The intelligence services get out their calculator

Radical ecology: looking at the sabotage of France

Le Figaro, November 9, 2022

Deliberate fires of electrical boxes for 3G/4G antennas and relay antennas in Savoie, fiber cabinets set on fire by tires in Finistère, cables cut in Var or Isère, sabotage of protected sites in the name of “social justice” in Cahors and Haute-Garonne… This is the map of a France sabotaged methodically by ultra-left-wing and radical ecology groupings that Le Figaro has exclusively revealed.

Established by the Ministry of the Interior, it offers a staggering panorama of clandestine violence carried out in the name of defending the planet. According to this vertiginous inventory, no less than 104 violent actions have been recorded throughout the country in less than a year, between January 1 and October 30. Among the infrastructures targeted are mainly antennas, but also fiber optic installations.

Not always claimed, the “commando” type attacks are sometimes committed in sectors known to the intelligence services. This was the case for the wave of 8 acts of destruction perpetrated last month in small villages in the Haute-Vienne and Creuse regions, in the “Limousin mountains”, which have become a “stronghold” of the ultra-left. Some acts are so serious that they are disconcerting, such as the three coordinated actions carried out on October 18 to cut intercontinental submarine cables. “This attack, at the heart of a judicial investigation, was carried out in fifteen minutes and will result in enormous damage, which could be worth millions of euros,” says a police officer. About fifteen actions that targeted wind farms deployed in New Aquitaine and in Burgundy-Franche-Comté complete this picture of an eco-leftism which advances barely wearing a mask.

“Culture of clandestinity”

Analysts at the Ministry of the Interior say: by targeting telecoms, the activists intend to destroy a sector they perceive as a tool for state surveillance, which, via 5G in particular, would attempt to conduct mass surveillance. If they target energy, it would correspond to the desire to fight the “electrical order” supposed, still according to the red and black doctrine, to enslave the population, condemned to watch television or a computer screen rather than to revolt. “These activists have gone from a protest ecology to a radical ecology,” explains Inspector General Bertrand Chamoulaud, head of the Central Service of Territorial Intelligence (SCRT). For many militants, peaceful marches and leafleting are no longer useful, either for influencing the decisions of politicians or large companies that pollute, or for enforcing international agreements.”

While the world’s leaders are gathered for the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to try to stem climate change, the extremists of the environmental cause are taking action in all directions. And they are grafting themselves, in order to better infiltrate them, onto all the local mobilizations carried out against wind farms, projects for “large water basins” or even highway bypasses, as around Strasbourg. Very often, the protest starts from simple disgruntled citizens, before being caught up by more consolidated groups, which take them in hand,” analyzes Bertrand Chamou-laud. The methods of action, more effective than before, are part of a culture that goes back to the dismantling of the McDonald’s in Millau in 1999 by José Bové’s supporters as well as the ransacking of GMO fields by the volunteer harvesters. Now, civil disobedience has given way to a more militant, stronger and more violent vocabulary.

The group Extinction Rebellion illustrates this disturbing metamorphosis: claiming nonviolence from its inception in October 2018, its members chain themselves to railings and carry out actions of “media visibility” before the radical fringe, in large cities in particular, urges the base to switch to violence. In Lyon, in March 2021, its activists invaded the headquarters of Bayer, before smearing the interior of the offices with tags to protest against neonicotinoid insecticides. In Grenoble, as part of the “Rino”, otherwise known as the “November rebellion”, they storm the construction site of a shopping mall and attempt to destroy machinery by putting sand in the tanks. “This is real sabotage,” they say in the territorial intelligence service, where they noted that the “change of gear is accompanied by a strategy to hide and disguise themselves in order to escape the forces of order. Through encrypted networks, activists exchange advice on how to avoid being followed and identified. This culture of clandestinity, pushed to the extreme, reminds us of another era… “. Even if they know that the network is no longer interested in assassinating bosses, the services refer to the years of lead and the terrorist spectre of Direct Action, which shed blood in the 1970s. In the expectation of a “big night” painted in green, the most determined attack the forces of order, symbols of a “police state” that they abhor. “To the traditional black blocks can be added blue blocks, in blue clthes, or even white blocks, in painter’s suits, notes an investigator. Whatever the outfit, the aim is to do great harm with petanque balls, incendiary fireworks and Molotov cocktails.

For the battle around the agricultural “basin” site in Sainte-Soline, in the Deux-Sèvres, a fortnight ago, the cocktail was explosive: Extinction Rebellion, also called “XR”, got closer to the seasoned veterans of the Earth Uprising, who honed their skills at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. As revealed by Le Figaro on November 1st, members of DefCo, the Collective Defense, a small group also classified as ultra-left and based in Rennes, made the trip to the Deux-Sèvres to “break the gendarme”. Their slogan? Because there is only one justice, we must fight it.” From anti-capitalist verbiage, the newly radicalized have moved on to a more assertive tactic, which they call “ecosabotage” to seek to destroy the state apparatus and democratic organization. There are several hundred of them and they are very mobile on the territory. The risk of contagion is very real, judging by the presence of some 130 associations around the “basins” of the Deux-Sèvres.

A claimed “civil resistance”

On the front of a claimed “civil resistance”, the collective Dernière rénovation, newcomer in the galaxy of protesters, continues its hits. On Monday, its followers blocked the Parisian ring road for about thirty minutes to denounce an under-investment in thermal renovation in the budget vote. Appalled, motorists had to dislodge the intruders sitting on the road, inviting them to “get out of there”. The same anger had seized the users of the Paris bypass last April, when activists had already paralyzed traffic by sticking their hands on the asphalt with glue. At the end of October, a young diehard visiting the Musée d’Orsay was prevented from throwing soup on a painting by Gauguin to draw the public’s attention to the “societal collapse” that was looming. Just before, she intended to stick her face against another masterpiece, presumably Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting Self-portrait in Saint-Rémy. Shortly before, at the Opéra Bastille, a young man had tied himself by the neck with a bicycle lock to a ladder that was part of the set. The scenarios are more and more devious. The hypothesis of an escalation is not excluded by the services, which note that Italian militants have switched to the use of timers to start fires.

According to the police officers specialized in “violent subversion”, there is no reason for this fever of radical ecology to subside between now and the 2024 Olympics.

via: sansom translated by Act for freedom now!