PARIS, Oct. 26, 2021 (Nouvelle Solidarité) – Eco-terrorist media darling Andreas Malm, the Swedish professor of human ecology at Sweden’s Lund University calling for the blowing up of pipelines as the new phase to save the planet and its climate, published in May 2021 a book with the revealing title “White Skin, Black Fuel, on the Danger of Fossil Fascism.” The underlying axiom of the book is that fossil fuels are intrinsically an invention and a tool of white supremacists. Therefore, fighting them is tantamount to fighting fascism and racism.
The Zetkin collective (a Swedish group of green scholars named after Clara Zetkin, a German Marxist theorist who studied Italian fascism), which co-authored the book, offers an explanation: “Two trends intersect in the present: rising temperatures and the rise of the far right. What happens when they meet? In recent years, the far right has done everything in its power to accelerate the heating: an American president who believes it is a hoax has removed limits on fossil fuel production. The Brazilian president has opened the Amazon and watched it burn. In Europe, parties denying the crisis and insisting on maximum combustion have stormed into office, from Sweden to Spain. On the brink of breakdown, the forces most aggressively promoting business-as-usual have surged – always in defense of white privilege, against supposed threats from non-white others. Where have they come from? The first study of the far right in the climate crisis, White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism presents an eye-opening sweep of a novel political constellation, and reveals its deep historical roots. Fossil-fueled technologies were born steeped in racism. None loved them more passionately than the classical fascists. As such forces rise to the surface, some profess to have the solution – closing borders to save the climate. Epic and riveting, White Skin, Black Fuel traces a future of political fronts that can only heat up.”
In an interview with the French green internet site “Reporterre,” Malm says the climate movement should take as its model Black Lives Matter. Extinction Rebellion (XR), he says, made a big error. “For them, a social movement is doomed to lose public support as soon as it resorts to methods that might seem even slightly violent. I don’t think this analysis is based on a historically accurate understanding of social movements, and I don’t think it’s wise for the climate movement to take perpetual vows of absolute non-violence.”
The way to go, for Malm is BLM: “The Black Lives Matter movement, for example, inflicts a complete disclaimer on the theory of strategic pacifism. It really took off when Minneapolis residents stormed and burned down the Minneapolis police station. If strategic pacifism were true, this event should have led to the demonization of Black Lives Matter. However, the exact opposite happened. This fire was a wake-up call that the police are not above the law in the United States. Black Lives Matter went on to bring together a wide range of currents; some choosing to destroy property, toppling statues erected to the glory of slave owners, others confronting the police in urban riots.”
Conclusion: “The role of the radical activist fringe is to instill in those who do not want to engage in active activism the courage to take to the streets and make their voices heard. To apply the lesson of Black Lives Matter to the climate movement is to seek modes of action that are equivalent to destroying the police station in Minneapolis or toppling statues. I’m not advocating violence against people, but I do think that property destruction has played a role in virtually every social movement that has achieved its goal.”