In April 2023 the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, decided to “dissolve” Les Soulèvements de la Terre, an environmental collective that shares many parallels with Extinction Rebellion. In a news magazine controlled by Vincent Bolloré, a Catholic billionaire and France’s prime facilitator of climate skepticism and far-right propaganda, he went so far as to accuse those who inspired the movement of “intellectual terrorism.” Not intimidated by this underhanded move of a leading politician, two dozen Les Soulèvements de la Terre supporters, including high-profile ones such as Greta Thunberg and Philippe Descola, gathered in front of the Conseil d’État, France’s supreme court for administrative justice. Their protest was effective; at least, the Conseil temporarily suspended the dissolution. And the environmental collective, notwithstanding the Minister’s shameless and all-too-blatant ruse to associate it with ecoterrorism, remains very much alive and kicking.

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