#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #GERMANY #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Germany, Die Platform: What comes after Lützerath? - Anarchist perspectives for the future of the climate movement (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Although Lützerath has already been evacuated, the fight for the small village in

the Rhineland is not over - at least that's how some parts of the climate justice
movement explain it. They are driven by optimism, but above all by the
unwillingness to acknowledge defeat. However, with a look at the superior power
of the state and the parties' adherence to the alliance with coal capital in the
form of RWE, we have to realize that the bitter truth is: We lost the battle for
Lützerath long ago. And even if it had succeeded in defending Lützerath, Germany
would never have met its climate goals or the 1.5° limit. ---- Because in the end
Lützerath was only ever a symbol for the destructive reality of this system. And
that symbol is now history. Aspects of self-organization in the camp remain in
memory, the visits of international delegations from all over the world, moments
of solidarity and resistance during the defense and the brutal violence of the
state, which once again cleared the way for capital. We stand in unwavering
solidarity with everyone who defended the village to the last, who were injured
or arrested, and would like to join the movement's call for donations. Now it is
important that we stand together against any state repression.

But now the time has come when we as a climate movement have to pause, honestly
acknowledge our defeat, critically analyze it and our situation and, based on
this, make common course corrections. Because the fact that we as a movement have
suffered a defeat cannot be disguised by the mobilization of tens of thousands of
people against the eviction, militant clashes with the state power, the huge
media attention and the internal party bickering of the Greens. These are all
positive and important aspects that have already been highlighted in many places,
for example by Carolin Schiml on anarchismus.de. In the end we still lost
Lützerath. There must be no simple "keep it up".

We therefore very much welcome the fact that various parts of the climate
movement want to talk about strategic perspectives for the future of the
movement. With this text we, as an anarcha-communist platform, want to make a
contribution to this debate from a class-struggle and anarchist perspective.
Specifically, we want to present our view of the current situation and strategy
of the climate movement, draw a critical conclusion about the fight for Lützerath
as a symbol and formulate possible perspectives for the future of the movement.
However, we also want to point out where questions arise for us to which we do
not (yet) have any answers.

Our goal is not to offend all the courageous people who fought for Lützerath at
great risk of their own time, strength and physical integrity. Many of us took
part in this fight ourselves in Lützerath or on site. Instead, we are concerned
with finding a way in the joint debate that will make us stronger as a movement
and will allow us to emerge victorious from the coming conflicts with capital and
the state. Because those fights will undoubtedly come.

We would be very happy to receive (likely critical) feedback and answers from
other parts of the climate movement and the revolutionary left. Let's talk to
each other!

Taking Stock: The Climate Movement at a Crossroads

It was about four and a half years ago that the fight for the Hambach Forest,
which climate activists had occupied for a long time, came to a head not far from
Lützerath. In a gigantic evacuation operation, the police and RWE tried to
evacuate the occupation and ultimately failed due to a court-imposed eviction
stop. The court's decision was preceded by mass protests in the forest and many
militant actions by the squatters. The rescue of the Hambach Forest represented a
rare success of a progressive social movement in the otherwise rather sedentary
Federal Republic of Germany.

However, the successful fight for the Hambach Forest was only the beginning of a
new high phase of ecological protests, which began the following year. In many
countries around the world, but particularly strong here with us, in the first
weeks and months of 2019, students began to regularly strike their classes under
the name Fridays For Future. The protests quickly developed into a mass
phenomenon that went far beyond the circles of the previous environmental
movement. In September 2019, the school strikes reached their peak when around
1.5 million people took part in over 500 mobilizations across the country. Once
again the environmental protest, which has been a tradition here for decades, has
reached a new boom. After that, the number of regular school strikes decreased
significantly, the size of the mobilizations decreased noticeably, albeit at a
high level. The onset of the corona pandemic in spring 2020 reinforced this
development. Fridays For Future lost much of its previous momentum. This
weakening continues to this day. ThereFridays For Future is the media and, in
many places, organizational driving force of the entire climate movement, this
weakness affects the entire movement.

