Malcolm X: By any means necessary?

Most environmentalists are of a progressive political orientation: a broad spectrum that ranges from centrists through to the radical left. If we can put aside Monty Python-style “People’s Front of Judea” conversations, most environmentalists agree with a political worldview that prioritizes other issues such as anti-capitalism, sexism, racism and Indigenous rights, even if they cannot agree on the details of how such issues should be addressed.

So when environmentalists work together they expect to share a certain worldview, to the point that they often cannot imagine working with people who do not share their worldview. Indeed, such environmentalists may consider issues such as anti-capitalism, sexism, racism and Indigenous rights to be so deeply interconnected with environmentalism that it is impossible to separate them, necessitating battling all these issues at once, and framing anyone who resists these issues — or is merely indifferent to them or has other priorities — as the enemy.

Such a strategy enables its adherents to maintain an ideological coherence and even a form of political purity, but is it really the most effective strategy to course-correct the environmental crisis? Perhaps this needs to be explicitly stated, just in case it is beyond the imagination of some environmentalists: there are lots of good people out there who care about the environment — either in a similar way to progressive environmentalists, or in a different way — that are not particularly enthusiastic about all the other political baggage that often comes with progressive environmentalists. Do we exclude them to maintain that ideological coherence and political purity?

In a Reddit discussion we asked the question, “What would it take for you to engage in an environmental movement that proposed expanding the nature of resistance?” One commenter made an interesting point that relates to this issue of ideological exclusion that is worth quoting in full, because it provides a voice to a real person who cared enough to engage the discussion in good faith:

I am a contributing member to an environmental conservation group. I constantly get e-mails about saving pandas, elephants, and sea turtles. While I think it’d be tragic for these populations to further diminish, it’s not my primary motivation. Personally, I’d like to see the oceans protected so I can eat fish out of them. I don’t want the fish to run out, I want to be able to scuba dive among live coral, and I want to be able to swim in unpolluted waters. Most environmental orgs, likely due to calls from their most vocal members, or fundraising market research, have decided that efforts to protect the environment should be done so for the environment’s sake, and not so humans can extract resources in a sustainable way. Their membership sees me the way a lot of people reading this on this sub are probably seeing me, and make my presence unwelcome. The other alternative to protecting the oceans comes in the form of industry groups, which don’t always have the best motivations. Who to cast my lot with? In the end, would not my support be welcome as long as we were all trying to fight for a better planet, at least when it comes to the environment? I’ve volunteered at cleanups; I’ve paid membership dues; I’ve written elected officials and businesses; I have more to give and want to give more, but I won’t support movements that actively go against my other beliefs.

If a person such as the above commenter does not feel welcome in environmentalist circles, we have a big problem. Ultimately, the scale of course-correcting the environmental crisis is so large that we cannot afford to work only with people who share a closely similar worldview. We must accept that there are many people out there (let’s say, for the sake of argument, hundreds of millions) who care about the environment, but are turned off by various elements of the progressive worldview. In order to course-correct the environmental crisis we all have to work together. That means that progressive environmentalists have to be more open to people who prioritize things like tradition, heritage, religion and the nation; and it means that people who prioritize those things will need to be more open to progressive issues. We should not be trying to convert each other on such issues at this point, rather working together on the environment.

Malcolm X famously used the phrase “by any means necessary” in the context of civil rights. In activist circles, this phrase has an almost menacing quality because it alludes to the use of violence, if indeed violence is necessary to achieve the required and justifiable outcomes. But there is another way for us to explore this phrase: “by any means necessary” might mean the political compromises that are required to course-correct the environmental crisis. This does not mean we should align ourselves with lunatics and white supremacists, but it does mean we need to expand the circle.

If you believe that such compromise is wrong, consider the following provocation. What exactly is your priority? Saving the environment or maintaining your political purity? Given that you probably can’t have both, choosing not to compromise is to acknowledge that the environment is not your priority, which means that you are, in effect, part of the problem that genuine environmentalists need to overcome.