Archived: How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Malm's musings on the definitions of terrorism and some parts about crime show his limited view in these areas, and takes no time to delve into the deeply political roots of these words and definitions he cites. Even in his scant mentions of punishment, he showed little understanding of the function of prisons in a capata

Malm's musings on the definitions of terrorism and some parts about crime show his limited view in these areas, and takes no time to delve into the deeply political roots of these words and definitions he cites. Even in his scant mentions of punishment, he showed little understanding of the function of prisons in a capatalist society. I would expect more such as than a from someone positioning themselves as having answers for the movement. As other's have said his little disscussion of the repression climate activists have faced from police and prisons, and even less so as far as the disproportionate effects these tactics have on marginalized people, is lacking and he doesn't seem to have any answers to it.

Also his downright offensive naming of his SUV sabatoge group and snide remarks about it were unessacary, he could have just apologized and moved on. He really showed a lack of sight in the interconnectedness between colonialism and the climate crisis there.

Despite these critiques, overall I appreciated most of his arguments and think many could benefit from his insights, especially those already in the XR non violent esque camp (at times it did feel like he was writing only to them, and left out large swaths of specifically the climate justice movement). But the lack of intersectional analysis of the impacts of policing and the prison system left me to question much of the analysis.

I wonder if the gap that Malm can't imagine which afflicts both of these recent books is that the state (e.g., the US) is largely a policing apparatus at this historical moment. the idea that one can compel the state to take adequate climate action via mass movement (Corona book) or property destruction (Pipeline book) just seems incongruous to me. which is not a fatalist position at all, except wrt to the potential of the currently-existing state.

i've been toying with writing an article about a 2008 DHS research paper on critical infrastructure security which is largely about the need for security from concerted pipeline destruction conducted by marxists--it's somewhat mythic but the hammer is already poised

Preamble:
--To me, most of this book ended up being a contemplation of the curious balance of principled solidarity (whereas I’m indeed more interested in dissecting the role of “sabotage” in “direct action”):
a) The hope is for moderate mainstream appeals to shift a critical mass and open breathing space for radicals.
b) Of course, it works both ways, where a “radical flank effect” can shift the “Overton window” (range of mainstream legitimacy) for moderate demands.
…T

Preamble:
--To me, most of this book ended up being a contemplation of the curious balance of principled solidarity (whereas I’m indeed more interested in dissecting the role of “sabotage” in “direct action”):
a) The hope is for moderate mainstream appeals to shift a critical mass and open breathing space for radicals.
b) Of course, it works both ways, where a “radical flank effect” can shift the “Overton window” (range of mainstream legitimacy) for moderate demands.
…Thus, we see periods of a parallel process where moderates and radicals build off each other. In analyzing moderate appeals (from a radical lens), my focus is both on (1) its surface goal of winning over a critical mass, as well as (2) how open it is acknowledging a parallel process and (even better) offering a bridge to more radical demands (revolutionary reforms, rather than reformist reforms).
--Looking back, the results have been mixed:
-ex. on the economics of imperialism: Ha-Joon Chang’s “kicking away the ladder” clarity but still clouded by US “Enlightenment” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) compared to radical presentations (The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry and The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions)
-ex. on Green New Deal: despite being well-versed in Global South demands (see A People’s Green New Deal), Pollin/Chomsky (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and Klein (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) lack synthesis in their GND presentations, with Pollin especially also trivializing degrowth (Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World).
--This book primarily evaluates the tactics of Extinction Rebellion (“XR”; see handbook: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).

Highlights:

1) XR’s moderate nonviolence and radicals:
--XR’s value #9 “We are a nonviolent network” reads:

At the same time we also recognise that many people and movements in the world face death, displacement and abuse in defending what is theirs. We will not condemn those who justly defend their families and communities through the use of force, especially as we must also recognise that it is often our privilege which keeps us safe. We stand in solidarity with those whom have no such privilege to protect them and therefore must protect themselves through violent means; this does not mean we condone all violence, just that we understand in some cases it may be justified. Also we do not condemn other social and environmental movements that choose to damage property in order to protect themselves and nature, for example disabling a fracking rig or putting a detention centre out of action. Our network, however, will not undertake significant property damage because of risks to other participants by association. [Emphases added]

