Subverting green growth propaganda: Degrowth, autonomous struggle, and media

AKC Collective (2023) has recently invited degrowth scholarship to engage with autonomous struggles in less abstract ways, specifically pointing at its tendency to "certify" rather than learn with and from them.Echoing this invitation, we suggest that an (eco)anarchist approach to corporate media may help to understand the creation and resilience of green growth narratives.We demonstrate this in the case of anti-mining struggles around Ltzerath, Germany, where we explore the role of integrative propaganda (Ellul, 1965(Ellul, /1973) ) in managing this socio-ecological conflict.Building on ethnographic research, we identify and illustrate dominant narratives on a corporate-state agreement known as the "RWE-deal," Ltzerath's symbolism, and left extremism; all of which omit, distort, and distract from the dissent emerging from Ltzerath.We then analyze these dominant narratives as (un)intentionally manipulated by exploring news production at Rheinische Post Media Group through Herman and Chomsky 's (1988/2002) Propaganda Model.Building on a discussion around dominant narratives as a form of psychological warfare, we draw out how dominant narratives are intertwined and rely on centering the lifestyle and culture of Ltzerath's inhabitants to secure green growth narratives.We then elaborate on how cherishing the practice of re-inhabiting can help scholars in engagements with autonomous struggle.m deep mine.Unimpressed, Gentian merely shrugs.They conclude that all the lecture offered was a repetitive list of reforms and hint at the irony of contemplating the relevance of autonomous struggle against industrial expansion to degrowth (Field notes, 24/09/2022; 05/10/2022). 1 At times, when the green economy can be understood as a discourse that strategically prevents radical socio-ecological change through mitigating ecological anxiety (Dunlap, 2023a), degrowth is increasingly important in addressing the improbability of, and injustices associated with, green growth (Hickel Keyer Parrique et al., 2019;Tilsted et al., 2021).Moreover, this academic field and social movement is rich in proposals for less destructive and more egalitarian ways of socio-ecological organization (D'Alisa et al., 2015;Hickel, 2019).Public debates on anti-mining struggles in Ltzerath illustrate degrowth's relevance, as they rely largely on the misleading dichotomy between renewable and non-renewable energy sources (Dunlap & Marin, 2022).Yet, the friction between theory and practice described in the anecdote above has been well interpreted by the AKC Collective (2023).As local co-organizers of the 8 th International Degrowth Conference in 2021, the collective initiated the thematic stream called "Degrowth and Anarchism," thereby inspiring further debates on the relationship between these two 1 Parts of this work have been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the first author's master's degree in Development, Environment, and Cultural Change at the University of Oslo.Image 1: Huts and tree houses around the tower, where Ltzerath's inhabitants held regular village assemblies.