Dissensus Rhetoric in Youth Climate Justice Activism

The youth climate justice movement Fridays for Future (FFF) is the largest and globally most diverse climate protest to date. Since 2018, it has been part of shaping public perception on climate politics. FFF has been critiqued both for lacking political radicality and for politicizing climate change through its emphasis on justice and intersectional alliances. Through a content analysis of FFF’s Instagram posts, observations at protests, and interviews with global activists, I analyze the movement’s dissensus rhetoric. I show that FFF articulates three lines of conflict positions: between children and adults, between the most affected by climate change and the ones most responsible for it, and between the people and the elite. These antagonistic relations correspond to three conceptions of justice: intergenerational, global, and democratic justice, all of which are negotiated online, in the activist community, and physically at protest events. I argue that this dissensus rhetoric politicizes rather than depoliticizes climate politics.