RA Blow Up Pipelines or No Way

[Harrison J Bounel]

State Universities Are Teaching Students To Blow Up Oil Pipelines, Records Show

‘How to Blow Up A Pipeline’ author wants to send message to 'capitalists' that 'their properties will be trashed'

By  Luke Rosiak
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Feb 26, 2024   DailyWire.com
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(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

At least sixteen universities are promoting the book “How to Blow Up A Pipeline,” which outlines for readers how to commit eco-terrorism — oftentimes making it required reading, a Daily Wire investigation found.

The book was published in 2021 by Swedish professor Andreas Malm and calls for terrorism and overthrowing capitalism, acknowledging that people will be killed as a result. “Demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed,” the book says.

Now multiple state-funded universities took classes that were nominally on unrelated topics, and contorted them into courses that read just four books, including the pipeline manifesto and a communist manifesto. At the University of California-Berkeley, for example, students of Geography & Interactive Biology were required to read the book. Instructors Jake Kosek and Paul Fine took what was ostensibly a biology course and transformed it into one on “decolonization.” The syllabus states that the “class focuses on the scientific practice of modern botanical taxonomy as a colonial formation that conditions our modern relations” and how the names of plants “were often forged to be of service to empire-building.”

The lessons across the country suggest that universities’ support for terrorism extends beyond the students supporting Hamas on many campuses. In fact, the book looks to Palestinian terrorists for inspiration, advising that, “As part of the mass resistance in the besieged Gaza Strip in the spring of 2018, Palestinians invented techniques for sending kites and helium-inflated condoms carrying incendiary materials across the wall to burn Israeli property.”

U.S. intelligence identified the book as a “developing threat” and security risk because “Malm encourages pipeline sabotage and property destruction.” Twenty-three government agencies, including the FBI, warned that the film adaptation of the book, released in 2023, could spark terrorism.

A New York Times interviewer was taken aback at Malm’s willingness to cause death. “It’s hard to think that deaths don’t become inevitable if there is more sabotage,” the interviewer said.

“Sure, if you have a thousand pipeline explosions per year, if it takes on that extreme scale. But we are some distance from that, unfortunately,” Malm answered.

“Don’t say ‘unfortunately,’” the interviewer interjected.

“Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents,” Malm replied.

Malm said he hasn’t had the opportunity to blow up a pipeline personally but that he would “gladly participate” if given the opportunity.

“If I were part of a group where something like blowing up a pipeline was perceived as a tactic that could be useful for our struggle, then I would gladly participate,” he said. “I have engaged in as much militant climate activism as I have had access to” and “I’ve done things that I can’t tell you or that I wouldn’t tell others publicly.”

He said he trained his four-year-old son to “be on the lookout for S.U.V.s” because the child “knows these are the bad cars” and has “an awareness of the tactic of deflating S.U.V. tires.”

His own children were not the only youth being inculcated with an ideology of destruction.

In Spring 2022, City University of New York professor Joseph Mohorcich required students to read the book as part of a course called Politics and Human Survival, which persuaded students that without radical action, “everyone could die a terrible death.” Students were also required to read “Revolutionary Suicide” by Black Panthers member Huey Newton, who was accused of murder and rape. Mohorcich wrote a paper called “What level of resistance to air pollution is justified? On violence and self-defense.”

Arizona State University, a public university, required students of Professor Mina Suk’s “Are Humans Special? Environmental Theory” to read “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” that same semester.

The University of California, San Diego required it in a class taught by Professor of Environmental Physics Brad Werner called “CGS 110 Intersectional Struggles for Environmental Justice.” The course says it focuses on “Colonial, capitalist and imperialist exploitation of and damage to the environment” and how “resistance developed,” using “Critical Gender Studies Frameworks.” It includes “role-play exercises and simulations of exploitive/extractive-resistance movement systems.” Werner once argued for “sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups” because the Earth was “f**ked.”

The University of Washington required it in “Special Topics in Rights,” where Professor of Political Science Jamie Mayerfeld asks, “Does capitalism help or hinder responsible climate policy? Is socialism a better way?” On the syllabus under the heading “What Should Activists Do?” is “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” Only four other books are required; one is How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century and another is A Planet to Win: The Case for a Green New Deal.

At Illinois State University, students in an English class are required to read only four books, one of which is “How To Blow Up a Pipeline.” Another is a book on Marxism by Friedrich Engels, whom Vladimir Lenin called “the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat.” Professor Christopher Breu describes capitalism as “cancerous” and “violence.”

Next semester, Ohio State University may change the title of “Environmental Citizenship” to “Climate Justice,” and require students to read the book as one of only four required readings. Another of the four is “Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards The Idea of Degrowth Communism.” That book, sold for $110, argues for making Western countries poorer.

The course will no longer focus on “interdisciplinary perspectives on the environment,” but instead on “political strategies for climate change” and “capitalism.” Professor Joel Wainwright warns ominously that “The carbon profiteers hope you fail to connect the dots,” and argues for overthrowing not only capitalism, but also the concept of sovereign rule.

Wainwright, a geography professor, is the author of Rethinking Palestine and Israel: Marxist Perspectives. In his book “Climate Leviathan,” he praised “the most radical strategies of the climate justice movement” and called for “revolutionary events” overthrowing the U.S. government as well as that of China, because China is too “capitalist.”

A spokesman for Ohio State said the course “is not listed for summer or autumn 2024,” though the change request form says “Autumn semester 2023 Tuesday & Thursday, 9:35-10:55 A.M.” and is listed as having been approved at every level except one, with the final one pending.

None of the other universities responded to requests for comment.

The Department of Homeland Security defines terrorism as any act that “is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources.”