By Moiz Maqsood
When I walked into “The Bike Shed” in lovely Inverness to watch Fires and Fascism, I wasn’t too sure about what to expect. It was an exhibition in a humble coffee shop in Inverness, to show off Imperial alumni, Dr Pete Knapp’s documentary passion project. There were about twenty-five people of various ages and backgrounds, gathered to watch this documentary which Pete claims is about community.
Over three months, Pete was a journeyman, travelling around various towns and cities in Europe that have been affected by fires in recent years. He engaged in conversation with the local population gaining insight as to why these fires occurred and ultimately uncovered links between big business and organised crime and these fires.
He starts his film in Evros, Greece, where in 2023, the largest wildfires in the EU broke out and destroyed 239,000 acres of forests, claiming twenty lives, according to the BBC. This region is home to a wall, akin to Mr Trump’s pet project, separating Greece and Turkey manned by immigration officers, which demonstrates quite perfectly the outlook the Greeks have with illegal migration. In the film, a lone officer mans this desolate object; the film exquisitely displays how alien and strange and arbitrary this idea of restriction between land really is.
Soon after the fires started, Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis stoked the proverbial flame and suggested that migrants were responsible for the fires. Without any evidence, he told his parliament: “It is almost certain the causes were man-made. And it is also almost certain that this fire started on routes that are often used by illegal migrants.” Mr Mitsotakis fails to mention that Evros experienced fifty-five forest fires in August of 2023 alone! He doesn’t talk about how his government would rather spend its budget on border guards and a wall to keep immigrants out, rather than funding fire fighting services in the area. The film points out that non-profit organisations such as the Panhellenic Federation of Volunteer Forest Protection and Firefighting Organisations have more equipment and are better funded than these official governmental firefighting services. The nefarious finger wagging to refugee communities does nothing than to obfuscate from the real danger facing us all – climate change.
He moves to Sicily next, where he exposes the systemic use of fires by the mafia to burn down local, independent farmland. He talks to various farmers who explain to him the mechanisms of how the mafia operates now. This burnt, non-arable land is then bought and used to build windmills over. In a strange irony, Pete reveals how governmental subsidies for environmental progress are being exploited by insidious agents of profit. When I asked Pete about this after the showing, he explained to me that despite far-right claims of being “tough on crime,” that these political actors ultimately prioritise capital over everything else.
In Portugal, paper companies planted squadrons of eucalyptus trees in the name of reforestation. Eucalyptus trees burn much faster, much livelier and at a higher rate than the native species of these forests. As the film explains, Portugal is the biggest eucalyptus pulp and paper producer, and it boasts the largest percentage area of eucalyptus plantations in the world. Despite constant activism and protests of the continuation of this eucalyptus predicament, government officials seem to be doing nothing, once again, turning the other cheek to protect capital interests.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though, as Knapp manages to capture hope in each of these otherwise dire situations. In Sicily, a landscaper explains the simple use of high-vis jackets at locations that are at risk of being targeted by the mafia. In Portugal, local communities have heard the silence of the government and decide to take matters into their own hands, by tearing up and uprooting the eucalyptus trees en masse.
And he doesn’t just stop there, as he moves through the entirety of the country, talking to regular, working-class folks about their own communities, warts and all. In Inverness, where I attended a screening, he led a discussion about the film and then twenty or so of us discussed various topics. Amongst them; the history of how a factory near Inverness had caused skin rashes on the local population due to environmental malfeasance by the factory owners; the disconnection between younger and older generations with regards to political polarisation and turning the A9 into a dual carriageway. I took a peek at his notes that he was taking during our discussion and was pleasantly surprised to see that there were detailed notes from every discussion that he had around the country. He was taking in what people from these various communities cared about and was even trying to come up with solutions to some problems, such as what changes could be made to schooling in this new age of rapidly evolving technology. What was obvious was that Pete is passionate about community and believes that an empathetic, connected, and inclusive community is the way forward through this political moment we find ourselves in.
So, by the end of my brief visit into Pete Knapp’s work, I was ultimately more well informed into how the climate crisis is inextricably linked to the worst actors in our society. I also walked away, recognising the importance of actually connecting with people, and that theory needs to be implemented into practice. If we really want to combat this far right element in our societies, then we need to become the change we want to see.
