Green Pines

Green Pines
Leader	Marcello Vilintin Jiseppi Montagnero
Founded	XX-XX 72 PC
Membership	approx. 300
Ideology	Radical Traditionalism Pastoralism Anti-industrialism
Party Color	Dark Green
Symbols	Pine
Advisory Council	0 / 5

The Green Pines is a minor traditionalist political party in La Rossa. It came into existence in 72 PC, following months of protests by the Montagneri community in La Rossa over construction in the Montesuvian mountain range. The party follows a firm and radically traditionalist line, holding that industrialization and destruction of the environment has corrupted humanity and that only through a complete return to the pastoralism that once dominated the island. The party has joined the Green Peasant International, a movement championed by the similarly oriented Green Oak Movement in Wälstanland.

History

Although a widespread belief among the Montagneri had for long been that they should be left to their own lifestyle, isolated from urban Rossan society, such a belief was mostly informed by their own cultural identity and a sense of separation from the Rossan state. The party's ideology as a true political project aiming to reshape the island's society as a whole instead comes mostly from Marcello Vilintin, a traditionalist intellectual, who, after a four-year stay in the Empire of Wälstanland, got deeply radicalized against the excesses of industrial society, and returned to La Rossa embittered with the scale of natural destruction that had taken place. Inspired by the Walstan politician and writer Erik Janeick, he would come to adopt many of the radical beliefs of the Green Oak Movement, though some ideological difference exists between the two. Happening to coincide both with the landslides that had occurred in La Rossa over the past few years, and the Montagneri uprising, which through sometimes violent means attempted to put an end to the housing and city construction taking place in the mountains, Vilintin would approach Jiseppi Montagnero, a popular leader adopted by the pastoralists, offering to formalize the party in order to increase their hold over the nation's politics and better exercise their will. Though Jiseppi remains the face of the party, Vilintin has been marked as founder on official documents, and runs its political operations.

Ideology

The Green Pines under Marcello Vilintin have been described as radical, traditionalist and anti-industrialist. Taking great inspiration from the Green Oak Movement in Wälstanland, the party is opposed to the industrial, money-driven society of today, based on the extraction of resources and pollution through production. The party claims that such society is fundamentally at odds with human nature, and that the destruction of the land similarly reflects the destruction of inner humanity. They urge for a stop to the exploitation of land by bringing an end to urbanity, as well as through the dissolution of the state, money, and land property, wishing for a mass adoption of the communal way of living as practiced by the Montagneri, a pastoralist people who live through hog-herding. Even as such a lifestyle would be unlikely to support the population of the island, now in the millions, the Green Pines hold that such a change would not matter, as the population would regardless drop down to levels at which humanity's own impact would be sustainable.

Although the party formally holds an incredibly radical worldview, it is not fully known how widespread such beliefs are even within its own party, mostly composed of the Montagneri themselves. While some Rossan intellectuals have given their support to the party, the Montagneri have rarely engaged with national politics, and have similarly been left alone in large part due to their distance from urban population centers. Though historically efforts have been made to assimilate them, current government policy has mostly ignored them outside of trouble, and very little interaction apart from sporadic trade has occurred between the urban and pastoralist communities. It is not known how much the Montagneri subscribe to the belief of asserting their own worldview upon the Rossans, and most of the rhetoric surrounding humanity's corruption has likely entered the conversation from the influence of Marcello Vilintin, and not anything usually seen among the Montagneri.

The party's rhetoric also holds some deep Tempestic religious undertones, holding to the belief that humanity's greatest error was going against the power of nature. As they accept that much of the ecological harm done to La Rossa has been caused by the Calming, they hold that humanity's victory against the dangers of the Storm should rather be seen as the defeat of a balancing force without which humanity is doomed to destruction. The party's position is not well-defined between members but tends to vary, usually between a belief that a return to the traditional lives of their forefathers will cause the Storm to once more come back, or that the Storm's return is not possible, but that a return to ancestral lifestyles is the only path towards humanity's survival. The Green Pines are a fringe group whose beliefs aren't commonly accepted within Rossan society.