2) Direct Action and Sabotage?:
--This book is indeed focused on XR’s gap of “significant property damage” (while having more praise for Ende Gelände tactics), which does become a low hanging fruit once we acknowledge XR’s goal of moderate mass appeal.
--The catchy book title is a conversation starter. Next is actually detailing the role of “sabotage” in ecological “direct action” (i.e. “we are the investment risk” transforming fixed fossil capital investments with 40 year lifespans into stranded assets to scare further investments and accelerate State commitment to immediate infrastructural transition) beyond the case study of vandalizing luxury SUVs and mention of the asymmetrical guerilla warfare of Yemeni Houthi drone strikes targeting Saudi Arabian oil refineries.
--This discussion is nothing new; what is a strike after all? It is a recognition that capital is a process (a flow) that can be damaged by disruption. Strikes (esp. historically) are not parades; there are widespread social consequences, not just “economic” loses. So, how are we defining “sabotage”? Is there something unique with direct property damage? There are many social/political contexts to consider:
-ex. tactical (public opinion/punishment): it's worth anticipating the acceleration of ecological crises rather than assuming perpetual status quo (thus my interest in the conditions of wartime economies).
-ex. different goals: workers seizing the means of production vs. Fossil Capital devices/infrastructure needing to be decommissioned regardless.
...If we stick with the Global North, this topic has been a constant debate within European anarchists, syndicalist, US’s Industrial Workers of the World (IWW): https://archive.iww.org/history/icons...
--The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity highlights how unique Roman law property rights is with its third principle: the right to damage one’s own property; perhaps it should be no surprise that damaging someone else’s “property” is doubly offensive. I wonder if there is more in Graeber’s Direct Action: An Ethnography.
--Varoufakis’ Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present considers how to sabotage financial instruments and scale this up/make this participatory, to adapt to the evolution of Finance Capitalism which as made traditional physical strikes more difficult.
--Malm considers how “Deep ecology” sabotage tactics in prior decades may have stigmatized sabotage for today’s Global North environmental movements, and contrasts their anti-civilizational despair. “Fighting despair” is the final section, which I’ll bypass as I’ll start bashing “Capitalist Realism” again (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).
--Finally, if I can continue giving XR (and the reformist GND presentations) 4-stars, I can give this brief polemic 5-stars!

The thrust of Malm’s argument is that the climate movement's commitment to pacifism with regards to property destruction is misguided, and the book is a spirited provocation to try out this type of action and see where it leads. It takes stock of so

The thrust of Malm’s argument is that the climate movement's commitment to pacifism with regards to property destruction is misguided, and the book is a spirited provocation to try out this type of action and see where it leads. It takes stock of some of the recent history of the climate movement, mainly since the 1990s, it finds that despite the rapid growth of the movement, and the rapidly worsening objective situation of global heating, the movement remains steadfastly pacifist, its leaders staunchly eschewing violence directed at individuals as well as property destruction and vandalism.

The commitment to pacifism has a few sources, first the mainly middle class basis of the movement in the global north. Middle class young people tend to have a cultural distaste for property destruction and believe that maintaining a program of civil disobedience generally within the rule of law should result in desired political change without resorting to tactical violence. But Malm points out that movement leaders have drawn on a selective reading of social movement history in order to reach these conclusions, and shows how some of the broadly analogous cases of wide-scale social change more often than not have a radical flank which does engage in property destruction (US civil rights, indian independence, anti-apartheid etc).
He doesn’t fetishize property destruction but suggests that as part of a larger movement, it might help to galvanize activists and prompt real state action. Proposed targets for property destruction include sabotage of all new and expanding fossil fuel infrastructure (pipelines, mines etc), as well as the most extreme sources of fossil fuel consumption by private individuals (luxury vehicles like yachts and SUVs). Luxury vehicles because they are the least connected to anyones subsistence fossil fuel consumption and because they are demoralizing to took at (if we can’t get society to at least give up these obscenely wasteful luxuries, how can we expect people to take on the more taxing climate conscious changes like restricting meat consumption and flights?). Proposed sabotage of new infrastructure is in less-so to discourage private owners from stopping production altogether of their own volition, since destruction at the scale necessary for this is basically impossible, but instead to cleate investment risk and chaos which may help push states towards more radical action. While Malm is clear that property destruction is no silver-bullet — since in his own words: “at the end of the day, it will be states that ram through the transition or no one will” — but the book makes a compelling case for giving it a shot.

Malm has appeared on many podcast interviews promoting the book, and while I was glad to read it as part of a book club, and to learn some of the more detailed histories and new sets of statistics to draw on, a podcast tldr is basically sufficient to understand the thrust of the books actual arguments.

i have a lot of thoughts, most of which make me want to hurl, so i will try to be concise (edit to say the gag is i was not concise):
-i think the question of "why isn't the climate movement more militant 🤔" has many obvious answers; perhaps most saliently that if what we are really talking about is, say, disrupting and upending a world order (colonization holding hands w capitalism) hundreds of years old, the ruling class who

