Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerveldt. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there is a lot to be outraged by and fearful
Speaker 1: of happening in the US right now, and as is
Speaker 1: the case whenever anything is happening outside of extreme weather events,
Speaker 1: there's been a chorus right now chanting who cares about
Speaker 1: climate change? Who cares about a far off problem when
Speaker 1: there are so many more urgent threats. It should go
Speaker 1: without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Anyone who cares
Speaker 1: about mitigating climate risk should absolutely be showing up to
Speaker 1: fight for democracy. The same administration that is shooting citizens
Speaker 1: in the street for exercising their first Amendment right is
Speaker 1: after all, trying to get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency,
Speaker 1: the National Oceanic and apple Miospheric Administration, and all of
Speaker 1: the protections that go along with them. I would say
Speaker 1: that those of us who think the world should act
Speaker 1: according to the scientific evidence on not only climate change
Speaker 1: but also air and water pollution, should be able to
Speaker 1: walk and chew gum at least as well as the
Speaker 1: goon's intent on destroying the so called administrative state in
Speaker 1: the US giving a shit about the long term viability
Speaker 1: of the human species is very much aligned with protecting
Speaker 1: your fellow humans on the streets today. There are also
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of ways that these issues directly intersect,
Speaker 1: one of which is the topic of today's show. From
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two to twenty twenty four, we reported, wrote,
Speaker 1: and produced an investigation into the increasing repression of climate
Speaker 1: protests around the world. It was called the Real Free
Speaker 1: Speech Threat, a not to the fact that while these
Speaker 1: supposed free speech warriors were worrying about cancel cultures were
Speaker 1: actually threatening political speech all over the world. The problem
Speaker 1: has unfortunately only gotten worse, and in many ways, the
Speaker 1: backlash to climate protest lay the groundwork for the way
Speaker 1: we're seeing protesters treated in the streets of Minneapolis and
Speaker 1: lots of other cities around the world today. Last month,
Speaker 1: I caught up with researcher Oscar Bergland, who recently released
Speaker 1: the first ever peer reviewed study of the global repression
Speaker 1: of climate protest. Some of Drill's reporting actually fed into
Speaker 1: that research, and I was curious to hear from Oscar
Speaker 1: what he and his team learn and how things have
Speaker 1: progressed in recent years. It tells us a lot about
Speaker 1: not just the fight for a livable world, but also
Speaker 1: the fight for a just one. That conversation is coming
Speaker 1: up right after this quick break.
Speaker 2: I am a doctor Oscar Bergland, and I work at
Speaker 2: the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol.
Speaker 3: Tell me a little bit about this paper and what
Speaker 3: prompted you to write it. I was shocked when you
Speaker 3: put it out and noted that it's the first a
Speaker 3: pandemic peer of you paper on repression of climate protests because.
Speaker 4: I had seen, you know, like a fair bit of
Speaker 4: media coverage topic and surprising to me that there hadn't
Speaker 4: been more research on it. So I'm curious why you
Speaker 4: think that is, and then what prompted you to want
Speaker 4: to do this paper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the main reason why there isn't more research
Speaker 2: on this is probably that research is slow. Academic research
Speaker 2: is slow, and adrilled have obviously been really early on
Speaker 2: on reporting about this and what this paper was the
Speaker 2: first of was kind of taking this kind of global,
Speaker 2: international perspective, and of course you have done that in
Speaker 2: your reporting, and Michelle Force, you know that you and
Speaker 2: Special Rapperteires certainly also takes a kind of international, global
Speaker 2: perspective in writing about these things, and talking about these things.
Speaker 2: So it's not like we're the first in the world
Speaker 2: to take this global, international perspective. But this is, as
Speaker 2: far as I know, the first pre viewed publication to
Speaker 2: come out to do so. And probably remember, you know,
Speaker 2: I obviously have been kind of looking into these things
Speaker 2: for a couple of years now. You and I have
Speaker 2: talked about it before, and you know, we obviously give
Speaker 2: a shout out to your work.
Speaker 5: I suppose what brought.
Speaker 2: Me to study this topic in the first place is
Speaker 2: that I studied climate change activism. I studied civil disobedience
Speaker 2: very much, the kind of wave of twenty eighteen twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen climate protests, and then during the pandemic, particularly in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, it became pretty obvious that there was
Speaker 2: a clampdown on protests, and therefore I started.
Speaker 5: Looking at that.
Speaker 2: And I think when we started this project, because we've
Speaker 2: been doing this for two years here now, and when
Speaker 2: we started this, we started with a list very helpfully
Speaker 2: provided by you, which had laws, various laws in various
Speaker 2: countries or states that were criminalizing protests in various ways.
Speaker 2: So then we looked deeper into that. We've extended that list.
Speaker 2: When you look at these new laws. You can see
Speaker 2: that they obviously have geographical differences. I think you can
Speaker 2: tell when places have extractive industries that there are certain
Speaker 2: types of protest tactics that are particularly targeted through new laws.
