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Title: Black Seed Issue 2
Author: Various
Date: Fall 2014
Language: en
Topics: green anarchy, anti-civilization, Black Seed
Source: Editor

Various

Black Seed Issue 2

Welcome to Issue #2

We've made the conscious choice to produce a print-only newspaper in an

era where much of anarchist dialogue occurs over the Internet. We hope

that our choice of a print medium allows time for slowness and

reflection, both as a challenge to the immediacy of the Internet as well

as to deepen the dialogue. Whereas so much of Internet anarchist

discourse is based on quick dismissals and ideological echo chambers, we

hope to foster face-to-face conversations based on reflective of

specific articles we publish and the larger questions they address.

Black Seed has already helped further conversations surrounding the

roles of anthropology and resistance.

Despite these successes, we were reminded that this project and these

conversations are very much a process. Professing to not have any

answers, yet asking questions, has put us editors in a position of

vulnerability. Holding everything in question, even the idea of green

anarchy itself, provides a certain kind of provocation for those who

have a stake in advocating for or defending their ideological positions

and tendencies. When one makes grandiose claims about how an ideology

must or must not behave a certain way, the only room for a response

remains that of a statement of allegiance or opposition to those claims.

By honestly opening up the conversation with a series of questions,

we’ve begun an experiment in life and thought.

How do we pay homage and respect to those who came before, living

against civilization and with wildness, without holding hands with

racist anthropological practices and appropriating cultures that are not

ours? How do we begin to discuss that the very way we live our lives is

out of sync with so many basic needs for living (not just surviving)

without fetishizing lifestyles? What will it look like to illuminate the

horrors that have been wreaked on the wild worlds of all species without

laying out a program for revolution or life? It is our aim to explore

these questions and their implications on our lives, not to answer them.

Lived anarchy is a process with no end in sight. It’s our belief that

green anarchy helps us to think about these larger questions.

Looking back at the first issue, the conversation was somewhat

scattered, just as we were. We put forth a lot of energy trying to make

Issue One everything we’ve ever wanted a publication to be: personal,

defiant, studious, news-worthy, convincing, and hilarious. We didn’t

deliver on all those fronts, as some critics have pointed out. Of

course, no publication can grab everyone, but we aim to constantly

improve the project. One of the more substantive criticisms we received

was in the form of a question: Who is this for? On the one hand, it’s a

fair question. Who do we expect to read this newspaper? What we do hope

they get out of it? On the other hand, we realize that there is no

typical reader. For a publication with a print run in the thousands,

readership and distribution are constantly evolving. Though we asked

specific questions in our calls for submissions, the paper is subject to

the content submitted. This is consistent with our goal of creating a

space for conversation rather than an ideological box. Black Seed is

clearly an anarchist project aimed at the anarchist space that

nonetheless hopes to spill out beyond the milieu. We started this

project to contribute something to the void of green anarchist

publishing, a forum for dialogue, and dialogue is indeed happening. At

the same time, there are questions about the limitations of this

orientation: are we writing to some perceived mythical “green anarchist”

audience? Are we just writing to our friends? What is the point? These

are larger questions that will be answered over time; other criticisms

of the first issue are addressed by the articles curated within.

In light of all this, we’re excited to present this second issue. We’re

continuing several specific conversations about green anarchy and

indigeneity integral to this project as a whole; related is the topic of

anthropology and its relationship to green anarchy. Dialogues growing

away from violence/non-violence debates into deeper and reflective

questioning regarding eco-defense are raised in the responsive “Two

Steps Nowhere” submission. The “Green Anarchy panel discussion” dives

into anthropology critique and the green anarchist/anti-civ anarchist

distinction, while also touching on the trendy topic of “hope.” “Anarchy

in Flight,” takes a completely different approach altogether by pushing

aside the usual jargon but bringing in something very new and inspiring.

We are also excited to print continuations of two pieces, “An Interview

with Klee Benally” and “A Voice from the Grave,” begun in the first

issue.

As the days get shorter and the acorns begin to fall, we hope to provide

fodder for late night talks ‘round the fire and letters sent over the

miles that come between us. And when those conversations lead you to

think you’ve got it, know that you haven’t, none of us do, but know that

we want to hear what you’re thinking, what small ways you’re finding to

get free.

The Editors,

-Scealai

-Cedar Leighlais

-Pietje

-Zdereva Itvaryn

-Aragorn!

A Discussion on Green Anarchy

At the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair this year in late August, a roundtable

discussion on green anarchy was held as one of the workshops. The

speakers included Ian Smith (the moderator for

uncivilizedanimals.wordpress.com), Kathan Zerzan (who co-hosts John

Zerzan’s Anarchy Radio show once a month), Aragorn! (publisher of Black

Seed) and Cedar Leighlais (an editor of Black Seed). What follows is the

transcription of the discussion, not including the last half-hour of

Q&A. The transcription has been edited for clarity.

Kathan: Well, I’ve just been elected the MC up here of this discussion

that we’re going to have up here. We’ve got some questions that I’ll put

out that I think are the basis of what we’re going to talk about. and

then people will introduce themselves. The questions we’ll be discussing

are: A) What is green anarchy? B) How did you come to a green anarchist

perspective? C) Are green anarchy, primitivism, and anti-civilization

synonymous terms? And then two kind of topical terms: anthropology—how

can anarchists interact with it? And hope: what is the role of hope when

we can see that the world has been so fucked by civilization?

What Is Green Anarchy?

K: I’m not going to just repeat the term. I participate in a radio show

with John Zerzan, I have since 2007, I’m certainly aware of ongoing

discussions and hear phrases and terms of tendencies that over the years

seem to be developing into positions... so for myself I have the

question: green anarchy, anarcho-primitivism, anti-civilization, are

these the same thing? I think there are probably different opinions here

that we will flesh out. I tend to think they are pretty much synonymous.

I think that there is developing theory about the world we live in and

how to interact with it, and that there might be specific, debatable,

kind of academic differences that to me are somewhat irrelevant. Then

there are practical-based differences in organizations like Deep Green

Resistance or say Ted Kaczynski’s writings, that there does seem to be

some pull towards military-style, hierarchical, centralized

organization; when you get into the topic of armed struggle, you’re

probably going to have centralized organizations, so that feels to me

(and I’m no expert, I’m just saying what I see) that that’s one thing

where I think there are major disagreements. But in terms of anti-civ,

and green anarchy, I think there are way more similarities than

disagreements.

Cedar: My name is Cedar. I’m appearing on this panel as one of the

editors of Black Seed. To me green anarchy is a political tendency

within the larger umbrella of anarchy that doesn’t stop at anything. It

holds the entire world ready for critique and attack. That is very

attractive to me, since I found that most of a lot of other niches

within anarchy stop short of going all the way to the root of where

these systems of oppression (to use a buzzword) come from. Often times

that what is lacking from anarchist analysis is a deep historical

understanding of where these things come from. The most important thing

to me about green anarchy is that everything in our lives that fucks

with us, holds us down, keeps us from being free, can be tied back to

civilization; everything goes back to this complete onslaught and

domestication, turning everything into a commodity. To me green anarchy

is the analysis of this world, not just looking at things in terms of

ecology or the environment with an anarchist lens; it’s not just about

rewilding or hunting and harvesting berries, for me that’s not even part

of green anarchy. For me that stuff is personal interest, and I’m also

excited about it… Green anarchy also takes into consideration ongoing

violent clashes in city centers and suburbs - some people would call

that class war. Green anarchy is calling into question everything that

we know.

Aragorn!: I was a columnist for Green Anarchy magazine, I also wrote

essays for the magazine. So I’ve been involved with public green

anarchist projects for a long time. I’m the publisher of Black Seed,

which means that eventually I will not be involved that much in

providing content, but as part of Little Black Cart, I pay for it and

make sure that people can get it into their hands. That’s my involvement

with Black Seed.

So, anarchism as a beautiful idea, both a sort of impossible

conversation to have, and a conversation that becomes one of

preferences - meaning all of us. And I believe that most people we meet

on the streets agree with us when we say, “I want freedom, and I want to

be with people in interesting constellations of freedom,” rather than “I

want to be oppressed and I want to be in uninteresting relationships of

oppression or hierarchy.” The traditional forms of anarchism - which

happened at the same time as the rise of the workers’ movements in the

19th and early 20th centuries - reflected the moment that it lived in,

which looked like a progressive, historical, abstract, and Manichean

political philosophy. In the 1980s and 1990s, then, it began to be

common to differentiate between red and green anarchism. That,

progressive, historical, abstract, and Manichean, that is red anarchism.

Green anarchism is everything else. So, for me, green anarchism is an

umbrella term, that we can now talk about as having distinct interests

underneath it, that are usually not progressive, historical, abstract,

or Manichean. Green anarchism, obviously, in the way it factionalized

out in the past 30 years, has taken on a variety of different nuances,

has become influenced by different people who have dogs in the fight. I

think it’s worth mentioning some of them, who are not usually mentioned

in the anti-civilization part of this conversation.

There are people who want to reconcile Hegelian thought with a

conversation about ecology; they’re called Bookchinites. Those people

still exist, they still have journals and people who follow their ideas.

There are people who think that instead of talking about destroying

civilization, that we should be talking about post-civilization. There’s

the anti-civilization discourse that includes a variety of perspectives.

Here we’re talking about taxonomy, rather than green anarchism in

particular, so we can talk about those distinctions later on. But for

me, the main point is that green anarchy is not the anarchism that came

before, which is progressive, historical, abstract, Manichean.

Ian Smith: I write a blog called Uncivilized Animals, which is probably

the vehicle that connected me with some of the people here. I think

Cedar’s idea of green anarchy being the largest frame that everything’s

up for grabs is a good way of framing it. Personally I’ve always used

these terms interchangeably, but I’ve done that unthinkingly, so this is

the question that we brought to this and I was interested to hear other

people’s thoughts. When I first thought about it and tried to think

about it more, it was that anti-civilization is a negative term, it kind

of leaves the floor open for something positive. Moving on to the next

question, which is...

How Did You Come To A Green Anarchist Perspective?

I: On a personal note, my step onto this floor was mainstream, consumer

veganism, and taking the next step out and then the next... thinking

about what does it mean to respect animals? And how radically different

the world as a whole would have to be if we genuinely respected other

animals. I think that ripples out to the furthest periphery of what that

means.

C: I would say mine goes back, like Ian I’ve been thinking about this

all week, I can trace it back to my childhood. Everything previously in

my life has had something to do with where I’m at now. Part of growing

up outside of a small town, running around in the woods, I mean it’s

cheesy American youth bullshit but it’s real too. Running around in the

woods with total abandon for the rest of the world. In high school I was

incredibly anti-social and found a place within the more anarcho-punk

hardcore scene. The lyrics in those bands really resonated with me and I

found importance in that. Eventually I was vegan and looked at it in a

larger context. But when I did away with veganism, that happened at the

same time that I started to accept a much more negative view of the

world, and to see that even the small, non-profit, organic farm I worked

on was bullshit, even that was “domestication.” Taking wild and free

places and manipulating them for money or surplus or whatever. Even

these small things that I had found solace in as a late teenager turned

out to be part of an entire system. As I realized that everything is

worth pointing a finger at, that was also when I put down veganism, and

came to have a very staunch position against everything else. This had a

lot to do with understanding that there was an importance outside of

civilization, and also being incredibly aware of this relentless anger I

have at the forces that control my life and the lives of those around

me, and that consistently put down struggles for freedom.

A!: I have always been a green anarchist, but I have yet to figure out

exactly what that means. One of the problems with labels and especially

labels that are wrapped up with politics is the way that they’re very

confusing, because they seem to be used much more as weapons than they

are as clarifying statements. So the reason I embrace the term green

anarchism is because of how open the term is. In other words, green

anarchism to me is a set of ideas that desire freedom, and that do not

accept that a clockwork universe exists. For me, there’s much more to

figure out, and one of my goals for Black Seed, one of the reasons I’m

helping to make it happen, is that I really want help figuring out what

it means to not live in a clockwork universe together, and the way these

conversations have happened up until now have felt very troubling and I

am very uncomfortable about them. That said, I do find the work of Fredy

Perlman and an U.K. author named John Moore to be very inspirational.

I: I guess I jumped ahead in my first statement. The only thing I would

add is that a key component of this transition is shedding old

identities that you’re given, whether that’s as worker or consumer (or

whatever the case might be) to an identity as animal, and trying to be

humble enough to look to other animals for solutions to problems and to

learn from others in that way. Grappling with these things I often feel

that in a different time and place people would have learned just by

breathing the air when they’re growing up and now we’re struggling to

learn these things with the clunky brain of an adult at whatever age you

are and it’s really not feasible, but you know, maybe some progress can

be made, so...

K: And I have the longest history, so I’ll be abbreviating a lot. I

appreciate very much Aragorn!’s distinction between red anarchism and

green anarchism, because I would say that kind of encompasses my

trajectory. So I was born in 1950, female, United States of America, my

father was military. I grew up moving throughout my childhood... I think

I attended twelve schools or something. I was in Puerto Rico before

Cuba, stopped in Guantanamo of all things on my way to Puerto Rico with

my family to be a good child of a colonialist in Puerto Rico for three

years. Came back to the U.S.; was in Georgia’s civil rights movement;

where we were considered northerners and federal-agents because the

military was integrating. So I started having contradictions with the

society I lived in, and being an outsider... my last high school was in

Colorado Spring, CO; the Vietnam War was raging, it was ‘68. I was a

good military girl and believed in America and freedom, the communists

were the enemies and that kind of thing. I had two older brothers, one

ended up in Berkeley, the other in Milwaukee marching with Father

Graupee against the war. I went to Oregon University of Portland,

started questioning the war, went from doing draft resistance and legal

activity to helping people get out of the country, to joining an

autonomous Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S.) that was probably

my first experience with working with other people in an anarchist

fashion. We didn’t have connections to national S.D.S., they’d had the

split with Weather Underground then. Anyways, it’s a long history. At

University of Oregon I was arrested, and the lovely government that I

believed in... it was really in my face, the contradiction was really in

my face: the good Catholic girl was looking at 25 years in prison for

inciting to riot. And I felt like I was being a good girl, I was doing

the right thing. S.D.S. was a local group at University of Oregon, not

connected with the national group. In 1970 I was arrested. There was a

centralized organization in the Bay Area that was Maoist and expanded to

Eugene, O.R., and my lovely group of people I trusted and who I had

worked with all year, we all became secret members of R.U. and became

very interested in armed struggle and the repression that was taking

place and we got more secretive and more ingrown and that kind of stuff.

Life went on, the war allegedly ended, the central committee in

California was talking about assigning people to ... “well maybe we

won’t fight the charges, maybe you need to go to prison and organize in

the prisons.” I always had trouble with authority, never respected

authority, but... when the central committee in CA, when... I don’t even

know who these people are, are apparently deciding where I’m going to go

spend the next 25 years of my life to organize a revolution that doesn’t

seem to be taking place in Eugene, Oregon, so I decided to get the hell

out of Oregon and go to the belly of the monster, which was Chicago. In

Chicago I got involved with left organizations that split with RU into

Sojourner Truth Organization (S.T.O.), which was probably the

transitional organization. We were accused of being anarcho-syndicalist,

that was very unpopular; any reference to anarchist, anarcho-, it was

like “Pfft, you’re a bad person.” 1970s became the 1980s, Reagan got

elected; the group I was with also became in-focused; revolution was not

happening. A vanguard of white, theory-centric males began to develop

theory that was hierarchical again. Even though we were

anarcho-syndicalist and the majority of people were very opposed to the

idea of any kind of vanguard party. So I was part of leading a split.

Then I moved back to Oregon with my three girls to where my parents

lived. Any hope of a new world that I had was fading. Then I became

familiar with my cousin’s writings through a patient I met as a nurse

practitioner. He asked me if I knew John’s writings. I got John’s books

Elements of Refusal, which is a good book. I encourage people to read

it. And I began discussions with him, became familiar with the

Situationists, Adorno, more theoretical thought that had taken place

since I’d left academia; and the 1990s began to see young people on the

streets, and anarchy being a developing body of thought. Very unrelated

to the Marxism, Leninism and Maoism that I’d experienced before. And as

the female voice in all this, you know I’ve been a female player in many

different groups that have largely been male-dominated. and the

anti-civilization perspective, and the understanding of where domination

comes from and what it means to be domesticated, to be conquered,

paralleled very much with ideas I was beginning to think about. So

that’s too long, but it’s a long history.

Are Green Anarchism, Anarcho-Primitivism, And Anti-Civilization

Synonymous Terms?

A!: So this is probably where things will get a bit more controversial.

Absolutely not. As I think we generally agree, that green anarchy is a

sort of umbrella term that encompasses a variety of terms within it.

Anti-civ is also a general term, a general critique of civilization.

From my perspective, anti-civ shares similarities with Marxism, with any

other -ism, because it provides an abstract solution to a variety of

problems, in this case the problem that it provides an answer to is

civilization, which is a very big and abstract idea that we may or may

not agree with all the specific details of, and it says “be against this

big abstract thing”. As far as I’m concerned, this world filled with

abstractions is a horror show from beginning to end, and the particular

terminology we use to describe that horror show, whether it’s

patriarchy, capitalism, civilization, is much more a matter of

aesthetics than it is of anything else. I’m happy to have further

conversations about why people prefer to believe in one religion vs.

another, but there’s a certain way in which anti-civilization has become

a religious term. Anarcho-primitivism is an even more narrow term that

builds from the idea, the common sense idea that 90% of human history -

if humans have been around for a hundred thousand years it’s only been

the last ten thousand that civilization has come into being - so using

that common sense idea it uses the science of anthropology to pull back

time, and ends the story of freedom with the story of civilization.

Anarcho-primitivism is a fine story and I encourage people to read good

stories, but I highly dispute using anthropology to make truth claims

about the world, and about the past, and particular the way that

primitivism has become a set of ideas that are written about by a very

small set of authors and has become a sort of cult around those authors,

which feels very antithetical to why I am an anarchist.

I: I think we all touched on this a little bit, but I said earlier I

have used these terms synonymously but not for any deliberately

thought-out reason, so I am interested to hear how other people answer

this question. Maybe anti-civ being a negative term can clear the decks

of certain problems that Aragorn! sort of spelled out, but then leaves

it open for different positive solutions, which might be why

anarcho-primitivism purports to be a more positive vision, something to

look to, to fill in those gaps. Not a lot to contribute to that one, I

guess.

K: I went with John on a speaking tour in 2007, to some Eastern European

countries, and I was asking myself at the time what label, what am I?

And the important thing to me is the understanding of civilization as a

problem; what makes up civilization, domestication, domination, and how

you apply an understanding of existence of humanity and the way of life

that happened before civilization to the present era was what I wanted

the term to encompass. Anti-civilization seemed like a good one.

Primitivism, I thought “that’s an art movement, that’s fancy painting.”

It was not a provocative term... “Ohhh I’m a primtivist.” Like, what

does that mean? [laughter] I kind of liked anarcho-primitivism ‘cause it

ties primitivism to a political body of thought, anarchism. I don’t see

it as one of these is better than the other. There’s a lot to be said...

in the 90s… maybe I’m overplaying what was happening in the 90s and

before the “War On Terror,” but I think there was more.. you could get

more conversation going, there was more understanding, talking about

anarchists, anarchy... There was a presence in the general public, that

I don’t feel is as much there any more. Like, outside of this room, if

we just went out and started talking to the people out there, people

know what civilization is, but do they know how and why it might be

problematic, that’s a further conversation.

C: As with Kathan, I remember a very specific period of my life where I

was questioning a lot of labels I was putting on myself about political

ideas about the world, specifically there was a time where I was

questioning whether or not I would identify as an anarchist. Looking

back now, what I realize about what was going through my head at the

time was what felt uncomfortable to me was the label “anarchist” seemed

to posit a forward, positive momentum in the world, which was something

I have always been unsure of, the idea that there is a pie in the sky

that we’re marching endlessly towards; I have always been that way,

hating everything. Can’t really help it. So, for me anarcho-primitivism,

anti-civilization, and green anarchy are not synonymous terms. I think

that anarcho-primitivism and anti-civilization are two very separate

tenets of what could be maybe seen as an over-arching green anarchy.

Anarcho-primitivism is very much this anthropological, anarchist look

and analysis on how things got to be how they are now - as Aragorn! and

Kathan said - about how some thousand odd years ago, civilization came

in and took over and that’s when everything got bad. The way that I want

to interact with critiquing things is a lot deeper than that, and also

realizing that freedom has happened inside of civilization, since

domestication, agriculture, and so on. I think the thing that irks me

the most about primitivism is this assertion that there is a positive

momentum forward that we can take. It does not seem much different from

a Maoist program for revolution, or the church telling you how to get to

heaven, or the anarchist telling you how to start a revolution. It all

seems much the same and I think that green anarchy is a larger, more

encompassing thing. If we were to posit these into opposite things:

anti-civilization being the negative critique of the world,

anarcho-primitivism being the positive place we can go. And my interest

in being part of the green anarchy dialogue is to talk about that, and

also talk about the idea of abandoning hope, and that there is a lot to

lose when we hope for things... but that’s another question, so I won’t

go into that now. The next topic we wanted to cover was of

anthropology....

