"Much of the book is given over to dismantling ahistorical arguments for the climate movement’s commitment to nonviolence, principally those of Bill McKibben and Extinction Rebellion (XR), a courageous but confused activist group that positions itself, absurdly, “beyond politics.” XR’s handbook is blunt: violence doesn’t work. “In fact, it almost always leads to authoritarianism and fascism. The alternative, then, is nonviolence.”

Is this true? XR adduces social movements that it suggests succeeded because of their rejection of violent tactics: abolitionism, the suffrage movement, the Indian independence movement, the American civil-rights movement, and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. But none was completely nonviolent, as Malm shows. Gandhi had to reprove his followers for sabotaging transport systems and telegraph wires; Nelson Mandela, in his own words, “called for non-violent protest for as long as it was effective,” as “a tactic that should be abandoned when it no longer worked.” The suffragettes “set fire to or blew up villas, tea pavilions, boathouses, hotels, haystacks, churches, post offices, aqueducts, theatres and a liberal range of other targets” around the UK. And John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave.

Malm suggests that these movements’ militant flanks provided cover for their nonviolent cores, whose members could position themselves as reasonable negotiating partners. The state could look at Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. and think, “Well, at least they’re not burning shit down. Maybe we can work something out.” The pivot to nonviolent resistance can be a tactical maneuver rather than a principled stance. What matters is finding a strategy that will effect change. And as King wrote, “there comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over.” XR’s handbook makes no mention of Algeria, Angola, Haiti, Vietnam, or Kenya"

https://www.bookforum.com/print/2801/how-to-take-action-against-the-climate-crisis-24383