Speaker 2: So we can see this in Australia, for example, particularly
Speaker 2: with states that have extractive industries or go harsher on
Speaker 2: things like block ons and things that protesters might do
Speaker 2: at sites of extraction. And there seems to be a
Speaker 2: fair bit of copy and paste, particularly in the US
Speaker 2: context of these anti protest laws, but there's also a
Speaker 2: lot of kind of local variation of what types of
Speaker 2: protest is being criminalized. And then we realized, well, actually,
Speaker 2: if we're talking about a repression criminalization of climate protests,
Speaker 2: then those laws are just one aspect of the criminalization.
Speaker 2: And what we see perhaps much more is what we
Speaker 2: call here creative and strategic legal interventions, which is basically
Speaker 2: using or misusing laws created for a different purpose and
Speaker 2: using it against climate and environmental activists, or changes to
Speaker 2: court procedures and so on. What you've seen loads over
Speaker 2: here in the UK where limit what can be said
Speaker 2: in court, what kind of defenses can be used. I mean,
Speaker 2: now they're even trying to get rid of jury trials
Speaker 2: for certain kind of trials, because juries are more likely
Speaker 2: to find defendants not guilty than if you just have
Speaker 2: sort of judges making that decision.
Speaker 5: So that's one aspect, and then.
Speaker 2: Of course you have this third very important aspect, which
Speaker 2: is that most of the repression and criminalization that activists
Speaker 2: face is in relation to the police. I mean, most
Speaker 2: of them don't end up in court, right. So then
Speaker 2: you know, looking at house arrests used, how surveillance used,
Speaker 2: and harassment and other kind of forms.
Speaker 5: Of police violence.
Speaker 2: So for the report that came out a year earlier
Speaker 2: and then the paper that came out last month, looking
Speaker 2: at the data and we see quite you know, important
Speaker 2: and interesting differences in how the police police protest mental activism.
Speaker 2: So which shows us, for example, that you know, France,
Speaker 2: you're much more likely to get violently attacked by the police.
Speaker 2: Police are much more likely to use gas or water
Speaker 2: canons or other forms of police kind of violence against
Speaker 2: you than you are in a country like the UK
Speaker 2: or in most other European countries. And whilst you know,
Speaker 2: in the UK and Australia you've had this huge amount
Speaker 2: of arrests for example, which obviously is because you've had
Speaker 2: extinction rebellion and groups like that habit use the arrest
Speaker 2: as a means of protest in a way that is
Speaker 2: behind that data. But like still it shows, you know,
Speaker 2: differences in police in practices for sure. So those three
Speaker 2: three different categories all for us come under this kind
Speaker 2: of criminalization aspect.
Speaker 5: And two of my.
Speaker 2: Colleagues that have written this paper with identify as criminologists,
Speaker 2: so they see themselves as criminologists. I'm more of a
Speaker 2: political scientist, and so host Chris, who's another course or
Speaker 2: the paper. And so if that's criminalization, then when we
Speaker 2: move over to the even darker aspects of this, which
Speaker 2: is you know, the killings and disappearances which arrive in
Speaker 2: certain countries, then that's beyond criminalization.
Speaker 5: If you murder somebody minorizing them, that's you know.
Speaker 2: So that's why we felt we needed you know, criminalization
Speaker 2: isn't enough to capture this.
Speaker 5: We need pression.
Speaker 2: We need repression more rarely to capture all of this.
Speaker 2: And actually those killings and disappearances often follow the kind
Speaker 2: of harassment and surveillance that are part of police action.
Speaker 2: Then of course, in many countries have state actors with
Speaker 2: the Trio police that carry out a lot of those killings.
Speaker 2: And then lastly, you know something that you have covered
Speaker 2: a lot as well, is that all of this is
Speaker 2: kind of justified and enabled by a constant vilification by
Speaker 2: media outlets, by politicians and on social media, trolling accounts
Speaker 2: and so on of climate activists. During the time that
Speaker 2: we've studied this, you know, you had use of anti
Speaker 2: terror legislation against suliman Let in France. You had organized
Speaker 2: crime legislation used against Leicster generacy in Germany, and against
Speaker 2: Tottutal in Spain. So you know, these are all European
Speaker 2: countries that are supposed to be the more democratic ones
Speaker 2: that use that kind of legislation that obviously is not
Speaker 2: designed to be used against non violent activist groups, right,
Speaker 2: and in a way that I mean, how is that
Speaker 2: different from what the Filipino state has been engaging in
Speaker 2: in for a long time now, which is you know
Speaker 2: this no red tagging where they label any activists that
Speaker 2: they don't like, they label them, you know, communist terrorists
Speaker 2: and hence the red tagging, and therefore they removed a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of rights that otherwise they would have right,
Speaker 2: which is it's it's the same process, right for sure,
Speaker 2: in Germany and France. You run a lot lower risk
Speaker 2: of in you know, killed by the military, as you
Speaker 2: certainly do in the Philippines, but the process is the
Speaker 2: same in many ways. So I think that that surprised
Speaker 2: us a bit. I think the extent to which and
Speaker 2: I've been we've been following this more closely as posed
Speaker 2: in the UK because we live here, but the extent
Speaker 2: to which court processes are constantly changed, and how the
Speaker 2: goal posts are constantly changed, and this really strange thing
Speaker 2: which I think would not be possible in a lot
Speaker 2: of countries. But what has happened in the UK at
Speaker 2: order is that you can do a Protest Act in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two before the Public Order Act becomes law,
Speaker 2: and then you go to trial two years later and
Speaker 2: you're sentenced using the Public Order Act, which didn't exist
Speaker 2: in that form when when the when the acts took place.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's insane.
