Between cooperation and conflict: New climate activists and the environmental movement in Czechia (and elsewhere)

Although the environmental movement has been around for a long time, it is going through a visible transformation right now. This is mostly due to the mobilization of newly established political actors, such as Fridays for Future (FFF) and Extinction Rebellion (XR), which focus on the pressing issue of climate change and its social consequences. Actions by FFF and XR immediately led to conflict within the environmental movement and with society as a whole. Within the movement this conflict has mostly hinged on the strategies used by XR, which has on several occasions targeted transportation lines and crossings, including lines of public transportation. In the eyes of the established groups, these strategies were ill conceived because they alienated ordinary people who use public transport, while they missed the real target, such as the big fossil fuel industry. Further, XR has been accused of fragmenting the existing networks of environmental movement, attracting mostly educated metropolitan elites unable to understand the needs of the working class. In the post-communist context, XR has also been criticized for copying the strategies of the British chapter and applying them in a completely different social context. Moreover, since the issue of climate change has been articulated by local groups, such as We Are the Limits in Czechia, some critics argue that the new activists tend to overlook what has already been achieved by home-grown groups. In this paper we focus on the trajectory and outcomes of interactions between new climate activists and the established groups in the Czech environmental movement. The paper uses both data from the interviews with activists and data on cooperation patterns in public events, utilizing the tools of social network analysis.