As An Academic Practice, What Role Does Anthropology Have In Green

Anarchy?

C: It has a really heavy presence within green anarchy, specifically

anarcho-primitivism, often times used as a historical backbone, to back

up assertions that, like, “Oh, hunter-gatherer good, everything else

bad. Agriculture definitely bad too, the beginning of the end of

hunter-gatherer.” Oh, I lost my train of thought and I’m answering the

question instead of asking it... This is another thing that I am excited

about in facilitating with Black Seed, is the conversation about

anthropology: does it have a place in green anarchy, where are the

contradictions, and what are the positive things that people do get from

anthropology...

I: I’m thinking of it as parallel to how do people of this persuasion

interact with technology that we might find problematic, that we know

has a concrete harm toward others. As a discipline it’s had this

exploitative history, that is a reason to be skeptical of it. And it’s

not something that we can necessarily hold on to if we think that we’re

getting somewhere different. So how do we interact with it: it isn’t

necessarily true that it has no place? We may need to employ it in the

same way we use problematic technologies right now. The other point I

want to make is that we recognize that getting to where we may want to

go, to keep this from being completely utopian, we have to acknowledge

the benefits and the positive things that will be lost. So there are

certain ways of knowing about the world that might be powerful that

won’t exist, that wouldn’t exist, in a world that most green anarchists

would see as a goal. There are certain ways that we know about the world

today that we wouldn’t have access to at some point in the future that

we desire. Acknowledging that certain benefits are going to be lost is

important to have any credibility. We can’t just say that “right now

it’s this parade of horrors with no redeeming virtue and that at some

point it will be completely utopian.” So continue the parallel of

anthropology with problematic technologies, every technology, no matter

how destructive it is, no matter how alienating it is, it’s sold because

it has some sort of benefit to us. We’re complicit in it, and we might

have to muddle along with it for the time being, but recognizing the

pros and cons, and figuring out where the preponderance of consequences

lie.

K: Whether it’s anthropology or history, and I’m not disagreeing, there

is danger in cults and religion and this missionary kind of thing, but I

think we’re all living in a present that is rather dissatisfying, to put

it mildly. You try and construct from where you’re at: how can I live

day to day, what can I eat, it’s not some future-oriented, come to find

Jesus, we’ll all be hunter-gatherers... but it’s that if you look at

what happens with language, what happens with writing, that was one of

the early things I read, kind of a popular book about before written

language... the whole dark ages, as they’re called, when civilization

collapsed after the Romans, when in fact there wasn’t writing, there

wasn’t history, people were just living for about 900 years, and then

civilization rebuilt itself, whatever. So anthropology, history,

whatever you have, you use what you have, and sure there might be a real

danger of this stupid Fred Flinstone idea, of oh some future, we’re

gonna be this and that, but the reality is that the resources aren’t

there for the Chinese who want ‘em, to say it crudely. The whole

devastation that’s happening right now with food resources, this kind of

stuff, something is giving as we sit here, it’s not sustainable, it’s

not going to go on... so it’s not some big future “things are gonna

change” it’s the reality; food shortages, water... So anthropology has

studies that give you some clues on other ways of being and living.

C: Well I kind of already put out my answer... it’s interesting because

I feel... I’m constantly trying to figure this out for myself because...

while I feel highly critical of anthropology, history is also something

I’m very excited about and I think that where I have most often seen

anthropology come into contact with anarchy, is when anthropology is

used to posit a way of life that we could potentially have like after

the collapse or the insurrection or the revolution - however it’s put. I

think that’s very problematic, because time spent on fantasizing about

how we might live one day, well like that can be a fun thought project

if I’m at work and I have nothing better to do, it’s not something that

adds constructively to my life project, of trying to create some kind of

agitation against things that keep me from being free. Anthropology

within anarcho-primitivism creates space for that to happen, it

encourages it, and if anything, it limits the greater anarchist

discourse from stepping outside of rewilding convergences and... Also

ends up creating space for people to inappropriately adopt native and

indigenous cultures. Which is interesting because there’s been a lot ...

As soon as I start to talk about that I often get a lot of resistance

from anarcho-primitivists who want to immediately write off that I’m

critiquing them from a leftist position. Where I’m coming from is a

position of wanting to focus on destruction and negativity, less on

“this is how it will be someday.” So that’s why I find it a problem that

anthropology has found a place within green anarchist thought.

A!: I’m thinking about this a lot right now because I’m writing an

article for the next issue of Black Seed on this topic. And at the heart

of what i’m trying to tease out is that anthropology exposes a problem

that’s actually not about the particular discipline of anthropology, but

is about sociology, history, anthropology, and the humanities in

general. So really it’s a question about how do we think. To distill a

big conversation into a small one, I would like to propose a new way of

anarchist thinking that is distinct from what I’ll call critique.

Critique is something that anarchists have pretty much borrowed from

Marxists: the idea that the things that you despise, you enter into a

dialectical relationship with, so instead of just despising these

things, you become the person who fixes those things. So a lot of our

friends who we call liberals end up in a critical relationship with the

urban planning institutions, with the non-profit complex... with the

variety of institutions that exist in the world, and throw their bodies

into what turns out to be fixing those things. Many people, and one of

the interesting responses to the hostility that Black Seed has expressed

about anthropology, has been how many people have responded “since Man

The Hunter, so many people have entered into anthropological fields and

they’re doing the good work of repairing it, of fixing it!” There is a

person in the Bay Area who’s probably one of the most tortured

anarchists in North America. He is a desperate fan of the Spanish Civil

War. He knows more about it than any other living person. I’m not

exaggerating; he knows more about the Spanish Civil War than any other

person and yet is a post-left anarchist. That position, the post-left

position, begins when we failed in Spain. The reason I mention him is

because I love him; it’s adorable that this thing that happened in

history is so alive for him. And the reason I can be tolerant of his

relationship to the Spanish Civil War is because it’s just the story of

where he’d rather be. And I’m the last person to judge other people’s

stories. I love Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That’s where I’d

rather be. [laughter] A world of imagination... that sounds fucking

awesome, and it will involve candy. So for me what I propose is that,

rather than critique, and rather than engaging in dialectics, and rather

than improving our enemies to make them more powerful and more

effective, that anarchists continue to be incredibly curious, that we

attack the things that we have curiosity about, that we do it with

hostility, that we do not fix them, we do not embrace these things, that

instead we stand apart. So in the context of history and anthropology,

we do not become historians and anthropologists, we become story

tellers. We do not get paid for our work, we share it with each other.

That’s it.

As Green Anarchists, We Can Easily See How Fucked The World Is. Is

There A Place For Hope?

K: I’ll shoot off the top of my head: yes there is - knowing full well

I’m gonna get shot down... [laughter], that nihilism, and no hope is the

way to go, that these are all Marxist-Leninist ideas, morals…I’m a

moralist, morality, [laughter]. I know on a theoretical level... there

are fine, theoretical considerations, I say a lot of things are open

questions... I shoot from the hip. Yea, the world’s fucked. When I

listen to you talk, it reminds me of being 18 [looks at Cedar - howls of

laughter] . I was into Nietzsche, I was into Dostoyevsky, I was into

Sartre, how do I make sense of this fucked world I’m in? I was looking

at kids my age, young men, who... half their body parts were gone, and I

was coming from a very visceral place. Army hospital, half-bodied men my

age, who... there is something seriously wrong here. What does that mean

to me? Should I go jump off a railroad bridge? It’s not a joke, my point

about figuring things out at 18. And if something in philosophy, or

maybe anthropology for some people, just looking at what Western

Civilization has provided for me, reading other angsty writers and

trying to use my own problem-solving, how do I live my life? I would say

there was a certain amount of freedom in existential thought that, it

doesn’t matter, so you are free. What you do doesn’t matter, good, bad,

whatever, that’s the ultimate freedom. That’s the context I take this

discussion in, like yea, if you don’t have hope you go off the railroad

bridge. And more intellectual thinkers can certainly provoke me to

question the philosophy of hope and what that means for the future, and

that gives me pause for thought and I respect it, and to me that is the

bottom line of this panel and this discussion, that this is a growing

type thing, there is a ... hope.

C: The way I first started grappling with the idea of hope was kind of a

tactical mindset, looking at actions of groups and autonomous

individuals, radicals, anarchists, generally the illegalists, and over

the last 30 years or so there being a general trend of actions that have

certain kinds of themes... whether they’re legal to try to convince

political entities to do this or that, or actions where the communique

about them speaks to gentrification and the mistreatment of poor people,

kind of seeing a train of thought that says if we act or do these kinds

of things, if we drop a banner that speaks a certain kind of message, we

will get our desired outcome. Where I applied the brakes on that was the

idea that there was a desired outcome that could be perceived, outside

of the destruction of everything we know. What I mean by that, to be

more specific, often times people are like, “So you say no hope. Are you

advocating for doing nothing, because you’re arguing that nothing is

going to happen, we’re never going to win.” That’s not the point that

I’m trying to get across. I think there is a heightened sense of

intentionality and integrity and intensity that come out of acting

without hope. I think that when we step to this world without any

preconceptions about winning, but when we fight like we’re going to lose

can make what we do more ferocious and unmanageable. It keeps our

actions farther out of the reach of recuperation, which is consistently

the thing that happens to mass uprisings. Abandoning hope is one of the

soundest weapons that anarchists can pick up when it comes to engaging

in this world with action.

A!: I don’t think you can talk about hope without talking about faith.

And in general because radicals eschew religious language, what they put

their faith in tends to be something that ... it’s a sloppy term but I

think generally fits... is humanism. The idea that humans equal good, an

ugly corollary is that more humans are better, and most humans is best.

So when someone says hope, in general, they’re speaking to their

analysis of human nature, which makes me very nervous, and what they

tend to be implying is that they have faith that human conscious

activity is going to result in good things. and I just... I guess when

we talk about hope we’re being challenged to prove that we should be

hopeless, and my turnaround is “prove why I should have faith in

conscious human activity as a source of good.” I don’t see that when I

open my eyes in the morning. But everything that Kathan and Cedar said

is totally appropriate; Kathan made the nihilist argument, and Cedar

kicked it with some insurrectionary flair. So all I need to say is that

human conscious activity isn’t the magic bullet to solve much of

anything.

I: My thinking is that Cedar’s thinking was one thought too many.

[laughter] Seems like what he was saying is that if people abandon hope,

then we might pull this thing off. [laughter] If we abandon hope, our

odds are better. That’s kind of a hopeful perspective. [laughter] The

odds are increased, but we can’t in good conscience think that way. So,

when I hear these discussion I end up agreeing with whoever is speaking.

because the definition being used is self-serving, it all depends on

what you mean by “hope.” There’s the Derrick Jensen line that when you

don’t have any agency, that’s when hope comes into play... Well, if you

look at it that way, then yea. But it gets parsed in lots of ways. I’m

thinking of it as something on par with cheerfulness [laughter]. The way

that… cheerfulness is a virtue because it makes you pleasant to be

around [laughter] and I think that hopeful people are more pleasant to

be around [laughter], although Cedar’s company has been delightful,

so... [laughter] so present company excluded. I think it could be

considered a moral virtue in that sense of the word, as a disposition;

the important thing to say I suppose is that whether we’re hopeful or

not, we’re not making any sort of truth claim. When you say you’re

hopeful or not, you’re saying you think the odds are more likely than

not that this will work or not, it’s not a claim about the world. It’s

neither true nor false, more of a disposition, a personality trait.

Interview with Klee Benally

Editor's Note: The entirey of this interview has been posted here,

although it originally appeared as two parts in Issues 1 & 2.

Klee Benally is originally from Black Mesa and has worked most of his

life at the front lines in struggles to protect Indigenous sacred lands.

Klee doesn’t believe the current dominant social order (read “colonial

system”) can be fixed but should (and will be) smashed to pieces. When

asked about his politics he says, “I maintain Diné traditionalism as my

way of being in this world. I have affinity with Anarchism and identify

myself as an Indigenous Anarchist.” Klee performed with the rock group

Blackfire for 20 years and performs solo today. http://kleebenally.com/

Aragorn! - What would it look like for someone who has no spiritual

practice to develop one?

Klee -That’s a very personal question and I think what ends up happening

is that people start these centers like the ones in Sedona, or start

these new age centers. They are seeking that answer from other people

(as opposed to within or from within their own roots or asking the land

what developing a spiritual practice means). To me that is what it looks

like when people start appropriating from all these other sources. Or

they go to the usual suspects who are exploiting their own cultures or

just selling them or--even if it’s not for sale, even if there is no

monetary exchange--sometimes these people have been kicked out of their

own communities and are pimping out their own culture for their own

gratification. People are seeking from other sources, and forget that

mother earth is THE source. Ya know there is this sort of this cliché

that mother earth is not a resource it is THE source. It’s actually very

true though. I think it is part of like, almost all indigenous cultures

that I know, they don’t fucking missionize; they don’t go out and try to

convert people. When people start asking that question, it’s like.... Is

that an answer we can give? Because then we assume some kind of

responsibility in that relationship. I think where people expect it, you

know just different expectations about that. I can maybe speak from

experience to people I have known who have come to some kind of

spiritual understanding but again that’s deeply personal on some levels.

Of course we have culture, it’s a social cohesion; how we understand our

relationship to each other and relationship to the land. There’s an

anthropological definition of “culture” and there’s our own definition

or understanding of that, what that term means and how we again

understand our relationship to each other and the land. The discussion

about spirituality can’t happen without a discussion about culture and

what that means and there is context to that. I think there is a violent

context that we have to come terms with when we start talking about

those things. There is a lot of trauma that we have to address through

that discussion as well. In the past when I would answer that question,

when I think I was in a different place than today, for Diné people we

have Hózhó’ji which is “beauty-way” or more well defined Hózhó’ji is a

way of health and harmony. Beauty is this sort of fetish as well, that

anthropologists are like “here is a great definition.” They sort of

latched on to but it’s deeper than that. You know when we as Diné people

understand that foundation and philosophy, for our identity and our

relation to each other through K’é or through our clan system, our

relationship systems that extend not just to people but to our natural

environment, to other beings. It’s not something that you can just say

“here’s what this spirituality means and I’ll give it you.” There is

this whole deeper understanding of what our ceremonial practices are,

for us to restore health and harmony with our mind, our body, our

spirit, and our soul, even within that. So the problem that we face a

lot is when we say that to people, it seems rather convenient just to

take it, and just to do what they want and that’s exploitation. To me it

just an abuse, the process that we carried forward. There’s a lot of

indigenous people who don’t want to share their cultural knowledge of

course, for good reason, ‘cause it has just been exploited and abused

and people just misuse it or they just distort it, and they take

different parts that are rather convenient for them when they have an

answer that resonates for them at the time. And then they...

A! – “picking and choosing”

K- ... I think through my experience (this is why I picked on Sedona

really quickly) we have people like James Arthur Ray who was selling Sun

Dances for like $10,000 and you know people who were ultimately killed

by his hand through his application, interpretation of sweat lodge, who

were there for the “Spiritual Warrior Retreat” in very clear quotation

marks and that’s an extreme but that is what we see. This exploitation

continues, so, yeah maybe sometime along the way he asked those

questions and people gave him answers. I don’t know but that is his

application.

A- What I identify with that (I guess I want to talk through why it’s

impossible) is that basically you are saying that anyone who wants to

take this project seriously basically has to commit to

multi-generations. In other words, indigeneity, whatever that means,

will require that kind of time span. It’s not going to happen in your

lifetime. So of course why that’s impossible is the american consumer is

not going to accept that this is something they can’t buy. Even if the

consumption we’re talking about is of an ideology.

K – For some reason what you are saying reminds of this discussion

around the apocalypse that I have been having with friends (you know

because things seem very apocalyptic and so forth). Through my research

it became clear, and this is even Christians saying this, that

Christianity is linear, with this Genesis, with the Christ sacrifice or

whatever, coming of Christ’s sacrifice and then judgment day. Ultimately

the logical conclusion of Christianity is apocalypse, or judgment day ya

know, as opposed to looking at it from an indigenous perspective--which

is cyclical, you know; we are part of an ongoing process. So I don’t see

a beginning and end to it, I see it as an ongoing process.. I don’t see

it like, “oh here’s victory over here, here’s a goal, I can see a way to

achieve something that we want to accomplish which is liberation of our

lands, the thriving, the cultural vitality of our people and hopefully

abolishing these systems of oppression that are built up and reinforced

through colonization.” But at this point, and I don’t want it to be

interpreted as being abstract, ‘cause it’s not, it’s anything but

abstract, it’s very clear in relation to the system, it’s is an ongoing

process. To some degree I think that is part of the western mentality;

it’s like linear thought, how change is gonna come about. When we look

at the multi-generational projects, with the seven generation concepts

(even from other indigenous nations, certainly it’s pan-indigenous right

now that it can be interpreted very easily with other indigenous

nations) in relation to the core of our practices is to ensure that

cultural knowledge is transmitted and maintains its relevance or

vitality. So for me that’s part of it, thinking in that way that we are

part of a cyclical way of being. It’s not saying we are going to sit on

our hands and wait for shit to change, it’s about doing the best we can

now.

A! - Did you see that article on indigenous egoism?

K - Yeah yeah, I read that.

A! - Fascinating!

K – Yeah, I, well, it’s not fresh in my mind but part of the issue I had

with it was, just this sort of like over focus on individualism and

which to me is again is this extremely western concept, which is

interesting I think because in Diné culture we have a very strong sense

of the individual. Children are taught or treated as individuals when

they are young, but in relation to each other, there is this sort of

like separation of the sense of “community”. That’s what I wanted to ask

the author, what was her upbringing, what was her experience. How can I

take what they said about egoism and apply it to my community? I don’t

think it connects. It is part of the reason I am guarded with my words

or I am fairly choosy sometimes. I don’t want to speak in these

generalities, because that is what people expect. It’s just like when

talking to indigenous people, oh you speak for everybody. And people

want some pan-indigenous solution. Even part of the whole Zapatismo fed

into that to some degree; they were very smart about using that to their

tactical advantage to some degree. But it’s, I’m at the point right now

where I am still playing with all of these concepts ideologically and

trying to reconcile how they work from a cultural perspective and then

apply them, ‘cause I don’t want to ever get caught in that trap of the

theory and shit. It’s always on the ground for me. .. I would like to

talk to the author more just to get a sense of what their experiences

have been. And I need to read it again. Like I said it’s not fresh in my

mind. But that was like the first thing. It was just like oh great,

another voice that’s like, for the egoists and reinforcing the

hyper-individualism and wait there is like this stretch and connection

to indigeneity and I am just like, I’ve never seen that. In every

community I have visited and traveled to and

A! - Well you have given me a couple of things to think about. I think

that this decolonize, anti-decolonization differentiation... I think

there is something interesting there. First of all it is a fantastic way

to break away from the decolonization, the way it is being framed right

now is not quite toxic, but...

K – I think it’s highly toxic, cause from what I see from a

non-indigenous perspective to these areas, patently white--for the most

part--perspective. It becomes a personal project and we don’t need more

people just running around with these...

A! - By which you mean a process of personal self-revelation?

K – Yes. And ultimate gratification.

A! - My question for you, and I will frame it in the form of advice. So

this new project: my goal is to be the editor emeritus of this project.

In other words, I make it happen from the perspective of resources and I

open my rolodex to make sure good writers and people find the project,

but I am very serious about this. I really want a transformation along

lines that we have already discussed, specifically along the line of

talking about Native stuff in a different way, in a not fetishizing way

and having voices, varied voices...

K – Beyond the usual suspects..?

A! – Yeah, so my suspicion is that what that is going to have to look

like is me doing a lot of interviews. We are talking about a green

anarchist publication, but I really would like it to look like the Green

Anarchism that I would like to create... I think you and I have a bit of

a sense as to what that would look like, so how to do this correctly?

Because first of all, I have to say, if you look at today vs. ten years

ago there’s a hell of a lot more people to talk to. I mean it’s

unbelievable. It’s really unbelievable how many more people there are

that have come into anarchism. How would you do it if you were me?