At the same time, we can see that with the emergence of Fridays For Future, many
young people have become progressively politicized and have become more radical
in recent years. In addition, the already existing radical left has put a
stronger focus on the climate fight. So while the climate movement weakened as a
whole, its radical part grew proportionately stronger. Since the end of the
school strikes as a real means of exerting pressure on the movement, this radical
part has adopted new forms of action or strengthened existing ones. This is
reflected in larger actions of the action alliance Ende Gelände, which promotes
anti-capitalist rhetoric and mass civil disobedience actions, and in a number of
local forest or zone occupations designed to resist specific destructive
infrastructure projects and/or deforestation. Examples include the Dannenröder
forest in Hesse, through which the A49 is to be built, or the Osterholz near
Wuppertal, which is to make way for the overburden of a lime works. Lützerath,
which is to be demolished for lignite mining, is also an example of this strategy.

The central reason why parts of the climate movement are increasingly turning to
this strategy is that many people who have been politicized by Fridays For Future
have recognized over the past few years that their protest has by no means
persuaded politicians to do the right thing for the climate do. Climate goals are
still not being met, the parties from the CDU to the Greens are still making
deals with the climate killers on the executive floors. Here is an important
starting point of anarchist criticism, which can also explain why many of the
occupations are anti-authoritarian: If politics doesn't help, then you have to
tackle it yourself and enforce it. Occupations are a means of direct action, as
are Ende Gelände 's mass actions. Direct action means the immediate enforcement
of one's own demands through one's own efforts, in contrast to an appeal to a
state or a boss who gives you what you ask for. This is a core tenet of anarchism.

Another reason for this strategy might be that the goals of one's own actions
become much more concrete. Saving the climate is incredibly difficult and
complex, and necessarily requires societal change (no matter how radical you
think it is). The struggle for an endangered forest or village is concrete and
less complex. If you can defend the occupation you win, if not you lose. If you
win, you have achieved a noticeable victory, the trees or houses remain standing.
These are goals that, if we look back at the example of the Hambach Forest,
actually seem achievable and in some cases even are. It is similar with the
actions of Ende Gelände. If the coal conveyor belt or the excavator is blocked,
then you've done something; specific amounts of CO2 were not emitted. A success
in a world that otherwise offers little reason for a climate movement to celebrate.

The means of occupation and civil disobedience within the framework of mass
actions is therefore obvious in view of the development of the movement and
actually desirable from an anarchist perspective: Direct action means
self-empowerment and weakens the false trust in the institutions, occupations
offer space for attempts at self-government and instead of being abstract
Discussing or making demands on politicians is a concrete fight for a goal.

However, this new strategy of the climate movement also has disadvantages. The
school strike - no matter how loyal to the system, institution-affirming and
reformist it is - carries a societal perspective. It is about a change in climate
policy, against the climate crisis as a whole. The occupation of a forest, on the
other hand, is very limited in its perspective. While many occupations rightly
and justifiably see themselves as part of a global movement, it's about their own
local trees first. The focus is on defending them, and in doing so, the
perspective of society as a whole often logically takes a back seat.
The means of the school strike is also extremely low-threshold. The way out of
the school together with your own classmates: inside on one of the central
squares of the city is much easier than in a forest somewhere away from the
cities. Even if you are there, it is not possible to take part in the fight at
low thresholds. Occupations require a lot of time and personal risks that are out
of the question for many people - especially not for people who have to work for
wages. Occupations and mass actions relevant to criminal law therefore always
build up barriers that many people cannot overcome. They thus mostly objectively
represent a demarcation from large parts of the population - even if one does not
want this at all and even if one actively seeks contact with the population, as
is done in many occupations, often with some success. It is no coincidence that
squats often develop their own small subcultures with their own codes that are
difficult to understand from the outside.
In addition, although the concrete battles seem easier to win than the general,
big fight for climate justice, they are often not winnable realistically. The
probability of a relatively small community successfully defending a small,
occupied, remote area against the well-equipped police, even for a short period
of time, is usually negligible. Without the courts, the Hambach Forest would have
failed because of this problem. The Dannenröder forest failed, as did the
Osterholz and Lützerath. This leads to an incredible amount of time and energy
being invested in almost inevitable defeats, which are also demoralizing over and
over again.

We should also take a critical look at this dynamic of successive, wave-like
escalations of individual struggles from a feminist perspective: Due to the
immediacy of the confrontation, occupations usually represent a space in which
emotional work is neglected. The highlights of such struggles are always moments
that cause activists a high emotional burden. On the one hand, through the
movement's own narrative that this will be the decisive fight and if not everyone
joins, everything is lost and it makes no sense to continue fighting.
On the other hand, because the direct confrontation with the state's apparatus of
violence and the loss of one's own temporary home when evicting an occupation can
be potentially traumatic - especially for young and inexperienced people who
often take part in these struggles.
After the climax has passed, excessively overwhelmed awareness and out-of-action
structures often remain and often a whole series of activists who can no longer
or do not want to be active. This is not a sustainable strategy.

