From Mindbombs to Firebombs: The Narrative Strategies of Radical Environmental Activism Documentaries

The article examines the narrative strategies of two documentary films that give insight into the direct-action campaigns of two radical environmental groups; Jerry Rothwell’s How to Change the World (2015) recounts the birth of Greenpeace and its development of “mindbomb” communication strategies. Marshall Curry’s If a Tree Falls (2011) chronicles the rise and fall of the Earth Liberation Front and its tactics of ecotage. Situating both films in the larger history of radical environmentalism in the United States, the article explores the affective side of their rhetoric on two levels: on the level of the activists’ own communication strategies and on the level of the films made about these activists and their strategies. It argues that making a documentary film about radical environmentalist groups raises moral questions for the filmmaker and that, each in his way, Rothwell and Curry have both made films that straddle the line between ostensible objectivity and sympathetic advocacy for the individuals they portray.

THE RELATION BETWEEN POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

The aim of this paper is examination of general relationship between political ideology and radical environmental activism, with a special focus on considering the extent of influence and the exact position of the politics in the domain of mentioned eco-activism. Within the first four parts, the general characteristics of radical environmentalism, as well as its relationship with the political left-wing, political right-wing and apolitical/anti-political beliefs are analyzed, while the final part is devoted to discussion and general conclusions. Among other things, it was concluded that the basic ideological dimension of radical eco-activism is based on the idea of biocentrism, as the original environmental and nonpolitical category, while political ideological elements represent secondary and facultative components that can influence the specification of the ideology of a part of eco-activists. At the same time, it was pointed out that the proper perception of such (i.e. secondary) position of political beliefs within the radical eco-activism creates a precondition for understanding heterogeneity and frequent contradictions in the political beliefs of radical eco-activists.