Partial blockage of Orly airport, unhooking of the portrait of Emmanuel Macron in dozens of town halls, fires of telecoms pylons, attacks on butchers, banks tagged or targeted by "cleaning" operations, chain of bodies almost naked and covered with fake blood on the gates of the Ministry of Economy…
The French have discovered in recent months these punching actions, as spectacular as they are political. They are claimed by environmental activists of the Extinction Rebellion movements, the Disobedient, Greenpeace, L214, Deep Green Resistance (DGR). Their objectives and modes of action differ, but their common point is to be all carried by the green wave and to assume a “civil disobedience” in the name of the survival of the Earth and humanity…
VIDEO. Extinction Rebellion continues in Bercy to denounce the recovery plan
"Some of these groups such as antispecies (Editor's note: supporters of animal liberation and hostile to the consumption of meat) can be incredibly violent," says Stéphane Le Foll, the mayor of PS Le Mans. He remembers that, when he was Minister of Agriculture, between 2012 and 2017, his wife “received letters telling him that she was married to an assassin. "
A “red line” that Corinne Morel-Darleux, elected regional of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, refrains from crossing. If this activist and theorist of environmental activism (author of “Rather to flow in beauty than to float without grace: reflections on the collapse” at Libertalia editions) clearly rejects any violence against people, it is not the same for actions against material goods. "Not everything is acceptable," she believes, "but certain circumstances, such as the concretization of agricultural land to build Amazon warehouses, can legitimize occupations." "
"Welcome gift"
"We come from this tradition and we support this type of mobilization which most often comes from the symbolic and which advances awareness, says Julien Bayou. But under certain conditions, adds the national secretary of EELV. These actions must be non-violent, claimed and with an open face. Those who exercise them must be ready to be prosecuted. Otherwise, it is sabotage and, in this case, we would be against it. "
A former Greens candidate for the presidential election, Noël Mamère was himself sentenced in 2004 to a three-month suspended prison sentence and a 100,000 euro fine for having uprooted a foot of transgenic corn in Haute-Garonne. "When the young activists of Extinction Rebellion block the Sully bridge in Paris or those leading to Westminster in London, they are not violent and do not break anything, it is just a way of alerting opinion on the climate emergency . "
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VIDEO. Greenpeace poses a banner for the climate on the Notre-Dame crane
The historic NGO Greenpeace has just reoffended by unrolling a banner on the Notre-Dame site with the slogan "Macron, climate, our drama". From EELV, the new Minister for the Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili, did not take formal notice of it and took the matter with humor: "They are whistleblowers, it is a welcome gift , a little message of encouragement. "
Discomfort in the police ranks
However, while certain activists are classified, in Anglo-Saxon countries, on the list of terrorist groups, their methods and their ideology find a definite echo in France. On its site, the French branch of DGR calls to fight using "all available means." "
The rise in power of these movements, non-violent or more aggressive, in turn provokes an outcry. “Thirty years ago, these activists demonstrated to be recognized. Today, they want to impose their views, "denounces Bruno Millienne, president of the Regional Bio-diversity Agency in Ile-de-France and Modem deputy whose permanence in Maule (Yvelines) was vandalized at the start of the year.
VIDEO. Medef siege sprayed with fake blood by Extinction Rebellion
On the side of the police, we can not hide his discomfort, while the environmental activists who occupied the Sully bridge in June 2019 were violently gassed and dispersed unceremoniously by the police. "It's very complicated," explains a police officer. We receive instructions not to intervene because these people are officially non-violent. But sometimes, it is a sequence that we no longer master. "
"Disobey to get things done"
In the courtrooms, justice does not hesitate to decide ... in the heart. On June 10, during the trial which tried four activists from the Amassada collective who had targeted the transformer in Saint-Victor-et-Melvieu, in Aveyron, the prosecutor denounced the “anarchy” and requested an eight-month suspended prison sentence.
Stephane Le Foll sees in the “collapsionist” ideology and the collapse of the world, widely spread among young people, a “very religious, millenarian and, after all, very individualistic” dimension. Former national secretary of the Greens, now secretary general of the Modem, Yann Wehrling warns: “If nothing happens on the part of public decision-makers, radicalism and exasperation will only increase. "
Convinced that “it will still be necessary to disobey to get things done”, Noël Mamère also warns: “Ecology has always been crossed by movements that were ready to fight it out. There have always been and, given the environmental disturbances, there will be more and more. "