Change through struggle for symbols?

The biggest problem has not yet been addressed in all of this: the occupied
forests and zones as well as the temporary blockades of Ende Geländeare primarily
symbols of resistance to the climate crisis and the politics that make it happen.
It would be wrong to underestimate the power of such symbols. Using the example
of the Hambacher Forest, but also of Lützerath, we can see that they carry people
away, can contribute to an enormous gathering of strength and that real
countervailing power can unfold in them - albeit for a short time. Even in the
event of defeats, they can lead to a necessary radicalization of new parts of the
movement. In the context of the brutal evacuation of Lützerath, this was rightly
pointed out again and again. In the long term, Lützerath will exacerbate the
long-overdue disillusionment of large sections of the climate movement with the
alleged green "climate party" and the capitalism it supports. That's good, very
good even. It should be our goal to translate this radicalization and
mobilization, which emanated from Lützerath, into long-term organization. The
organizing calls fromLützerath is alive! are going in the right direction.

And yet it would be wrong to overestimate the importance of symbols in the fight
against the climate crisis. Because these forests and villages are of negligible
importance for the big question of whether and how climate change can be
mitigated. As bitter as it sounds: A few saved forests and villages or a conveyor
belt that is idle for a few hours more or less does not stop any development that
is inevitable according to the laws of movement of the global capitalist economic
system.

Nevertheless, large parts of the climate movement - including many who see
themselves as anti-capitalist - rely on an approach that deliberately focuses on
the struggle for symbols. They justify this by saying that these struggles are
about emphasizing and deepening the contradictions in this system. An important
point of reference is the category of discourse. Based on theorists like Michel
Foucault, the social discourse should be shaped and shifted in a critical direction.

Social discourses are important and must not be ignored. You can influence social
developments. The successful agitation of the extreme right in recent years has
impressively demonstrated this in a negative sense. It is definitely worth
fighting for discourse shifts. However, for a revolutionary left, as well as for
the climate movement in general, discourse interventions can still be one tool
among many.

Because a shift in discourse alone does not change society and does not overthrow
capitalism. The fact that parts of the climate movement and the revolutionary
left still attach such great importance to it is due to the fact that both have
long lacked an overall social strategy for actual structural change. Instead, one
hopes that the discourse will shift and then push politics along. But that's
little more than a newly warmed-up version of the already wrong slogan "We'll
strike until you act". We still have to do the trading ourselves.

Perhaps what is special about Lützerath is that this time there was a discourse
in the climate movement that was about more than just shifting the discourse.
"Lützerath is the 1.5° limit" was heard from Greenpeace , via Luisa Neubauer to
the radical left, with reference to some scientific studies. "It's about
something." wrote the Interventionist Left. What was meant by this was that it
would finally be impossible to meet the German climate targets with the mining of
the coal under Lützerath. This is undoubtedly correct and yet it is surprising
how strongly this point was also emphasized among anti-capitalists. As if it was
realistic at any point that Germany would actually meet its climate targets.
After all, we are talking about a capitalist state whose economy is geared
towards profit rather than climate protection. The narrative of the 1.5-degree
limit was probably adopted deliberately, as a kind of last straw to mobilize more
people for the fight for Lützerath. That is understandable. But it brings with it
problems. Because this narrative hides the fact that the 1.5° target was and is
anything but realistic. And even if it were there would still be a number of
other countries around the world that are breaking their climate targets. As
understandable as grasping at the last straw is, an analysis of the real events
is just as necessary. This is the only way to derive a course for your own actions.

The once again bitter truth is: There has never been a 1.5° limit, not in
Lützerath and not anywhere else. Even if it's not nice to hear. Germany will miss
its climate targets, as will most other countries. Global warming will go beyond
that, the situation will first continue to deteriorate with massive repercussions
for working and poor people around the world, especially of course in the Global
South. As a climate movement and revolutionary movement, we must not ignore these
coming upheavals, but rather gain a clear view of the situation and include it in
our analyses, our public relations work and strategic considerations. Now and in
the decades to come, it must be about slowing down climate change as much as
possible and at the same time curbing the consequences that are already
occurring. Because these will once again be carried out on the backs of the lower
classes, as we are already seeing.