K – I know how I wouldn’t do it, unfortunately that is a lot of my

initial response. I think part of it is just being on the ground with

folks and connecting with folks who are on the front lines and being

open to a sense that not everybody’s gonna have the articulate academic

voice and just making sure that people feel comfortable engaging and

that it’s not just gonna be some type of hostile place for them. When I

started doing media work it was partly out of just the frustration with

folks just sticking this lens and exotifying, essentializing, and

picking off the things they felt were sexy for other people to pay

attention to without dealing with the full range of who we are in all

our contradictions and conflicts as indigenous folks. Maybe establishing

this sense doesn’t have to be that explicit but trying to develop that

relationship. You want to dissuade the cultural pimps to some degree and

you want to get the heart of this discourse/discussion cause it sounds

like part of the objective is to amplify indigenous voices in to the

larger anarchist milieu, to assert another direction or ya know just

another option for folks to embrace their fights. I guess that’s like my

initial reaction when I heard. What is indigeneity mean for other folks

who are not indigenous to this area. There might be some people who want

to engage in that discussion. Like I said before, I don’t know how

interested I am in focusing on that as much as just drawing some

boundaries, and saying “hey maybe this is a good place for you all to

focus your fight” and making sure people aren’t just (for lack of better

terms) Zapatista-fying all these external struggles without saying “oh

wait, right, here we are on Tongvan (Indigenous folks of LA area) land,

maybe we should build a relationship with them and maybe it is going to

take a lot longer than we want and maybe they don’t have the articulated

position that’s convenient for us to just transpose their politics and

our politics interchangeably.”

A! - But I guess, that’s talking about fighting a fight with people on

the ground. You’re answering that question already with what you’re

doing here. It’s not exactly what I am asking. How many people do you

know are confident to say something challenging, how many of those

people could say it in print vs face to face, how many of those people

would it take days to develop a relationship before they would say it?

Cause if that is the only option then if you point me to the right

person I am willing to do it.

K – Yeah, so how it could be done is establishing a network. But folks

need to have a demonstrated sense that it’s not just some exploitative

work or something that’s hostile. ‘Cause like I said. We have a lot of

shit lessons. It’s part of the reason a lot of native folks don’t go to

the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair. We have a lot of shit lessons. It’s

part of the reason why a lot of O’odham folks outside of Phoenix don’t

engage with radical folks. I know some communities where people have

only gotten hostility. So there is not a good relationship. Starting in

the Southwest, like you said there is this strong cultural base, and

part of the history of that unfortunately is because a lot of the

colonizers, I mean we fought off the Spanish for 350 years but a lot of

the colonizers rushed past us for the gold in California. Honestly,

looking at some of the sacred sites areas... Like I said, part of the

reason people are so aggressively fighting for sacred sites and a lot of

young people is because one, they are in areas where there is still an

intact relationship so it meets some of the criteria that you

established before. And those folks understand the risk and they are

engaging on multiple fronts. I think maybe hitting some of those places

or just reaching out to people.... Just focusing on the project first,

your audience, again. Just to hear it a little more clearly.

A! -.. That’s a great question. I assume that the audience is the

audience of the last magazine but perhaps that’s sloppy. So the

provocation is how to make it better, how to reach a different set of

people, and I would say in general that I have not done a particularly

good job of... the term we use is marketing. This is a marketing

problem. How do you find, especially since I am, like most anarchists,

by and large isolated from the rest of the world, by the wall of them

not caring about the way we put things and us being fine with that. So

if I break out of that for a second and think, the problem with green

discourse is that it’s, to use a loaded word, apocalyptic, and the

influence of anthropology, green capitalism, and christianity.

K – I guess when I ask that question, part of it is about when you were

talking about wanting to reach out to different contributors, find a

range of voices. Part of that question is, what relevance is this to my

community. It’s a question of distribution and dissemination and “Indian

Country” too, maybe just looking at how that will work out and how that

could look. There has been a range of different projects, the good ones

being in Canada, the more a-political and more arts-focused ones here in

the US and even them being somewhat limited and being a question. I

don’t feel as well versed in bridging indegeneity (which to me feels

still more like an academic term) and anarchism; you have a lot of

interesting writings that explore that. More just your perspectives and

what you have come to understand. Last time we talked you said you were

an anarchist without adjectives. I don’t feel uneasy about saying I am

an indigenous anarchist but indigenous always comes first; this is what

I have to preface the discussion with. And my affinity with anarchism is

through direct action, acting without mediation in the range of values,

like mutual aid. Which sometimes reinforces that sense of community. To

me it doesn’t have to be beyond the mutual here, but to me it connotates

that to some degree. The range of other basic qualifications for

anarchism. But I’m curious ‘cause you obviously dig deep, very deep.

What’s your expression? I read something a while back, that I am pretty

sure was written by you that was about Locating An Indigenous Anarchism

and I went back and read that some time ago. It was more or less, it

almost felt like it was a longing for something as opposed to

identifying as much. Which I appreciated.

A! - It is also the nature of being an urban, mixed Indian. It’s a very

different experience than yours. But, I think that where I begin, is

probably in this space of having a suspicion that my own internal

conflict is... on the one hand, I think that using the word “anarchist”

has magic powers. That’s on the one hand. On the other hand I think that

the anarchistic instincts are generalizable. The interesting part is in

the specifics, but that many of the 500 had anarchistic sensibilities.

So I’m not excited about the Iroquois (which some anarchists have become

excited about cause they model after them their idealized organizational

configuration or whatever). For me I am much more interested in the

small stories of how one’s elders communicate ideas of how to behave and

I think somewhere in those stories is something really different. I feel

like I am not even a good enough storyteller; the older people in my

life have been fantastic storytellers. It took me years to figure out

what they were driving at. So for me the challenge to anarchists is,

what does anarchism look like if it doesn’t use the word? The other part

of this is that I have more influence than many people in the anarchist

space. If I want to do a green anarchist publication I can and people

are going to read it. So the political motivation here is that I want

this story to be what the future of anarchism looks like. And the story

is going to be a long one. It is going to be drawn out, and it’s not

gonna be question then answer. I’m enough of a strategy person, up to

now I have been able to fit pieces out, thinking a couple years out.

This is more like a ten year fitting things together. And it involves a

lot of strangers and a lot of suspicions but I’m not sure. ..The flip

side in terms of the audience question is what do the people I am

talking to get out of it. And that’s important. It’s not just important

it’s a problem I don’t have an answer to. What I’m talking about would

benefit anarchists, because they need it. So what is it that anarchists

have that could actually benefit strangers? And the answer is the same

that it always is. Ridiculous enthusiasm, a lot of laughter, but then,

danger. So yeah I am going to have to think about that some more.

K – Yeah, that’s where we like Drew and Brian’s statements about wanting

accomplices not allies. They’ve done a great job of deconstructing f

ally-ship. Cause that’s part of what I hope gets sorted up front. It’s

interesting with this current wave of liberal disillusionment, with the

Obama administration, and Idle No more, the Keystone XL pipeline, that

people are paying attention to native struggles and that there is a bit

of a spotlight. And of course the non-profits are flocking, like the

moths that they are, rather blind. Fitting the metaphor very well

unfortunately. Yeah it will be interesting to see how that plays. ‘Cause

there have been other times when indigenous struggles have been sexy,

and then people just move on to the next interesting spectacle. And

that’s what I would hope this base has some aversion to. So one question

I had for you, I guess I’m still trying to extract some of your

politics. So what is your reaction to the statement, we belong to the

earth? Do you have an affinity for that?

A! - I do but it doesn’t have the sort of specificity that it does for

you. A little bit about my story; so while my mother’s family is all

registered Native people, my maternal grandfather was actually a

Canadian, therefore his quantum did not count. So I’m not registered

myself. But my father, a white man, loved Indians. Like he really really

like Indians like he read all of Carlos Casteñada, he knows all the pipe

ceremonies. I mean there is nothing about the western plains indians

that he doesn’t know. That’s why he found my mother. So while I was

raised by my mom, I spent plenty of time with this guy who very much

fetishized this whole aspect of my life. So my mother’s spirituality was

very quiet and not specific. And her mother was a catholic and pretty

much everyone else was a catholic. I have one traditional relative, and

she is still alive. She is actually why I am going to michigan, and she

was raised by Catholics, so all this is very different from your

experience. So it is much more on the level of platitudes than

places.[?] Even though I can go to this Indian village, which is this

shanty town outside of Traverse City, where generations of my people

were. But that was a village of timber houses. Not what was there

before. So my experience is post genocide. This is my language of

course. You might not accept it but to me, my struggle, what does life

look like, what does spirituality look like, my language is a couple

words and my great great grandfather who died when I was six, who was

the last fluent non english speaker that anyone in my family knows. So

to me, the question is what does life look like in these sort of ruins.

Which is kind of why I don’t talk about it so much, ‘cause that is what

life in the ruins is like. But I know that something in here is very

important and I know that something is missing. And I was raised with

all the urban indian problems. Alcoholism, violence, etc. But those are

the problems of urban people of color. Obviously natives have got a

spin. But this isn’t a triumphant story. I don’t have a good to reflect

against the bad. So while I am willing to go out and say spirituality is

possible and I can even say there was a place where I spent a lot of my

youth that was particularly important, I can’t bridge this sort of

existential gap. I point to that gap as being the genocide gap. My

language is harsh but that is the way that I would put it.

K – Yeah, that makes sense. It’s a lot to think about for sure. Thanks

for sharing, appreciate it. Yeah I guess that part of it is what’s worth

fighting for. When you talk about fatalism, that is part of the question

for me.

A! - Of course, right. At certain points in my life, I absolutely

thought there were things worth fighting for and over time I saw how

thin and shadowy they were. So I fought against nazi-skinheads when I

was a kid. I did a whole variety of irresponsible things in the belief

that it had this certain resonance that it didn’t actually have or that

it had for me only at that time . I’m not trying to demean my own

experiences but what you’re talking about is different. Because of the

three things or whatever.

K - I know you have challenged me with that question, of how unique

intact indigenous cultures who meet those three criteria are. So you are

engaging in this project and you put out some analyses sometime or just

stories you share regarding indigeneity. I want to see what the chance

is, ‘cause you put in my face a little bit about what can be done on a

practical level. What are we asking or urging people to do or move

towards, what are we inspiring. I guess that’s maybe in some way, shape,

or form to just put that ball in your court and maybe hear your thoughts

about that. Cause if we talk about how few indigenous nations maintain,

that keep that fire burning...

A! - Have the capacity to.

K – Cause we look at some of the indigenous nations in California who

have gotten just disturbingly rich off of casinos, completely removed

from their language, spiritual practice, and so forth, not necessarily

their land base, and so there are a couple of tribes that we met, or

indigenous nations that we met that are just traveling to other

indigenous nations and through a process that they just sort of

developed, basically sharing and learning from other neighboring tribes

but other tribes from other areas. And it was quite interesting cause

they were just collecting to establish a culture, which is being done in

a way, because they were up front with other nations people were

sharing. And they’re doing in a way that wasn’t just constructing

something false necessarily, because they are doing with a sense of--not

necessarily restoring their connection but--restoring a connection to

the land. I’m sure that from an anthropological perspective there is

some kind of name for it or whatever. You know that’s just what they are

doing to heal.

A! - That’s what they got. But the complication of course is that by and

large this is part of the process they have to go through to get

government recognition. Which in some occasions has been connected to

casinos and other commercial enterprise... In Michigan it is about

fishing rights. Fishing rights is big.

K - Yeah, it’s like, I guess you were asking, Where do you see things in

100 years or ten years or whatever. That’s part of it too I guess, just

putting part of that discussion back in the mix.

A! - The way I approach this problem is somewhat different, and perhaps

it is because I have read too much philosophy. Western philosophers have

done a lot of good thinking about their enemies. I’m sure that there is

someone who is waiting in the shadows against every argument that I

could possibly have against them. But I basically desire the dismantling

of the western project in all of its sundry forms and so specifically in

this case what I am about to talk about, my language, is the causal

chain that people create between action and spirit.

K- Causal alluding to causality?

A! - Right, cause and effect is one part of it, but also this idea that

ethics is why I chose to sit here and talk to you rather than walk over

to you and punch you in the face. I feel like all of this is... wrong is

too simple, but there’s something in the way that all of these are

constructed that I have a visceral revulsion to, and I’m not just going

to pull it out and say that there is something just spiritual, but I

could. But what I’ll say is that, a lot of questions that the western

mind thinks are answered, for me are mysteries, and they are only

satisfying and I can only be satisfied by them as long as they stay

mysteries. And the extent to which one wants to answer them, I usually

consider that person to be someone I am hostile towards. That make

sense?

K – Absolutely.

A! - So, by and large when someone asks me the question, why are you

doing what you are doing, my answer is fuck you. So I am a deep

pessimist who puts out a book a month. Many of these books are about

actions that happen on the street. Like one of our newest books is about

street tactics. But I don’t believe in fighting on the street. But I put

out a book a month. So there isn’t an answer to your question other than

this mystery that is definitely my preferred mode. Yesterday I was

talking with someone about the difference between social and anti-social

activities and I more or less identified as being for anti-social

activities. I was basically asked, “How can you be for infrastructure

and anti-social activities?” And the answer that I gave them, different

context, but whatever, spun my little story in a different way, but

basically I said, I believe in the power of seduction. [both laugh] So.

Yeah. [pause]

K – I wasn’t trying to ask you why you are doing what you are doing at

all. I questioned earlier “what’s worth fighting for.” Is it in relation

to just looking at some of the core values behind your thought.

Sometimes that question about belonging to the earth irritates egoists.

I don’t’ think they like to belong to anything, which is quite

interesting. I like to concern myself with not just outputting or making

lots of things but thinking about what the outcomes are. It’s like the

strategic or tactical thing that’s been ingrained in me. Just like doing

lots of ineffective things for so long, you just gotta try to consider

other options. So sometimes you just gotta think about the project that

you are working on and how I can put energy into that too, apply it to

these areas and move my agenda, my project along, which I identify as

essentially indigenous liberation, ya know, reinforcing resistance and

ultimately liberation.

A! - I just don’t put things like that at all. There is something in

that kind of triumphalism. I recognize how it’s a good communication

skill to be able to talk like that. [laughs] I prefer to not be

understood as far as that goes.

K – Yea, it’s interesting. I guess that’s why I keep revisiting some

stuff cause it’s interesting and I’m trying to elicit a bit more

understanding for myself and I appreciate your response of seduction and

I appreciate reading stuff from the folks in Italy who are torching shit

and talking about desire. I don’t like to fall into the trope traps and

sometimes feel myself, like I said earlier, feeding into them. And I do

need to have more discussions and read more about some of these things

to some degree because I feel...

A! - Let me, I will maybe say what you are trying to get at from a very

different place, maybe from a perspective you won’t appreciate. There is

a reason why people are turning to you to talk as a spokesperson, and

it’s because you know how to talk as a spokesperson.

K – Thanks for the insult, but yes, point taken.... I think that it is

really interesting to see the tendencies in radical circles in relation

to the anti-politic, and privilege theory, and identity politics stuff.

A! - When you refer to privilege theory what do you mean?

K – Well, primarily I am referring to folks addressing identity politics

in relation to saying “we need to deconstruct this discourse around

privilege” and just go beyond that and just focus on collective

liberation. Essentially that, like Andrea Smith just wrote an essay that

was talking about... essentially just arguing for collective liberation

to occur, we need to stop having these discussions that turn into

confessionals about each other’s privileges and people sort of atoning

for their sins of privilege and just move beyond that. Part of what

other folks have discussed too is just ensuring that folks are taking

initiative and not just objectifying indigenous people or just

objectifying even their senses of what the oppression is. ... I think

the bottom line is that this theory based around “if we all come to

terms with and own our own privilege and deconstruct it then we are

going to get to wherever we need to be,” and ultimately that just turns

in on itself and neutralizes people and ultimately the result is that

whoever are the oppressed group are still objectified. We are just

trying to move beyond that. That is my understanding, I think there is

more to it.

A! - Yeah, I guess I am curious as to why you care about this?

K – I guess a lot of other people care about it and it seems like the

terms to engage in allyship and support... The bottom line is that we

can’t do this alone. Collective liberation means something else when I

talk to other Diné people or other indigenous people and certainly when

I talk about resistance and liberation struggles with the white folks we

interface with here, or other folks of color, especially in the migrants

rights struggle, the so-called migrant rights struggle. Especially in

Phoenix, I think we see the problematic dynamics even worse with

organizations like Puente perpetuating this invisiblization of O’odham

folks whose lands they are occupying but also asserting this sort of

indigeneity as well, recolonization as some people call it. This example

should be built out more: Large budget non-profit migrant rights

organizations like Puente are working for comprehensive immigration

reform. Comprehensive immigration reform means increased militarism and

“border security” in the form of drone flights, increased checkpoints,

armed troops, the border wall, and more. Indigenous Peoples lands such

as the Tohono’odham are bisected by the so-called US and so-called

Mexican border. Some O’odham resist immigration reform as it means

destroying Indigenous communities. Migrant rights organization and their

“allies” invisibilize Tohono’odham and continue to rally for immigration

reform perpetuating the destruction of their communities. Part of the

basis of this intersectionality of oppression is tackling these issues

and finding ways to make sure we are engaging people who can provide

material support, cause our folks usually don’t have it at all... With

the infoshop for example, from the get go we knew that the folks who

have the time to volunteer are white folks with “privileged

backgrounds”--they have a lot of resources and a sense of volunteerism

as part of their social understandings. But for indigenous people it is

just like, usually with families with young ages, and school and work

and all these other things, it is a hard thing, to find a way to engage

on a sustained level. That’s part of it; we have been forced to

interface with folks who just show up. Then we assert our anti-colonial

politic and then they don’t know how to navigate, so then we end up

going through a bit of a process of orientation. Sometimes there’s

static, sometimes there’s problematic dynamics, especially if there’s

more white folks that are getting involved. So we have had a lot of

growing pains with trying to process all this shit. And people have done

it other places where it’s like everybody grew out of the identity

oppression olympic games and shit, where the challenge has been to find

a way to have each other’s backs.

A! - But you see, for me, that’s simple. And what you are talking about,

you are willing to use a whole ton of jargon or discourses, and I know

where those things come from... personally I would refer to it as “who I

am willing to negotiate with, and on what terms” and that’s a pretty

different conceptual space than kind of accepting the premise.

K – Yeah, and I think I have to give it more thought. Part of my initial

response is that I’m not sure how much negotiation--as far as it is

affirming and asserting like who we are and ensuring that other folks

understand--and that’s establishing the terms and just proceeding, ya

know? And certainly there has to be communication. We are not just gonna

impose. I don’t think it has ever been the nature of the relationship,

even though we have been imposed upon for so long... but I mean if we

are going to have a discussion about indigeneity and what that means,

there are certain terms that can’t be negotiated. That’s why I talked

about the natural law before, there are things that... I guess it’s

something I have to think about a little bit more. But yeah, I agree. I

do get sucked in o the academic establishment sometimes. I get sucked

into at least the periphery of the non-profit industry even thought I

try to dismantle it at every turn and part of it is just navigating to

survive. I am trying to find a way to be as effective as possible and

sometimes that means asserting myself in a different way. When I first

got involved in the peaks issue I had no idea what the National

Environmental Policy Act process was or what an environmental impact

study was or anything about The Forest Service decision-making

framework, but I had to learn, to be able to navigate and understand. I

always really deeply respect my brothers and sisters in the Native Youth

movement when that was a really fiery movement, because they were

fierce, no fucking question. And they wouldn’t have this conversation

with white “allies”, there’s no point and I’m not gonna have this

conversation with my elders cause there’s no point, and I say that not

to dismiss their intellect, ‘cause their intellect is beyond this., I

would offer them the respect to have a better conversation that’s direct

on that level. I think part of it is a survival mechanism to some

degree. Maybe I’ll grow out of it.

A! - I mean you’re not gonna be able to keep this space unless you are

willing to do it and there is something there that is a realpolitic,

that is something that I don’t accept but I get it... [laughs] Usually

when I hear people say these things I don’t like them very much.

K – No, no it’s interesting. It’s part of a discussion I have had with

other Native folks, ‘cause one, everyone on the outside presumes that

Native people have all the same politics, which is the first fucked up

assumption. Two, we do the same thing; we presume we are all on the same

page too and I had this... I mean I’ve had tons of horrible experiences

that have led people to either decide not to work with me or whatever,

just because I can be really critical sometimes. And people are like

“let’s start a campaign to get out the vote” and I’m just like “you’re

presuming we are all on the same page politically and you just told me

we didn’t have to have a discussion about politics before we talked

about tactics that we wanted to use in a campaign.” There is definitely

some deep things that we need to tackle. Yeah, sometimes I find myself

dislocating myself from what I feel should be authenticity, who I am and

the expression of who I want to be and honestly I think that’s part of

the expression... Out of frustration is the differentiation between

de-colonization and anti-colonial... I don’t think people are gonna get

it otherwise. Unless there is a strong enough differentiation where

people understand how to engage and how to not. I’ve told people through

music, through work over the years, if they ask, things they can do to

engage or not. I am just tired of doing that, I AM tired of sitting in

those circles and trying to hold hands. And basically just getting

frustrated with people who need that time to figure things out.

Sometimes it’s easy to subscribe to that, what is it? It’s not a

treadmill, it’s a hamster wheel or... (Sorry hamsters) of discourse and

the jargon that goes along with it.