Speaker 3: Kin imagine if people tried to do that to you know,
Speaker 3: corporations with tax law, there'd be yeah, we'd never hear
Speaker 3: the end of it.
Speaker 5: We wouldn't.
Speaker 2: And so that's and obviously so you know, the UK
Speaker 2: is so probably the place where I have spoken more
Speaker 2: to activists because you know, I live here and I
Speaker 2: know I've been and speaking to these people who oh,
Speaker 2: you know, have live court cases and are yeah, really
Speaker 2: really scared about that kind of thing. The the way
Speaker 2: in which you know, it really matters who your judges,
Speaker 2: and you know, if you certain judges have real grudges
Speaker 2: against activists, whether those whether they exist the kind of
Speaker 2: actual financial links or not, whether it's just kind of
Speaker 2: political grudges that judges have against activists.
Speaker 5: But it's obvious that.
Speaker 2: Some do and have been much much harsher in the
Speaker 2: restrictions that they have put in in their courtrooms and
Speaker 2: so on, and the kind of deep politicization of the
Speaker 2: courtroom or you know, attempted depoliticization of the courtroom here
Speaker 2: in the UK, and which I think is replicated in
Speaker 2: several other countries as well, where you know, you're not
Speaker 2: allowed to talk about climate change and or allowed to
Speaker 2: talk about anything about what motivated you to do it.
Speaker 5: I mean that's insane.
Speaker 2: Any crime that has been committed, you talk about the motivation, right,
Speaker 2: That's part bit, isn't it. But no here in these
Speaker 2: in these what is political trials, you're not allowed to
Speaker 2: talk about about the politics of it.
Speaker 3: So talking the other day and back to one of
Speaker 3: the health workers that is on trial for protests in
Speaker 3: the UK, I think their their trial is February, and
Speaker 3: they were saying that in their initial hearing too, that
Speaker 3: they were yeah, like effectively told that they whatever they
Speaker 3: had to say wouldn't wouldn't qualify as a legal defense anyway,
Speaker 3: so they couldn't say anything, which I'm like, I don't
Speaker 3: understand how that doesn't constitute effectively not allowing someone a defense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if you look
Speaker 2: at the experiences of these activists that have gone through
Speaker 2: the trials and so on as well, what these knew
Speaker 2: what the Public Order Act did was you know, really
Speaker 2: limiting their civil liberties when they are out, you know,
Speaker 2: on remand or just been released from prison that you know,
Speaker 2: on paper, they're not allowed to do anything. They're not
Speaker 2: allowed to go anywhere near a protest, They're not allowed
Speaker 2: to go be engaged with perfectly legal groups of activists.
Speaker 2: So you know, whether you know that is ultimately policed
Speaker 2: or not is of course another matter, But on paper,
Speaker 2: they're not allowed to do very much at all, and
Speaker 2: their civil liberties are significantly restricted. And that kind of
Speaker 2: brings me in the point about you know, is it
Speaker 2: police or not. That brings me into because in the
Speaker 2: kind of theoretical criminalization literature, there's this kind of distinction
Speaker 2: between you know, one thing is what is criminalized in law,
Speaker 2: and one thing is what is actually in practice criminalized.
Speaker 2: So you know, like the law allows for the whole
Speaker 2: bunch of types of criminalization that aren't actually then policed
Speaker 2: or acted on in society. And here we can see that,
Speaker 2: you know, the new powers that were given to the
Speaker 2: police in the UK early on were used almost exclusively
Speaker 2: against climate protesters, soil against against just topoil, and that
Speaker 2: was a group that was very heavily criminalized by the
Speaker 2: state and by their police. Now I think we've seen
Speaker 2: very obviously a heavy criminalization of the Palestine protesters as well,
Speaker 2: and not at least obviously Palestine action that was proscribed
Speaker 2: as a terrorist organization again very much you know, misusing
Speaker 2: this label. And here also done many interviews with foreign
Speaker 2: journalists who all, you know, think that it's ridiculous that
Speaker 2: this happened, because you know, it's easy to criticize what
Speaker 2: goes on in other countries harder to do it in
Speaker 2: their own country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm curious because we're thinking about building on a
Speaker 3: series that we did on criminalization of activists to look
Speaker 3: at criminalization of civil society.
