On Monday, climate activists of the “last generation” blocked Berlin’s autobahns for the first time in a dozen different places at the same time. The anger of the motorists is growing significantly. And a Mercedes driver even goes completely nuts. “That was just the beginning,” announces activist spokeswoman Carla Hinrichs to FOCUS Online now. Is Berlin threatened by the permanent climate blockade?
In January, the climate activists started the first freeway blockades in Berlin. Further individual blockades followed in Munich, Bayreuth, Frankfurt am Main, Göttingen, Stuttgart and Hamburg. Then, on March 24, Putin’s attack on Ukraine put an abrupt end to interest in the climate protests. However, in early May, the activists returned. They again blocked various highways and also sabotaged some gas and oil pipelines.
But such individual actions should now be over – in the sense of a sharper “escalation strategy”, which has been the subject of lively discussion in circles of militant environmentalists for months. “From now on we will concentrate on Berlin. Here, where the political decision-makers are based, we will from now on disrupt traffic in several places at the same time with dozens of disruptive actions,” says Carla Hinrichs, spokeswoman for the “Last Generation”, FOCUS Online. And adds: “What Berliners are experiencing now is just the beginning. We will not stop doing this until the Chancellor listens to us and guarantees that there will be no new drilling for oil in the North Sea.”
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The movement of this group of climate activists is still young, it only came into being in the summer of last year. Their declared goal is to use various actions of “civil disobedience” to get politicians to take stricter measures against global warming than the predominantly young activists believe they have been doing up to now.
“We have already approached the Green Climate and Economics Minister Robert Habeck several times in the past and demanded a ‘declaration of life’ from him,” explained Friedrich Graeber, who stuck himself with two other activists at the end of the A100 in Berlin on Monday morning Location FOCUS Online.
The activists demanded an assurance from Habeck that there will be no more new fossil fuel infrastructure. “But instead of reacting, he is now having oil production in the North Sea checked. That is why we are now turning to the Federal Chancellor directly.” Graeber and his fellow campaigners are demanding “save oil instead of drilling”. They are also committed to nationwide free public transport and a speed limit.
While politicians in Berlin are still not commenting on the demands of the activists, motorists are now becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the protests. Already on Monday there were aggressive reactions in several of the ten blocked places on the A100.
The driver of a Mercedes, who pushed an activist from the blockade in front of him with his car, caused a stir and a few moments of shock. According to the environmentalists, the police today, unlike Monday, were unable to intercept one or more groups of activists before they could set up the blockade. As on Monday, around 60 people were taken into custody on Tuesday, Hinrichs said in the late afternoon.
And it wasn’t just rude insults. The Last Generation Twitter account posted several videos that the activists say they took themselves on Monday. Several drivers and motorcyclists can be seen approaching the young activists and roughly dragging them off the road or spraying them with a drink. One picture even shows a bald man throwing himself at one of the activists.
According to the activists, several sections of the A100, which is Germany’s most heavily trafficked motorway, were again blocked on Tuesday.
The escalation of the disruptive actions comes as no surprise – and was publicly announced weeks ago. A radicalization of the militant actions has been the subject of lively discussions in environmental protection circles for the past year.
Organizers and comrades-in-arms of the “last generation” repeatedly emphasize that the protests are about “completely non-violent resistance” and that this maxim must not be broken under any circumstances. But some activists, such as Tadzio Müller, who is regarded as the mastermind of the militant environmental protection scene in Germany, go a step further in theory. In an interview with the “Spiegel” at the end of last year, Müller even considered the establishment of a “green RAF” to be possible if politicians did not respond to the demands of the environmental activists.
For the summer that is just beginning, the activist and political scientist prophesies “car showrooms smashed to pieces, cars destroyed, sabotage of gas-fired power plants and pipelines”. After the first acts of sabotage, the “crucial question” is what happens afterwards. “How does society react when motorway construction sites are regularly devastated at night?”
Müller expects that the majority of militant activists would “get scared” and remain “peaceful” if the state’s “repressive pressure” became massive. But a “small part”, the scientist believes, will go underground. “Those who prevent climate protection create the green RAF.” The “Red Army Faction” was a left-wing extremist terrorist group responsible for more than 30 murders of leaders from politics, business and administration.
