Hollywood Money, Woke Radicalism, and the New Climate Extremism

Hollywood’s Climate Crusaders Fueling Activism

In a striking connection between California and Brussels, wealthy American celebrities have become key financiers of European climate activism. A Los Angeles-based nonprofit, the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), has funneled substantial grants to climate protest groups worldwide – including Belgium’s increasingly militant coalition Code Rood (Code Red). The CEF was co-founded in 2019 by activist philanthropists like oil-heiress Aileen Getty and filmmaker Rory Kennedy (daughter of Robert F. Kennedy). It raised over $5 million in 2022 alone to support “disruptive climate activism” across 44 organizations.

Behind this fund is a star-studded roster of progressive Hollywood donors. Jeremy Strong, award-winning actor from Succession, sits on CEF’s board and has reportedly contributed over €3 million to the cause. Adam McKay, director of Don’t Look Up, pledged $4 million (CEF’s largest personal donation) and publicly lauded the fund’s “commitment to funding civil, non-violent, disruptive activism”, insisting “we are past time for politeness, past time for baby steps”. Comedian Chelsea Handler has chipped in roughly €1 million, while Disney heiress Abigail Disney and other wealthy elites have also made sizable donations. Ironically, one founding donor is from “old oil money” – Getty’s family earned billions in oil, yet she now ardently bankrolls radical climate protests (even posing in an Extinction Rebellion jacket) to atone for that legacy.

All told, CEF’s Hollywood-backed war chest has become a “very important lifeline” for activist networks like Code Rood. Financial records reveal that since mid-2023, CEF grants to Code Rood have totaled on the order of €30,000, making it the single largest funding source for the Belgian climate coalition. (For context, Code Rood’s public donation pages list CEF as the top contributor, surpassing even groups like Extinction Rebellion Belgium.) These funds help cover materials, travel, food, communications, and especially legal defense for activists frequently arrested or sued due to their actions. In short, Hollywood money is quite literally fueling the logistical engine of climate activism in Europe.

Yet this raises an uncomfortable question: Do the celebrity benefactors know what their dollars are funding on the ground? The CEF explicitly restricts its grants to non-violent civil disobedience, aiming to “wake up” the public with creative disruptions (think protesters gluing themselves to art or halting traffic). But recent events in Belgium suggest some CEF-funded activists are crossing a line – from disruptive to destructive.

From Civil Disobedience to Extremism in the Climate Movement

Belgium’s national security watchdog OCAD sounded the alarm in mid-2025: a segment of the climate movement is radicalizing and “flirting with extremism”. What began as peaceful civil disobedience – blockading roads, occupying sites, and other measured law-breaking to spur climate action – has in some cases escalated into outright vandalism and dangerous sabotage. “The methods of action of certain groups have become harsher; some can hardly be labelled ‘activist’, but deserve the label ‘extremist’,” OCAD warned in a confidential report. Authorities are increasingly concerned that the space between legitimate protest and criminal extremism is narrowing.

The prime example was a high-profile protest on March 1, 2025 in the Port of Ghent. Under the banner of Code Rood (a coalition of over 20 climate organizations), hundreds of activists – including Swedish climate icon Greta Thunberg – swarmed facilities of the agribusiness giant Cargill. What ensued went far beyond chanting and holding banners. Small teams of militants pressed emergency stop buttons and sliced through safety data cables on industrial machinery. According to OCAD’s analysis of the incident, this caused a dangerous accumulation of gases in pipes and silos – “an acute explosion hazard” that could have led to a deadly blast.

Nearby, at the site of steelmaker ArcelorMittal, activists climbed onto a blast furnace gas pipeline and severed critical cables connected to its safety systems, forcing an emergency shutdown. Belgian officials acknowledged the protesters likely did not intend to endanger lives, but the fact is their sabotage “could have had fatal consequences”. This is a worrying new development, OCAD concluded, where climate protest tactics are teetering into physically perilous territory.