Speaker 6: Organizations now is sort of like the next phase.
Speaker 3: I'm curious what you think about that and if you
Speaker 3: looked at that as.
Speaker 1: Part of the oppression tactics as well, or what you
Speaker 1: found as you were looking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so in some countries that's really obvious. And
Speaker 2: to be honest, the way that criminalization has happened in
Speaker 2: Russia has been a lot about foreign NGOs, and now
Speaker 2: one of our countries that we look at is Peru,
Speaker 2: and in Peru you have a new law that particularly
Speaker 2: targets NGOs that might in some way support activists in
Speaker 2: the country. So that is definitely a really important part
Speaker 2: of repression and has been more common in some countries
Speaker 2: than in others, for sure. But it's scared so you
Speaker 2: see that more Where have you seen it stuck the
Speaker 2: case in the US?
Speaker 3: Yes, And now the foreign influence law thing is becoming
Speaker 3: a real in the US, both at the national level,
Speaker 3: which is interesting because actually Farah was something that we've
Speaker 3: used in the past as a reporting tool to understand
Speaker 3: like which us PR firms and whatever else are doing
Speaker 3: work for like Saudi Arabia for example.
Speaker 1: That's been like the use of Farah in recent years.
Speaker 1: This is the foreign agent station, and now the Trump
Speaker 1: administration is using it to go after climate organization.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're talking at there's now a few local level
Speaker 3: foreign influence laws.
Speaker 6: Being floated, which I have not seen in other countries.
Speaker 1: So they're talking about state level foreign influence laws, which
Speaker 1: would be really, really weird.
Speaker 2: I suppose one thing that we really wanted to do
Speaker 2: in the paper is to you know, address this kind
Speaker 2: of separation between kind of global North of global South,
Speaker 2: or kind of more democratic and or less democratic countries
Speaker 2: and actually say, obviously, you do run much more risks
Speaker 2: being an activist in the Philippines or Mexico or Brazil
Speaker 2: than you do in the in the US, or in
Speaker 2: the UK or in Sweden. But a lot of the
Speaker 2: similar strategies are used to repress protest and activism across
Speaker 2: this so it's not a kind of categorical difference in
Speaker 2: most instances, it's a difference in degree and so on.
Speaker 2: Take the thing about angios, right. I mean this is
Speaker 2: justified in terms that would be justified in Russia, and
Speaker 2: that we would be our governments would feel really free
Speaker 2: to create de size Russia about being authoritarian about but
Speaker 2: then they do very similar things at home. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And that's the kind of I suppose thing that we
Speaker 2: really want to call out and observe. And I think
Speaker 2: it's scary that those lines are being increasingly blurred. So
Speaker 2: I'm Swedish, proven right, and Sweden and are two countries
Speaker 2: with vastly different histories and civil liberties, equality, all sorts.
Speaker 2: So when people ask, you know, is this going to
Speaker 2: basically kill protests? Obviously it doesn't, right. I mean, people
Speaker 2: protest under the most horrendous, repressive circumstances, you know, as
Speaker 2: we are, well, it would be wrong to see that
Speaker 2: we're seeing it. But I mean something is going on
Speaker 2: in Iran as we speak, and it's certainly not the
Speaker 2: case that Iranians don't protest because of how repressive the
Speaker 2: Iranian regime is. Protest has continued to happen in Iran.
Speaker 2: Obviously it becomes a lot more dangerous, but repression is
Speaker 2: ne one hundreds percent successful in repressing protests so this
Speaker 2: is a really interesting question that you know, people, you know,
Speaker 2: how does this change protest? And I think that's something
Speaker 2: that we want to explore further and understand more about,
Speaker 2: because it doesn't kill off protests, it changes the conditions
Speaker 2: under which we protest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is something that I think we saw a
Speaker 3: lot in the reporting too, that it's like more violent
Speaker 3: and maybe more obvious in some global South countries, but
Speaker 3: not dissimilar in the person I would say.
Speaker 7: And you know, now, at.
Speaker 1: Least in the US, we're starting to see a huge
Speaker 1: uptick in state violence as well.
Speaker 7: So two things.
Speaker 3: One completely accidentally because I was looking, I was pulling
Speaker 3: all a video from various press conferences that Marco Rubio,
Speaker 3: is the Secretary of State for the US, has been
Speaker 3: doing since March, because there's quite a bit in what
Speaker 3: he was saying that.
Speaker 8: Has to do with what's happening in Venezuela right now.
Speaker 3: So I was just sort of like, Okay, what's he
Speaker 3: been saying over these months or whatever. I didn't know
Speaker 3: this was happening before I watched all of those videos,
Speaker 3: but it seems like the press corps that was traveling
Speaker 3: with him like decided amongst themselves that one of them
Speaker 3: at each press conference he did, would ask him about
Speaker 3: the repression of campus protest and it's very it's pretty
Speaker 3: amusing because he gets very irritated by it every time
Speaker 3: they have, you know, unfortunately, many varieties of questions to ask,
Speaker 3: but one of the things that has come up in
Speaker 3: is a that he way that he.
