Autonomous struggle, infrastructure sabotage, and propaganda
A political ecology of media manipulation in the case of Lützerath
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12979352 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elena Salmansperger (0009-0007-7257-3384, Film Independent, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Geography (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1942-7786 • E-ISSN: 2633-674X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/19427786251395653 |
| OpenAlex | W4416697481 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
In this visual intervention, I demonstrate the connections between corporate-state propaganda and anti-mining struggles through four film-scenes that document the defense of Lützerath, a squatted hamlet in the German Rhineland. This essay demonstrates and seeks to explain the deceptive communication entailed in dominant media narratives, which delegitimizes acts of sabotage on mining infrastructure through de-contextualizing Lützerath's defense. The essay does so by contrasting dominant media narratives to audio-visual material that conveys the Lützerath struggle in its historical and political context: as a space of creative and regionally rooted resistance, collective belonging, and diverse tactics in opposition to industrial expansion. While many scholars have juxtaposed dominant and counter narratives in the context of socio-ecological conflicts, this essay embeds such a contrast within a theory of propaganda and audio-visual recordings from living in Lützerath at the edge of the opencast lignite mine Garzweiler II
Context (archaeology · Media ecology · Narrative · Opposition (politics · Political ecology · Politics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Mining and Resource Management · Water Governance and Infrastructure
A faultline in neoliberal environmental governance scholarship? Or, why accumulation-by-alienation matters
Subverting green growth propaganda
The hard work of future-making
Behind the Invisible Curtain of Scholarly Criticism
The Propaganda Model Revisited
Lügenpresse
Toward a Science of Propaganda
Normalising corporate counterinsurgency
Securing accumulation by restoration - Exploring spectacular corporate conservation, coal mining and biodiversity compensation in the German Rhineland
Greening extractivism
What's ontology got to do with it? On nature and knowledge in a political ecology of the 'green economy
Aesthetics of green dispossession
Frontline anthropology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |