One of the main propositions of All In: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse is that “we need to focus on a movement ecosystem composed of organizations that agree on the ruptural model of transformation”. Through several conversations with comrades from different countries, mainly in the Global North, I realized there was a lack of clarity about what a ruptural organization can look like in practice and even how to know if your work is aligned with a ruptural model of transformation. This is not surprising, taking into account that, as it is also admitted in All In, “a credible ruptural movement doesn’t exist in Europe or in North America” and a big part of the climate justice movement is not paying that much attention to the several examples of ruptural movements (successful or not) that have existed in the past.
With this article, inspired by some of these conversations and by a previous article I wrote proposing that groups adopted a ruptural theory of change, I mean not only to repeat this invitation but also to bring more clarity about what does it change when you adopt a ruptural path and how can this look like.
Why is it time for rupture?
I’ll avoid repeating what is already written in All In about why we need to build a ruptural movement fast. However, there are two arguments made in the book that this article takes for granted, so it may be useful to remind them:
The first one is that organizations strategize based on their model of transformation, which can be either “inside the system”, “outside the system”, or “ruptural”. These 3 models of transformation are mutually incompatible frameworks.
The second one is that only the ruptural model of transformation will have a chance to stop climate collapse. To prevent climate breakdown, we need an end to fossil fuels in the Global North by 2030. This existential necessity will not be given by the capitalist system, which, at the time of this writing, is burning and investing in more fossil fuels despite knowing about the climate crisis for decades.
If we want to stop climate and social collapse, we need to be honest with ourselves and society: governments and companies will not solve the crisis they’ve created. It’s their feet on the accelerator towards climate hell. We need to stop trying to convince them to choose a different route. We need to stop them and take the wheel. We need to build a ruptural climate justice movement fast, a movement that accepts the task of achieving system change by 2030.
What does adopting a ruptural model of transformation change in practice?
Two years ago, Climáximo, the grassroots climate justice collective in Lisbon that I am part of, accepted that governments and companies have declared war against society and the planet. This framework increased Climáximo activists’ focus and commitment, made our ruptural model of transformation more explicit to society, and made what we were saying to the public and what we already believed long before that moment more coherent: governments and companies will not solve the crisis they’ve created, the responsibility to stop climate and social collapse lies with us (us not as Climáximo, but us as society at large). Together, we – ordinary people everywhere – need to build a massive and popular movement that achieves the “disarmament and peace plan”. The required change is incompatible not only with the current government, but with this system. Later in this article, I will elaborate on how your organization can follow the same approach and why I believe it should. However, for an organization to be ruptural, it doesn’t necessarily need to adopt the same grand strategy or even to have such an explicit approach.
What matters to infer an organization’s theory of change is not only what it appears to be doing or telling the public at one particular moment. If the organizers and activists that compose the organization have an honest answer to the questions “how long do we have to stop climate collapse?” and “will it be possible to have an end to fossil fuels in the Global North by 2030 within the capitalist system?”, then their organization will need to have as a goal not to make the government/companies/institutions cave in to the group’s pressure, but to change the overall system under which these institutions operate, striving for a rupture with the system (meaning, revolution) within climate deadlines. So, it also matters how the members of an organization see that change will happen and how they see their organization’s strategy contributing to rupture. At some point, you will also need to be honest with everyone following you about your goal to change the system because you will need them to act accordingly, so you also need to make sure that what you are currently doing is not contradictory to that end goal to avoid losing the people you’ve managed to mobilize. However, as we will see, you can try to pursue strategies that aim to radicalize society as you go, as long as you don’t lose focus of where you are going.
One of the misunderstandings I’ve realized many organizers have about the meaning of rupture is around demands to the government. Climáximo is indeed saying that we shouldn’t be demanding anything from governments and companies, and I will later repeat this argument. However, it is not true that we judge an organization as being ruptural or not simply based on whether they have or haven’t demands to their governments. For instance, the reason that in All In it is said that the A22 Network is operating under the inside the system model of transformation is not solely based on the fact that all its chapters’ demands are aimed at the government. It is also based on the readings of its strategy documents and articles and multiple conversations we’ve had with core organizers and members from different countries about how they see that the necessary change to stop climate breakdown will happen. If this sounds too abstract, let’s look at two examples around this issue.
The first example aims at showing that not asking stuff to the government doesn’t mean you have a ruptural model of transformation. An example of this would be most anarchist groups, in particular the ones following the “evolutionary outside-the-system approach” (as defined in All In). Let’s say that, for instance, your strategy is to create several self-managed factories or community centers to build alternatives on the margins of the system and to build people’s power from the bottom-up. If you are doing this intending to change the system through the competition of these powerful alternatives with the institutions of the system, then you are not demanding anything from the establishment, you are hoping to create the alternative yourself. However, this is different from the ruptural approach, as you are not trying to attack the state but to build alternatives outside of it.