i have a lot of thoughts, most of which make me want to hurl, so i will try to be concise (edit to say the gag is i was not concise):
-i think the question of "why isn't the climate movement more militant 🤔" has many obvious answers; perhaps most saliently that if what we are really talking about is, say, disrupting and upending a world order (colonization holding hands w capitalism) hundreds of years old, the ruling class who does have an iron fist on this world would be pretty invested in killing any militant environmentalist dead and you and me wouldn't know anything about it. a really easy way to wind up dead is to be an environmental activist especially in the global south and the fact that he doesn't talk about how many environmentalists (militant or not) get killed each year is a glaring blindspot
-it's lip service when he does interact with the sacrifice it takes to be a militant activist and he basically asks why hasn't anyone martyred themselves for the movement??? i wonder if he has ever considered taking that on because he has all these ideas and is annoying...
-effective in that it made me climb the fucking walls with anger about how the world is quite literally ending right this second and we are so invested in this fantasy that the world goes on forever that we're like what career will i end up in and when can me and Bradley have a baby to also experience global catastrophe with us in 5 years probably
-if his thesis is we must physically attack capital to stop climate change then fine i agree
-all of his philosophizing about violence and terrorism and the meanings & values of these tactics got really hairy really fast
-essentially i don't know what verso is up to with these books that are like how could these things like police brutality & global warming get and continue to be so bad without us doing anything ????? without giving the context of colonialism/white supremacy/capitalism/whatever we are calling that rat king at this point lmk. he also can't be bothered to spell out his acronyms on first mention which is, for me, tacky
-so actually i hate this book and i think it was bad

i hope the one person who finished reading this (my designated NSA agent) has a lovely evening and a tender kiss planted on their forehead 💋

I'm really glad that he tore into the Chenoweth study - that crap is the bane of my existence. A+ for that.

His criticisms of XR are also on point. However, it really bothered me when he sugge

I'm really glad that he tore into the Chenoweth study - that crap is the bane of my existence. A+ for that.

His criticisms of XR are also on point. However, it really bothered me when he suggested that a radical flank could allow XR a seat at the table to negotiate climate policy, as if white liberals who don't care about social justice or racism are who we want at the table. I get that he's trying to illustrate a point about how radical flanks work and trying to keep things short, but it still bugs me. There's a bit too much centering of XR as "the movement."

Even though I don't think it's totally necessary to delve into the subject of climate justice in order for him to make his main points, its absence bothers me and I think he could have included some of those dynamics in the discussion. Like, who is more likely to want to shut down a refinery than the people who live around it and are poisoned by it every day? That seems like even further justification for the righteousness of such action.

It seems like his target audience is the mostly white, liberal mainstream climate movement in the global north and that he intended to specifically convince them to be supportive of sabotage as a tactic. Those people do need convincing, although I tend to think most of them are incapable of changing their minds. Regardless, the case needs to be made. Despite my criticisms, I believe that escalated tactics are absolutely necessary for all the reasons he discusses and I hope a lot of people read this. 

Firstly, the point both Malm and I seem to recognise, that non-

Firstly, the point both Malm and I seem to recognise, that non-violence is useful in it’s relationship with violence (largely against property) is poorly addressed throughout. This is not for want of trying, but Malm generally focuses on the contradictions or failures of the non-violent movement rather than the role played by their more violent sister movements. For example, he focuses on Gandhi and Martin Luther King while not mentioning Subhas Chandra Bose (a violent Indian Nationalist) or Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. This is not to say there isn’t some engagement with these groups, but I don’t think one would be amiss expecting some engagement with the success and failures of these movements. Equally, in an interrogation of the tactics of the suffragettes, a more violent social movement, he totally forgets to mention the suffragists, their pacifist sister group.

Where Malm looks at movements who have uses violence against property he largely draws from examples in the Global South, from Hamas to the Arab Spring. There are many examples, but he seems to not mention the ultimate failure of these movements and the brutal repression they unleash. For example, he criticises the civil disobedience of Martin Luther King for it’s slow pace but continues to use the Palestinian struggle as an example of political violence towards a cause. The Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, as one can gather from Malm’s writing, pre-dates Israel’s advent and existed during the time of the British protectorate. This is not something that Malm stops to recognise and one wonders if he has even noticed this bloody struggle has continued for almost a century. This plays into a wider simplistic approach to facts and context which run through the book, he uses Gandhi’s early experiences in South Africa as a tool to smear his later non-violence. Falling foul of the facts but also the common fallacy that sees historical figures as fixed icons devoid of the change and development across their life which gives dynamism to more contemporary historical figures.

He reserves special criticism for Extinction Rebellion (XR), using many of worn out and cliched criticism the group receives from sections of both the right and the left. At this point I must admit I am a card-carrying member of extinction rebellion as much as a criminal record can be considered a card. However, I am not opposed to criticism of the movement and have often been critical myself. He criticises the groups whiteness, which is legitimate to an extent however his criticism for the group not representing the diversity of the cities they often protest in holds little weight as cities are not representative, necessarily, of a country or the world. He is also very critical of the action at Canning Town, as am I for many of the same reasons, however his criticism of the kicking out of one of the participants and smearing the movement for the action, which was largely condemned by XR members, is more indicative of criticisms that should and could be levelled at his idea of a good, more confrontationally violent climate movement. He equally fails to engage with much of the work done by XR to address criticisms for their relationship to police. His generalisations about XR rarely hold up to scrutiny for example that it is a movement that doesn’t have an anti-capitalist element.