A! - Yeah. Ok let’s talk about some anarchist stuff. Weasel words,

consensus, accountability.

K – Yeah ‘cause I do want to ask you more things.. Early on I had some

issues with collective process; the quick response is just noting how

people fetishize things easily. It’s just like the term “community.”

What does that mean?

A! - Right. It’s a weasel word.

K - I mean we could have a long discussion about it. Yeah, people focus

more on the process than the outcome sometimes and that’s the issue.

Just like you can sit for fucking hours in a meeting or you can try to

focus on getting shit done and doing the work, and sometimes that is the

process. There’s that zine Fetishizing Process, which I think does a

great job of sharing some anecdotes about how badly and how easily

consensus process can be manipulated. We’ve had some great

discussions... It’s the same thing with the word “accountability.” It’s

still somewhat prevalent to fetishize accountability processes in

communities and sometimes it is just as easily manipulated as consensus.

To the point where we have seen people attacked through accountability

processes. So here we have adopted a pairing of accountability and

responsibility. There has always gotta be an element of that through

whatever process. I think it’s great just anytime to throw out words

sometimes, but there is also a danger in just deconstructing everything.

Where do we stop? For me I have this point of reference, or points of

reference which are always culturally based, which is sort of grounding

for lack of a better term. Right now, you know like keh being our

familial clan-based relationships, which to me I see, I use that

interpretation of collective interchangeably, to varying degrees. One of

the lessons I learned early on with the big mountain resistance was that

everybody was just frustrated after the late 80s and early 90s. The

fragmentation of some of the families in the resistance was just like,

“Whoa, if we just had unity we would be effective and successful and

have victory.” And I had some of my elders, some of my relatives, say,

“Well if we were unified it might be easier for them to break us and

sometimes we just need to be in our own camps, doing our things.”

A! - Forcing them to negotiate separate deals.

K- Yeah, and so I always took that with me and used it as a frame of

reference when I thought about any joint or collaborative or collective

effort. Just thinking about what are the terms of unity and what are the

terms for working together, ‘cause sometimes people focus too much on

the process and we forget about the outcomes that can be achieved in

different ways. I really like having discussions like that... We just

like the sense of experimentation and we like to take risks here

sometimes, see what we can do based upon shitty experiences we have had

everywhere else. Just having discussions with other people, looking at

some of the methods that they have used and just being like, “yeah, fuck

that, let’s try something else because it’s not working.” For years,

every time I would get involved in any type of collective, one of the

first things we talked about was modifying consensus if it’s necessary.

There’s something to be said about over-focusing on the process and

forgetting about what the actual desired outcomes are. So I agree with

you on that. Obviously we’ve come to some conclusions from different

perspectives. I would like to hear more from you about that though. I’m

sure you have different experiences.

A! - Well I think I stopped... I mean, I was pretty into the process

around consensus for a great number of years. I feel like every group I

came into that had people less-experienced in these topics, I really

walked people down the country road. Oh and partially that’s because I

was in the Che Cafe (in San Diego), for a couple years and part of the

process of becoming a core member was being educated... The Che Cafe is

actually at the UC San Diego, and there were four other worker

cooperatives at UC San Diego. One of them was a bookstore, they were the

smart ones, and they actually, you had to go through a class where they

taught you how to think about consensus and there’s a book called the

“Red Doc”, it was a very thick binder and you had to go through the

whole thing. I learned afterwards that those people were Maoists, but

they were definitely teaching the Anarchists how to do consensus. So

that was actually why, I mean I got the hard lesson, [Klee laughs] I got

the full nine yards; they had very clear flow charts and the whole

thing. They had created it out of a process of decades of big fighting.

They did one thing that we actually replicated through my entire time in

collectives, which was crit, self-crit. Do you know about this, from the

70s? It actually comes from China. I mean crit, self-crit is basically,

we are in a collective together and you do something that is politically

inappropriate, crit, self-crit is the process of you being thrashed over

it, in public, within the group, within the central committee. To the

point to you having to confess your mistake. This was seen as a way to

even out power relationships. So in the context of the Che Cafe, every

three months the fifteen of us would sit together and block out the

whole day--with no one coming in or going out--to criticize each other.

It was, I mean especially for me, this really was my, like, becoming an

adult sort of thing. Prior to that happening, I threw temper tantrums. A

part of my personality and my rage issues and all the rest. I threw

temper tantrums. And boy after like two crit, self-crits I was cured.

But of course, as you can imagine, there were maybe one or two other

people who came from like a poor background. Everyone else... these were

the children of rich people. I wasn’t a student, they were all UC San

Diego students. It was a crazy thing for me to do, but that was...

Whatever, that was part of my process; it was part of how I came to

understand this stuff. And five years later I never worked with another

group that did that because, actually that’s not fair. I have become

increasingly critical of this over time. And especially what I feel is

the sloppy use of language. Every anarchist group is not a collective.

Anytime an anarchist decides to do something with another anarchist is

not an example of consensus. But that’s, it’s kind of like a pet peeve,

like when people say “very unique”, another pet peeve, but um... So I

guess what it comes to is this point where there has become an obsession

with process because anarchists don’t have particularly good answers to

the questions “what does that mean?” Americans, by and large, are

Protestants and the Protestants, they care about work a lot. It is part

of their religion that they’re gonna work. As a matter of fact I grew up

in Western Michigan; the neighborhoods in western Michigan were Black

people, Poles (as the poorest of the white people they got their own

ghetto), Indians, the Dutch. And the Dutch brought their type of

Lutheranism to western Michigan, and they believe in pre-destination, so

they work hard because they aren’t sure which way it is going to go

[heaven or hell] but it’s already been decided. Anyways, big long story.

The point is that...

K – I’m always interested in the long parts of the short stories.

A! - Yeah, of course. That’s where the flavor is! So the point is

Americans by and large think very functionally. Anytime you share your

crazy idea, the first question is always “How you gonna do it?” So the

response that has really come through the peace movement of the 70s ,

but really of the 80s and the--not clamshell alliance but whatever it

was called [the abalone alliance]--that was in the bay area. They are

the people who brought consensus into the anarchist discourse. It wasn’t

part of it at all before then. So that happened in the 80s and we have

been burdened with it ever since. Basically I would like to have you

join me in the resistance to it , but really it is joining the

resistance to weasel words, ‘cause what has happened is that we just use

these words to describe everything even if they aren’t necessarily

particularly accurate.

K – Yeah absolutely.

A! - ‘Cause a group of people sitting around a table and more or less

agreeing on doing something together, that still feels like a pretty

good way to do things.

K – Yeah. Certainly the will of the majority or impositions are very

challenging, but I think that is part of... at least the approach needs

to be mindful of... I mean, indigenous organizing with the NGO

non-profit world on an international level is focused on free prior

informed consent, which I think makes sense to people. And it’s

applicable I think. Right now there’s a bit of a monopoly on that term,

in the international indigenous organizing spheres, but I think there’s

different ways we can apply it beyond so-called human-rights struggles.

There is something to be said about free, prior, and informed consent.

A! - The free part is the deception.

K – Yeah, right. Especially when defined by international institutions.

A! - ...and the violence all over the place there. Just because violence

doesn’t look like violence any more.

K – That’s the thing. More recently I have been really fascinated with

talking about legitimacy too, and just thinking about what that means in

relation to... and I think it came out of one of the Rolling Thunders,

there was a really good essay about legitimacy and I just took the word

out of context. I don’t even remember what they were talking about but

it was interesting. I think that sometimes if you have these terms and

then you apply them you are legitimate, within these circles. And if you

don’t have them, “What are you doing here?”

A! - Actually I was going to mention this earlier, I was always struck

by the land bridge discussion.

K – Yeah, the Bering Strait.

A! - Specifically the idea of how, like I have challenged people a

couple different times on the idea that... perhaps I accept that there

were people who came out of the heart of Africa, the Euphrates and

Tigris, the Euphrates Basin? I’m willing to accept that “POP!” People

came. But you’re not willing to accept any other point of origin? In

other words most people who are scientifically-minded and believe in

evolution are very clear that everyone walked from there. It blows my

mind.

K – Yeah. We did a tour with our traditional dance group and took our

music up into those areas ‘cause there is an Athabaskan dialect, as it’s

called, has always fascinated anthropologists and we were talking to

them, and... You would have a much better conversation with my dad to

some degree ‘cause he doesn’t... Like, he gets straight to the point. So

it’s what we asked them up there, my dad was talking to them too and we

were just asking them what they thought about this and my dad was

saying, “Hey we’re relatives, in some way, shape, or form we know that

in our history this is what we say. That there was a time of conflict

here and some of our folks migrated up north and some folks came down

and we have words or names for them,” and one of the things that folks

up there, Dine said was that, if there’s a bridge, traffic goes both

ways. And we were just laughing about it, because of their

interpretation. I think the important thing for me, the main point I

mentioned earlier, we have our origin story, our traditional history

which is, that’s how we know ourselves in this world. It’s a challenging

discussion when you have people dislocating that and taking that from us

and calling it myths.•

Anarchy and Anthropology

by Kevin Tucker

One from the archives. The following is an article that we unearthed by

Kevin Tucker which was featured in Species Traitor: An Insurrectionary

Anarcho-primitivist Journal, Issue 3 (Spring 2003). The author looks at

anthropology with a skeptical and sobering (no pun intended) gaze that

offers many insights that we hope can spur further discussions on this

particular school of “truth”, and maybe lay others to rest. The

discussion of anthropology’s relationship to science and reason, and the

author’s asking of whether or not anthropology is a tool that we can

“use” without reproducing that system, were particularly good. Though

this article was not submitted, it was certainly worthy of a reprint. If

you can get your paws on the issue itself, there are some more gems in

there that merit a gander. Perhaps Tucker’s views have changed since

this article was first published 11 years ago, but maybe we can leave

that question to the archaeologists.

As Theresa Kintz points out in her interview, anthropology (referring

here to the general field that consists of biological/physical

anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics), like

all sciences, is a tool of the civilized. Radical anthropologist Stanley

Diamond has written: “Civilization originates in conquest abroad and

repression at home.” The role of science has been to justify and perfect

that conquest and repression, and anthropology isn’t an exception.

However, through the work of anthropologists (both unintentionally and

intentional) we’ve come to a greater understanding of the human-animal

and the anarchist state we’ve lived in for over 99% of our existence. We

come against the problem of having to work with such tools of the

civilizers while trying to destroy the entire mental and physical system

that originated it.

Outsiders Looking In and Away

The original anthropologists primarily worked from the accounts of

conquistadors, missionaries and travelers bringing back news of the

‘savages’ beyond the realms of civilization. The two options that the

conquerors saw for the ‘primitives’ was to wipe them out or assimilate

them, though as we have historically seen, both have led to similar

outcomes. The assimilation was spearheaded by missionaries and those who

found these people had more value alive (as labor) than dead, although

the two are hardly separable. The hopes of the missionaries would be to

pave the way for a ‘friendly’ relationship and to ‘civilize’ the

‘savages’ through their God.

The work of the time would predominately be self-serving accounts of the

rise to civilization from ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’. The major turn

would be with Franz Boas who focused on the need for direct field work

around the turn of the century. Boas, a German immigrant to the United

States, saw the natives of this country being slaughtered off and fast.

His concern was that all of this knowledge would die off with these

people and began the turn of anthropological work to recording the

entirety of the knowledge being destroyed.

With Boas came the importance of describing and cataloguing aspects of

people. This kind of approach is work of the scientist. Despite what

good intentions Boas and his followers had, their work was entirely

subjective. By describing everything that one sees, there is no kind of

‘objectivity’. There is only a situation that German philosopher Hans

Peter Duerr calls “riding the fence”, meaning that there is a person

trying to understand one reality to translate it to those in another

reality. That person then is stuck in the middle, always a part of one

culture and is therefore only capable of observing the other culture

through their perceptions. What Duerr points to is that there is no kind

of ‘scientific method’ that can even begin to bring about what it

proposes it will . In this case, that is the field of anthropology

acting as the study of humans, or as Stanley Diamond says, “the study of

men in crisis by men in crisis.”

The process that Boas started was furthered by Polish anthropologist

Bronislaw Malinowski a few decades later after his work with the

Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. Malinowski’s initial fieldwork there

ended up lasting longer as he moved onto a remote island to avoid

deportation during World War One. Over this period he became immersed in

Trobriand culture, defining what he would later call

“participant-observation”. Duerr comes to mind as I can see Malinowski

the scientist becoming somewhat emerged into this ‘primitive’ society to

return to Europe. Knowing his situation wasn’t permanent he always had a

foot out the door in some respects.

I don’t feel this wipes all validity from his work, I just feel that

when looking at these cases, these are all things we have to consider.

This kind of ‘observation’ carries with it the scientism of objectivity,

believing that the wholeness of a culture can be observed and understood

from neutrality. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss has

recognized that while science is still myth, it carries the possibility

of finding a ‘factual reality’. He states: “Science will never give us

all the answers. What we can try to do is to increase very slowly the

number and the quality of the answers we are able to give, and this, I

think, we can do only through science.” Through even this rather liberal

assessment we are left with the belief in ‘hard facts’, and while

Lévi-Strauss has denied ‘scientism’ he has none-the-less carried its

underpinnings.

Through this, all of the positive outcomes of anthropology must also be

understood in a way that is independent of civilized assertions. What we

have seen from the field of anthropology and understanding the problems

we face now is that “[f]undamentally we are people of the Pleistocene” ,

we are gatherer-hunters. The anarcho-primitivist critique takes this

understanding very seriously, meaning that civilization is a recent

invention and the effects of domestication are just a sign of our urging

to return to the way of life that has shaped our being. With this, there

is little reason why we shouldn’t uphold this kind of information,

because it speaks directly to the repressed gatherer-hunter in all of us

civilized peoples. What we should always be wary of is the dry scientism

that underlies the specific search that anthropology takes on.

Creating Reality

In his book, Red Earth, White Lies, Sioux scholar Vine Deloria Jr. opens

up questions about “the myth of scientific fact”. His drive in this was

to debate the well established theory that Native Americans arrived on

this continent by crossing the Bering Strait within the last 20,000

years (one of the more modestly accepted estimates). In the eyes of

Deloria and other Native Americans (though not all) this theory,

established as ‘fact’, is racist. I’m concerned in certain ways about

validity of some arguments which may be based on ‘land claim’ issues,

which has been an accusation against this particular book. As an

anarchist, I feel that nothing makes any specific ‘land’ someone’s

‘property’, although I understand this kind of legal assertion against

governments. Regardless of this possibility, I find that a lot of the

arguments are worthy of heavy consideration.

What Deloria draws upon in this book are the ways in which anthropology,

as a science, will pick and choose what ‘evidence’ it will bring into

its ‘factual’ reality (although Deloria is guilty of this as well). This

is a serious problem of all scientific understandings, a conception of a

kind of ‘absolute truth’ which underlies all of existence (this

dependency on ‘absolute truth’ is the reason that I would qualify most

religion as science). What happens is that the possibilities for what is

‘real’ are framed only within what is ‘known as fact’ for those who are

observing. A lot of people have a hard time understanding that science

is all just theorizing, in this way it becomes only possible to think of

people coming into this continent through the Bering Strait. I can’t say

I take the ‘science’ side or the ‘indigenous’ side (since neither really

exist), but I think that scientific ‘fact’ has limited our ability to

look to other possibilities.

The problem, as I see it, isn’t in trying to figure out what is ‘right’

or ‘wrong’ but realizing that a system that carries such values and can

impose them upon others is the problem. I, like Theresa, have little

interest in battling myths with others, and as I will point to later,

feel that a mythic, ecological consciousness is important to rewilding

our lives, but I feel that anthropology can be vital only in

deconstructing the universalized and institutionalized myths that

underlie and maintain civilization.

Cataloguing Conquest

The past of archaeology isn’t much different than the rest of

anthropology. The kind of observation that Malinowski brought into the

fieldwork of anthropology could be said to be the basis of

archaeological digs. It wasn’t till after Darwin’s Descent of Man (1859)

that archaeologists would even recognize the past as existing outside

the 6,000 year span that the Church allowed since ‘creation’. In the new

world it wasn’t till Boas criticisms came to reshape the way digs were

done. Archaeological digs, as we know them now, didn’t take their

current form till the 1960’s through the work of Lewis Binford after the

1947 origin of the Carbon-14 dating technique, explicit use of

evolutionary theory, employment of cultural and ecological concepts, and

the use of systems theory.

Archaeology is essentially the study of the past through material

remains. The work of archaeologists can only really be useful when put

into context with how certain remains are used by more recently observed

peoples or common usage of similar materials. What archaeology really

has to work with is finding the exact location of things in the earth.

Their work is to literally dig up the past and theorize on the

implications of their findings. In many ways this is working with a huge

disadvantage and moving into a lot of speculation, but as Theresa points

out, there is a lot that can be learned from this despite the handicap.

Some have taken these findings and added to the critique of

civilization, such as John Zerzan, Jared Diamond, and Clive Ponting to

name only a few.

What I see as problematic here is the actualities of all of this. While

I see no point in discrediting the effects of all the collected

information that points to the inherent problems of civilization, I do

think there may be a point when this becomes self-serving. I’m not

interested in ever saying that we should stop looking, but I’m concerned

that this search has overcome the possibilities that are being opened

up. When I was writing these questions to Theresa, something was

constantly coming into my mind; that we know that civilization is fucked

up and that this is not the way of life that humans have become

ecologically evolved into, but how much do we have to constantly

reassert it before we do something about it. I’m not accusing these

folks of not trying to do something, but I become concerned in general.

Looking into the fields of anthropology, I constantly see people like

Boas who are concerned with constantly recording and cataloguing all the

problems of civilization. What comes to mind is a photograph from the

Vietnam War of three American soldiers raping a Vietnamese woman. The

war photographer (as well as the photographer and journalist in general)

have made it their work to constantly record the destruction that is

occurring, possibly with the hopes that what they have recorded may spur

others to action. How much does it take before we stop just recording

hoping that someone else will come along before we act? In many ways the

anthropologist is just like that war photographer, watching destruction

take place right before their eyes and recording it. Perhaps this is the

success of domestication in disempowering individuals to feel that they

can have no impact on the situation, but my interests remain purely

revolutionary. I again am forced to ask what it will take before we stop

being mere observers as our home and all life is being destroyed before

we do something about it. I feel anthropology can serve as a weapon

against the civilized ‘reality’, but I’m afraid that so long as it

remains within scientific understanding it will seek to only make us all

participant-observers to destruction.

As Theresa has mentioned, the work of the archaeologists is the business

before the bulldozers. This can be a tough situation. Knowing that

developers will completely destroy the land without regard would it be

doing something positive to try and pull out the pieces of human past

that will be plowed away? Can it serve as a kind of deterrent against

developers or is a dig just another method of clearing out the land,

whether developers follow or not? Most importantly, I’m concerned with

finding a way of trying to stop the destruction from the start, and not

trying to make the best of a shitty situation.

Revolutionary Potential

The work of radical anthropologists like Theresa, Pierre Clastres,

Marshall Sahlins, Richard B. Lee, and Stanley Diamond (to name a few) is

vital to moving anarchist critique and action. What is being uncovered

by anthropology is too valuable to be discarded, and it is inspiring to

see people from within these fields realizing the potential influence of

their work. However, it is equally important to use that evidence as not

just ‘findings’ and ‘evidence’. To move beyond civilization we will need

to use this kind of knowledge to reawaken the wildness that sleeps

within us. Anthropology will remain vital only so long as it speaks to

us and we are able to use it without becoming it.

The exact same applies to history and other sciences. I personally feel

that the work of the evolutionary theorists was vital to overthrow the

scientific mythology of the religious conquerors. However, as a

rewilding human, I’m forced to question the potential of this finding.

To what degree is it important that we ‘know’ the specifics of our

entire past? What is important is a mythological

(anti-institutionalized) consciousness that enhances who we are within

the context of the community of life that we are a part of. The success

of civilization exists in reducing our reality to a backdrop of things

that we exist apart from.

What I’m referring to above isn’t a kind of intentional ignorance or

turning the cheek on ‘knowledge’, but to question what is a part of the

human-animal. From my own understanding, a mythic, unwritten view is one

that is able to flow with the world and can achieve what we’d hope to

get from history and science without subjective implications on the

world that we are theorizing about. The problem that is being opened

here is getting to there from here. I’m interested in a reawakening of

primal consciousness that has been repressed by civilized domestication

in order to justify and continue conquest and exploitation. We are

constantly up against questions of how can we use these things that

shape the civilized reality in order to destroy it. Towards this I can

only point to what I think is problematic, in this case being any kind

of complete faith in sciences like anthropology and using what speaks to

my being without disregarding what I just don’t care for.

The point in extending on this discussion is to find a way of using

these kinds of findings without using the system that has produced them.