However, the containment of the crisis and its consequences will only work if
capitalism is overcome. This in turn is not only negotiated at all the symbolic
forests and villages. The climate crisis is happening every day in countless
completely uninteresting, unspectacular places around the world. A movement that
wants to oppose you has to start at all of these places.

We have to admit that the current strategy of the climate movement is not
working. Not because she couldn't save Lützerath, but because even a dozen
rescued villages couldn't stop climate change. Instead, we need to discuss a
major course correction. In the following we would like to outline our
perspective for the future of the climate movement.

An anarchist perspective on the future of the climate movement

An independent climate movement will continue to exist even after the defeat of
Lützerath. And that's a good thing, because it forms an irreplaceable space for
theory building and the development of new tactics. It also forms a pivot for the
ideological class struggle, since it reveals the contradiction between a future
worth living on our planet and the reality of capitalism. There will continue to
be symbols around which the climate movement will rally and fight. There's
nothing bad about that either. On the contrary, such fights serve a purpose. A
strong climate movement can actively fight battles of its own, and symbolic sites
are good settings for this. To a certain extent, it can and must develop its own
countervailing power. Yet symbols and the discourses that arise around them

Because the climate crisis is a necessary consequence of capitalist production
relations, our strategy must start with the question of production relations.
However, we must not only ask this question in the abstract, but above all answer
it through practical work where the production conditions are manifested: in the
companies. This is where the climate-damaging production takes place. In
principle, the workforce in the companies also have the power to stop production
and either switch it off forever in the sense of a necessary deindustrialization
or convert it to another type of production.

But just because workers inherently have this power doesn't mean they use it. The
cooperation of the leadership of the big trade unions with capital in the sense
of location logic and social partnership, the reactionary incitement of the right
and the bourgeois press against the climate movement, which bears fruit not least
in the industrial workforce, and also the actual anti-mass attitude of some parts
of the climate movement for alienating workers from their own interest in a
habitable planet.

But workers are not simply being duped by the right, the press, their bosses and
union leaders. The comparatively good collective bargaining position of many
workers in particularly climate-damaging key industries such as the automotive
industry ensures that long-term ecological and direct economic interests of
workers in the industrial centers of the world often do not overlap. Instead, the
immediate interests of a mine worker often align more with those of RWE than
those of climate activists. So we shouldn't have any false illusions about the
current potential for change from within the workforce.

But it would also be wrong to adopt the wrong image that the right-wing press
paints of the supposedly "climate-hating" industrial worker and to completely
reject the potential of the workforce. It is a fallacy to believe that workers
are fundamentally immune to ecological positions and that change can only come
from outside the workforce, for example through blockade actions that are
completely independent of the workforce, like we did last year in the Port of
Hamburghave seen. Instead of such symbolic events, a long-term process is needed
to bring the climate movement closer to the workforce with the aim of uniting
themselves in the fight for a common future. The climate movement must win the
workers for this fight by not ignoring the question of job losses through
ecological conversion of production, for example, but by demanding socially
acceptable solutions on the side of the workers. Solidarity actions by
environmental organizations with strikes in French refineries, the support of
German climate groups for a struggling workforce at Bosch in Bavaria or the
support of bus driver strikes by activistspoint in the right direction. A
rapprochement will not happen overnight, nor will it come by itself; the climate
movement has a lot of ground to gain. But we don't think there is any real
alternative to such an approach.

Because what the climate movement is discussing as alternatives - symbolic mass
actions and collective sabotage - will not be realistically feasible to the
extent that it permanently disables the capitalist machine. The debate about
sabotage as an extension of civil disobedience, as it is currently being
conducted in the climate movement, is therefore more pseudo-radical than it shows
a real way out of the weakness of the movement. Sabotage can be one means among
many, for example to support operational struggles in the workforce. Detached
from real struggles, however, it is a blunt sword that isolates the climate
movement from workers. It is still open for us

The question of the big trade unions is also important. Although these are
formally instruments of the workforce, they have largely had their teeth pulled
due to the legal situation, the logic of the location and decades of social
partnership. They also lack the ecological perspective of an actual conversion
and dismantling of production. We do not believe that the climate movement should
align itself primarily with union leaders, but directly with workers. At the
trade union base, the perspective of the necessary ecological restructuring must
be strengthened. However, we cannot yet say what that will look like in detail.
Working together with the militant opposition in the DGB seems like a good idea
to us.