What’s driving this turn toward extremism? OCAD observes an “evolution towards more radical methods” within networks like Code Rood, with hardline factions increasingly calling the shots. More moderate climate activists – those who favor strict non-violence – are being marginalized. In their place, far-left extremist groups have gained influence under the climate umbrella. Belgium’s OCAD specifically names groups such as Gauche Anticapitaliste (a revolutionary socialist cadre) and France’s Les Soulèvements de la Terre (Earth Uprisings) as injecting militant anti-capitalist ideology into climate actions. At the Ghent protest, for instance, witnesses noted that slogans on signs and graffiti went beyond “Save the Planet” – fists and circled-A symbols, anti-capitalist mottos, and anarchist flags appeared alongside environmental messages. In effect, the climate cause is being fused with an anti-establishment, insurrectionary leftist agenda.

Even some longtime environmentalists have grown uneasy with this trajectory. The Belgian group “Grandparents for Climate” publicly distanced itself from Code Rood once the actions turned combative. After the port sabotage, many asked: Is Hollywood-aware that their donations are now underwriting this kind of extremism? The Climate Emergency Fund’s mandate is to back “disruptive but strictly non-violent” protests. Yet clearly some Code Rood affiliates crossed into violent (or at least dangerous) direct action, blurring the lines. This disconnect could put CEF’s wealthy donors in a tricky position – inadvertently financing radicals who undermine the very non-violent principles the donors espouse.

Belgian authorities, for their part, are grappling with how to respond. There are calls to draw a sharper line between acceptable civil disobedience and punishable sabotage. “It is important that we take this report seriously,” said one Belgian lawmaker, noting the growing violence from the extreme left and “the social acceptance of this” as cause for concern. Security services are not yet cracking down wholesale – the OCAD report was more warning than outright repression – but the message is clear: climate activism is at a crossroads, and parts of it risk sliding into outright extremism if unchecked.

Woke Convergence: Climate Activism Meets the Palestinian Cause

Another striking twist in this saga is how climate activism has recently spilled over into geopolitical conflict. Progressive activists often embrace a spectrum of “woke” causes, seeing them as interconnected fights against oppression. In late 2023 and 2024, as war flared between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, many climate justice groups declared solidarity with the Palestinian people. What does fighting fossil fuels have to do with Palestine? In the eyes of these activists, both struggles pit grassroots movements against what they view as systems of oppression and colonialism – whether petro-corporations or military occupations. The slogan “Climate Justice is Social Justice” took on a new dimension, extending to the Middle East conflict.

Even Greta Thunberg – arguably the face of youth climate activism – made headlines for taking a pro-Palestinian stance. In October 2023, Greta posted a photo holding a “Stand With Gaza” sign as part of her weekly climate strike, declaring that climate justice includes standing with those under oppression. The gesture drew sharp backlash in some quarters; critics accused her of veering off-topic or even abetting extremism. A bizarre controversy erupted over a stuffed blue octopus visible in her post, which some interpreted as an anti-Semitic symbol (an accusation Thunberg vehemently denied, explaining the toy was a symbol of neurodiversity and nothing more). Despite the noise, Thunberg doubled down on linking humanitarian issues with climate – tweeting that we must fight “one injustice, not ignore the others”.

It wasn’t just symbolic support. In Belgium, climate activists literally redirected their wrath toward companies tied to Israel’s defense industry amid the Gaza war. In June 2025, nearly 1000 protesters under a campaign called “Stop Arming Israel” blockaded and sabotaged two Belgian arms manufacturers (Syensqo in Brussels and OIP in Tournai) accused of supplying weapons used against Palestinians. Activists damaged equipment and spray-painted slogans, accusing the firms of aiding “genocidal acts” in Gaza. Notably, OCAD reported that while these particular actions were not officially under the Code Rood name, members of Code Rood were actively involved in the planning and training for them. In other words, the same network funded by Hollywood for climate protests seamlessly pivoted to direct action against Israel-linked targets – essentially melding climate activism with anti-war, pro-Palestinian activism.

For authorities, this “Gaza link” is troubling. It widens the scope of confrontations: what began as environmental civil disobedience now entangles foreign policy flashpoints like the Israel–Palestine conflict. OCAD called this shift “tactically significant” – the climate radicals are no longer limiting themselves to pipelines and power plants, but expanding into arms depots and defense contractors. The fear is that once global geopolitical grievances mix into local protests, the potential for violence and public disorder grows exponentially. Security analysts note parallels with anti-globalization and anti-imperialist protests of earlier decades, which sometimes spiraled into riots.

