How the car become the battleground at the centre of the climate change culture wars.
Since the pandemic, there has been a growth of conspiracies that centre on the so-called ‘war on cars’. The far right argue that government measures to reduce fossil fuels are a stealth attack on ordinary people’s individual liberty, the nuclear family, the ‘energy-secure’ nation, and ‘the people’. And they have come out both online and the streets, in opposition to urbanist policies such as the ’15-Minute City’, ULEZ [Ultra Low Emission Zones] and LTN [Low Traffic Neighbourhoods], alongside rural movements across Europe that feel that they have been ignored in favour of the city. Such protests also fold in attacks on the family, gender and reinforce paranoia around ‘the Great Replacement’. In The Great Driving Right Show, the Zetkin Collective unpacks the origins of these conflicts and shows how, as the climate crisis worsens, the political right has inverted the narrative, treating solutions as more threatening than the crisis itself. This eventually evolves in attacks on Electric Vehicles, increased oil production and attacks on minorities.
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