Thread by @MsKellyMHayes

Between that Guardian piece by an Extinction Rebellion member throwing anarchists under the bus and Greta Thunberg being pressured into disavowing an antifascist t-shirt, I think it's time to have a talk with newly activated environmentalists.

Climate catastrophe cannot be governed, but people enduring it will be. What shapes do you think governments might take amid so much collapse? Do not set the table for fascists.

https://twitter.com/MsKellyMHayes/status/1154551107412082688?s=20

In Oregon, Republican state senators prevented the passage of a climate bill by fleeing the state, guarded by armed rightwing militia men. Police were told to retrieve them. One of the senators said "Send bachelors and come heavily armed." That's a preview of a possible future.

Rightwing militants and Republican officials have solidarity. Whether rock solid or uneasy, their political alignment is not in question. They both understand that they're your enemy. If you ever truly threaten the status quo, they will rely on each other, as needed, to stop you.

The ascent of fascism and the imminence of climate catastrophe are connected. Fascist leaders like Trump, Duterte and Bolsonaro are rolling back environmental protections, which will hasten climate disasters globally. In the resulting chaos, there will be more fascist power grabs

Also, please retire the "we're not anarchists" spiel. Because in addition to shitting on people you ought to be building in solidarity with, you also disrespect people who threw down hard long before you -- some of whom lost everything fighting for the Earth and your future.

You can judge and denounce those activists, who were risking and sometimes losing everything, long before climate panic set in, or you can write to some of them in prison and tell them how sorry you are, how sorry everyone should be, that no one listened. earthfirstjournal.org/eco-prisoner-l…

Bc when I hear words like "rebellion," I think about the radicals. I think about ppl who led tree sits & ppl who overturned vehicles to block bulldozers. I think about the ppl that blockaded a logging road in Oregon for 11 months to save a stretch of old growth forest -- and won.

You should do some thinking about those folks too.

Here's a documentary on that 11 month blockade: sub.media/video/pickaxe/

Here's a book you might want to read: greenisthenewred.com/blog/book/

Btw those Republican state senators I mentioned, who used armed rightwing militia members to keep cops at bay so they wouldn't have to vote on a climate bill -- they won. The bill died.

Now, we have Sen. Ted Cruz trying to pass a bill that would label antifa as "a domestic terrorist organization" -- which could be the first step in creating new federal guidelines for the DOJ that would make it easier to target leftists more generally. truthout.org/articles/ted-c…

You've been sold a bullshit story about antifa by the corporate press & by Republicans who've been allowed to frame the argument bc, for some reason, folks always seem to let them frame the argument. @GrimKim gets into some of that misrepresentation here. medium.com/s/story/what-t…

@GrimKim I don't say any of this scornfully. I am glad you're in the fight. I do movement education work & I'm not about shitting on new people for not knowing what it took me years to learn. But the world's on fire and fascism is ascendant, so I am gonna need y'all to play catch up here.

@GrimKim Familiarize yourself with how 9/11 was weaponized to pass laws that labeled radical environmental activists as terrorists, despite the fact that they had never harmed any person or animal. Similarly, there have been no deadly antifa attacks, and yet the word terrorism is in play.

@GrimKim Expect your criminalization to keep pace with your effectiveness. And remember that rebellions are not about respectability. They are about upending what must not be allowed to continue.

@GrimKim Capitalism will do what it does until the lights go out unless we stop it. You don't have to be antifa or an anarchist, but if we're gonna make it, and avoid living out our days on a fascist, disaster-torn hellscape, we are gonna need some downright insurrectionary solidarity.

P.S.

Please don't let your group, whose existence was triggered by our proximity to extinction as a direct result of capitalism, become the monied protest army of climate panicked millionaires.

theguardian.com/environment/20…