I feel that a revolt against civilization will require a revolt against

the scientism of civilization (Reason). What Theresa has laid out here

is a view from inside the field about what is going on. I don’t agree

entirely with her view, but I can respect her attempts to overturn from

within without preoccupation or delusions of anthropology as the

‘wonderscience’ (as Lévi-Strauss surely would see it). The path to

anarchy will require calling into question all of the ‘sacred cows’ that

have laid the path for rational dissent so that we can return to our

primal being.

Don't Turn Away

by Diane di Prima

if you are working on something don’t turn away &

especially if it hurts don’t look away how many how deep the sore flesh

eaten to bone by infection

don’t turn away like hyena Vulture waiting guardians don’t look away

guardians of the edge, of

Port0au-Prince, don’t look don’t look away the wraiths of forbidden hope

don’t forbidden love

don’t dust whose skulls we bury who and bury wehre shall we keep the

dead don’t loook away

don’t blink don’t turn it is the same north for the old ones don’t look

away south for the children

i thought they came to stay look now look thru yr tears if you have any

if there are any tears left

look they magnify tears magnify what you can still see

what what look

do you know mud warm mud what breeds in it no don’t ook it up don’t

study it’s all before your

yes it’s in your skin your memory you can taste it too don’t refuse your

memories they ARE you

don’t look away don’t let that one lie face down any longer turn it over

is it he or she IS there a

face part of a face look close eyeballs are delicious to many zero in

don’t go we have only just

come to this place it’s not a horror show.

what does it mean to rot? a great healer asked h e looked he invited all

to look. what does it mean

to ROT what comes apart in the moist air look in the rain look in the

streaming mud

what is a mass grave? this is not a rhetorical question. stand on the

brink & look look close as you

can never mind the smell this will only take a moment I promise how long

do you actually think

you have? stand on the edge the brink who is rotting here? what falls to

pieces? how do you

know a piece?

look in discover stumble by accident on a grave at the edge of town is

it fresh? look closer is it fairly

new? the mud is alive with forms moving shaping self-destructing

recombinant they are not fearful

any longer look bear witness look earth is mass grave in the warming air

Answers to Questions Not Asked: Anarchists & Anthropology

-by Aragorn!

The issues with anthropology have little to do with anthropology itself.

Wanting to understand and hear other people’s stories is a sound desire.

It is arguable (but I’d side with it) that stories are one of the best

things about humans and hearing new stories is one of the best ways to

get to know new people. These things also have nothing to do with

anthropology.

Those who confuse the specialization of an academic discipline with

human curiosity are the ones doing the work of society, of the social

order. Anarchists in general understand that one can observe, test, and

propose solutions to any number of problems, in any number of areas of

inquiry, without the stamp of approval of the institutions that

discipline the curious into orthodoxy, that rely on their own logic, and

that steer such inquiry for their own interests. When one eschews these

institutions but continues their work, dividing daily life into narrow

categories - even when one does it critically - then one is still doing

the work of alienation and fragmentation.

Critique Isn’t Nearly Enough

By whatever name it is called: anthropology, sociology, psychology,

philosophy, etc. human experience has been fragmented into a thousand

shards. Those who do the new ordering and the recombining of the shards

will be the new managers. Whether these specialists are speaking truth

is irrelevant compared to the process of dissection, isolation, and

objective truth telling they are attempting to do. At some point the

truth is in the details and those details are about something entirely

different from the relationships I have and am capable of having, the

details are about something only a specialist would know and understand.

The devil-in-the-details is society and the bargain is that tomorrow

will be much like today.

Our project here is not a critical engagement with

anarcho-anthropologists. Fans of the Other (whether it’s anime, Native

Americans, or paleolithic era hunter-gatherers) are fairly harmless as

far as they go. Our project is with the thinking that may (but may not)

underlie the rhetoric of some anarcho-anthropologists but absolutely

buttresses the thinking about what the role of society is; i.e. it works

to normalize the other, flatten cultural difference, and participate in

truth claims.

To put this a bit differently... I believe that the destruction of the

western project (what some call civilization and what I call society),

is a goal that I share with many of these neo-romanticists but we

absolutely disagree about not just how to do it, but how to think about

doing it. Painfully, I don’t believe we are even at the stage of a

debate about tactics, but are instead at a preliminary discussion on how

to conceive of the problem, which at some point may turn into a sharing

of ideas about strategy that may result in debates about tactics. We are

tentative comrades who - if the current reticence towards examining

basic ideas is any indication - probably have a long way to go before

meaningful cooperation can begin.

What Is The Most Fundamental Of All

A sort of shared beginning where we can start a conversation could come

from the lovely words of Against His-Story, Against Leviathan! (AHAL).

<em>Leviathan is turning into Narcissus, admiring its own synthetic

image in its own synthetic pond, enraptured by its spectacle of itself.

It is a good time for people to let go of its sanity, its masks and

armors, and go mad, for they are already being ejected from its pretty

polis.</em>

-Fredy Perlman

This book spins a creation story of Leviathan and of an enclosure—that

we can safely call Civilization - that has captivated us all. But it’s

not a true story. It is not Truth. It did not happen the way Fredy

writes in the book (not even close). One could say that his story speaks

to greater truths than the actual things that happened, and that’s fair,

but let’s be clear among ourselves that the story of AHAL isn’t a true

one, it’s something else.

Truth is an insistence on a single interpretation of facts on the

ground. It lays evidentiary claims to reality by way of disciplines like

the experimentation and rational claim-making of the natural sciences.

It may claim a tentative or partial nature but it bases all

argumentation on the centrality of, and provability or belief in, a

central thesis.

To bring this into a discussion about anarchism and anthropology, the

central conceit of the anarcho-anthropologists is the theory that prior

to the first granary we (humans) were free of coercion, hierarchy,

patriarchy (and the toxic mixture of those and more that we call

Leviathan). By fixing this line of demarcation in time, location, and

import we orient our dreams of a better/different world. If that line

isn’t real, either because freedom existed both pre- and post-

Civilization or because Leviathanesque elements existed prior to priests

and the first assertion of a monopoly of violence, then the entire

orientation around the line should be seen for being as utterly

subjective as it is.

Serious play requires serious thinking and commitment (and the ability

to laugh every step of the way). The issue with truth is how it

considers play: as what only children and the ignorant do. The issue

with truth is that at some point it will always insist on being taken

seriously and will punish those who ignore the evidence - usually first

with scorn and eventually with force.

As we go mad here in the shadow of Leviathan our problems seem to

fracture and multiply. Is there a way out? Where do we begin? Where does

the shadow begin and end? Are we truly mad at all? I would propose that

these questions, all of them, are absolutely normal and equally (not)

true. The monsters around us thrive in our quiet misery, in our pretend

calculations around tripping them up and rising above, and above all in

the ways that we understand ourselves in their shadow. The idea of

Leviathan as truth is another pernicious way of being framed by ideas

(as in the old adage about it’s theory when you have ideas and ideology

when they have you).

The reification of civilization was not the goal of AHAL. As I read it,

the goal of AHAL was to tell a story about a strange and maddening

Leviathan, to problematize our relationship with what has come before,

but also to see ourselves in that history. As in Fredy’s story we are

zeks (workers, slaves) but as most of us have no remembrance of

elsewhere, of home, he makes it clear how few tools we will have to

contest this new disaster.

Behemoth

But what if Leviathan isn’t the worst of it. What if it isn’t the end

but the chapter before a new horrorshow, dominated by a different

mythological framework, one that literally disembodies and ensorcels us

all, one that crushes Leviathan beneath its hooves, that assumes our

disconnection from place, from home, and from each other as fellow

travelers, that assumes that we primarily interact with other zeks

through screens and ASCII characters. That builds on us, not as zeks,

but as consumers of a life that we fear to live. The story of this new

Behemoth isn’t about the violent dispossession of us from our homes, but

of us from our capacity to imagine and make decisions for ourselves. For

our resistance to Behemoth will be even more marginalized from the order

of things than seizing the means of production was against Leviathan,

it’ll be utterly constrained by communication technologies and

superficialities.

Which is why we must reject Leviathan and Behemoth, just as we already

reject Capitalism and the State. We must do this not just as

abstractions more alive than most of our personal relationships, but in

the very ways that they serve to frame reality, and the difference

between what we want to be (or used to be) and what we are. Truth claims

are traps that begin with our critical facilities and force us to either

remove them or be stuck.

Critique And Hostility

The tension I’d like to build here involves a sort of knowing,

understanding details about how the triumvirate (spectacle, biopower,

and bloom) works, while at the same time not becoming trapped by that

knowledge. As things get more complex (which the operation of a

seven-billion-zek-machine necessarily will) those who can wrap their

heads around more and more of the whole operation will be rewarded with

the perception of their participation. One can become a respected

commenter on political events, make a headline or two themselves, or

become a paid functionary of state or industry. By throwing oneself into

one’s job or into correcting the ills that one can identify and address

in the world around them, one can truly make no difference at all.

I assume a reader who is hostile to this arrangement from both

directions. On the one hand a revulsion for the business-as-usual roles

one is rationalized into becoming and on the other that “making a

difference” makes any difference at all, hostile to the idea that we are

all eager little producers - of ideas if not products - just waiting our

turn to have our products be popular and trendy. I propose that this

hostility be destructive; rather than expressing itself as an aloof

brand of cool, it should embody attack.

This is a distinct operation from what is traditionally called critique.

Critique is always a sort of loving embrace, a negotiation between

peers, and a quibbling about details. One critiques an essay, book, or

song as one who is also engaged in writing or singing on the themes

involved. Critique is usually inside-talking where there is no outside.

This is usually disconcerting to those trapped by the context of

critique-critiquer (no one likes to be critiqued) but irrelevant, trite,

and ridiculous to anyone outside of this insider relationship. These

relationships are called dialectical because those inside tend towards a

similar goal and agree, by way of reasoned dialog, about the truth of a

subject or the goal of their shared project.

Attack, or destructive knowledge, is mostly about understanding terrain,

capabilities, and timing. It is not about a pursuit of truth or a

purposeful productive project. It is not about a barbarian charge

against those things one despises (where would such a charge begin? Or

end?) Rather it searches for ways around nodes of critique (aka

dialectical sandtraps or clusters of truth negotiations) for its own

ends. Attack as an anarchist form of knowledge-acquisition means those

ends are likely connected to the destruction of existing systems of

social, cultural, and material organization. As it is largely unclear

how to resolve the central paradox of knowing as it relates to changing

or becoming, attack necessarily becomes languorous, ambivalent, and

idle. Entire industries exist to take advantage of this tension,

stifling instincts and the energy of attack by way of converting it into

simple consumption, partial activism, and ideological solutions. (We

fail, therefore we drink. We succeed, therefore we drink).

How could this look different? I will take a specific example. In the

Bay Area currently - but within radical politics generally - questions

of race have been absolutely captivating. Both from the experiences of

minorities who want to express themselves and their difference - in a

world that just doesn’t seem to give a fuck - and from the experiences

of those who know that they have been raised to, on some level, not give

a fuck, are levels of anxious efforts towards... what? On the

post-marxist side of radical race efforts are projects like race traitor

(and the ideological schemes that have grown from its seeds) that claim

that the key to solving the problems of our age is abolishing the white

race. The liberal/occupy side of radical race efforts was exemplified by

the proposal in December of 2011 in Oakland to change the name of

OccupyOakland to Decolonize Oakland. (This argues - put very simply -

that the language of occupy is that of colonization whereas the

terminology of decolonization is about growing, sharing, connecting to

traditions, healing, and education. To put it differently, it argues

that language matters and it has an action plan on how to achieve the

results it desires.) A final example comes from the post-occupy

decolonization movement, which demands that white allies speak about

their racial privilege, that occupy activists address genocidal

violence, and that future encampments be organized and led by those who

need them most.

There are a thousand ways to critically engage with these three

perspectives, all of which involve accepting basic premises that may, or

may not, be antithetical to how one actually thinks, but how can one

attack them? How can our engagement with interesting and serious

problems embody hostility to pre-existing methods and thinking about

them? Obviously the first step is to lay them out in this way, to expose

their analytical frameworks and solution-based orientations.

Another step is to understand that the politics, the words on paper and

claims to goals, are only one level of what is happening. Another level

is one of social arrangement and relationships. Most politics is also

cover for a social scene and the way its members communicate with

themselves about good and evil, right and wrong, and what the order of

operations should be.

Most jargons and frameworks are about creating insider-outsider

relationships and forcing the discussion (what the good talk about) to

live entirely inside the framework. There is no outside.

As a matter of political practice, the attacking anarchist always has to

be outside. An anarchist never accepts the premise that forces one

inside of other people’s assumptions. If these assumptions begin with a

series of definitional exercises that constrain reality to essential

categories and then claim domination over them... then reject it all.

What Is The Space Between 5,000 Nations And One

<em>Not even Indians can relate themselves to this type of creature who,

to anthropologists, is the “real” Indian. Indian people begin to feel

that they are merely shadows of a mythical super-Indian.

Many anthros spare no expense to reinforce this sense of inadequacy in

order to further support their influence over Indian people.</em>

-Vine Deloria, Anthropologists And Other Friends

After the treaties were signed and the bloody marches completed the

government of the US started a long game. To describe this game as

genocide is fine, as far as it goes, but what’s relevant here is that

it’s the game that states play by default. Destroy all distinct cultures

and organisms. Eliminate all threats to the monopoly of violence (which

is the bedrock upon which states are built).

There is a straight line from the mouth-foam frothing colonialism of the

19th century to the secular liberalism of the 20th. This line is drawn

in the expansion of job titles like legal assistant, program specialist,

coordinator, researcher, etc, (recent job titles drawn from BIA.gov).

It’s drawn as straight as the railroad, telegraph, highways, and fiber

optic cables are. We participate in this heritage (this straight line)

when we accept their terms of engagement and that is particularly the

case when pan-identities (synthetic amalgamated identities created in

the past few centuries) are considered true and real. It is clear that

the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians are not the same, do not

have the same interests or daily concerns, as the Sicangu Lakota

residents of the Rosebud Reservation or the federally unrecognized

people of Ohlone descent scattered around California - but referring to

natives as one singular thing, as a fixed singular identity is seemingly

natural. It is the way 500 nations have been distilled into one, one

that is oppressed sure, but that is fading into the sunset of history as

a single noble savage slumped over his defeated mount slowly plodding

away. It is one sad story in a world where there are a thousand of them,

all competing for our attention.

But this pan-identification goes the other way too. White people do not,

in fact, exist. There is no white culture, tradition, or material

condition. White, in the context of current racial identity and

discourse, is another way to express negation: it is the absence of good

food, dancing, and song. It is the way of lamenting how exchange

relationships have become confused and entangled with all human

relationships and gives that lamentation a cause; white people. And this

is true, the forces that have created a phenomena that is called “white”

are the same that have confused us about our relationships to each other

and forced us into believing that massive pan-identities are singular,

true ones. But these forces are not specifically white - white supremacy

(if that’s even a useful term, which I highly doubt) is a symptom, not a

cause. These causes are something, and somewhere, else.

Anthropologists, sociologists, marxists, etc are in the trade of

creating these categories and using them to dominate others. They are

doing the post-modern work of something-like-genocide. They directly

aided in the transition of thousands of tribal formations (in North

America and elsewhere) into categories of citizens, and today into

categories of consumers, sub-cultures, and counter-cultures. Whatever

their motivations, the god they serve is society: not social

relationships between peers, but an ordered hierarchical world composed

of classes (abstracted tribes), politics (abstracted collaboration), and

consumers (abstracted humans).

The Sound Of One Hand Clapping

Whether it is a little matter of the relationship between a cave and the

shadow on a wall, the author and the reader, or the observer and the

observed, there has been a deep concern since records have been kept

between those who keep the records, write them down, keep them safe, and

those who are the subject of those records. If one were critical of

these mechanisms and techniques one could reconcile themselves to

political partnerships with the subjects, perhaps would find themselves

protesting the record keepers, the keepers of truth, and resolved to the

ways that the Internet has reconciled the difference. The gap between

the cave and the wall is now illuminated by the electric glow of

information passing by. That gap, between the name and what is being

named, is also what is powering the whole show.

“The European materialist tradition of despiritualizing the universe is

very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another

person. And who seems most expert at dehumanizing other people? And why?

(...) And what the process has in common for each group doing the

dehumanizing is that it makes it all right to kill and otherwise destroy

other people. One of the Christian commandments says, “Thou shalt not

kill,” at least not humans, so the trick is to mentally convert the

victims into nonhumans. Then you can proclaim violation of your own

commandment as a virtue.”

-Russel Means,

“For America to Live, Europe Must Die”

Prior to the rise of mass society, when you knew the name or family of

every person you met, there was no Other. There were different families,

tribes, and ways but they were recognizable. One way to account for the

otherification that is the hallmark of society is pure numbers.

Regardless, there is no going back. We now live in a world populated by

Others, by other people and other ways of treating and considering the

shared problems we all have. We are no longer able to consent to this

othering, as it’s built into the economic arrangement and we live as

victims of it rather than as agents.

The only way to fight the othering instinct is to keep your circles

radically small, and resist attempts to be integrated into this society.

Since integration is the alpha and omega of the triumviarate, this

effort is nearly impossible. Every resistance is seen as seductive by

the cooptive forces of commerce and pluralism. Becoming impossible to

manage is one of the few human (by which I mean the inverse of mass

society) instincts left. Mostly though, this instinct has been manicured

out of existence and soon will entirely live in stories and histories,

as life escapes into screens and flipping bits. ‘

The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by Divine

Providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language,

professing one general system of religious and political principles, and

accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs. For the

common happiness of them all, for their peace and prosperity, I believe

it is indispensable that they should be associated in one federal Union.

-John Quincy Adams, 1811

Military power has severe limits. It implements violence against other

recognizable forces and then retreats. This is more true now than

perhaps it was in the 18th century but unless you are prepared to salt

the earth, at some point forces that work with different forms of logic

come into play. Society (especially as we understand it) does not

operate by way of violence, or it does but the ways in which this is

true are so obfuscated by the triumvirate that one barely notices it.

Society operates by the simple mechanisms of going to work everyday,

collecting your checks from your fixed income, traveling on the roads

provided by taxpayers, etc. It couldn’t be more normal that

one-step-at-a-time, one-day-at-a-time, one-choice-at-a-time society

(fixed, post-modern, and (in)tolerant) becomes the way we manage

ourselves. This doesn’t mean we have escaped a time of managers, but

that even they have little power: their role is more as functionaries:

oiling gears; filling out work schedules; making sure budgets are

adhered to, rather than telling those beneath them when, where, and what

to do.

Today’s managers require a sophisticated education in scandal

management, communication skills, and timing, to maintain the operation

of their little piece of machinery and their few entrepreneurial

subjects. Few managers know that when they are training themselves in

art history or anthropology, they are actually learning how to operate

humans inside of organizational charts. But they are.

The End Is The End

Over the past six months I’ve had the opportunity to answer a question I

never expected to have posed to me: “Why are you so hard on

Anthropology?” The argument being that it’s just another discipline much

like others and only a poor relative of the big social sciences.

Moreover, say its defenders, anthropology has learned the lessons of

[Man The Hunter, Clastres, Deloria] and no longer [believes in progress,

sees the Western project as inevitable, aids in genocide] and should not

be held responsible for its past. As a matter of fact - they say - it

should be considered the best curator of that past, as it knows where

the bodies are buried and - they argue - the cause of freedom & anarchy

is best served by honestly and critically engaging with the cultures

that have come before, which are only revealed through anthropology...

The anthropologist is Judas but is eager to redeem himself. The point is

that the specifics - how humans interacted prior to the toxic

abstraction of Civilization - matter. Somewhere in the details of what

has come before will be the evidence of a crime, a universal,

agreed-upon-by-everyone, evil that we can smash like we do the idols of

Racism, Sexism, etc. Indeed we have fallen but our redemption story is

the only story we can write, given the evidence of our crimes.

This argument demonstrates the romantic desire to return to Eden: Eden

and the possibility of return has always been a central theme of Western

thought and is answered in two ways by anarcho-anthropologists. One

answer conceives of a future living in the shadow of the past (at least

the written past) listing as superior and preferable examples and

experiences from cultures and lifeways entirely different and

disconnected from ours. This form of post-romanticism devotes a great

deal of intellectual energy to extending the brutal lessons of

techno-culture forward in time, while drawing lines back in time through

the pasteurization of (other people’s) anthropology.

The other answer is a kind of cosplay. If this world is evil, corrupt,

and if its failure is already happening and/or guaranteed, then we

should prepare for the future by learning to gather, hunt, and forage.

Instead of intellectualizing our way out of a world of terror and

technology we can rewild (a set of practices that emulate

hunter-gatherer lifeways) and check out of the rat race for once and

all. This rhetoric boils down to an assertion that we must prepare prior

to The Collapse by (kind of) living as if it’s already happened.

