Are You Willing to Blow Up the Cause?

11 Nov 2023

I approached Andreas Malm‘s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” with some trepidation, after reading positive coverage, either of the book or of the movie based upon it, from people I respect. Trepidation because I knew the gist of its argument (for attacks on property to fight climate change), yet I am both temperamentally and pragmatically nonviolent. Would the enormity of the climate crisis and the arguments in this pamphlet change my outlook? Turn me into an advocate for, and a perpetrator of, property destruction to help stop the rise in carbon emissions? Would it lead me to sabotage?

That would have been a very tall order, for me. I admire Gene Sharp and his writings. I’ve read and been convinced by Erica Chenoweth‘s and Maria Stephan‘s studies about the statistical analysis on the superiority of nonviolent tactics. I watched with despair first-hand as the peaceful messages from G20 protesters in Toronto were hijacked by black bloc doofuses, burnt in a dynamic of pointless vandalism and indiscriminate repression. I admire the practical emphasis on nonviolent civil disobedience by Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil (setting soup-throwing-into-artworks incidents and their ilk aside, of course—these hurt nothing except our collective intelligence). Still—global warming is an enormous problem, and I have turned my life around on a good argument several times. What if Malm is right?

Well, I shouldn’t have bothered. “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” turned out to be one of the sloppiest and most irresponsible arguments I’ve read in print in a long time. It is sloppy in its analysis of nonviolent protest, and irresponsible in its careless endorsement of sabotage.

On his analysis against nonviolent protest, Malm makes three main points: (1) sometimes violence is necessary, as when faced against a mass shooter, so anyone who thinks they are nonviolent are fooling themselves, (2) pragmatic nonviolent icons are not the doves they’re cracked up to be, and (3) what if nonviolence doesn’t work and our commitment to it is a waste of time? Each of these has glaringly obvious replies — (1) a systemic, slowly unfolding problem is not a mass shooter, (2) so what?, and (3) any approach could indeed fail, but some may go beyond failure and poison the cause; why wouldn’t “try a couple of bombs” fail even worse? But Malm doesn’t see these replies. I have the sense that he’s too drunk with retributive power to see them. Early in his book, he narrates how he and his friends would go out at night and puncture the tires of SUVs, calling themselves, with baffling tone-deafness, the “Indians of the Concrete Jungle” (no, I’m not making it up, I wish). The idea was to instill fear in the hearts of wasteful motorists. He claims, with zero evidence, that drops in SUV sales are a result of his fine slasher work.

Malm thinks that that’s the path to follow, just amped up by a kiloton or two. He disses the climate movement as too doughy, too mild-mannered—he repeats a criticism of Extinction Rebellion kids looking like they just stepped out of a community theatre (rather than the proper anarchist uniform he sports, I guess). Not edgy enough! He feels that someone should, you know, really do something. If someone just had blown up some infrastructure, some light sabotage here and there, a decade or two ago, that would’ve taught them a lesson, and maybe we’d already be on our way out of this crisis. He’s not saying that everyone should be violent, but hey. A bit of diversity of tactics! Normie protesters with their cute signs and community organizers and children over there, bomb throwers over here, all working in harmony for a common but not quite articulated goal.

It really is a good thing for him that the supposedly common goal is left as an exercise for the reader, because I doubt that spelling it out would gain him much traction in the mainstream. Reading between the lines, the ambition goes, predictably, way beyond stopping carbon emissions—indeed it doesn’t even seem to be primarily about that. Because Malm takes as a premise that you simply cannot fix the problem under our economic systems. So it follows that you must overthrow the government, and not just yours, as this is a global problem, but nearly every government in the world, and institute in its place, I suppose, a worldwide Leninist regime? Something that will ban property everywhere, in any case, as he warns us that “property will cost us the earth”. This is how we get to the trope that plagues so much left commentary of late: if you want to avert the collapse of our civilization, you must bring about the collapse of our civilization. Best to leave all of this unsaid in your sales pitch!

Let’s say, instead, that of course, we will take the utmost care in not hurting anybody. Of course, our acts of sabotage won’t ever be thought of as terrorism by the public: we’ll define terrorism in a way that doesn’t cover us and everyone will adopt our definition! Of course, the targets will be selected surgically and with a galaxy-brain analysis of the impact of our actions. And ah of course, of course, uhm someone else should actually do the deed? Maybe some kid somewhere? Malm himself would in principle get his hands dirty, he just uh, hasn’t gotten around to it yet. He’s the brains of this outfit!

Well what does he think would happen if we listened to him? When the opponent has the most sophisticated surveillance technology and the most devastating weapons in existence? A couple of well-placed bombs, the oil companies fold, the system is brought to its knees, the spell is broken, blood is left unspilled, the blinkers come off of everybody’s eyes, then a radical transformation of every aspect of life and a magical eco-utopia? Are we on a matinée action movie? That really is the level of strategic thinking here. Even Jacobin is telling Malm to come off it, and these are the guys who sell DIY guillotine posters!

Reading Malm I was doubting myself: how is this taken seriously by anyone? What am I missing? Which is why it was so refreshing, coming out of “How to Blow Up a Pipeline?” to read Chris Oliveros’ new and excellent “Are You Willing to Die for the Cause?”, a graphic novel about the Québec revolutionaries of the 1960s. Different situation, but so many similarities! It’s all there: pseudo-intellectual windbags egging each other...

...the Che cosplay...

...the lazy "there would be even more damage if we don't do this" rationalizing...

...the "it will be just property damage" good intentions...

...the poor kids not knowing what they're getting into...

...the stupidly unnecessary deaths...

...the predictable reaction of the state...

The same course of action staring back at us, from sixty years ago! The same tragedies to avoid, for those who want to listen—and we’re lucky that most in the climate movement have, so far.

I don’t know what it is about Oliveros' writing, or about his graphic style, that works so well at conveying the deadly, assured cluelessness of these fellows; their futility. I just hope that, sixty years from now, people will have managed to navigate out of this crisis without falling into the same traps, without the same kinds of self-inflicted wounds. And it’s possible. We are seeing progress on multiple fronts (too, too slow, yes), we have the high ground, and public opinion is vastly on our side. Let’s not blow it.