Climate Protest Crackdown

People & Power meets climate activists who’ve been labeled as ‘terrorists’ by their critics.

A police crackdown against a band of climate activists in Germany is gathering pace. Last Generation, which describes itself as a climate activist group, is now at the centre of a political and legal storm. Having emerged relatively recently, in 2021, Last Generation employs a protest method known as “direct action”. Those actions include non-violent disruptive acts aimed at drawing attention to the climate crisis. Members’ actions range from blocking streets and disrupting traffic to defacing works of art and even breaking into oil pipelines. A number of conservative and far-right politicians started using words like “criminal”, “terrorist”, and “extremist” to describe Last Generation’s members, seeking to spark a debate about the line between activism and “extremism”.