The struggle for and with the workforce can be waged both in the company and from
outside. The latter, for example, is attempted by the campaign " Gemeinsam
Kampfen" in Cologne, which establishes contact with RWE workers through talks in
the city of Frechen . In principle, however, it seems sensible and important to
us that climate activists also begin to fight as workers in companies. A question
that we are currently unable to answer is what exactly such ecological and
anti-authoritarian company work can look like. Here, too, the question of how to
deal with the trade unions is relevant. It is certainly worth learning from the
experiences of past decades of subversive industrial work here and in other
countries.

When it comes to approaching the workforce, strategic weighting must also be
carried out. Not every company in Germany is equally responsible for the emission
of climate-damaging emissions. Certain sectors are particularly harmful to the
climate, which is why they are of particular importance . Energy production and
the processing industry should be mentioned here in particular. In addition,
strikes in large companies can more easily affect many workers and can actually
have symbolic power for other companies. Another question that we cannot
currently answer is how to focus on certain farms as a movement.

The perspective that we in the workforce must advocate is that of the
socio-ecological transformation of production from below for the general good of
society and the planet. Workers must walk down their jobs as part of a full-scale
general strike, seize their jobs in a break with the ruling system, and take
matters into their own hands. They are the ones who should reorient the work
process to their needs and production to the needs of society. In the course of
this process, not a few of today's production facilities will close forever or be
permanently converted, since the capitalist profit motive is no longer applicable
and they are no longer needed from a social and ecological perspective. It's
clear, that in order to achieve this goal we have to go far beyond the scope of
normal operational work. The workers sometimes have to consciously oppose their
own immediate economic interests. This requires a comprehensive politicization
and activation of the workers and an actual counter-proposal that we can offer.
How exactly the step from anchoring in the company to the complete shutdown of
production can look like also has to be clarified and may only become apparent on
the way. inside and an actual alternative that we can offer. How exactly the step
from anchoring in the company to the complete shutdown of production can look
like also has to be clarified and may only become apparent on the way. inside and
an actual alternative that we can offer. How exactly the step from anchoring in
the company to the complete shutdown of production can look like also has to be
clarified and may only become apparent on the way.

The factories are not the only places for grassroots ecological struggles. It can
also be parts of the city in which we fight against having our neighborhoods cast
in concrete, for ecologically usable areas, against the dominance of car traffic,
for better and free public transport and so on. How exactly such fights can look
like is another open question. We think it is conceivable to discuss them within
the framework of grassroots organization in neighborhoods, which is currently
gaining in profile and relevance, as is happening, for example, in Münster and
Bremen with the district organizations Bergfidel Solidarisch and district union
Solidarisch in Gröpelingen . Marian from the anarchist podcast Übertage outlines
similar considerationsin his last post on anarchismus.de . Climate activists
should bring their experiences with practical self-organization into such projects.

Schools and universities should also be made a battleground for the climate
movement again. End Fossil: Occupy! partially pointed in the right direction. But
lower-threshold forms of action are needed again to take many schoolchildren and
students with them. The means of reviving school strikes should at least be
discussed. To what extent a practical implementation is realistic only four years
after the end of the last wave of school strikes, we cannot say at this point in
time.

No matter in which area of the struggle - the movement itself, the companies, the
neighborhood and education - the perspective of the sustainability of our work
must be taken into account and space for emotional care, e.g. in the form of
awareness structures but also the development of lasting interpersonal trust
relationships, be created. In order to implement this, it is necessary that we no
longer just think and fight from one moment of intensification to the next, but
develop a long-term strategic perspective and continuous organization.

Conclusion

In the context of the protests in Lützerath, the idea of "Diversity of Tactics"
was once again widely heard. We want to expand the field of vision. Because the
climate crisis is being made in so many different places and is having an impact
everywhere, a "diversity of strategies" is needed today. The climate movement as
we know it is one of these strategies, as an independent force in the treetops
and in the fields against capital and the state. But the fight for the climate
needs more than this one strategy. He needs the struggle in the factories as a
central lever directly at the production conditions, in the districts, in the
schools and universities. Each of these fronts requires different approaches. And
only together can they be successful. Not despite, but because we have so little
time to contain the climate crisis, we must choose our steps well and
deliberately. So let's talk to each other and strategically develop the fight for
the climate step by step everywhere.

For the establishment of ecological counter-power from below!

Climate-friendly conversion of production? Only with the social revolution!

https://www.dieplattform.org/2023/02/12/was-kommt-nach-luetzerath-anarchistische-perspektiven-fuer-die-zukunft-der-klimabewegung/
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