Speaker 6: Talks about protesters in general.
Speaker 3: And definitely it seems like, you know, the way that
Speaker 3: a lot of these countries have been talking about and
Speaker 3: treating climate protesters was then just like copy pasted to
Speaker 3: Gaza protesters as well. So one of the reporters in
Speaker 3: I think it was in Surinam asked him, you know,
Speaker 3: you had condemned China in twenty nineteen for repression of
Speaker 3: student protests. Would you say that today you agree with
Speaker 3: the Chinese government and its view of protest.
Speaker 5: It's good and now it's done for ETWO from the.
Speaker 9: New York Times, I thank you, mister Prinsident of mister
Speaker 9: secretary for taking questions from US. Mister secretary, first to
Speaker 9: you related to China. In twenty nineteen, you supported legislation
Speaker 9: to have the US government support the protesters in Hong Kong.
Speaker 9: The pro democracy protesters, and mostly the protests are peaceful,
Speaker 9: but also occasionally the disrupted public life. And so, based
Speaker 9: on your rationale for deporting campus protesters in the US,
Speaker 9: would you now support the Chinese Commanist Party or hall
Speaker 9: authorities deporting foreigners who took part in those protests in twenty.
Speaker 10: Nine of person It is silly because so the people
Speaker 10: that we're getting rid of in our country are vandalizing
Speaker 10: call They're not protesters who are taking over college campuses.
Speaker 10: They're harassing fellow students.
Speaker 5: We let them in our country to study.
Speaker 10: We gave them a visa because they said I want
Speaker 10: to go to a university, I want to get a degree.
Speaker 10: They didn't say I want to go to university and
Speaker 10: I want to vandalize your library, and I want to
Speaker 10: wear a mask over my face like off it's Halloween
Speaker 10: and terrorized people. We didn't give them a visa to
Speaker 10: do any of that. So we don't want those people
Speaker 10: in our country. They're not they're not demonstrating for there.
Speaker 10: They're going beyond demonstration. They are going and they're creating
Speaker 10: a ruckus. They are creating riots basically on campus, and
Speaker 10: it's making it's unfair for students. Some of these schools
Speaker 10: are some of the most expensive schools we have in America.
Speaker 10: People bay a lot of money to go to these schools.
Speaker 10: They borrow money to go to these schools, and you
Speaker 10: can't even go to class because some want a tech
Speaker 10: who's covering their phase is running through campus, spray paying things,
Speaker 10: harassing people, and they're in my country.
Speaker 5: As a guest.
Speaker 10: We want them out, every one of them. I find
Speaker 10: We're going to kick them out.
Speaker 3: That's an amazing question.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I do wonder, like, how how close are some
Speaker 11: of these supposedly democratic countries getting to countries that, you know,
Speaker 11: the Global North has always pointed to you as examples
Speaker 11: of like the most intense state oppression of speech.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean it's.
Speaker 2: Equally you know, golling to see UK government ministers coming
Speaker 2: out and call out propression in other countries when there
Speaker 2: are currently you know, three Palestine action hunger strike is
Speaker 2: on the brink of dying, and that the government won't
Speaker 2: even acknowledge that they are on hunger strike and not
Speaker 2: even you know, open negotiations with them. I mean the
Speaker 2: longest one has been now for over seventy days, which
Speaker 2: is insane that she's still alive and.
Speaker 5: That the government won't even you know, acknowledge it happening.
Speaker 2: So yeah, absolutely, it's that kind of you know, double standards,
Speaker 2: which obviously is a classic thing in politics, right, but
Speaker 2: I think particularly in this sphere of oh, you know,
Speaker 2: civil liberties, political liberties, I think it is it is
Speaker 2: scary how quickly they have deteriorated in in many global
Speaker 2: Norse countries. And I think that one of the sources
Speaker 2: that we use, so we use various databases sort of
Speaker 2: evidence based in the paper, and one of them mister
Speaker 2: Civicus database, which is really really good. And you know,
Speaker 2: Civicus do this grating of countries and the extent to
Speaker 2: which they are free basically, and you know, it's a
Speaker 2: grim picture. It's a grim picture around the world. Very
Speaker 2: few countries are going up on Freedom Index, whatever it's called,
Speaker 2: and you know, most countries are becoming a lot worse.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm not surprised that the UK are
Speaker 2: doing you know, increasingly bad on it and the US,
Speaker 2: but so are a lot of other countries. And interestingly,
Speaker 2: even I mean Sweden is like green on the Civicus thing,
Speaker 2: but I mean Sweden's had you know, they were threatening
Speaker 2: one academic at the University of Land with deportation because
Speaker 2: you know, he participated in non violent climate protests. So
Speaker 2: you really are seeing seeing this everywhere. And yes, the
Speaker 2: way that it's so easy to support protests in other
Speaker 2: countries and criticize repression, I mean, that's what's so going,
Speaker 2: right that they actually, you know, they they they kind
Speaker 2: of yeah, they they express all of protesters in other
Speaker 2: countries whilst throwing nothing but scorn in their own countries.
