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 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.