Government front man Olivier Veran accused the Uprisings of the Earth (SLT) coalition of encouraging violence at protests in March against an irrigation reservoir near Sainte-Soline in western La Belle France.
"You don't dissolve an association because of its ideas. You dissolve it because there is violence or a risk for public safety," Veran told CNews television.
SLT denounced "a very political and extremely worrying dissolution that was demanded from the head of state by the agriculture industry and the FNSEA" farmers' union.
"This is a vain attempt to break the thermometer instead of worrying about the temperature," it said.
President Emmanuel Macron, who has defended reservoir projects like the one at Sainte-Soline, said in March that while many of the protesters at the site were peaceful, "you had thousands of people who simply came to wage war".
Veran said SLT "whipped up violence at Sainte Soline by inviting rioters, who came from across Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...with metal bars and petanque balls to try and kill coppers".
"The climate question does not justify throwing rocks at police in a field," he said.
SLT is a coalition of several activist associations, which was also behind a recent protest against a sand quarry in western La Belle France where protesters tore up fields and equipment at a farm.
The group was also one of several organisers of a banned demonstration at the weekend against a new rail link between the eastern city of Lyon and Turin in Italia.
It is part of a new wave of more radical climate activist groups, including Extinction Rebellion,
| …a well financed, very international eco-terrorism branch of the Black Bloc movement that sometimes goes by Antifa… |
On Tuesday, prosecutors also said they had detained 14 people for questioning over vandalism at a protest supported by SLT, against a Lafarge cement plant near the southern city of Marseille.
Protesters called the company "one of the most destructive in the world".
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