Speaker 2: And I think that vilification, which we're really talking about, then,
Speaker 2: the realification of activists that politicians and the media do,
Speaker 2: is really important to understand here and sort of in
Speaker 2: the other research and I've looked at public opinion on
Speaker 2: protesters and so on, and a lot of these protest
Speaker 2: groups have been really unpopular in the countries. But I
Speaker 2: mean that's not strange if you look at the media
Speaker 2: reporting about right right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that too.
Speaker 3: That is what's the latest kind of research showing in
Speaker 3: terms of I guess you can't point to any one
Speaker 3: thing as being the driver of public opinion on protesters,
Speaker 3: but I guess, even just sort of qualitatively.
Speaker 1: How much influence do you think that has.
Speaker 6: I can't remember the last time I saw coverage of
Speaker 6: a protest that was either just like very neutral this happened,
Speaker 6: or was remotely positive. And I wonder what you've seen
Speaker 6: on that front, how much the way that people are
Speaker 6: are seeing protests in the media impacts how they think
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we've actually in a different team of mine.
Speaker 2: We're about to come out with an article in the
Speaker 2: next couple of weeks about just a boil and the
Speaker 2: public opinion and media reporting about just up oil. And
Speaker 2: there actually the media reporting in The Guardian, which is
Speaker 2: left leaning according to some not very left leaning, but
Speaker 2: nonetheless one of the big British newspapers that is fairly neutral.
Speaker 2: The reporting about just apoil in the Garden was pretty neutral.
Speaker 2: But outlets that reported the most on just a boil
Speaker 2: were called right clickbait media and there obviously it's incredibly
Speaker 2: negative and used always use these kind of derogatory terms
Speaker 2: to write about them, but that wasn't the case in
Speaker 2: the Guardian. And then relating to what you were saying,
Speaker 2: I think, how big is the impact of these kind
Speaker 2: of media discourses, and I'd say significant.
Speaker 5: So we.
Speaker 2: Studied the government discourses around justtop Oil in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: And then we also carried on carried out interviews with
Speaker 2: members of the public that just respond to a survey
Speaker 2: that we did, and you find a lot of the
Speaker 2: sort of discourses in the media and by politicians being
Speaker 2: repeated by members of the public. So you know, issues
Speaker 2: about energy security and things about we need new oil
Speaker 2: and gas to be an energy independent from Russia and
Speaker 2: so on. So things that are like just political discourses
Speaker 2: that are not grounded in the truth of energy security
Speaker 2: in the UK are very much repeated by people and
Speaker 2: they swayed like opinion about so like obviously just ap
Speaker 2: Ooil were campaigning to stop ail in gas licenses in
Speaker 2: the North Sea, and when that heated up anything else
Speaker 2: in the summer of twenty twenty three, then public opinion
Speaker 2: did swear like basically most people instinctively actually think that
Speaker 2: let's not dig out more oil in gas.
Speaker 5: That's probably if we let it be.
Speaker 2: But because of those discourses, they managed to sway a
Speaker 2: proportion of the public to be for new oil in
Speaker 2: gas licenses. Now that then swung back later when the
Speaker 2: issue kind of was removed from the headlines and so on.
Speaker 2: Another way, of seeing this is when you look at
Speaker 2: polls or surveys that have been done about criminalizing protests.
Speaker 2: We found that in the abstract people don't want to
Speaker 2: criminalize nonviolent protest, but when you ask questions specifically about
Speaker 2: just stop oil, then they do.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And you think that that is because I see a
Speaker 7: lot of even.
Speaker 6: Kind of like quote unquote climate people will look at.
Speaker 12: That stuff and say, oh see, just stop Oil's tactics
Speaker 12: are bad. People don't like them, But do you figure
Speaker 12: out what impact potentially, you know, whatever choices they're making
Speaker 12: on campaigning have versus how the media and politicians are
Speaker 12: positioning those tactics.
Speaker 7: How much of people's opinion of just Stop Oil do
Speaker 7: you think is shaped by how the media and politicians
Speaker 7: frame their tactics, because I've seen some people will point
Speaker 7: to that and go, oh see, like.
Speaker 1: Their tactics are bad, people don't like them, as opposed
Speaker 1: to having a more nuanced understanding of well, they've been
Speaker 1: sort of uniquely vilified in the press and bipoliticians, and
Speaker 1: that plays into it.