He levels particularly pointed criticism at individuals such as Roger Hallam and Bill McKibben. I am not necessarily a defender of Roger Hallam and have at times felt he deserved some criticism. But I am surprised at Malm’s criticism of Hallam’s attempt to shut down Heathrow for saying what they were going to do before. Maybe this was a bad strategic move on the part of Hallam but seems to be more in fitting with Malm’s desire for targeted aggressive action against some of the largest polluters that hits them in their wallets.

The finger pointing and criticism Malm reserves for others within the environmental movement is indicative of the failures of the left to create a polite unity among groups whose objectives are different. This is also, I wager, due to the lack of movements working to the aims endorsed by Malm. This view that there is limited space on the left for movements rather than that movement create an ecosystem that feeds off each other. While not unique to the Marxist/Socialist block of the left it is an area I have found they specialise in, anyone who has engaged with the Socialist Workers Party knows it is difficult to get them to leave their SWP banners at the door.

Finally, on the point of inclusivity. Malm criticizes groups like XR for their whiteness and the lack of inclusivity of their actions. Arrest is not the only strategies these groups use but this is often forgotten. However, what Malm suggests would increase the risk dramatically to BIPOC communities that are seen by state power to be connected to violent political movements. One only needs to look at BLM to see how violence is met with violence by the state and this violence is often likely to be targeted at those who are already at threat of state violence. His criticism of the one kick levelled, arguably in self-defence, by a XR protester pails in comparison to the risks posed of violent encounters with the government and establishment and the way they will spin them to their advantage. Protesters at the recent #killthebill protests were cajoled by the police into rioting and the riot led to police claiming, falsely, various serious injuries to their number. The risks of violent action are high and Malm is right, although me mentions it as a counter-point, that violence is often exactly what the violent capitalist system wants from dissent.

Malm’s book is replete with factual errors, it’s argument is often unbalanced and this book is unfortunately yet another book by an embittered misanthrope of the left. I remain open to the idea of a more confrontational environment movement and would be interested to see what Malm’s group would look like, but if he was involved I would steer well clear. A disappointing book!

Malm makes a series of points to support this. If climate change is a dire threat to humanity, including mass deaths and suffering, surely meeting it justifies a form of violence when peaceful means fail to change the status quo? Violence can certainly grab people's attention very well, which can be useful in changing hearts and minds. If one considers climate devastation to be a form of vi

Malm makes a series of points to support this. If climate change is a dire threat to humanity, including mass deaths and suffering, surely meeting it justifies a form of violence when peaceful means fail to change the status quo? Violence can certainly grab people's attention very well, which can be useful in changing hearts and minds. If one considers climate devastation to be a form of violence against humanity and the natural world, then violence in response suits many people who aren't committed pacifists. And if climate change is already in motion, already starting to bring about terrible effects, then we might not have time to spend in patiently building and rebuilding nonviolent coalitions.

On a different level, Malm makes an old fashioned left wing argument. He sees neoliberalism at the heart of the climate crisis, and wants us to defeat it with organization including militancy. He wants a return to revolutionary politics. It begins with shame and mobilization and includes a vanguard. "[R]ich people cannot have the right to combust others to death."(Kindle location 1954) "[A] climate movement that does not want to eat the rich, with all the hunger of those who struggle to put food on the table, will never hit home." (1438) He concludes by musing that we need to move beyond Ghandi to Fanon. (1835)

How to Blow Up a Pipeline consistently responds to objections. What about the power of nonviolence to get things done, from Indian independence to Britain's suffragettes winning women's voting to American black people winning their civil rights? Malm replies that many such nonviolent movements were actually accompanied by violent wings in many ways and the two played off of each other. Wouldn't violence let the state respond with overpowering force? Yes, but Goliaths do lose to Davids, and violence might electrify people into a force more powerful still. Is violence against people merited? No, that is a sign of despair.

Malm is very careful in his recommendations, urging the reader to destroy property in certain ways, as "controlled political violence." (1242) It should not injure people. It should focus on the materials of the very rich, and avoid injuring the lives of everyone else. He bases these recommendations on his own experience with European direct action as well as on an analysis of recent climate change activism history.

Malm's argument may remind some of you of previous pro-violence arguments within the green world, like those powering Earth First! He touches on those as formal successes (overwhelmingly focused on property, rather than human bodies) and sees their real failure as not connecting with a bigger movement. Now is different, given mass dismay at climate change.

Overall this is a striking book, at least in part for its clarity, signaled from the title. It's a straightforward call to action. It reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future, wherein a "black wing" conducts sabotage and terror in support of a nonviolent political campaign for climate mitigation and transformation.

