After having acknowledged the “failure of society” to do without fossil fuels, the group of climate activists Letzte Generation (Last Generation) declared on its website on Tuesday that it was ending its demonstrations. “We no longer see any prospect of success,” it explained, saying that it had “protested despite violence, death threats and fines of several tens of thousands of euros”. The government must now “assume”, according to it, the imminent death of “billions of people” due to global warming.
Over the past two years, Letzte Generation’s actions have hit the headlines in the Alpine country. They stuck their hands to the asphalt to block car traffic or threw ink on master paintings to denounce the cooperation of museums with the oil industry. But this collective of about 280 people encountered a firm reaction from the public authorities who multiplied the complaints, opposing their logic of awareness with a necessary maintenance of order.
The conservative ÖVP party, in power in Austria, welcomed in a press release the “dissolution” of an “extremist group” having understood, “after numerous legal proceedings”, that there existed “neither fundamental right sabotage” nor “lawless zones” in the streets of the country. “I have always considered that deliberately complicating people’s lives was a mistake,” reacted Chancellor Karl Nehammer on X. “No one is above the law, whatever the cause we defend,” he added.
The NGO Letzte Generation deplores this forced stop in Austria, seeing it as “a warning”. It will however continue its activities in Germany, where linked to other movements of civil disobedience in Europe, it also makes itself heard very regularly.
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