“Under the mantle of protecting critical infrastructure, the security state has rationalized a widespread surveillance program targeting opponents of destructive energy projects related to the tar sands or fracking and, to legitimize these practices, has also engaged in the construction of the anti-petroleum movement as a quasi-criminal identity….
We stress that these practices say much less (if anything) about the social realities of the groups under surveillance, while saying a great deal about the relationships of power and aspirations for control that animate the policing agencies who engage in” kind making.”
As a construction that emerges from the critical infrastructure assemblage of the security state, the “anti-petroleum movement” illustrates how settler colonial agencies normalize extractive capitalism while demonizing its opponents.”