Making green extreme: defending fossil fuel hegemony through citizen exclusion

Abstract

ABSTRACT By marking protests as violent and protesters as extremists, politicians and governments around the world have reclassified citizens’ environmental engagement. Government rhetoric and accompanying legislative amendments establish a baseline by which citizens – and their causes – are excluded and discounted. This article contributes to understanding how environmental protesters and their activities are constructed as dangerous through analysis of recent legislation and surrounding debate in Queensland, Australia. This legislation sought to curb particular forms of protest in the name of protecting public order. These legislative responses are illustrative of how the Australian economy’s reliance on fossil fuel extraction is protected from critique. We show how the contestation of resource extraction is escalated by politicians to the level of a threat to the nation. While the state’s regulation of protests helps to protect the object of protest – in this case the fossil fuel industry – we demonstrate how such legislation is also shaped by the futures and logics promoted by the industry.