There is no need to directly criticize these practices or beliefs. They

are, in fact, entirely beside the point. The point, if I were to

conclude by way of a new beginning, is that we live in a culture that

forces all political questions to be answered, especially the big and

hard ones about desiring another way of life, of desiring anarchy. Most

political people become ensnared by this cultural pressure and end up

sounding like city planners, politicians in waiting, and in the case of

our friends the anarcho-anthropologists, like a utopian Garden of Eden

recreation society.

For the rest of us we continue to have, ask, and think about the hard

questions: how to become free individuals in free communities in harmony

with one another and with the biosphere; how to break from a world of

abstractions and ideologies; how do we treat our fellows zeks in the

time of Leviathan? How will that change as Behemoth approaches? But

questions have that frustrating quality of running through our hands

like water, quenching certain thirsts, but never ours to lord over, much

like anarchy.

Resources

Against History, Against Leviathan

– Fredy Perlman, Black & Red Books

Society of the Spectacle

– Guy Debord, Black & Red Books

Theory of Bloom

- Tiqqun, LBC Books

Custer Died for Your Sins

– Vine Deloria, University of Oklahoma Press

Marxism and Native Americans

– ed. Ward Churchill, South End Press

The Undying Appeal of White Nationalism

by James Joshua

Originally only a portion of this essay appeared in the printed version

of Black Seed Issue #2. This is the entire essay, originally posted to a

website that is now defunct.

• *** Neofascism in the Cultural, Artistic, and Ecological Movements

The earth is firmly enveloped in crisis. This crisis is at once material

and existential. The economy can no longer support the human weight that

bends it at its foundation. Can not, or will not. The aftermath of the

recession has produced only one reality: an intensified stratification

of global society.

The crises have created a world devoid of meaning. Everywhere, people

question the bold political narratives of the present, exposing them all

as being without purpose. Democracy appears as the ridiculous theater

that it always was.

In much of the world, young people found solace in the lack of meaning.

They embraced cynicism and insincerity as responses to the real

situation. As time went on, they found that this ironic perspective

failed them in the very same way as did the dominant paradigm.

The recession of 2008 propelled the earth into a state of delirium. Over

the following three years, the world fought to materially answer the

existential crisis; to existentially answer the material. These popular

movements posed a question. Is it even possible, in the 21st century, to

imagine another way of living? All of society was exposed for its

repressive essence, and people began to appropriate buildings, parks,

universities, vacant lots, and city centers to begin directly creating a

different way of life.

The question of the people fighting in occupied buildings and sleeping

in city squares never received a response. Echoes, but not answers. The

militants of 2011 reluctantly returned to life in the void.

We are still living with the same crisis. Meaning has yet to be

restored. Around the world a new movement is emerging.

Across the globe, a reactionary wave has presented itself as the answer

to the question posed six years ago. In Greece, Ukraine, Thailand,

Venezuela, Russia, and Italy, neofascist parties have reemerged in the

form of militant street-level uprisings. In the United States, fascist

influences have begun to permeate the cultural, artistic, technological,

and deep ecology movements.

In particular, the strong historical precedence of fascist influence on

the legacy of ecological movements illuminates a need to take this

situation seriously.

Ecology

Esoteric fascism is growing in the ecology movement. This is nothing

new. The term “ecology” was coined by the racist, white nationalist,

eugenics enamored German biologist Ernst Haeckel in the 19th century

[1]. Haeckel founded the eugenicist and white nationalist Monist League

in 1905 to propagate his racist views. Haeckel later joined the

occultist Thule Society, a spiritual organization that sponsored and

helped to develop the Nazi Party.

The German concept of “blut und boden” (blood and soil) traces its

origins to the ethno-nationalist Volkisch movement. The belief insists

that a people are connected to a historical territory, and that whites

must protect the health of that land in order to ensure the continuity

of the Aryan race.

Inspired by this view, German philosopher Rudolf Steiner founded

Anthroposophy in 1912. Anthroposophy was a school of ethno-religious

mysticism that promoted the idea of a race’s spiritual connection to a

local environment along with the belief in a hierarchy of human races

and the need to keep these races separate. These beliefs were heavily

influential in the Volkisch movement of the 1920s.

The Wandervogel (wandering bird) youth movement was a strongly

influential back-to-nature cultural force in Germany in the early 20th

century centered around environmentalism, communal living, eastern

religion, and staunch nationalism. Wandervogel youth believed political

action to be incapable of correcting the deeply entrenched societal

crisis, so they looked instead to personal and cultural transformation.

The immigration of some Wandervogel youth to America in the early 20th

century helped to inspire the Hippie movement [2]. Initially, the

Wandervogel movement was comprised of people from somewhat disparate

philosophical backgrounds, but by the 1930s most of the tendency was

absorbed by the Nazi Party.

The Wandervogel subculture was a reflection of the larger The

Lebensreform (life reform) movement. Lebensreform advocated organic

diets, sexual liberation, vegetarianism, and a deep respect for nature.

The tendency was popular in Switzerland and Germany in the early 20th

century. Anarchists were very influential in the Lebensreform tendency,

people like painter Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach and poet Gusto Graser

promoted liberatory ideas among the movement. Graser, along with

cultural libertines Henry Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann, founded the Monte

Verita commune in Switzerland in 1900. The commune initially existed as

an experimentation in living according to communist ideals, promoting a

way of living modeled after “primitive socialism”. Anarchists from

around Europe flocked to Monte Verita. The communards were largely

vegetarian, and practiced polyamory and held a deep respect for the

environment.

By the 1930s, many of the anarchists of Monte Verita abandoned their

long-held ethics and joined the Nazi Party [3].

The same trend occurred in the Lebensreform movement in general. Richard

Ungewitter, a white nationalist pioneer of the German nudist movement

and advocate of cultural upheaval, wrote and distributed white

supremacist and anti semitic texts. He insisted that the seemingly

emancipatory cultural trends of the time would be the way that the Aryan

race would reestablish its dominance over “the diabolical Jews”. This

reactionary tendency within the Lebensreform movement later inspired

leaders of the Nazi Party.

The environmentalism of the Third Reich largely came from the mystical

and anti-rational fascist lineage promoted by Richard Darre, Alfred

Rosenberg, Rudolph Hess, and Heinrich Himmler [4]. It was Darre who

introduced the blood and soil ideology to the NSDAP (Nazi party). As the

Nazi movement was very dynamic in its early days, there was tension

between the spiritualistic, anti-rational tendency and the cold,

calculating, efficiently rational wing of the party.

Likewise, there was conflict between the ostensibly workerist and often

openly gay wing of the movement (the Sturmabteilung, abbreviated as

“SA”), and the rest of the NSDAP. The “blood purge” of the SA has become

a focal point for some people in the current Neofolk subculture.

Music

The neofolk genre is loosely based around traditional european cultural

heritage, practices, and music. Many of the bands that popularized the

genre have current or past allegiances to fascist politics. Death in

June, perhaps the best known name in the genre, is the project of

third-reich obsessed musician Douglas Pearce. Pearce named the band in

honor of the SA stormtroopers who were violently expelled from the Nazi

Party in the Night of the Long Knives blood purge of 1934 [5].

Death in June has a history of collaboration with Boyd Rice, a somewhat

more obtuse performer whose usage of third reich imagery is equally

unironic. Rice appeared as an outspoken guest on the television show of

Tom Metzger, founder of the well-known neo nazi group White Aryan

Resistance. Rice has toured the US extensively with Cold Cave, an act

founded by Wes Eisold. Eisold was a well known figure in the hardcore

scene; his band American Nightmare was very popular in underground music

scenes in the early 2000s.

Both Death in June and Boyd Rice have had several of their shows

canceled due to pressure from anti-fascists over the past few years.

For the most part, bands in the neofolk and neo dark-wave scenes eschew

overt fascist politics in favor of “apolitical” stances and a fixation

on cultural heritage and “traditionalism”. Artists often state their

insistence on playing “white” or “european” music that is free of

“negro” influences such as rock and roll, jazz, or rhythm.

Stella Natura is a large neofolk music festival held in the Tahoe

National Forest of Northern California featuring dozens of acts and

hundreds of attendees. Though the promoter, Adam Torruella, claims the

event is non-political, he has invited the white nationalist publisher

Counter-Currents to table at the event [6].

Counter-Currents (which recently had its San Francisco office smashed up

in a late night attack) primarily sells white supremacist literature

from esoteric fascist authors such as Julius Evola and Savitri Devi.

Devi, a Nazi sympathizer who served as a spy for the Axis Powers during

WWII, was born in France, moved to India, converted to Hinduism, and was

an animal rights activist and deep ecologist. She promoted the idea of

the supremacy of the Aryan race and the need for whites to respect other

“noble races” such as Indians, who were believed by the nazis to be the

racial relatives of white Aryans.

The festival is sponsored by the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA). Asatru is a

pagan faith founded in the 1970s based on ancient Norse beliefs. Early

on, there was a split in the Asatru movement around the issue of white

nationalism. The universalists opposed racism, the tribalists focused on

ethnic and cultural heritage, and the folkish tendency advocated an

entirely racialized conception of Asatru . The AFA comes out of the

folkish lineage, meaning that it is part of the white nationalist wing

of Germanic Paganism.

The AFA provided security for the festival as the “Viking Brotherhood”;

the original name of the organization. According to reports from

concertgoers, the Viking Brotherhood roamed the perimeter with zip-ties

on their hips while maintaining a diligent eye for anti-fascists.

The festival’s lineup has included several post-fascist acts and

performers. Blood Axis, the band of neofascist author Michael Moynihan

performed, as did Changes, a band founded by white nationalist Robert

Taylor [7]. Fire and Ice and Waldteufel have also played the festival,

both acts having ties to white nationalist movements. Neofascist bands

Die Weisse Rose and Of the Wand and Moon were scheduled to perform in

2013 but could not enter the country due to visa issues.

This cultural tendency has grown among the hipster crowd, many of whom

naively believe that the fascist aesthetic is merely ironic or just an

added effect for shock-value. It has also grown among young white people

from black metal and dark-wave scenes who feel alienated by the

emptiness of modern society and desperately reach back to a romanticized

and fictitious ancestral past.

Nihilism as Question and the Suppression of the Hipster

The epoch of the hipster has been marked by an irrepressible irony; a

tangible insistence on the meaninglessness of things. The entire world

appears to rotate without purpose; the era of metanarratives has long

since passed and history seems to stand still. This tendency’s ascension

coincides with a social era widely referred to as “liberal

multiculturalism”. This multiculturalism is widely seen, by white people

at least, as having reached a state of hegemonic dominion over all

societal affairs. In this context, nothing can truly be racist, as the

institutionalization of political correctness has seemingly relegated

the older, more blatant forms of racism to the margins of culture and of

society.

Because of this, the era of the hipster is not anti-racist, in fact it

has no need to be. The ideology of the present era is better understood

as post-racial; the apparent suppression of the old forms of prejudice

have rendered white supremacy a phantom of the past only seen presently

in the most anachronistic vestiges of white provincial society.

Racism is thus perceived as being powerless and therefore either

innocuous or ironic. The hipster appreciation of Boyd Rice and Death in

June is the result of the assumption that the resurgent fascist movement

cannot possibly be sincere (as sincerity is impossible) and that, if by

some far-fetched chance it were, it would be incapable of attaining

meaning, as such overt racism cannot be a threat in a post-racial world.

In the world of pop culture and in the world of the anarchist, nihilism

has firmly taken root. The rejection of all values, with the exception

of the interests of the self, stems from a dissatisfaction with the

meaninglessness of modern life. The hipster nihilist surrounds himself

with accumulated symbols of irony, as sincerity has become impossible in

a world without direction, and true meaning no longer exists. The

anarchist nihilist maintains a steadfast refusal to participate in any

political activity other than the occasional online cheering for the

smashing of windows, as activism reeks of leftist naiveté and fails to

comprehend its own pointlessness amid the magnitude of the present

subsumption of the world.

Until now, nihilism has been addressed as a solution. But nihilism is a

question. It is a passionless cry into an indifferent distance that

continues to await an answer.

What will bring meaning to the world? What force can again restore a

sense of purpose to those without direction? For many, reaching back

toward the dirt-covered hands of long-buried ancestors has been a

starting point. A normative vision of the past harkens back to a simpler

era. Young people everywhere are again discovering religions and the

languages of their ancestors. Many have begun to experiment with the

assumed eating habits of someone’s distant ancestors, and are convinced

that the paleo diet will bring them back in tune with what humans are

supposed to eat in their natural state. On trendy shopping strips in

America’s cities, artisan boutiques are again emerging. Micro-brewing

and woodworking are regaining prominence. Experienced beard trimmers and

butchers skilled in charcuterie are again making a living as men once

did in a bygone past. Young men in Red Wings and work shirts revive the

wardrobes of white men before their supposed systemic emasculation by

liberal feminism; they appear identical to their grandfathers walking to

work in those old segregated factories. Levi’s commercials speak proudly

of pioneers and territorial expansion into both the wild west and into

the untamed and pre-gentrified neighborhoods of America’s rust belt.

The neofolk movement is merely the avante garde wing of this diffuse and

growing cultural tendency that longs for a romanticized and uncorrupted

past.

Radical Traditionalism, Revolutionary Reactionism

Presently, the mystical current of racist ecology is slowly gaining

traction among some circles of former anarchists. Most notable is

Olympia, Washington, where two former Green Scare prisoners and

ex-anarchists have turned to white nationalism, citing a desire for

white-only spaces, a respect for neo-nazis, and a pronounced disdain for

“the Mexicans”. Nathan “Exile” Block and Joyanna “Sadie” Zacher were

heavily influential in the green anarchist tendency prior to and during

their incarceration for late-night arson attacks against industries

responsible for massive environmental degradation. Disconcertingly,

these two influential former Earth Liberation Front militants were

initiated into the world of political violence while running through the

streets of downtown Seattle in the anti-WTO Black Bloc in 1999 [8].

Several other people associated with the green anarchist movement in

Olympia have followed their reactionary trajectory.

The quasi-spiritual works of ego-fascist Julius Evola and the “esoteric

hitlerism” of white supremacist author Miguel Serrano [9] have been

heavily influential in this growing circle. A webpage [10] operated by

Nathan Block appears as a cascading scroll of imagery adorned with

swastikas, black suns, and Anglo-Saxon runes complimented by an

assortment of quotations from obscure neofascist theorists. This

cult-like formation has expressed a sincere admiration for would-be race

war instigator Charles Manson [11], particularly his environmental

decree “ATWA” which stands for “air trees water animals” or “all the way

alive” (the latter was used as the title of a 2012 public statement from

Zacher published in the Earth First Journal). A 2007 communique written

by Block and Zacher makes several vague references to the need to

continue the ecological struggle in the name of the white race (often

hidden behind double meanings) before concluding with an allusion to

Manson’s environmental decree.

"[A]nd let those of us who heed the calls so often ignored stand

upright, with clear vision, whether illuminated by the great Sun or by a

more obsure Light, which rides with the night terror with all creatures

of the hidden horse: the clawed, the winged, the hoofed, and also with

those beings referred to by the euphemisms of 'the ancestors,' 'the fair

folk,' or indeed, the 'elves.'

air trees water animals [12]"

As with the Apoliteia tendency (explained below) and the Wandervogel

movement, they claim an aversion to the political and a focus on

individual and cultural pursuits such as touring in Neofolk bands and

practicing Germanic pagan rituals.

Unfortunately, many green anarchists do not fully understand this

resurgent white nationalism. Many assume that any apparent fascist

sympathies must be purely aesthetic or symbolic. This willful ignorance

will likely allow the trend to continue to grow, particularly in the

white counter cultural enclaves of the Pacific North West.

Retreat from Politics

The current resurrection of fascism continues virtually unchecked due to

the insistence of its authors and artists on their supposedly

“apolitical” stance.

Apoliteia, as described in the early 20th century by the currently

influential post-fascist author Julius Evola, is the rejection of

compelled allegiance to the realm of traditional politics. For Evola,

this did not mean that all political action is problematic, only that

individuals should base this activity solely on their own personal

interests.

Evola, promoting the concept of a hierarchy of races that placed blacks

at the bottom and whites at the apex, also fixated on the mystical realm

of race. He believed that race was manifested both in the body and in

the soul, and that the ideal human being embodied the Aryan race both

physically and spiritually [13].

“Our position, when we claim that race exists as much in the body as in

the spirit, goes beyond these two points of view. Race is a profound

force manifesting itself in the realm of the body (race of the body) as

in the realm of the spirit (race of the interior, race of the sprit). In

its full meaning the purity of race occurs when these two manifestations

coincide [14].”

Evola promoted a sort of egoist fascism; the individual was to seek to

become an “aristocrat of the soul” and to embody the brutality and order

of the Holy Roman Empire within their own individual essence.

Evola objected to many of the visions of the PNF (Italian National

Fascist Party) because of their focus on material conditions and

relative lack of attention to spiritual and racial considerations.

Though never a member of the PNF, he was an associate of Benito

Mussolini and his writings eventually influenced the racial perspectives

of the PNF hierarchy.

“And if Fascist Italy, among the various Western nations is the one

which first wished for a reaction against the degeneration of the

materialist, democratic and capitalist civilisation…there are grounds

for thinking,…that Italy will be on the front line among the forces

which will guide the future world and will restore the supremacy of the

white race [15]“.

Evola was a bizarre character. At the peak of WWII, he would walk the

streets of the city during allied bombing raids in order to “ponder his

destiny”. One one such stroll, he was maimed by a Soviet bomb and as a

result spent the remainder of his life paralyzed from the waist down

[16].

For Evola, as for many of todays’ esoteric racists, a retreat from the

political realm is accompanied by a rise in the cultural and artistic

worlds. Liberal social-democracy has dominated the globe and vanquished

its opponents on a political level. Post-fascists advocate remaining in

the cultural sphere until the moment that social-democracy begins to

collapse as a result of its own decadence; this fall will be the moment

to again emerge into the world as a material force.

Modern society is meaningless, directionless, decadent. A new way must

emerge to once again give purpose to life. For many, this force will

resurrect the spirits of the ancestors, a reincarnation that is starting

to appear in the world of culture.

The New Force

Third-positionism is a political tendency that seeks to synthesize

aspects of anarchism and communism with white nationalism or extreme

ethnic traditionalism. This tendency has grown significantly in Europe

over the past few years. In Italy, the neofascist squatters of Casa

Pound are occupying buildings and organizing militant demonstrations

against the proposed construction of a high-speed rail that would be

heavily damaging to the local environment. In Russia, fascists have used

the anarchist black bloc tactic to anonymously march through city

centers.

Today, neofascism appears much more exciting and radical than did the

far right organizations of decades past. The images of popular unrest in

Ukraine during the winter months inspired people around the world. It

was not long before it became clear that violent neo-nazi street

movements were responsible for instigating much of the anti-government

unrest.

The May 22 military coup in Thailand came as the result of months of

reactionary struggle, with many militants finding an ideological base in

third-positionist (though not white supremacist) inspired politics [17].

In America, some third-positionist groups have been bold enough to refer

to themselves as “anarchists”. BANA (Bay Area National Anarchists) was a

short-lived white nationalist organization based in San Francisco and

Dublin California. The group dissolved shortly after members were

publicly beaten by anarchists in San Francisco following BANA’s

counter-protest of a May Day immigration march [18].

In New York, NATA (National Anarchist Tribal Alliance) members were

forcibly ejected from the anarchist bookfair last year, making it clear

that the presence of neofascism will not be tolerated in anarchist

circles, regardless of what name white nationalists choose to hide

behind.

Nothing Before the Earth

At the time of its inception in 1980, the radical environmental group

Earth First! took its name literally, avoiding broader social issues and

focusing exclusively on a militant commitment to the preservation of the

environment.

A decade later, the dedication of Earth First! attracted many anarchists

to the group. These newer members were interested in developing a

movement that, in addition to defending the earth, fought against

racism, sexism, homophobia, and capitalism. This new political direction

caused a split in the group with some of the founding members eventually

leaving the organization in disgust.

David Foreman, Earth First! cofounder, went on to cofound the Wildlands

Project and later joined the Sierra Club’s board of directors. His

virulent anti-immigration views have caused many people in ecological

movements to distance themselves from him, however his reactionary ideas

have a surprisingly strong following. He was described by anarchist

theorist Murray Bookchin as a “macho mountain man”. Bookchin, on the

Foreman tendency:

“There are barely disguised racists, , macho Daniel Boones and outright

social reactionaries who use the word ecology to express their views,

just as there are deeply concerned naturalists, communitarians, social

radicals, and feminists who use the word ecology to express theirs.

[...] It was out of this [former] kind of crude eco-brutalism that

Hitler, in the name of ‘population control,’ with a racial orientation,

fashioned theories of blood and soil that led to the transport of

millions of people to murder camps like Auschwitz. The same

eco-brutalism now reappears a half-century later among self-professed

deep ecologists who believe that Third World peoples should be permitted

to starve to death and that desperate Indian immigrants from Latin

America should be exclude[d] by the border cops from the United States

lest they burden ‘our’ ecological resources [19].”

