Whether speaking of trees counts as political silence depends on the historical moment.

Evidence

Within the metaphoric groves of “growth,” we have witnessed a huge spectrum of literary tree politics. Bertolt Brecht, from his Danish exile in 1939 most memorably lamented the dark times he lived in, times of “terrible tidings”: “Ah, what an age it is / When to speak of trees is almost a crime / For it is a kind of silence about injustice!” The poem that bears those words—“An die Nachgeborenen” (To posterity or To the unborn)—has sometimes been invoked by those who wish to distinguish the hard, clear clarion call of radical politics from the soft claims of environmentalism. Yet Brecht was clearly writing into a particular cultural moment—into an ascendant fascism, a powerful strain of blood-and-soil German romanticism implicated in Nazism’s ascent. As Kenya’s Green Belt Movement testifies, there are other eras when, for the sake of the unborn, we need to talk about trees with unremitting urgency; indeed, when to be silent about trees is to become complicit in an injustice to posterity. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 377

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly enriches ‘Grafting & Growth: On Trees as Infrastructure’ — Brecht’s claim that tree-talk silences injustice versus contexts (fascist blood-and-soil) and ecojustice contexts where tree-talk is itself urgent resistance.
• XREF: connects to: Contingency of historical conjunctures is a precondition for political possibility; Material plenty legitimately silences meaningful political opposition — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 107; Historical-political typologies are interpretive criteria, not rigid predicting schemata (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Contingency of historical conjunctures is a precondition for political possibility #qualifies (0.80)
• Localized critique gains its justification from the specific historical moment #corroborates (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 499
• Deconstruction paradoxically requires political resistance to stay silent and unprogrammatic #complicates (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 321
• Material plenty legitimately silences meaningful political opposition #qualifies (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 107
• Historical-political typologies are interpretive criteria, not rigid predicting schemata #qualifies (0.72)