are beyond any measure, even for ...
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non-violent activists like @morgantrowland, Marcus Decker and Mike Lynch-White (just yesterday 😭😭😭) in the UK, never mind actual eco-saboteurs like Jessica Reznicek @FreeJessRez in the US. The repressive state apparatus has been ready for years,
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and getting worse all the time. Moreover, the risk of blowback on the whole movement due to fossil-controlled and fascist-tending (a Venn diagram which is really a circle) media portraying everyone as terrorists is all too predictable. None of these are overwhelming ...
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arguments, but they require more careful thought and strategising, far more than what exists in the book, which seeks to gloss over them too much for my taste. We need to use the weaknesses of the "social movements from above" to have more sophisticated campaigns.
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Finally, caveat 3⃣, Malm mentions not at all the most effective strategy against fossil fuels to date: the legal one. Fighting fossil strangleholds on our politics and finance in court has proven immensely effective, both in educating the public, giving politicians ...
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some backbone, and frightening the industry. These legal challenges expose the cracks in the "social movement from above". Campaigns against the "Energy Charter Treaty", which is not mentioned at all in the book, are doing more the fragilise the future of the industry ...
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than any other actions in Europe, thanks to heroines like whisteblower and tireless campaigner @ysaheb . Read more about the ECT from @krustelkram here if you don't know about it. So my point here is that we have lots of underexplored strategic avenues
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celinekeller.com
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celinekeller.com
to hurt the fossil fuel industry and their cosy ties with government and media. We need to use them all, strategically and intelligently, not just create a false choice between nonviolent demonstrations and sabotage.
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As usual apologies for too long thread.
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As usual apologies for too long thread.
Oh yes haha. I put an (*) next to "read" because my shitty eyes no longer allow me to read real books. I listen to them on my phone, via Natural Reader, from epub or pdf. I cannot express what a difference this technology is making in my life. 🙏🙏🙏
Also, fuck @JeffBezos, everyone should stop using @audible_com , it's part of @amazon , which is high up on the @BDSmovement list. Free Palestine.
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