Foreman currently acts as the President of the Board for Apply the

Brakes, an anti-immigration campaign initiated by white

environmentalists [20]. Last year, he published a virulently xenophobic

article for the green nativist “Earth Island Journal” obtusely entitled

“More Immigration= More Americans= Less Wilderness [21]“.

For some reason, Mexicans only become a problem for the environment once

they cross over to the white-man’s land. On the other side of the line,

their impact on those fields and deserts who don’t yet know of borders

doesn’t seem to be of concern to these environmentalists.

In spite of their disdain for indigenous “immigrants”, even the

conservative ecological tendencies often maintain a fetishistic

reverence for “The Indian”. In this Jeffersonian view, indigenous people

are the archetypal noble savages presently confined to history books;

the current realities of most indigenous communities are of little

interest. For many white environmentalists, indigenous people are a

natural extension of the local environment much like a wolf or a tree.

In spite of this exoticization, indigenous people from south of the

Mexican border are often viewed as alien trespassers on America’s soil.

Paradoxically, indigeneity is conceived of within the confines of

colonial borders.

For David Foreman, the earth’s population has grown to unstable levels,

and people in the third world must be purged to bring humanity back into

equilibrium with the environment.

From an interview with Bill Devall (author of “Deep Ecology”):

“When I tell people the worst thing we could do [during the famine] in

Ethiopia is to give aid—the best thing would be to just let nature seek

its own balance, to let the people there just starve—they think this is

monstrous. . . . Likewise, letting the USA be an overflow valve for

problems in Latin America is not solving a thing. It’s just putting more

pressure on the resources we have in the USA [22].”

Foreman’s views are unfortunately commonplace in the deep ecology

tendency. If anything they are merely an echo of an earlier wave of

reactionaries who offer an academic counter to Foreman’s simple-minded,

He-Manish, backyard wrestling, Macho Man Randy Savage approach.

Lester Brown, a renowned ecologist and prolific author, also speaks on

behalf of the Apply the Brakes campaign. Brown is a staunch nativist and

promoter of the reduction of human population in the developing world.

Much of his focus has been on China and the role that its growing

population may play on global food prices.

American zoologist, microbiologist, and ecologist Garett Hardin was

fixated on the forced reduction of human population as a means to ensure

the longevity of the environment. Hardin advocated for coerced

abortions, eugenics, and forced sterilization until his death in 2003

[23]. Hardin promoted a pseudo-scientific concept of a racial hierarchy

of intelligence, and in 1994 he was one of 52 signatories to an

editorial published in the Wall Street Journal on the genetic basis of

racial superiority. In 1974, Hardin argued against sending food to

people starving to death in the Ethiopian famine as a way to reduce the

human population, decades before Foreman crudely parroted his ridiculous

statements.

Like Hardin, Finnish ecologist Pentti Linkola argues that human

population must be drastically reduced for the health of the earth. An

advocate for eugenics and totalitarian state control, Linkola stated

that the “massive thinning operations” of Hitler and Stalin were a step

toward establishing an equilibrium between human population and the

environment. He states that global chemical or nuclear warfare would be

an ideal way of swiftly reducing the human population.

While Linkola’s wingnut ramblings are unlikely to develop directly into

a global campaign of genocide, watered down variations of his ideas have

a material base in the reactionary corners of deep ecology.

Left-Right Collusion and The Technocratic Future

Bizarre fascisms are starting to appear everywhere. Two of the three

members of the board of directors of the Occupy Solidarity Network

(Occupy Wall Street’s nonprofit wing) have at times publicly expressed

vaguely fascist sentiments. Micah White, former Adbusters editor and

cofounder of Occupy Wall Street, has traveled across the country

promoting a populist left-right alliance, recently going so far as to

advocate working alongside the violent Greek neo-nazi party Golden Dawn.

While it would be comforting to attribute this prospective collusion to

naivete, it is clear that White is by no means unfamiliar with the

dynamic nature of fascism. He has studied political movements for years

and even authored an article exposing Pentti Linkola and other fascist

influences in the ecological movements in 2010.

On August 12, 2011, a month before the start of Occupy Wall Street,

White was interviewed by Nathan Schneider, author of “Thank You,

Anarchy”:

The worst outcome would be to get there and they just fumble it by doing

this whole lefty game we always play, which is self-defeatist. We go

there, make some unreasonable demand, like, we want to abolish

capitalism and we won’t leave until we do. And well, that’s like the war

on terrorism; that’s an impossible dream. Or they just squander it by

being some hipster, anarchist insurrection like, we’re gonna smash some

stores and make a spectacle. And everyone’s like, ‘Why?’

Because we have something beautiful going here. So we’re trying to rise

above the sectarian clashings of whether or not US Day of Rage is

tweeting too much or whether or not the libertarians are – you know? And

reach out to the Tea Party too. This is a moment for all of America.

I don’t see why this has to be a lefty moment or a righty moment,

because this is a moment for us to reinvent democracy in America,

because it’s getting to be too late. If we don’t do it now, we are

reaching the end [24].”

While the far right Tea Party is not technically a fascist formation,

White’s proposed nationalist left-right collusion is cause for concern,

especially in the light of his statements about Golden Dawn. A proposed

collaboration with the Tea Party is ridiculous, yet it must be mentioned

that, in real terms, the Tea Party was the initial popular response to

the economic crisis of 2008. This street-level conservatism spanned the

nation with demonstrations against the bailout of Wall Street nearly

three years before the left decided to occupy it.

While White’s dream of left-right collusion is disconcerting, it is

important to note that he is not alone. Justine Tunney, creator of

occupywallst.org and the Occupy Wall Street twitter account is also a

member of the Occupy Solidarity Network board of directors. She

currently works as a software engineer for Google. Recently, she used

the official Occupy Wall Street twitter account to publicly advocate a

corporatist political agenda:

"Ending poverty isn't a political program- it's an engineering problem

[25]."

"I want to make clear that this is not an anti-corporate movement. This

is an anti-wall street movement. [26]"

In an interview with Business Insider about her role in Occupy Wall

Street, she stated that “democracy never works [27]“. From her personal

twitter account she attempted to bolster her image of Google as a

revolutionary force by insisting that “Silicon Valley is firmly

post-capitalist” because tech companies like Google “expropriate ad

money from capitalists to build a superintelligence & don’t pay

dividends” to “entitled shareholders”. In March, she posted a petition

to the White House website demanding the termination of all 4.3 million

government employees, the resignation of Barack Obama, and the

appointing of Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt as CEO of America

[28].

Google, the largest collector of private personal information the world

has ever known, acts as a giant data mine for advertisers and the state.

The mere suggestion of granting the giant surveillance apparatus even

deeper governing power is troubling.

Google’s rigid hierarchical structure has been (positively) likened to a

monarchy by some reactionaries. Shareholders have virtually no voting

power in the company as the company’s two founders control the vast

majority of votes through the organization of shares. The workforce is

organized into veritable castes delineated by colored badges. Most

employees enjoy high pay (median salary $125,000), free gourmet meals,

and a relaxed work environment. Lower-paid yellow-badge workers are

confined to a separate building and excluded from the free food,

limousine shuttles, or usage of company bikes. Their jobs consist

entirely of tedious data-entry. These workers are not permitted to speak

with the rest of the workforce. Filmmaker and former Google employee

Andrew Norman Wilson stated that the yellow badge workers were mostly

people of color [29].

According to its own numbers, Google’s overwhelmingly male American

“tech” workforce is a mere one percent black and two percent latino

[30].

Both Tunney and White have advocated raising funds to sustain a

mercenary “non-violent militia” to take to the streets. Recently, Tunney

suggested that her twitter followers “read Mencius Moldbug” referring to

the pseudonym of computer programmer and aspiring writer Curtis Guy

Yarvin. Yarvin, along with English philosopher Nick Land, is among the

best known names in the “Dark Enlightenment” movement. This tendency,

also referred to as the neoreactionary movement, promotes a

pseudo-scientific notion of the racial superiority of whites under the

guise of “human biodiversity”, opposes egalitarianism and democracy, and

supports autocratic governance [31].

“Human biodiversity [HBD] is the rejection of the ‘blank state’ of human

nature. Creepily obsessed with statistics that demonstrate IQ

differences between the races, the darkly enlightened see social

hierarchies as determined not by culture or opportunity but by the cold,

hard destiny embedded in DNA…

Cue the adherents of The Bell Curve, eugenics enthusiasts, believers in

white supremacy and sympathizers of the National Socialist German

Workers’ Party. In the Dark Enlightenment, we seem to have stumbled

across a place where pseudo-intellectually grounded racism is

flourishing in a way it hasn’t since before World War II.

In our discussion, [Nick] Land was explicit in his view on this: ‘HBD,

broadly conceived, is simply a fact. It is roughly as questionable, on

intellectual grounds, as biological evolution or the heliocentric model

of the solar system. No one who takes the trouble to educate themselves

on the subject with even a minimum of intellectual integrity can doubt

that’…

Is this fascism? Desire for genetically determined ruling classes,

distrust of popular democratic reform, distaste for the aesthetic

standards of mass culture, and nausea over the political correctness of

modern life—the Dark Enlightenment does have all the markings of a true

neo-fascist movement. It’s here that the dangers of the Dark

Enlightenment are hard to dismiss [32].”

They advocate a return to feudal city-states as a counter to democratic

governance while maintaining an almost religious reverence for

technology.

Yarvin advocates a form of total corporate domination of society he

calls “neocameralism”:

“To a neocameralist, a state is a business which owns a country. A state

should be managed, like any other large business, by dividing logical

ownership into negotiable shares, each of which yields a precise

fraction of the state’s profit. (A well-run state is very profitable.)

Each share has one vote, and the shareholders elect a board, which hires

and fires managers [33].”

While ridiculous, the ideas of the neoreactionary tendency have attained

some degree of support in the world of Silicon Valley tech workers.

Balaji Srinivasan, Computer Science lecturer at Stanford University and

current partner in Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm Andreesen

Horowitz, promoted “dark enlightenment” inspired ideas during a speech

to a crowd of tech entrepreneurs last fall. He encouraged the dawning of

a Silicon Valley secessionist movement that would break away from the

United States and establish authoritarian city-states run by technology

firms:

“We want to show what a society run by Silicon Valley would look like.

That’s where ‘exit’ comes in .. . It basically means: build an opt-in

society, ultimately outside the US, run by technology. And this is

actually where the [Silicon] Valley is going. This is where we’re going

over the next ten years …[Google co-founder] Larry Page, for example,

wants to set aside a part of the world for unregulated experimentation

[34].”

The contrast between this hyper-technological conservatism and the

right-wing traditionalist ecological movements highlights the

pluralistic essence of fascism. Throughout history fascism has been a

movement that is at once rational and anti-rational, secular and

spiritual, traditional and futuristic, capitalist and socialist,

authoritarian and anti-statist, social and individualistic, luddite and

technological, nationalistic and international. Fascism is a rigid

paradox that does not fall in the face of contradiction. The Third Reich

was at once the mystical and environmental perspective of Hess, Himmler,

Rosenberg, and Darre and the hyper-rationalist and industrialist reality

that flattened much of Europe. Mussolini was as influenced by Julius

Evola’s esoteric traditionalism as by Filippo Marinetti’s rejection of

of the past and advocation of a technological and artistic “futurism”.

The commonalities shared by these ideologically diverse reactionary

movements are concerning: the belief in racial, ethnic, or cultural

superiority, the revival of The Nation, the concept of a superhuman

ubermensch at the individual or the racial level, fearsome disdain for

groups considered “inferior”, an aversion to collective desire, and a

reverence for force and brutality.

Realization and Confrontation

Autonomous from the directives of any centralized institution,

neofascism exists as a single point in a perpetually expanding galaxy of

state prisons, renegade police, urban developers, realtors, Sheriff

Arpaios, minutemen, neo-nazis, militaries, psych wards, public

education, and George Zimmermans. The new fascism is merely a third

position of domination, another knot in the repressive net of state,

patriarchy, and racism. Its hegemony comes not from its own virtue, but

from its position in the wider network of white supremacy. It does not

walk alone, but travels through the night guided by the spirits of

overseers and pioneers, its path illuminated by fiery crosses and the

barrel flash of vigilantes’ guns along the border.

Although the beneficiaries of American reactionary politics are almost

exclusively white and gender-normative, it is important to remember that

the token mouthpieces need not fit these descriptions. While the

spokesmen of green fascism are mostly male and exclusively white, it is

notable that Micah White is black, Justine Tunney is transgender, and

Curtis Yarvin is Jewish.

While neofascist ideology does not appeal to most Americans, white

supremacist and corporatist rhetoric has a clear resonance among

powerful people with substantial means at their disposal. The whims of

such people have always yielded a profound social impact.

Although the technocratic aspirations of Justine Tunney and the Dark

Enlightenment scene seem far fetched, the social implications of the

currently thriving technology industry must be taken seriously. In the

Bay Area, the influx of highly paid mostly white Silicon Valley

programmers and software engineers into low-income black, brown, and

broke communities has dramatically altered the urban landscape. Around

the Bay, a racialized reconfiguration of urban neighborhoods is

occurring; blacks and latinos are being forcibly relocated or

incarcerated to make room for the Justine Tunneys and Curtis Yarvins.

When not exiled from their communities, the immiserated populations live

stacked atop each other in overcrowded units while the wealthy newcomers

build their technocratic dystopia.

Like virtually all Silicon Valley empires, Tunney’s beloved Google is

wholly unapologetic about its role in steamrolling California’s cities,

as are the majority of the high-paid workers who have no problem

participating in the expulsion and confinement of black, brown, and

broke people.

In a global sense, the role of blacks in the tech industry has been most

clearly represented in the coltan mines of war-torn Congo, excavating

the precious minerals necessary to power Silicon Valley’s digital

bubble.

At times, the vast displacement of black residents has been accompanied

by a more blatant racism, though generally this position is obscured

through the lens of economics.

Bill White, prominent third-positionist and former national spokesman

for the National Socialist Movement, owns nine properties in a

low-income black neighborhood of Roanoke, Virginia. As a landlord, he

engaged in a project of harassment and gentrification that he referred

to as a “ghetto beautification project” [35]. He raised rents, evicted

tenants, and was alleged to have patrolled the neighborhood carrying a

shotgun to intimidate local blacks.

In more general terms, the whitening and gentrification of black and

brown communities is materially congruent with neofascist ideology. The

vaguely liberal sentiments of a handful of landlords and developers does

nothing to change the real situation.

While the most recent waves of resistance in America have been leftist

and at times even revolutionary, modern history has made clear the

entirely unpredictable nature of white-majority subcultures and

movements. Much of the 60s generation that shut down America’s

thoroughfares in opposition to the war in Southeast Asia grew into the

right-wing formation that elected Ronald Reagan in 1980. The America of

Golden Gate Park’s drug loving hippie acid freaks metastasized into the

war on drugs within fifteen years, with many middle-aged former leftists

leaving their convictions behind with their youth. For the most part,

white America sat by and watched as military-style raids into black and

brown communities fed the expansion of a draconian prison slave-society

that expanded over 700% since 1970.

From a global perspective, the socialist sensibilities of Mussolini and

his associates transformed into an uncompromising fascist state, just as

many the libertines of the German Lebensreform movement eventually

joined the Nazis.

In May, the European Union’s parliamentary elections saw the rise of

fascism in traditional politics. In France, the National Front won the

parliamentary election, while in Greece Golden Dawn received enough

votes to enter the European parliament for the first time [36]. Fascist

representatives were also elected in Denmark, Germany, England, Austria,

and Hungary.

As fascism views itself as a revolutionary tendency, it will not cease

its attempts to disfigure the beautiful trajectory of radical movements.

The current momentum of the New Right will smash up against a blockade

of material resistance. The Tunneys and Whites, affixed to the most

senseless fringes of the Occupy movements, along with the washed up

Earth Liberation Front militants currently agitating in the ecological

scenes of the Pacific Northwest, will not turn popular resistance into

reactionary foolishness.

Bibliography

Implications of an Anarchist Spirit in the Salmon Run

by Cedar Leighlais

One day in the height of Autumn, my friends and I went to a secluded

place in the Pacific Northwest to fish for salmon at the beginning of

their spawning run, and we were nervous because we weren’t sure if they

had arrived as far inland as the place we chose. Due to the thick

undergrowth of sword fern, devil’s club, and heavy cedar branches,

catching sight of the creek was impossible until we were standing on its

banks. As soon as our feet were upon the tiny pebbles of the creek-side,

we could hear that the splashing and turning of the creek was not just

running water and could see countless large salmon making their sprints

upstream. Our hearts delighted at the mere sight of the powerful fish,

finishing their eternal cycle of life and death.

We all began to take our shoes and socks off, rolling up our pants and

very reluctantly stepping into the water. The creek was so ice-cold and

biting, I actually thought that if I stood in the creek long enough my

toes might sustain serious nerve damage. Quickly losing feeling to my

feet made it even harder to walk in the creek; navigating rocks, logs,

the current, and constantly having large salmon swim through my legs was

incredibly distracting.

To say the setting was beautiful is an extreme understatement. The

forest seemed to be radiating that day. When I think back to that

experience and truly recall everything about it: the feeling, the sights

and sounds, the rare moment of felt-presence, I seem to remember seeing

and feeling the forest’s pulse as I suddenly became aware of all of my

surroundings. This is the opposite of what it’s like to live in the

city. I find myself constantly shutting out so many things: the sound of

traffic and the train that permeates through my backyard and house,

shouts from incoherent drunks on the corner, annoying conversations

seemingly coming from all sides, ugly housing developments, police, the

list goes on. This prevents me from being present, from seeing and

experiencing intense sensorial occurrences. But in the forest in that

moment, I wanted to attach myself to everything happening around me.

Seeing that there were a handful of salmon hiding under a log and caught

in a whirlpool of currents in a little off-shoot of the creek, one of my

friends and I slowly walked towards them from opposite sides, not

wanting to scare them off but wanting to have as far of a reach as

possible between the two of us should they dart off.

My footing and balance were compromised by cold and uneven terrain when

I found myself practically standing right next to a group of hiding

salmon. Bending over with my hand waiting just above the water’s

surface, I paused before striking. What was about to happen? I was so

close to this fish it felt too good to be true; my heart was racing.

Without a moment’s more hesitation, I plunged my hand into the water,

aiming for the end of the tail where it joins with the fin. It happened

almost too fast to recall, yet I found my fingers grasped around the

slimy scales of the salmon’s fin, which acted as a sort of hilt to

prevent it from sliding out of my hands as it wriggled, squirmed,

thrashed and turned, attempting to get back into the water.

Without even thinking about it I placed the salmon on the log that it

had been hiding under, plunged my free hand back into the creek, and

grabbed a rock that was slightly smaller than the size of my fist.

Holding the fish down with my palms on its gills with one hand, I

proceeded to bring the rock crashing down on its head three to five

times or so. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins and I can’t

remember all of the specifics, but I did not need much more than

intuition to tell me when the salmon was dead, the blood from its eyes

and mouth mixing with the blood coming from my fingers that had ended up

too close to where my rock was striking.

Breathing heavily and unable to tear my eyes away from the salmon’s, I

announced, “I got it!” to my friends who had stopped their attempts to

watch mine. Upstream, my friend shouted to me “You gotta drink its

blood!” Without even questioning it I lifted the salmon up over my head,

tilted back as if it were a giant vase full of something worth drinking

all at once, and opened my mouth under the salmon’s, letting its still

warm, salty blood pour into mine. I walked over to a downed tree that

lay across the creek and crawled on top of it to get my feet out of the

freezing water and to stand in the rays of sunshine that had sneaked

past the clouds, cedars and Douglas firs and just stood there.

Adrenaline rushed through my body. I was equally amazed and thrilled at

what had just happened. I also felt total awe and wonderment. To this

day, I am struck with total fucking joy when recalling this moment in my

life. I am grateful for every time I retell the story, because it allows

me to feel that experience all over again.

Processing the fish later on in the day, we laid out our catch on stumps

and began hacking off the heads and tails and pulling out the spinal

cords. I took the fish I had caught home, even though I was living by

myself at the time, because I wanted the experience to be complete, to

eat my entire catch and to allow this fish to give me its gift of

sustenance throughout the winter.

My reflections and analysis of this experience has not stopped here,

however. Often the discourse around hunting, fishing, and wild-food

harvesting does not go much farther than its economic implications;

these are wild resources untouched by capital and civilization and if we

are to live wild and free we must learn how to use them to our

advantages. I found that the reward for having caught, killed, processed

and eaten a salmon from the wild went much farther than economics for

me; for the first time in my life I believe I had what some may call a

spiritual experience.

What does this even mean? I had the luck of not having grown up in a

religious home, and the most experience I had with church was having

gone to a week-long bible-camp in the summer out of my own volition that

focused mostly on hiking in the woods or kayaking on the sound. The only

religious teaching I was ever given at that camp was that God would love

and accept me for who I was, no matter what, even if I arrived at the

pearly white gates of heaven proclaiming “Fuck god in the face!”

