Antitax protests leveraged climate policy to expose power inequities.

Evidence

The most emblematic of such demands centered on the traditionally right-wing territory of antitax grievances. On the face of it, protesting an anticarbon fuel tax would be the natural territory of climate-change deniers and anti-environmental conspiracists. Yet here protesters leveraged a counter-speculation that was purposely aimed at revealing the power inequities behind the government’s policy. They denounced a “pseudo-environmentalism” with no intention to “punish the actual polluters” while doing “much to make daily life just that bit harder for many more” (Stetler 2020). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 336

Categorization

• QUESTION: Was this counter-speculation genuinely aimed at power inequities, or is the author over-reading (or laundering) the movement’s actual climate denial sympathies?