In a World on Fire, Is Nonviolence Still an Option?

As proponents of nonviolence are increasingly ridiculed as “peace police” and booed out of movement spaces, Kennedy’s warning grows more urgent. It is not in fact a manual, but rather a treatise inviting the climate movement to widespread sabotage and property destruction, and it is surprisingly compelling. As a climate movement insider who protested outside COP1 in 1995, Malm has a balanced critique of the climate movement and sees great hope in groups like Germany’s Ende Gelände. But his primary critique is that the movement’s incredible and historically unprecedented commitment to nonviolence is no longer strategic. Malm’s anti-capitalist lens provides a particularly enlightening contrast of American and French social receptivity to movement violence.