The second example aims at showing that asking stuff to the governments doesn’t mean that your organization is not following a ruptural model of transformation. A familiar example to me is Fridays For Future (FFF) Lisbon and its “End Fossil: Occupy!” campaign in Portugal1. In 2022, FFF Lisbon started to do occupations in different schools and universities, demanding an end to fossil fuels by 2030 to the Portuguese government. Currently, they have an ultimatum to the Portuguese government, with a letter signed by thousands of Portuguese students from dozens of different high-schools and universities saying that if the government fails to deliver their demand until end of April, they will walk out of their schools and shut them down for a period of two weeks, after which, if the government continues to fail to implement this demand, they will come back for a longer amount of time, shutting down even more schools, and so on.
Although they are demanding stuff to the government, there’s not a single activist in Fridays For Future Lisbon that has been part of the group for more than two months that believes that the government (be it this one, or the next one, as Portugal is currently facing a political crisis and we are once more heading for an electoral period) will give them what they are asking for. Their goal is to use the fact that the governments will not give them this existential demand to legitimize the argument that it will be impossible to solve the climate crisis within this system. With this, they intend to continuously radicalize more and more students through the fact that this system is incapable of giving them what is needed to secure their lives, hoping to delegitimize the system while building a massive radical youth movement that will revolt against it.
I’m not trying to argue that this is a good strategy, I’m just trying to illustrate that it’s not the fact that a certain group has instrumental demands to the government that places it under the “inside-the-system” box. There can be several strategical reasons for your group to continue making instrumental demands to the government, and I can even understand how this can be more simple to communicate to the public. So, a lot of times we need to look deeper to infer a group’s model of transformation, analyzing their overall strategy and escalation plan (regardless of whether it works or not), understanding the beliefs of the members of the organization, and paying attention to how the leaders of the movement tell their members that change will happen and what the end goal is of the tactics and strategies they are currently undertaking.2
Why does Climáximo propose that your organization accepts and starts saying to the public that governments and companies have declared war against society and the planet?
As I’ve said previously, accepting this framework was the way we, in Climáximo, found to make our model of transformation, our overall strategy, our tactics and our external communication coherent, although we’ve had a ruptural model of transformation well before 2023 while we were doing campaigns that demanded stuff to the government.
The main goal of this article is not to persuade you to adopt the war framework, but to clarify what rupture can look like. However, I do believe that the war framework could be a game-changer to building the ruptural climate justice movement we need and that it has a chance to take us a step further towards global system change by 2030, by re-anchoring the climate justice movement in the necessary urgency and ambition and by giving the people who are, understandably, running out of hope that the governments/companies/institutions will listen to our cries, a new horizon under which to fight. Therefore, I will continue to propose to other groups that agree with the propositions in All In to accept that governments and companies have declared war against society and the planet. This proposal consists of a four-fold plan of action:
1. Accept that governments and companies have declared war against society and the planet
We need to accept that the climate crisis and all its impacts are a premeditated and coordinated act of violence led by governments and companies against society and the planet.
Governments and companies have known for decades that continuing to extract and burn fossil fuels would lead to more displacements than all previous wars put together and more deaths than it’s possible to count. They have consciously chosen to continue to shell humanity with carbon bombs, leading us toward social and climate collapse. They have been choosing to kill us for their profit for decades. They have declared war against society and the planet.
This is not a metaphor. Every way in which we can try to comprehend and explain the climate crisis is an understatement. This is also not just a narrative or slogan, it is a central and honest analysis about what is happening that brings with it serious strategical consequences. It is the basis for how we need to operate moving forward, and it’s where we need to anchor the people and the movement.
2. Don’t pressure the war criminals, focus on those responsible for stopping this war
Although governments and companies are the ones to blame, asking them to stop or pressuring them is a waste of time and energy. They have declared war against us. Asking them to stop would be as pointless as pressuring Hitler to stop the Holocaust or as ineffective as asking a dictator for more freedom.
So, although they are the ones to blame, it is we, ordinary people everywhere, who are responsible for stopping this war because we know they will not do it. Achieving an end to fossil fuels in the Global North by 2030 and any other step required to stop this war is a responsibility that lies with us, the people, not the war criminals.
Public disruption actions can be useful to start an honest conversation with society and to empower the people. Through them, we can focus on telling the people that we (society) are the ones responsible for stopping this war – because governments and companies won’t do it – and that they need to act and join the movement to stop this war before it is too late.
3. Targeting weapons of mass destruction while getting society to act
Fossil fuel infrastructures are weapons of mass destruction pointed by governments and companies towards our lives and the lives of everyone we care about. We know that war criminals cannot be pressured into giving up the arms through which they have been killing us for decades.
We should, through public disruption, tell people they need to stop consenting with the ongoing destruction and resist. But it’s through actions that focus on disrupting the weapons of mass destruction that we can show what society will need to do to stop the war, achieving the end of fossil fuels by 2030 and any other measure to stop the attacks against our lives.
