Hello everybody! I’m a student living and studying in south Italy. As you might already know, there have been a few protests made by Ultima Generazione (Brutally translated: Last Generation) which have been object of debate and disputes (and mostly critiques)
I’m afraid that Italian politicians are now exploiting these protests to indoctrinate people into hating environmentalism. In my personal experience, I’ve seen plenty of people who used to support environmentalist protests starting to, I wouldn’t say hate, but at least distancing themselves from the environmentalist cause (regardless of the age)
Know here’s the question: Have there been similar protests in your country? What about the reaction of the media and the public?
EDIT: i put a random pic of Fridays for Future and Extintion Rebellion militants helping with the flood in Emilia Romagna
in Holland we’ve seen environmental protests taking extreme forms while not being condemned as extreme. They’re being discussed as “people who have concerns” while other groups aren’t portrayed like that.
Also, a protester was invited to a popular mainstream talkshow and glued himself to the table (which was easily undone afterwards). Other protesting figures for other means, with a reasonable following, and never calling for arms (while being protrayed in msm to do just that), don’t even get a seat on that “talkshow”.
Also e.g. A protest organized by ‘extinction rebellion’ was able to seige a runway at an airport. imo, it’s unthinkable for a random group to do that unless there’s inside support. In my opionion millitary police would have intervened before they would be able to block the runway with those numbers.
I’ll read the article!
There isn’t such a phenomenon in my country, perhaps because there is more or less environmental awareness due to the waste crisis we dealt with couple of years ago, and the government and parliament’s role in exacerbating it. There were nationwide protests even. Yet the awareness didn’t go beyond trash disposal back then. As long as we hid our debris behind walls, the environment would be fine!
However, the last two years were different. We successfully protested against building a harmful dam, heavily invested in green energy, and climate change was at last acknowledged as the reason for this year’s horrendous weather (it only began to rain in the spring, which harmed crops).
In Germany there’s a costand debate because last generation people block our holy roads.
Is there last generation in germany? Damn
As @sexy_peach@feddit.de said, there is “Last Generation” here in Germany, too. And as you said about Italy, here they are doing more harm than good for climate protection. People who are already convinced that we need urgent climate action like the last generation. But they don’t need to be convinced because they already are. And the people who are not fully convinced, they get very angry about the climate movement. In Berlin an ambulance on duty was hindered by the “Klimakleber” (climate gluers) who glue their hand to the street.
I don’t think that they are doing their cause a disservice. Yes, a lot of people are annoyed by them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their opinion on climate change shifted. Also they do set the topic on the news, which otherwise would 100% have ignored climate change, as always.
“100% have ignored” Yeah sure, then you don’t read newspapers. It is not ignored.
btw it wasn’t me who downvoted both of your posts.
Hehe, ok. I think it is not done enough to stop global warming. Maybe my writing “It is not ignored” gave such a wrong impression. But we have a climate initiative in my town’s politics, including the mayor. We have newspaper articles about climate change, and I don’t mean about the “Last generation”. We have the city’s supplier for energy, busses, water etc. doing climate actions.
Edit: We have a climate protection minister. So it is NOT ignored.
In Berlin an ambulance on duty was hindered by the “Klimakleber” (climate gluers) who glue their hand to the street.
Yes but in Berlin ambulances regularly are being stuck in traffic. That doesn’t excuse them, of course.
In both Germany where I live and in Canada where I grew up the same is happening. Protestors have to go further and further just to make themselves heard, but this is leveraged by the media into “environmentalists are crazy loons.”
In both countries protestors have been forcefully removed by police openly working on behalf of the resource extraction companies the people are protesting against. And then the media goes on about how these people are just mentally unstable, smoke too much weed, and besides we simply can’t afford to slow down the economy or inconvenience people for the sake of the environment.
We do have the green “taz” newspaper in Germany. But the mainstream media, especially the “Bild”, do indeed a bad propaganda to the masses. I don’t like general cop-bashing and such but I feel the urge to vomit when the politicians talk about economic growth. Or when our chancellor says we can’t save the climate with abstinence/refraining (“Verzicht”). In contrast I think we can’t save the climate WITHOUT abstinence/refraining!
German policy overall is an absolute dumpster fire. I can’t listen to any of the politicians here for want of punching them in the nose.
My statement about cops wasn’t general cop bashing, but even that has been well earned. Recently German police dealt violently with protesters in Lützerath. The Canadian police, typically the federal RCMP, respond to peaceful environmental protests with assault rifles, sniper rifles, armoured vehicles, etc. There have been instances where Land Defenders have chained themselves to trees and the police just cut them out. But the Canadian media plays it all off as cops just doing their job and how we should be really upset at environmental protesters and indigenous people who just want to draw attention to the facts of resource extraction, climate change, and sovereignty.
Yoo another compatriota, there’s a whole 3 of us
Although many people on the left in general don’t like to admit it, I do believe that some radical actions can be counterproductive to your cause, especially if your cause depends on convincing people from other sides of the political spectrum. This is valid for environmentalist or LGBT acceptance etc you need to get more people on board, not to repel the moderates.
That said, the difficulty is to find the right balance. And some radical action by fringe groups can help moderates to be more easily accepted by the mainstream. I would expect environmentalism to be now so ingrained in mainstream politics in Europe that some more radical actions wouldn’t jeopardize the main cause.
But, far-right politics is going up everywhere in the continent and they’re eager to profit from some small radical actions. We’re still very far from any form of “ecoterrorism” but we already see them echoing the word… European elections next year will be crucial, the risk of the EU giving a sharp turn right, with the EPP siding with the far-right is real. And that would be a catastrophe for our environment.