As a futurist, I think some will heed it.

he's a european dude, and he typi

he's a european dude, and he typically sounds like he's addressing to the largely white and middle class climate movements of the global north (which he himself has spent most of his life a part of), but sometimes he'll speak on movements in the global south which he has nooo expertise on. the arguments he uses are so abstracted, focusing on philosophy and things like "justice theory" or even "just war theory." this means he spends a ton of time talking about these logical extremes or niche possibilities that aren't that enlightening. he has no analysis of settler colonialism, or really much analysis of any colonialism. he obviously acknowledges the huge inequities in who is going to feel the brunt of climate collapse (the global south / colonized ppls), and who's doing the consuming, but that doesn't fundamentally inform his writing. and that analysis could help explain the huge question one is left with at the end of the book — why DO those climate movements in the 'west' cling so tightly to total pacifism despite the historical record and the material analysis?

well, one reason is bc the white middle class ppl in europe and amerika who lead those movements aren't fighting against such immediate devastation and harm like people in the global south are. so when it comes to either building an effective, radical movement or taking less personal risk & getting that arrogant purer-and-holier-than-thou mindset that pacifism gives .... well the latter feels much nicer to the big climate movements in the global north.

im definitely over simplifying some things but you get the point. and if andreas malm would think in more material, emotional, and anti-colonial terms like this instead of abstract & (falsely) universalist ones, he could get to the more needed conversations of how to practically build militant movements for climate justice & reparations in the global north! instead of just writing this book trying to Logically and Rationally explain why people need to bomb some stuff — a book which, given its intended audience and its rhetorical / argumentative style, will probably fall on unwelcoming ears.

maybe 2 stars is harsh given that the main thesis is right buuut, i just see no point in reading it. other ppl make better cases for violence, and indigenous analyses gives better understandings of the climate crisis.

Within this critique of "non-violence" (at least in the understanding which sees the sabotage of inanimate property as unacceptable), Malm is careful to also criticize and caution against more extremely violent movements, those who swing the other direction in their orthodoxy - refusing to consider non-violent actions even where such

Within this critique of "non-violence" (at least in the understanding which sees the sabotage of inanimate property as unacceptable), Malm is careful to also criticize and caution against more extremely violent movements, those who swing the other direction in their orthodoxy - refusing to consider non-violent actions even where such tactics are useful.

Also, nowhere in this book does it say how to blow up a pipeline.

Even for a short book Malm spends less time than many climate writers pointing to the scoreboard and maintains an urgent tone and anti-defeatist stance. Effective use of historical example to expose some of the confusion of contemporary "non-violent" movements, though shorter on the economic perspective than I'd hoped given his other writings. The tactical and philosophical discussions are not always the most sophisticated, but I sincerely hope to see more writers take up these themes and certainly hope I can convince some of my friends to join me in taking up this call to action, deflate some SUV tires / sink some superyachts, etc.

Malm begins by acknowledging that, with respect to climate action, the conditions of business-as-usual are not threatened by good arguments, science, and pacifist finger waving. There are too many opportunities for profit. Capital has been reassured by governments that their investments and capital sunk into the fossil fuel infrastructure are secure.

The author also correctly recognizes that the carbon footp

Malm begins by acknowledging that, with respect to climate action, the conditions of business-as-usual are not threatened by good arguments, science, and pacifist finger waving. There are too many opportunities for profit. Capital has been reassured by governments that their investments and capital sunk into the fossil fuel infrastructure are secure.

The author also correctly recognizes that the carbon footprint is not distributed evenly amongst 'mankind', but is highly skewed to the very rich. That luxury emissions can more easily be reduced than subsistence emissions. Luxury emissions happen because 'rich people like to wallow in the pleasure of their rank', while subsistence emissions are poor people trying to survive. In other words, there are identifiable people who are mainly responsible.

Given this, "there must be someone who breaks the spell: ‘Sabotage’, writes R. H. Lossin, one of the finest contemporary scholars in the field, ‘is a sort of prefigurative, if temporary, seizure of property. It is’ – in reference to the climate emergency – ‘both a logical, justifiable and effective form of resistance and a direct affront to the sanctity of capitalist ownership.’ A refinery deprived of electricity, a digger in pieces: the stranding of assets is possible, after all. Property does not stand above the earth; there is no technical or natural or divine law that makes it inviolable in this emergency. If states cannot on their own initiative open up the fences, others will have to do it for them. Or property will cost us the earth" (p.48).

Malm continues: "the states have fully proven that they will not be the prime movers. The question is not if sabotage from a militant wing of the climate movement will solve the crisis on its own – clearly a pipe dream – but if the disruptive commotion necessary for shaking business-as-usual out of the ruts can come about without it. It would seem foolhardy to trust in its absence and stick to tactics for normal times. Recognising the direness of the situation, it is high time for the movement to more decisively shift from protest to resistance: ‘Protest is when I say I don’t like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don’t like. Protest is when I say I refuse to go along with this anymore. Resistance is when I make sure everybody else stops going along too’" (p.50).

