Environmental activist and professor Andreas Malm during an appearance on The New Yorker's podcast called for "intelligent sabotage" of things contributing to climate change.
In the episode titled "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" published Friday, Malm says, "if people in that region were to attack the construction equipment or blow up the pipeline before it's completed, I would be all in favor of that. I don't see how that property damage could be considered morally illegitimate given what we know of the consequence of such projects."
Malm, a professor from Lund University in Sweden, at one point mentioned that "a call for escalation, a call for the movement to diversify its tactics and move away from an exclusive focus on polite, gentle and perfectly peaceful civil disobedience" should be emphasized in the environmentalism movement.
"I am recommending that the movement continues with mass action and civil disobedience, but also opens up for property destruction."
Malm in the past has maintained the point of view that violence is justified if it promotes the environmental good. According to Fox News Malm writes in his book, "How to Blow Up a Pipeline," that one should "damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep on investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed."
But the call for normalizing violence in favor of environmentalism drew considerable pushback. Townhall.com senior editor Kurt Schlichter responded to Malm in a tweet, "I think it's weird that guys who don't own any guns and certainly don't know how to use them seek to normalize political violence. I wonder if they'll act surprised."
Spectator contributor Stephen Miller added, "for those keeping track at home, both the New Yorker and the New York Times are debating and soft endorsing terror acts against national pipelines in the name of climate."
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