Can a System Revolt Against Itself?  Why Climate Protest May Be Completely Doomed.

The most successful protests in human history were led by angry mobs with simple and concrete demands: freedom, food, equality, the right to vote and so on. The anger, the urgency and the passion drove some demonstrators to even sacrifice their lives for their cause.  Whether they were French peasants, African Americans, LGBTQ activists or Suffragettes, they had one thing in common: they were fighting for issues already affecting their personal life and that of their loved ones.  Their demands, although revolutionary, were very specific, some may even say narrow.  Climate protest has failed to match the success of previous human revolts because the climate crisis is so all-encompassing and highly unspecific: both the villains and victims are also victims and villains respectively. The finger pointing is not as straightforward, in fact it goes round and round in a perfect circle, and neither are the solutions.  Unlike previous crises the climate crisis is not an issue with a specific subset of society, but with society itself, in its entirety.  Solving it therefore requires solving the problem of civilisation.  It requires an entire society mobilising and facing itself, which begs the question:  can an entire system revolt against itself?  Revolting against oneself is the most difficult type of revolt, yet this is no more no less what this polycrisis requires: an addicted and self-destructive civilisation to awaken, understand what an addiction is, self-diagnose, self-psychoanalyze, and self-heal.  By all accounts and events so far, this is an impossibility.

A crucial additional complication is that climate protest is the first and only protest movement in human history which is not exclusively about a human right, but about the rights of nature as well. For a selfish society living and breathing consumatronic narcissism, caring about nature is as counter-intuitive and foreign a concept as believing in purple extra-terrestrials.  The “human stake” in the crisis would need to take centre stage if there is any chance of eliciting the anger and passion of previous revolts. It has not dawned upon human society that “nature” and human civilisation are part of a single, collapsing system, and it is an open question whether this truth ever will.  It never has, on multiple occasions of ecological collapse in our history, so why should it now?

Climate protest is the first and only protest movement which is still seen as a protest about something that “is going to happen”, as opposed to something that is happening already.  This view is unlikely to change, despite a global economy and climate that are already in full collapse, and an ecological crisis that has been in accelerated collapse for at least 300 years.  As a species we tend to normalise events and establish a new baseline of existence, a new normal, even as we collapse. The paradox of telling people that billions will die and that food or nature will be gone is that they become complacent: all of a sudden the present looks like paradise, making a dire future look ever more remote and improbable.

Those already impacted across the world can potentially be the flag-bearers of a revolt. They are in the order of billions already. They are the “angry” mobs that this movement is missing, the ones with a specific personal stake and a personal loss, like the LGBTQs, African Americans and suffragettes: but they belong to a geographically fragmented global diaspora comprised of different cultures, incomes and other walks of life. Very often there is more that divides them than unites them, and this cannot be the basis for a revolution.  Moreover, many have not made the connection between their personal circumstances and the climate and ecological crisis.  They are revolting, but they don’t know they are revolting against the climate crisis.  They are neither interested nor able to make that cognitive leap.

Climate protest is the first and only protest movement in human history which is not about something that is easily fixable, like giving women the right to vote, or passing equality legislation for LGBTQ and other minorities. Climate protest is an all-out anti-systemic struggle: it targets the very basis of expansionist human civilisation, and this is why it will never cease to face the fire of global capital. It does not demand concessions, rights or privileges for a specific group of people, but demands total system change. This is the biggest ask any human movement has ever made. The climate movement is fundamentally an anti-systemic revolt, and this is why it will continue to face opposition from the entire system: global capital, sponsored media, puppet politicians, and the brainwashed public.

All these reasons explain why climate protest is one of the first protest movements to be up against the biggest backlash ever: from government, the economy, and even the average citizen. We are witnessing the rise of a global social movement-suppressing fascism which lacks defined leaders and geographic location. This system of suppression has a global voice and global authority however, manifested in world conferences such as COP, which control the narrative of our civilisation and quickly extinguish self-critique and introspection. This global regime is too powerful for any individual or collective to challenge, let alone overcome. This is what the climate movement is up against: civilisation itself.

The general public have been reduced to back office working bees, merely existing to sustain this self-destructive system.  They are helping it become bigger and stronger, while being served an illusion of personal choice through an infinite range of products. There is no anger, no mobs protesting, just consumatrons and credit cards. There is nothing to see here, unless you want to buy something. Don’t expect a revolution from this lot.

It is not surprising therefore that the simple expression of discontent towards the vices of civilisation is increasingly labelled by the system as a form of terrorism towards society, when in fact it is a revolt against the system that has taken society hostage. We are beyond fascism. We are in a digital dystopia that can evade scrutiny by mobilising society itself against those fighting for freedom, the planet, the future. This system’s strength lies in dividing and gaslighting “the mob that never got angry”, turning us against each other. Turning society against the suffragettes, the gays, the coloured minorities, and anyone who has ever fought for a just cause.  Will we ever unite based on our common infernal future, and revolt against the system which brought us to this state?

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons

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