But then he seems to waffle. But there is the asymmetry of power; violent acts move onto the advantaged terrain of the state ... "The enemy has overwhelmingly superior capabilities in virtually all fields, including media propaganda, institutional coordination, logistical resources, political legitimacy and, above all, money" (p.87). Without a mass movement behind acts of sabotage, nothing will be achieved. "All those thousands of monkeywrenching actions achieved little if anything and had no lasting gains to show for them. They were not performed in a dynamic relation to a mass movement, but largely in a void."

So, sabotage is okay (maybe), but only if there is a mass movement ready to act. But a mass movement will not emerge from its passive condition on its own, particularly in the face of State intimidation. I was buoyed by the strength of the arguments at the beginning of the book, but felt a bit betrayed by Malm's criticism of radical groups and the arguments presented in the Deep Green Resistance books - that they haven't done enough to bring the masses along with them. In the end, I don't know what Malm was really saying. Catchy title, though.

This book particularly soars in the first chapter, “Learning from Past Struggles,” where Malm refutes the rosy, peacewashed narratives of social movements past. While acknowledging that “a comprehensive appraisal [of the use of property destruction as a tactic in past social movements] is beyond the scope of this text,” he still offers us a brisk and persuasive rundown demonstrating that property destruction has almost always accompanied the successful social movements that are cited by climate activists as sources of inspiration. The abolition of slavery, the suffragette movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the fight to end apartheid, all of them had flanks engaged in property destruction (and beyond into armed resistance, in some cases). Some of the content was familiar to me, but some of it was really surprising! For example, I had no idea that factions of the British suffragette movement engaged in widespread window smashing, arson, bombings, destruction of statues, once ambushed the prime minister before “dousing him with pepper,” and even engaged in hand to hand combat with cops! There are (as I learned) hundreds of documented examples. “To be militant in some form, or other, is a moral obligation,” said British suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, who organized such direct actions. She and her collaborators deemed the situation “urgent enough to justify incendiarism,” adding that in order to achieve change and upend the status quo, women needed to disrupt and “upset the whole orderly conduct of life.” Basically, Malm shows that the climate movement’s disciplined aversion to property destruction is in fact a historical anomaly. Which of course begs the question… why haven’t climate activists taken more direct action to destroy the literal machinery that imminently, directly threatens to harm and kill billions of people? Pipelines, fossil fuel power plants, yachts, private jets are all just sitting there — do these inanimate objects have a right to be undisturbed, at the expense of everybody else’s right to live?

While the widespread destruction of fossil fuel infrastructure has not taken place *as a tactic to fight climate change*, Malm highlights that many struggles in the global South have employed the tactic in anti-colonial, anti-authoritarian, and anti-corporate struggles. In the early 2000’s, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta [from polluting and extractive oil companies] shut down a massive amount of oil production through pipeline and platform bombings. In India, Naxalites have sabotaged coal mines and transports as part of a broader class and anti-corporate struggle. During the war in Yemen, Houthi rebels crashed unmanned, remote controlled drones into Saudi oil refineries and ended up shutting down HALF of that country’s oil production. “Commodities that combust fossil fuels may be comparatively thinly spread in the South,” writes Malm, “but it is sufficiently crisscrossed by infrastructure for their production to be home to the richest tradition of sabotage… Given this record from the past and present, the question is not whether it’s technically possible for people organized outside of the state to destroy the kind of property that destroys the planet; it evidently is… The question is why these things don’t happen — or rather, while they happen for all sorts of reasons good and bad, but not for the climate.”

Another area where Malm really shined was where he interrogated the seemingly sacrosanct findings of Dr. Erica Chenoweth and Dr. Maria Stephan, co-authors of the 2010 watershed book “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.” Carefully examining their methodology (which labels property destruction as violent), he highlights examples from their dataset that paper over violent factions that were concurrently active with nonviolent, mass civil resistance movements. For example, the Egyptian Revolution, which is heralded by civil resistance proponents as a model of nonviolent success without reckoning with the fact that protestors destroyed more than half of Cairo and Alexandria’s police stations in two weeks, thus significantly “degrading the repressive capacity of the State” through property destruction. Dr. Chenoweth and Dr. Stephan have made major contributions to public thinking on civil resistance — some very helpful. But this is the first formal pushback and methodological challenge to their work that I have yet encountered, which I appreciated for expanding my perspective on that influential scholarship.