This doesn’t mean abandoning public disruption, we can have both (either simultaneously, or in some coordinated fashion), but it means that we also need to 1) show what are the weapons threatening millions of lives, and to treat them as such; 2) show that, knowing that governments and companies will not be pressured into dismantling their weapons of mass destruction, a big part of resisting to this war will imply that the people carry out the necessary dismantlement.
If we can act together by targeting these weapons of mass destruction in different countries simultaneously, maybe we could start restoring some of the faith lost in the movement. This can reopen the possibility in peoples’ minds that the ongoing destruction can be stopped if we all start resisting it.
4. Movement learning process
We need an honest reflection of our movement’s failures and our own failures. We also need to share our learnings amongst committed organizers to be able to fail forwards.
At a time where our movement seems to be lost and committed organizers are looking for ways out, we need open and honest conversations about what these ways out are.
In practice, this means that we will need to create processes that enable us to have consequential evaluations and strategic discussions between all the organizers executing this proposal. We will need to regularly evaluate together if what we are doing is leading us closer to our goal and to be able to change what we are doing otherwise.
Taking on this approach also means sharing our failures, learnings, and reflections with other movement organizers and groups and being able to engage in strategic discussions with them as well. We will need to be attentive to what else is going on and find ways that enable us to articulate the different parts of our movement that are anchored on the same ambition to increase our overall strength.
This will imply honesty, accountability, openness, flexibility, disagreements, vulnerability, and investment in articulation.
Creating a ruptural organizational culture
The war framework is also an emotional and climate-realist anchor useful for our organizational culture and strategical processes. Accepting that the governments and companies have declared war against society and the planet is not something we are just proposing others to do, we’ve also had to do that difficult cognitive and emotional process between ourselves in Climáximo, and we continue to do it, either while we’re onboarding new members, or just by continuously reminding ourselves of this reality.
Being anchored on this framework gives us two other organizational advantages:
1) It allows us to stay strategically focused on the ruptural approach, and it gives us a coherent and honest lens through which we can analyze reality without falling under distractions. For instance, when there is an electoral period, no one in Climáximo thinks that we will be able to pressure candidates that are running for a post on a destructive system into stopping this war once they are elected, because it is not just a matter of “the right person being in charge”. This analysis of reality allows us to stay strategically focused on the ruptural theory of change in the face of sociopolitical developments. It also gives us clarity about how to best engage at each moment with organizations that are operating under a different model of transformation.
2) It also helps us to establish a ruptural culture within our organization. Militants that have accepted that they are fighting to stop a planetary war perpetuated by governments and companies know that they will face repression, know they will face negative backlash from people and organizations that still believe that the solution to climate and social collapse can be found within this system, know it will be hard to mobilize people that haven’t yet accepted the reality that they and the people they love are under attack by those they believe are supposed to protect them, and know that they have to act with the commitment, seriousness and camaraderie required to act against a planetary war with a deadline to be stopped.
I’m not saying that this is a perfect solution to all the strategical and cultural issues that naturally emerge inside organizations. However, it is an extremely useful tool to anchor ourselves in the ambition, realism, emotional connection, honesty, accountability and flexibility that is required in the face of climate and social collapse. If your organization is working under the ruptural model of transformation, whether it decides to accept Climáximo’s invitation to adopt the war framework or not, it needs to find ways to create and maintain a ruptural organizational culture in order to stay focused on the task of dismantling capitalism by 2030.
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I know there are several organizers out there with way more experience, abilities, and resources to build international movements, and we want to work with all the organizers that agree that the time for rupture has come to rebuild, while re-anchoring, our movement to a position where it could be possible to stop this war before it is too late. If any part of this proposal to build a movement that can stop the war governments and companies have declared against society and the planet before it is too late resonated with you, if you don’t believe that we can keep going for the next years as we have for these last decades, and know that it’s time for rupture and to stop this war, let’s talk.
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Alice Gato is a climate justice activist from Portugal since she was 16, and is currently doing most of her activism in Climáximo. She was one of the main organizers of Fridays For Future Portugal and one of the co-founders of the End Fossil Occupy international campaign. She has been active in several international initiatives of the climate movement, and leading some of them, such as the 5th International Ecosocialist Encounters and the Earth Social Conference.
Footnotes
1 Please note that, as far as I’m aware of, this only applies to the Lisbon chapter of Fridays For Future/End Fossil and not necessarily to the other branches of either FFF or End Fossil in other countries.2 This can also mean that probably there are dozens of ruptural movements we are not even aware of from countries (particularly in the Global South) where the repression is to elevated for us to be able to infer what is the real model of transformation of the group, because even talking with other activists from other countries about the desire for reforms can be a threat to the movement survival, let alone talking about revolutionary aspirations publicly.