From the activists’ perspective, this convergence of causes is natural. They argue that the climate crisis and humanitarian crises are interlinked – often citing how wars (like those in the Middle East) are fueled by oil interests, or how climate stress can exacerbate conflicts. Many on the left see Palestine as a powerful moral rallying point, much like apartheid South Africa was in the 1980s, and believe fighting injustice anywhere is part of a holistic quest for a just world. However, this broad “woke” coalition can bring controversial bedfellows. Mainstream climate campaigners risk alienating supporters when they align with polarizing political causes or appear to condone violent resistance. Indeed, some critics seized on Thunberg’s Gaza solidarity as proof that the “woke climate movement” was losing its focus – or worse, tacitly siding with extremist entities (since Hamas, the de facto authority in Gaza, is designated a terrorist organization by the West). Conservative commentators argued that October 2023 marked a fracture point where parts of the left seemed to excuse or ignore terrorism for the sake of anti-colonial solidarity.

The truth is more nuanced – supporting Palestinian civilians is not the same as endorsing Hamas – but the optics and rhetoric matter. When climate activists chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at a climate rally, they inject themselves into a decades-long conflict far beyond greenhouse gases. It underscores how the current wave of left-wing activism blurs environmental, social, and political battles into one. And as the Belgian case shows, the tactics employed (e.g. sabotaging an Israeli-linked factory) can veer into what authorities consider criminal extremism. In effect, a portion of the climate movement is embracing a quasi-revolutionary stance, willing to break laws and confront state power on multiple fronts – climate, capitalism, colonialism – all at once.

Echoes of the 1970s: When the Left Turned to Terror

To observers with a sense of history, these developments carry an unnerving resonance. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Western countries witnessed the rise of militant left-wing groups that likewise began with idealistic protests and escalated into violence – often in solidarity with anti-imperialist causes abroad. The pattern is not identical, but the parallels are worth noting.

Back then, radical left organizations like the West German Red Army Faction (RAF), Italy’s Red Brigades, the Weather Underground in the U.S., and the Japanese Red Army all formed from the ferment of student and anti-war movements. They saw themselves as the militant wing of global revolutionary struggle. Crucially, many of these groups explicitly aligned with the Palestinian liberation movement, viewing it as a kindred anti-colonial fight against Western imperialism. In 1970, the founding members of the RAF trained in Jordan with Palestinian guerrilla factions – the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Fatah – “looking to the Palestinian cause for inspiration and guidance”. Far-left European militants forged bonds with Palestinian militants, sometimes literally fighting side by side.

This led to joint operations that blurred ideological lines between European leftist and Middle Eastern militant. A notorious example was the Lod Airport massacre in Israel (1972): three Japanese Red Army terrorists, recruited and guided by the PFLP, opened fire in Tel Aviv’s airport, killing 26 people. It was a shocking instance of a Japanese communist cell doing the bidding of a Palestinian terror group – all in the name of global anti-imperialism. Likewise, German radicals from the Revolutionary Cells collaborated with Palestinians in the 1976 Entebbe hijacking, selecting Jewish hostages during the standoff. And in 1977’s “German Autumn,” Palestinian gunmen hijacked a Lufthansa airliner (Flight 181 “Landshut”) specifically to demand the release of imprisoned RAF leaders. As one former RAF member later admitted, “without Palestinian support, the RAF would not have been in a position to engage in any action”. The symbiosis was clear: European leftist militants provided international reach and propaganda impact, while Palestinian factions provided training, weapons, and a unifying anti-Zionist, anti-Western narrative.

Of course, the context of the 1970s was different in many ways. Those leftist groups had explicitly taken up arms, committing assassinations, bombings and kidnappings that went well beyond the property damage and obstruction we see (so far) from climate extremists. The death toll from groups like RAF and the Japanese Red Army was tragically real. Today’s climate radicals have not (yet) crossed that threshold – they target infrastructure, not people. And importantly, the scale of popular support is different: while 1970s terrorists ended up isolated and condemned by most of society, the climate movement (even its radical wing) still enjoys a degree of public sympathy for its cause if not its methods.

Yet, the ideological through-lines are striking. Both then and now, we see a faction of the far-left concluding that the urgency of the cause justifies extreme measures. Back then it was the looming specter of fascism and colonial wars (Vietnam, Palestine, etc.) that “radicalized” youth into picking up the gun. Today it is the existential climate emergency – and intertwined injustices like racial and global inequality – that drive some activists to consider more drastic “resistance” beyond peaceful protest. In both eras, lines between protest and crime, civil disobedience and violent direct action, became blurred in the minds of true believers. And in both eras, Palestine emerged as a rallying cry that linked Western radicals to a broader anti-imperialist struggle, sometimes to the point of abetting violent actors in that struggle.