The biggest concern I have with Malm here (which, based upon a skim of other reviews, seems to be shared by many others) is his lack of rigorous engagement with how police, prisons, and other modes of state repression would move to counter and deter acts of property destruction. As an American reader in Alabama (home of some of the worst, most lethal, most punishing prisons in the world), I particularly worry about this. Malm cites the example of Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya as a positive model: the two American women, both activists with the Catholic Worker movement, were indicted in 2019 for sabotaging the Dakota Access Pipeline. The charges carried a sentence of 110 years in prison. Malm reveres and lionizes their sacrifice, but… are we meant to simply resign to mass incarceration as a necessary price to pay for effective climate activism? Even a cursory Google search shows that in the year since publication, state pressure on Montoya — as well as, presumably, the suffering experience of prison — has led to Montoya cooperating with law enforcement to map information about climate activists in her network. The potential for surveillance, infiltration, state violence, and more feels immense. It’s one thing if Malm wants people to let the air out of SUV tires. But the potential for devastating state response for things like blowing up pipelines seems as though it hasn’t been reckoned with enough here.

It is worth noting: Malm puts his money where his mouth is! He describes multiple examples of personally engaging in the risks associated with destroying property as climate action, including his participation in a 2007 campaign to deflate SUV tires in Stockholm and in the 2016 Ende Gelände activist incursion, occupation, & shutdown of the coal-fired Schwarze Pumpe power station in Brandenburg. This felt important to me: Malm is not just an armchair theoretician urging his readers to throw themselves into the maw of the carceral state from the comfort of the Ivory Tower. He is a field practitioner who walks the walk. But I still don’t think he has reckoned with the carceral state or with state repression enough! Perhaps this is because he writes from a country (Sweden) that does not have a comparable history or infrastructure of mass incarceration? I’m not sure. As persuasive as his case is, I just really wish there was more strategic engagement or risk assessment with prisons and police.

Overall, I think this book offers a concise, sober, persuasive argument for the climate movement to adopt sabotage and property destruction as available tactics in the fight to preserve a habitable world. Malm has some blind spots where the case is underdeveloped, but it is still an extremely worthwhile read on a subject that can no longer afford to remain taboo.

I don't know if it was my ADHD or what. It's difficult to say because I read several fictio

I don't know if it was my ADHD or what. It's difficult to say because I read several fiction novels in between from when I started this book to when I finished. I thought maybe it's because it's nonfiction - I read these a lot slower than fiction stories and I already read at average speed as it is. But I think the reduced amount of chapters didn't help me get through the book when I would have to inevitably interrupted to do something else.

Had I slowed down to read every word normally I wouldn't have finished this book this month probably. But it's still informative and still an important read. There's a few things I didn't care for that Malm touched on - not necessarily his fault per say, can't remember if he was responsible for the naming of the group but there was an activist group in Sweden that had the audacity to name themselves "Indians", which invited their racist counterparts to take on the name of "Cowboy" and invoke very anti-indigenous, aggressive comments and threats. All in the name of fighting for environmentalism, all the while throwing indigenous communities to the wolves. Their actions should be celebrated for they were successful in what they did but the naming, what a fuck up. A result of a group consisting of primarily white folk.

Malm does a good job in addressing the issue of race and class in the environmental advocacy which I appreciate. He spends the majority of the book dismantling the arguments of pacifists and Gandhi too; pacifism has a chokehold on the fight against climate change, Malm argues it's what is holding the movement back and I wholeheartedly agree. Overall I think it's worth a read, even if you can only finish it by skimming it like me.

I will give that he had some potentially decent points about the suffragettes and the civil rights movements - and that the climate facts littered throughout this book were poignant and appreciated.
Essentially I think where this book was strongest was in the idea that we should not look at things in a vacuum and should be aware of all sides of the story to make as informed a decision as possible on how to move forward with climate activism.
Advice he consistently and constantly ignores.

Firstly, the title is misleading. It’s less a how-to manual, and more a justification for small scale vandalism. The nods to those pipeline saboteurs were intriguing and extensive. The narrative shifting from Palestine to Yemen, and Nigeria to Chechnya in search of oil-hating comrades and their dastardly exploits.

The section on the Su

Firstly, the title is misleading. It’s less a how-to manual, and more a justification for small scale vandalism. The nods to those pipeline saboteurs were intriguing and extensive. The narrative shifting from Palestine to Yemen, and Nigeria to Chechnya in search of oil-hating comrades and their dastardly exploits.

The section on the Suffragettes, championing guerrilla destruction as justifiable resistance, really got me proud of my country (a sadly infrequent occurrence):

...will those in school today or born next year grow up to think that the machines of the fossil economy were accorded insufficient respect? Or will they look back on this moment in time rather like we, or at least those of us with a modicum of feminist leanings, look back on the suffragettes and see smashed windows as a price worth paying?