Speaker 2: I think there are a lot of critiques of justop
Speaker 2: oil and such groups from many angles. Some of them
Speaker 2: I think have more merit than others. But this paper
Speaker 2: that we have coming out soon looks specifically at claims
Speaker 2: counterproductivity about just a boil and see if there's any
Speaker 2: credibility to say that those protests are counterproductive. So just
Speaker 2: a boil were not counterproductive in terms of people's opinions
Speaker 2: about oil and gas licenses. It was not counterproductive in
Speaker 2: terms of actually banning oil and gas licenses. I mean
Speaker 2: that is still the policy of the current UK government,
Speaker 2: the Labor government, and it was before, so you know,
Speaker 2: just stop boil's unpopularity or whatever, it did not change that.
Speaker 2: So in that sense they have not been counter productive.
Speaker 2: Now I think another claim is that stop oil would
Speaker 2: have been counterproductive and that they weakend the overall climate movement.
Speaker 2: But even that there's a very vague evidence for that.
Speaker 2: People often pointed this German survey which was done, you know,
Speaker 2: to ask what you think of climate activists basically, and
Speaker 2: when they think about just stop oil, they or about
Speaker 2: lesser general asy on in that case, you know, that's
Speaker 2: they think very negatively about climate activists, and maybe a
Speaker 2: few years earlier when they thought about the school strikers,
Speaker 2: they had more positive views of climate activists. But have
Speaker 2: they fundamentally changed the way that climate activists or the
Speaker 2: climate movement is viewed. Well, all, there's a fair amount
Speaker 2: of scholarship on what's called, you know, the radical flank effect,
Speaker 2: and a lot of that points towards the fact that
Speaker 2: actually it doesn't really damage organizations that are more kind
Speaker 2: of moderate in that sense.
Speaker 5: The fact that just the boil are.
Speaker 2: Unpopular, it's you know, it turns people against that group,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't really change people's opinions on the matter
Speaker 2: at hand or support for other groups. And then, of course,
Speaker 2: you know this question, does the fact that just a
Speaker 2: boil had a kind of tactic of wanting to get
Speaker 2: arrested or kind of pushing the boundaries of the law
Speaker 2: and so on, has that kind of increased the repression
Speaker 2: against activists in general? And it's like, sure, you can
Speaker 2: see that there, but I mean, you don't blame the
Speaker 2: person people being repressed for that. And actually, through the
Speaker 2: work that you have done and that I have done,
Speaker 2: we've shown that this is a global phenomenon. The criminalization
Speaker 2: and oppression of climate and environmental activism is global. It
Speaker 2: would likely happen whatever just the boil we're doing. And
Speaker 2: even though of course the way that it has happened
Speaker 2: in Okay has been very much targeted against them and
Speaker 2: what they are doing. So I think that you know,
Speaker 2: claims that just Aboard and such groups counterproductive they might
Speaker 2: are you know, unfounded. They may not have been the
Speaker 2: most productive, they may not have achieved very much, and
Speaker 2: they have certainly been very risky for the people involved,
Speaker 2: the people that have done the protests, that have paid
Speaker 2: a very high price for it. So in that sense,
Speaker 2: you could, you know, question it in terms of being
Speaker 2: being worth it. But what we have found is very
Speaker 2: much that claims of it been counterproductive are wrong.
Speaker 6: Thank you. You mentioned this paper that's coming out in
Speaker 6: a couple of weeks. What else are you looking at
Speaker 6: to kind of follow on from here?
Speaker 5: So we want to.
Speaker 2: Continue the research into criminalization and repression globally. So the
Speaker 2: research that I want to carry out next is taking
Speaker 2: this global angle, but also zoning in on four countries
Speaker 2: and that's the UK, Australia, Philippines and Peru that are
Speaker 2: all in different parts of the world obviously two of
Speaker 2: them and the global North two of them, Global South,
Speaker 2: two of them with significant risk to life of doing
Speaker 2: climate environmental activism in the Philippines and Peru and two
Speaker 2: countries have had very high levels of arrest and a
Speaker 2: lot of new kind of anti protest laws in Australia
Speaker 2: and the UK and looking at these and using this
Speaker 2: kind of framework that we've developed in the article to
Speaker 2: look deeper in these countries and carry out interviews with
Speaker 2: people involved, so activists for sure, but also a lot
Speaker 2: of the legal profession also involved with this, and other
Speaker 2: and of civil society groups to see what are the
Speaker 2: effects of criminalization and repression and how does it change
Speaker 2: what people do and how do you resist it as well?
Speaker 2: So what are the efforts to resist criminalization and repression on.
Speaker 2: So we have these partner organizations in these countries and
Speaker 2: we want to be really yes, studying this in depth
Speaker 2: to really see the effects. At the same time, we
Speaker 2: also want to keep this kind of global aspect, so
Speaker 2: we want to interview more kind of international stakeholders who
Speaker 2: have this kind of global overview and look at policies.
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's one question that drives us
Speaker 2: in which we don't have the answer to yet, is
Speaker 2: you know what international global processes are kind of driving this,
Speaker 2: how policy move how are these policies adapted in different countries,
Speaker 2: you know, are they kind of transferred, copied and pasted.
Speaker 2: Who are the actors that drive them? Obviously your research
Speaker 2: has a lot to say on that. Beyond your investigative journalism.
