Contribution short abstract

The contribution examines alliances formed and abandoned by activists opposing Tesla’s car factory in Germany. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it highlights conflicts over water, authoritarianism and capitalism within the movement.

Contribution long abstract

Immediately after Elon Musk announced that he would build a car factory in Grünheide, Germany, environmental activists were alerted and organized resistance against the project. They therefore united neighbours from different political backgrounds. Their reasons to protest were thus various, causing controversies about the aims of the protest. The parts of the protest that rejected the factory and criticized its capitalist logic in a more general way prevailed. They therefore sacrificed more reformist, liberal and conservative positions in the protest, aligning instead with a global climate justice movement. Based on a fundamental critique of capitalism they started connecting with urban anticapitalist groups in Germany, rural activists in France and anti-extractivism activists from Chile. Water became a unifying theme. On the other hand the total rejection of the factory itself became one factor to hinder an alliance with unionized workforce of the factory. Being both confronted with largely antidemocratic dynamics in and around the factory and with bounding concepts of the metabolic rift and a double exploitation, this mutual ground could have only been used poorly for a practical alliance between workers and climate activists. An environment-vs-jobs-dilemma could have not been overcome so far. In my contribution I want to elaborate on these dynamics, the ground for existing alliances and the hindering factors for others. I therefore rely on data from my ethnographic fieldwork in Grünheide.