Malm’s writing style is disjointed. He’s clearly an avid historian, but the way in which he disseminates information is haphazard. Sentences are stuffed with ripe knowledge but often suffer from a hazy focus, leading to a lack of clarity. In one sentence I noted the words Mubarak, non-violence, bequeathing, hegemonic, Tahrir Square, poll tax, XR, Mandela, strategic pacificism, volunteering, Thatcher etc. That said, he had my undivided attention because I had to work so hard to follow the line of argument.

I loved the literature review; the author was wholly dismissive of the climate fatalism purported by Franzen and Scranton (white men of the North). He’s equally irritated by the ‘noble’ tone taken by the authors of the radical text Deep Green Resistance, who’s views he finds incompatible with an empathetic approach to climate resistance. Nothing if not a cynic.

Whether I like it or not, his won’t be the voice of a generation, but I for one think we could do with more Malms in the public eye. These Malms would at least shift the Overton window to a position that retains a majestic view of our perfect planet.

There’s simply no other option.

Chapter 3 is much shorter than chapters 1 and 2 and mostly tries to hoo-rah the readers into not giving up and being gross accelerationists in response to the ongoing & worsening climate disaster. I appreciate his perspective, but skimmed it pretty hard, as I don't really need to be convinced that "despair is a sin" wrt. climate. Given that the book feels pretty aimed at people who are already activists (ie., who are already not inclined to give up on the struggle to eliminate emissions promptly), I'm not quite sure why he decided to dedicate space in the book to this rather than eg. taking a closer look at radical climate camps for instance (one of the things I was most newly curious about after reading this book).

this book is

this book is basically the missing link between academic discourse and blogfighting (spoiler they were always the same thing). he's 100% right about the big picture: it's been time to blow up pipelines/SUVs for years - it's just that we made all these laws to discourage doing stuff like that. but this is like 10 pages of big picture and 140 pages of internecine snorting. i hope the planet isnt so fried that we all go extinct but that part is above my pay grade. meanwhile i swear my next car will be electric

I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, but was intrigued by this take on climate activism. I do commend the author for the work they’ve done on this, but also felt that their limited worldview was showing. I don’t doubt that the protests he describes worked or created progress, but that doesn’t mean that will translate into different parts of the world. I found myself thinking a lot about the Standing Rock protests and the violence Indigenous peoples experiences just for trying

I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, but was intrigued by this take on climate activism. I do commend the author for the work they’ve done on this, but also felt that their limited worldview was showing. I don’t doubt that the protests he describes worked or created progress, but that doesn’t mean that will translate into different parts of the world. I found myself thinking a lot about the Standing Rock protests and the violence Indigenous peoples experiences just for trying to protect our lands. I think this could still be a potentially valuable resource for people, but it shouldn’t be your only resource.

However, the book was very much ~white man vibes~ and it lacked so much nuance that I found it to be annoying and pretentious at t

However, the book was very much ~white man vibes~ and it lacked so much nuance that I found it to be annoying and pretentious at times. Overall though, a good book that expanded my thinking on the climate movement.

Would recommend, just read with a critical lens!

So as a quick summery what do we talk about here? We cover a bit of the Climate Change's movements and XR protests and notably their limiations and lack of change that they have caused. We then analyze past movements that have been successful such as the civil rights movement and the suffragettes and look at how violence or a "radical flank" was a key factor in creating real change.

The m

So as a quick summery what do we talk about here? We cover a bit of the Climate Change's movements and XR protests and notably their limiations and lack of change that they have caused. We then analyze past movements that have been successful such as the civil rights movement and the suffragettes and look at how violence or a "radical flank" was a key factor in creating real change.

The majority of the book muses around a key question along the lines of, When Should We Blow Up a Pipeline? When is it "too late" to be waiting on the goverment and when do we need to take things into our own hands, and along the way what steps can we take before violence is used as the last resort.

His argument

His argument is two-fold. First, and fundamentally, it is case for the development of a more diverse set of tactics allowing in particular for the building of a ‘radical flank’ to more mainstream forms of action. Second, and more tactically, it is a critique of the partial reading of past social movements that results in the particular activist formation and styles we see in XR. The effect is not so much a direct action activists’ handbook as suggested by the title as a more polemical case for why blow up a pipeline.

This then is an essay, not a sustained conjunctural analysis of the climate crisis. Furthermore, it is an insider’s essay and could have done with a little more reflexive critique. As a result, for instance while Malm is aware of factors linked to racial capitalism and coloniality the discussion of them is limited and requires more nuance.

It is hard to be sure why the mainstream movement is so cautious in its rhetoric and its tactics, although it seems almost certain to include factors such as the class position of its major thinkers and leaders as well as the tension demanding radical (as in root and branch) change but not wanting to appear too disruptive. Malm’s critique is well informed, historically grounded and pointed, while also drawing on other stands of environmental activism that indicate the potential for other approaches. This makes it a sharp, engaging intervention in the climate movement’s forms and activist approaches. We need more of this kind of debate in contemporary social movements.