Speaker 2: I don't think we have much to go by there.
Speaker 2: So I think those are the questions that would really
Speaker 2: drive this kind of research going forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're looking into that too, so if we find
Speaker 3: anything interesting, I'll let you know. But I actually do
Speaker 3: wonder how much some of the extractive companies themselves are
Speaker 3: spreading these ideas around. We found some indication, for example,
Speaker 3: that like a coal mining company was trying to encourage
Speaker 3: folks in Australia to adopt a foreign influence law that
Speaker 3: applied to organizations that were similar to FIKRA in India.
Speaker 8: Which was pretty interesting, And I was like, I wonder
Speaker 8: how much that's happening with other companies because they are
Speaker 8: very global entities anyway, So I'm curious about that too,
Speaker 8: how it's traveling around and who's funding what.
Speaker 6: I'm curious if, either in the research that fed into
Speaker 6: this current.
Speaker 3: Study or just your work in general, if you are
Speaker 3: seeing any kind of a similar pattern or global kind
Speaker 3: of approach and people figuring out creative ways around the repression. So,
Speaker 3: like I mentioned the health workers in the UK, the
Speaker 3: ones I was talking about are these six medics that
Speaker 3: broke windows at gp bukin to protest their funding of
Speaker 3: fossil fuel projects. And they are putting on a play
Speaker 3: that is basically just the transcript if they're hearing, to
Speaker 3: kind of show how ridiculous this legal process has become.
Speaker 2: So we can come back to this question of what's
Speaker 2: criminalized in law and what's criminalized in practice. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and as activists we can increase the cost of criminalizing
Speaker 2: us in practice. And that's ultimately what you know, these
Speaker 2: so efforts to legitimize protesters and activism, which you do
Speaker 2: from a journalistic perspective, which I do, from an academic perspective,
Speaker 2: which this theater then does from a kind of artistic perspective,
Speaker 2: are all. You know, we're a kind of ecosystem of
Speaker 2: trying to say that actually, protest and you know, climate
Speaker 2: environmental protest is not just justified, but it's good. These
Speaker 2: actors are fundamentally good actors. They need to be legitimized,
Speaker 2: they need to not be criminalized. The more spotlight is
Speaker 2: on that when these actors are criminalized, the costlier the repressionist.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So the people who repress you, the actors that repress you,
Speaker 2: they also make a cosset to benefit analysis of should
Speaker 2: we repress should we let it go? And for me
Speaker 2: more than you know, drawing on my actual research, like now,
Speaker 2: for me, this is you know, deeply personal. My dad
Speaker 2: was a Peruvian revolutionary slash activist for all his life,
Speaker 2: and he if the Peruvian state and landowners would have
Speaker 2: had their way, they would have just shot him and
Speaker 2: or and you know, after that given him death penalty,
Speaker 2: or after that locked him up for all his life.
Speaker 2: But they weren't able to dodge, right, because there was
Speaker 2: too much spotlight on him. So when he was caught
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three, he was lucky in that it
Speaker 2: was the security services and not the police who found
Speaker 2: him first, and the security services had orders.
Speaker 5: To capture him and not to kill him on the spot.
Speaker 5: So that was you know, luck number one. And then
Speaker 5: when he.
Speaker 2: Was you know, put on trial, there was on her
Speaker 2: whole kind of international campaign for his for his liberty,
Speaker 2: so he wasn't sentenced to death. He was sentenced to
Speaker 2: twenty five years in jail, and then in came a
Speaker 2: kind of progressive, proving government that didn't like him, but
Speaker 2: it was too uncomfortable to keep him in jail, so
Speaker 2: they released him, but deported him from from the country.
Speaker 5: So like.
Speaker 2: This is obviously under you know, deeply repressive realities of
Speaker 2: Peru in the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties. So
Speaker 2: and it matters, like the spotlight, the international spotlight matters.
Speaker 2: And that's why I'm really motivated to be doing work
Speaker 2: with like Philippines and Peru and by you know, organizations
Speaker 2: that work with highlighting these things. Is like, you know,
Speaker 2: if the international spotlight is on, that's a level of protection, right,
Speaker 2: That's like it makes the repression more costly. So that
Speaker 2: kind of makes it any Anything that we do in
Speaker 2: order to highlight and call out that repression and call
Speaker 2: it for what it is, offers some level of protection
Speaker 2: against repression, criminalization, or you know, in the worst instance,
Speaker 2: death for people. So I think that's really important to
Speaker 2: remember and for those on the front lines and for
Speaker 2: those of you and me who who in different ways
Speaker 2: right about this and research this is that that's worth it.
Speaker 3: That's great. Thank you, that's such an interesting I didn't
Speaker 3: know about your personal background.
Speaker 8: That's really interesting.
Speaker 3: Well, it must be that much more interesting and scary
Speaker 3: to see this sort of like turn in Peru for you.
Speaker 13: Yeah, that's it for this time.
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