There is also a parallel in the way broader society reacts. In the early 1970s, many young people and intellectuals, even if they didn’t endorse violence, felt sympathy for the critiques voiced by groups like the RAF. A notable poll in 1971 found a quarter of West Germans under 40 felt some sympathy for the Baader-Meinhof gang’s “righteous” anger at the establishment. Similarly, a number of otherwise non-radical citizens today voice understanding (or at least tolerance) when climate activists deface a famous painting or block a highway, because they agree we face an emergency. That tolerance is tested, however, as tactics escalate. Already, one can sense a backlash growing against groups like Just Stop Oil or Code Rood when their disruptions or sabotage inconvenience thousands or risk lives. The question becomes: at what point does public sympathy snap, and authorities clamp down? The OCAD report in Belgium is analogous to the warnings issued about leftist militancy decades ago – a signal that patience is wearing thin and that a harsher response may be looming if the radical fringe continues on its current trajectory.

Conclusion: A New Wave or a Cautionary Tale?

The entanglement of Hollywood philanthropy, “woke” climate activism, and radical extremist tactics presents a complex, cautionary tale. On one hand, the infusion of celebrity money and attention has undoubtedly empowered the climate movement – helping it balloon from polite marches to headline-grabbing acts of civil disobedience that force the crisis into public discourse. The passion and urgency of young activists, exemplified by Greta Thunberg and her cohort, have succeeded in making leaders at least talk about a “climate emergency.” But as the movement’s edge becomes sharper – tolerating sabotage, defacing property, and flouting more laws – it risks undermining its moral authority and splintering its own base of support.

The cross-pollination with other causes like the Palestinian struggle further complicates the narrative. It broadens the movement’s purpose (connecting climate justice with global justice), but also broadens the list of its adversaries. Oil companies and governments are one thing; the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with its centuries of enmity and high emotions, is another battlefield entirely. Aligning with a cause that involves recognized terrorist groups (Hamas) opens climate activists to charges of endorsing violence, whether fair or not. It also gives ammunition to those who always painted environmentalists as “radical leftists” to say: Look, they’ve proved us right. Indeed, conservative voices now lump “climate warriors” in with a so-called “woke mob” that, in their view, has lost all sense of proportion and is willing to excuse even terrorism for its agenda.

History does not repeat in exact patterns, but it often rhymes. The late 20th-century leftist terror wave eventually burned out – through a combination of state crackdowns and loss of public support – even as some of its grievances (anti-nuclear, anti-war, anti-colonialism) lived on in less violent movements. The climate movement of the 2020s stands at a similar fork in the road. The vast majority of climate activists remain non-violent and focused on policy change through pressure and protest. But if the militant minority grows – bolstered by generous funding and a sense of righteousness – we may see a new wave of conflict between activists and authorities that echoes the 1970s in dangerous ways.

Even some founders of the Climate Emergency Fund have hinted at unease. “We need a radical change in direction,” co-founder Rory Kennedy said, while still emphasizing the hope that change comes from mass street action, not chaos. The Hollywood donors surely didn’t intend to finance potential explosions at Belgian factories or midnight raids on arms depots. As they awaken to how their money has been used, will they recalibrate their support? Or will they conclude that a bit of extremism is the price to pay to jolt society out of climate complacency? These are the debates now roiling boardrooms and activist circles alike.

In the end, the story of Hollywood-funded climate radicalism is a dramatic illustration of our turbulent times: global crises overlapping and intensifying one another, noble intentions clashing with harsh realities, and the eternal question of how far is too far in pursuit of justice. The next chapters will depend on choices made on all sides – by activists debating strategy, by donors attaching strings to their grants, and by governments walking the tightrope between protecting public safety and preserving democratic protest. The hope is that we can address the climate emergency without reliving the darkest chapters of extremist violence. The fear is that unless all players take heed of history’s lessons, today’s “woke” uprising could slide into the kind of conflict that everyone later regrets. As OCAD’s report warned, the time for soul-searching is here – before passionate idealism turns into something far more destructive.