Organized religion failed to bring me under its grasp then, and it did

not take much more than reading Sam Harris’ Letter To A Christian Nation

at the age of 16 for me to foment an unbridled hatred towards western

religion and all of its affiliates.

So spirituality for me had a negative connotation for a very long time,

and it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I began to accept the

idea of experiencing spirituality divorced from any kind of practiced

religion. However, I still have no idea what that could look like today,

hundreds of years after the genocide of so many earth-based spiritual

practices.

What I do know, however, is my experience. Intense sensorial engagement,

complete joyous fulfillment, incredible awareness of presence, and the

sense of wonder and awe that can only come after one has engaged with

the cycle of life and death. Every time I retell this story, I can feel

all of these things in my body, not just remember feeling them but

actually go through the emotions all over again.

There are so many things that I feel must be taken into consideration

when embarking on a journey into this conversation. First and foremost,

that there were and still are many indigenous tribes in the Pacific

Northwest that have celebrated and relied on the return of the Salmon

Run since pre-history. Since the arrival of the colonial West and the

signing of land treaties at the Nisqually River, the United States has

systematically fucked with every Indigenous person’s access to

traditional fishing practices. In my act of catching salmon, am I merely

just taking advantage of my ability to drive out to a wildlife refuge

and spend the morning in a creek with my friends, effectively latching

onto a traditional practice that I have no experience with as a white

person? Am I participating in the act of defiance that Indigenous people

throughout the Puget Sound and coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest

who, since that fateful signing of land treaties at Nisqually River,

“poached” their salmon catch, disobeying orders of Fish & Game

Authorities? Or am I partaking in neither of these, simply creating a

new practice for myself of relating to wildness, of the self and the

other?

Another thing I’m aware of is the disconnect between the telling of

these traditions and the people who have traditionally practiced them.

The only reason I am allowed any insight into any of these traditional

practices is due to books written by historians and social

anthropologists. Not only does this put me in an incredibly alienated

position in relation to these practices, it also feels greatly

appropriative, and thus inappropriate. I cannot in good faith pick up

these practices and call them my own “tradition,” I cannot say I do them

because “it’s how it has always been done.” Due to the uninhibited

reaches of civilization and it’s efforts to destroy all earth-based

spiritual practices, I have absolutely no ties whatsoever to any

traditions or rituals that build spiritual connection to the earth.

Furthermore, I have no elders with whom I can consult. I have older

family members who do hunt and fish, yet the farthest my conversations

have gone with them on the personal rewards of these endeavors does not

venture farther than, “Damn, there’s really nothin’ like sittin’ on the

lake with a fishing pole in one hand and a beer in the other!”

So I am left with improvising and creating a practice or rhythm of my

own. I am a lost child seeking entrance into a world of

interconnectedness, yet I consistently remain detached from myself and

others. So what is the space that I inhabit, neither here nor there?

This is where I find the struggle to determine some kind of spirituality

in relation to the earth and away from civilization, if we are to use

two polarized catch-all terms, in confluence with anarchy. As an

anarchist, I find myself in a position between a world I cannot live in

and an idea of a world that I want to live in. The impossibility of both

of these raging rivers inevitably brings them crashing together.

This is why I find importance in the searching and questioning of a

“spirituality” within an anarchist discourse. Understanding the

historical implications of conquest and colonization and attempting to

understand what has been taken from every grouping of humans since the

onslaught of organized time and forced worship, we can continue to

expand our understanding of how it is that the material conditions under

which we live are unbearable and banal. When we realize what has been

taken from us, we can begin to know what we must take back. I am not

advocating for a new earth-based anarcho-religion, but for the

lived-hatred of the systems enforced on us to be evermore total.

There is an ethereal high that accompanies the attack. When one shifts

the emphasis from thought to feeling and action and utilizes their

intellectual disdain for one’s enemy, the reward is far greater than

words can express. It is my wish in writing this to spark a dialogue

within an anarchist context around the spirit. What is it, how can we

interact with it, how can we reawaken our own? How has it been damaged?

It is also my wish that through these dialogues, anarchists can begin to

again become aware of an age-old saying, “healing is a form of fighting

is a form of healing is a form of…” Our enemies deserve to feel the

brunt of our rage and sorrow, and we should also grant ourselves the

chance to revel in and celebrate our unleashed spirits wreaking havoc on

the material world.

Points For Further Discussion in the Digital Era

by Oxalis

In an issue of Green Anarchy published in 2004, Sphinx responded to one

of the early Internet-based social networks, Friendster, declaring “You

Won’t Find Me on Friendster.”* The article, while obviously now dated,

was an early attempt to develop an understanding of modern networked

computer communications. Its historical overview of the development of

computer technologies and the ways that they had (at that time) changed

how we interact with each other and the world were important insights.

Sadly, this is a topic that needs further elaboration and discussion.

The computer-based forms of communication and mediation have only

increased in the years since 2004 and have done so at an incredibly

rapid pace. The objections to Friendster from ten years ago—the concern

about legality and a commitment to human communities—while still true,

seem almost quaint as the proliferation has increased to a level that

seemed almost unimaginable just a few years ago. In the past, the idea

of abstaining from Friendster or a particular digital social network

seemed plausible, to do so simply meant not going on the computer and/or

limiting computer use. Computer use largely took place at a specific

site, something that we could essentially choose to interact with. In

many cases, that is no longer possible. Over the past few years, the

Internet has essentially become all pervasive. Through smart phones, the

Internet is everywhere. While there are exceptions outside of so-called

“industrialized” countries and among those who cannot afford smart

phones, for the most part the discussion is more a question of when

people will get the capabilities, not if (see for example, all the

efforts to get computers to everyone across the world and to enclose the

entire world in the web).

This has all had a real impact on how we relate to each other. Seemingly

everything is mediated or interrupted by computer-based communication.

There are relatively few private moments left, as shown by the numerous

studies that track the phenomena known as “sleep texting” or the numbers

of people who admit to checking their phones during sex. The particular

studies matter relatively little, what is important is the way in which

this activity has more or less been normalized. Few people seem to care

and indeed for those who have an issue with it, there seems to be

nothing that can be done. The rather laughable digital utopianism has

proven to be untrue—we haven’t arrived at an equal society as a result

of equal access. Even in the best cases of open source tools, their

challenge is a drop in the bucket and they can often be just as easily

mobilized towards non-liberatory ends. Moreover, the Internet and

computer technologies have contributed to a situation of information

overload and the fragmentation into a seemingly unlimited number of

different identities, making it harder than ever to be seen on the

digital networks, arguably the ultimate goal. Added to this, the

increasing fragmentation and personalization—enabled through

sophisticated forms of behavior and browser tracking—assure that there

is no universally accessible network that one can simply have access to,

but rather a series of largely closed and overlapping networks. These

technologies extend the logic of computers into all realms: success is

the documentable and quantifiable number of “friends” or “connections”

we have on various sites, future activity, preferences, and

“personalization” are predicted by algorithms informed by massive

amounts of stored personal data, and everything is ranked and rated.

In the present, more and more of our interactions are mediated by

computers. The social networks are built on representation and

presentation – we don’t necessarily show ourselves (assuming that there

is somewhere an authentic self), but rather a representation that will

do the best in a particular situation. The potential employee deletes

last night’s drunken party photos to present a serious tone, while the

frat boy eagerly shares photos of the previous night’s debauchery.

Moreover, depending on the particular social network, the presentations

differ. While “compartmentalization” is something we all have done in

civilized social contexts for quite some time, the speed and frequency

at which it happens is different. The constant maintenance of how we

present ourselves results in a compulsive “need” to “check” everything,

seeing what is “happening” on “social media” at all times. There is

always something better “happening” elsewhere, whether that be the cool

event that we didn’t know about or something “happening” entirely in the

digital realm. Consequently, the real “event” may not be the one that we

are physically at, but the “conversation” that happens online. “Reality”

is increasingly redefined as that which is documentable online, and

“conversation” is the “discussion” which happens through social media.

Something is always happening elsewhere and we are never really present

anywhere (while at the same time, we are stuck in a seemingly

ahistorical constant present). The constant need to be attached, to be

checking what’s going on, to be instantly accessible, is beneficial to

the system, not only in terms of pacification but also in making us

ideal workers. The maintenance of social networking profiles and other

such activities is essentially free labor; and “always on, always

reachable” isn’t just about “convenience.” While the networks are about

others, especially in terms of quantifiable audiences and visibility,

they are paradoxically also about the self. There is a built-in form of

narcissism with constant pressure to act as if you and what you are

doing is all that matters. There’s a striking sense of

self-referentiality and praise, digital greetings from our “friends”

always tell us how beautiful we are or how strong we are. In many ways,

the new forms encourage a celebrity-like performance, where one assumes

that at any point some of our “friends” might catch a glimpse of what we

are doing—in many ways life becomes a constant performance for a real,

imagined, or potential digital audience.

The technologies have also encouraged a further separation from the

natural world. An already distanced populace has become further

separated. Much of what we see—if we actually take the time to look—is

filtered through screens. The “nature scene” is potential background for

a “selfie,” the flower the perfect fodder for a photo blog. The aspiring

forager need not learn through direct experience or shared knowledge,

but can simply point the phone and determine what a particular plant is.

The more attached we become to the phones in our pockets (or, let’s be

real, in our hands because for some even the one-second delay in

retrieving a phone from a pocket is too much), the less we actually see

and experience on a day-to-day basis. Our separation from the wild

increases, as does the domestication that comes in the form of virtual

chains. Computer technologies are presented as compatible with the

natural world, with much of the rhetoric invoking natural images. We

have “cloud” computing, “green” “server farms,” and pledges that

buildings containing thousands of computer servers are environmentally

neutral because they are powered by solar energy, wind, etc. At the same

time, the environmental impacts of these new technologies are largely

ignored. This isn’t a call for green computing, but rather, a

recognition that the environmental costs of a digital society are quite

high, in terms of waste, water used in manufacturing microchips, and in

minerals extracted. Moreover, just as there is always something

happening elsewhere on social media, much of the creation of computer

technologies happens “elsewhere” with the productive consequences made

invisible.

As it has in the larger world, the proliferation of computer

technologies has had a considerable impact on the anarchist space. Much

of the discourse that happens within the anarchist space is mediated

through computers. News websites, blogs, and social networks have gained

a hold within the space, becoming virtual sites through which we come

together. In a networked society, it is relatively obvious that the use

of many of these technologies allow one’s enemies, be they the state,

fascists, or others, the capacity to map activities and track specific

individuals. The possibilities of this—while always hiding in plain

sight—have become all the more obvious as more becomes known about the

extent of government surveillance and the willingness of corporations to

share data with the state. Despite this, many of us continue to use

these technologies and participation in the various social networks,

dating sites, photo sharing services, etc, barely raises an eyebrow in

most circles. Even when using “open source” tools and those that respect

privacy, the proliferation of these technologies has had a major impact.

The snarky comment, the photos of the cool banner seemingly crafted for

dissemination on the Internet, and the rise of “scannable” text and 140

character Tweets attest to this. As with any technology, modern computer

technologies have a certain logic and ideology embedded within them and

when we “use” them, we often internalize those values. Moreover,

attachment and allegiance to (as well as dependence on) digital

technologies makes us less likely to criticize them.

In terms of both the anarchist space and the larger world, the

proliferation of these technologies has ramifications for how we act. If

everything we do on the computer is tracked, if every movement is logged

thanks to our smart phones, every person a potential cop, and every

corner adorned with an Internet-enabled surveillance camera, what are

the possibilities for action? If—as is increasingly the case—to abstain

from the social networks is to mean to “not exist”—what does it mean for

those of us who choose to abstain? What does it mean to assume that

these technologies will exist “after the revolution” and/or that they

can somehow be “democratized”? How does our willingness to use the

platforms constrain our interactions and alter our forms of

communication? With the ever-increasing expansion of Internet-access

into previously “unconnected” spaces, is there even a possibility of

abstention? Owing to the importance within the economy of the new

communications technologies, are there new targets for attack that can

be identified? How does one “oppose, “resist,” and/or “attack” something

that is literally everywhere and seemingly nowhere at the same time?

To a large degree, many of us are complicit in these systems in varying

ways. Perhaps there is way through which we can maintain a critical

engagement via distance, using these systems and technologies to the

extent that we feel we have to, i.e. using them for some forms of

outward communication while making our priority face-to-face

communication and discussion. At the same time, there should be more

efforts aimed at directly and indirectly combating these technologies

(i.e. attack, lessening reliance on them within the anarchist space, and

assuming a position of hostility towards them). Additionally, more

discussion and theorizing is needed to explore the ways in which these

technologies function and how they have changed the terrain, both on an

inter-personal level and a system-wide level. In a so-called

post-industrial economy, the reliance on these systems—however much they

may invoke seemingly intangible images of “the cloud”—ultimately depends

on physical infrastructure and as such vulnerabilities exist. We should

be looking for these weaknesses, both physically and rhetorically, and

advancing an anti-technological practice and critique.

- “You Won’t Find Me on Friendster” is available on the Internet at

http://blackseed.anarchyplanet.org

Anarchy In Flight

by Ron Sakolsky

<em>I sing as the bird sings.

I sing because—I am a singer.

But I use you for it because I need ears.</em>

-Max Stirner

<em>At home (in California) I used to play, and the birds used to

whistle with

me. I would stop what I was working on and play with the birds.</em>

-Eric Dolphy

<em>While living in London I had an apartment with a small garden.

During the

summer around 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning, just as the day began,

birds

would gather here one by one and sing together, each declaring its

freedom

in song. It is my wish to share this same spirit with other musicians

and

communicate it to the people.</em>

-Dave Holland

When jazz improviser Dave Holland entitled one of his early recordings

Conference of the Birds, he was drawing upon the deep well of mythical

thought about the “language of birds”. Some see it as a perfect

language. Others as a magical language used by birds to communicate with

those humans sensitive to its cadences. In the Talmud, Solomon’s

proverbial wisdom was reportedly due to his being granted understanding

of the language of birds. In Kabbalah, Renaissance magic and alchemy the

“green language” of birds is a secret language which is the key to

perfect knowledge. In Sufism, the language of birds is analogous to the

mystical language of angels. In a poetic rather than a mystical sense,

surrealist writer Rikki Ducornet would give her highest praise to the

radical nature of Penelope Rosemont’s book, Surrealist Experiences, by

proclaiming: “In these writings, critical theory embraces the ‘language

of birds’ and poetic language reveals open secrets of thought that is

revolutionary thought at its wildest and brightest.” And perhaps the

essence of the foundational surrealist practice of automatism itself can

be most brilliantly rendered in Ducornet’s alchemical language of Birds

of calcium and mercury, of lead and sulphur.

In further examining the depth of the surrealist affinity for birds, we

might consider the passion of post-Second World War Paris Surrealist

Group member, Vincent Bounoure, for “objects that speak in bird cries.”

And in relation to bird song, we can make an analogy between André

Breton’s praise of auditories over visionaries, and his ecstatic

reveries on “free flight” expressed upon encountering the seabirds of

the Gaspé peninsula during his wartime exile in Québec. As he so

emphatically stated, “There can be no more valuable and far-reaching

hope than in the beat of a wing.”

Beyond the musings of philosophers, poets, artists and musicians, within

the culture of the Kaluli people of Bosavi in Papua New Guinea, everyday

human singing is intimately connected to the rising and falling songs of

rainforest birds (with the Kaluli even “becoming” birds on ritual

occasions). Within this tropical setting, the human voice finds

expression in relation to nature by being “in sync” not only with these

rainforest birds, but with the fluid sounds of creeks, streams and

waterfalls. All of these sonarities are connected to one another as

participating “voices in the forest,” fading in and out, thinning and

thickening, over the course of a day, with seasonal variations over

time. Kaluli singing is characterized by what participant observer

Steven Feld has called a “lift-up oversounding,” a dense multi-layered

aesthetic and ecological soundscape which he considers to be consistent

with anarchy as a lived experience.

As he explains:

Lift-up oversounding, like harmony, is both a grand metaphor for natural

sonic relations, the way tones come together in time, as well as for

social relations, for people doing things together in concert. It is the

pattern of fluid but tense egalitarian social life, where an anarchic

synchrony of energy and assertion takes prominence over fixed

categories, in a social order without political or economic hierarchy.

As a result of his fieldwork in this Bosavi sound environment, Feld

underwent a kind of poetic metamorphosis himself from academic

ethnomusicologist to “echo-muse-ecologist.” Of course, the Kaluli sound

mosaic is only one possible soundscape for anarchy. The egalitarian

society Feld observed in Bosavi should not be exoticized as bucolic or

pastoral. Rather, in his words, it is “fluid but tense.” Lift-up

oversounding then is one site-specific Kaluli approach to striking the

delicate balance between individual freedom and community in practice.

Therefore, in a creative problem-solving sense, it provides a way of

resolving the same kinds of anarchist tensions that flutter throughout

the more familiar writings of both Kropotkin and Stirner, who each wrote

on the relationship between birds, freedom and mutuality.

Too often, our conception of the anarchist soundscape is unilaterally

forged on the barricades of social war and rebellion against authority.

We experience the carnivalesque rhythms of an anarchist marching band in

the streets or the dramatic thunder of the martial soundscapes

associated with urban insurrection. We immerse ourselves in the sonic

environment of a noise demo in defense of the winged resistance of the

Individualist Cell of Birds of Fire or kick it to the beat of a

punk-edged rap soundtrack by P.O.S. in the midst of a black bloc

throw-down. Yet, we can likewise discern the broad musical sweep of

anarchy by recognizing the anarchist trace of birdsong embodied in free

flights of jazz improvisation, sound collage experimentation, deejay

mash-ups and the naturally-layered soundscapes of indigenous peoples

living on the land.

For Feld, both city-based and rainforested anarchic soundscapes are of

sonic interest. Accordingly, in 2002, he recorded the songs, chants,

speeches, and parades of anarchist May Day as celebrated in Carrara,

Italy under the title, Primo Maggio Anarchico. When I first heard about

this difficult to find 2002 recording, I’d never had the pleasure of

hearing it, but since these outdoor festivities are held in the Merry

Month of May, I assumed that on such occasions birdsong would always be

a part of the mix. When I finally did get to listen to it in 2013, my

hunch was confirmed on lucky Track 13.

When Nature Attacks

Attack is never inconsequential. When we do it we often justify our

actions by rhetorical flourishes and calls to history, greed, or the

correctness of some position or other. Fuck that shit! Our attack should

never be reconciled to language but to velocity, sinew, and the ground

we launch from. We share the passion that our non-human friends have

against civilization and howl alongside them in rage.

Cop Hit By Falling Tree During Traffic Stop

from http://gawker.com, May 11th

An Centreville, Iowa cop had pulled over a driver for not turning their

headlights on when a 30- foot oak tree cracked and fell, totaling the

car and slamming the cop to the ground. The police

chief said there was no wind in the area that night and the owners of

the tree said they had no idea it had rotted because it “appeared

healthy” and continued to sprout green leaves each season. Both the

driver and the cop walked away without major injuries, and the driver

managed to not get a ticket.

Soldier Mauled By Bear At Base In Alaska

from Yahoo News, May 18th

A soldier was badly mauled as she jogged on a trail and encountered a

bear and her two cubs. The soldier said she didn’t scream or fight

during the attack, and the bear left her bleeding in an embankment. She

sustained cuts to her neck, arms and legs, a torn ear and neck

fractures. She was rushed to a hospital by a soldier who was driving by

when he saw her walking down the road holding both hands to her bleeding

neck. Soldier Mauled By Bear At Base In Alaska, Again from Yahoo News,

July 21st An Alaska National Guard soldier was mauled by a bear while

participating in a training exercise at a military base, officials said.

The female brown bear was defending her two cubs when it mauled the

Alaska Army National Guard soldier Sunday morning at Joint Base

Elmendorf- Richardson. The exercise involves giving soldiers compasses

and maps and timing them as they make their way alone to hidden

locations on the course. The soldier was going through the woods when he

encountered the bear and her cubs late Sunday morning. The bear

approached the soldier, swatting at him and biting him before retreating

after about 30 seconds. The soldier blew a safety whistle, alerting

medics stationed nearby, Olmstead said. This was the second mauling at

the base in about two months.

Small Town Mayor Killed By Wasps

from CNN, July 23rd

The mayor of La Prairie, a small town just outside of Montreal, Canada,

was killed when she was attacked by 15 wasps. The spokeswoman for La

Prairie said that the mayor was not allergic to wasps. Otter Attacks

Swimmers In Pilchuck River, WA from Associated Press, August 1st A

grandmother and grandson duo were swimming in the river when a

4-foot-long otter emerged and attacked the 8-year-old boy. Both had to

be treated for their injuries at a hospital. ‘All of a sudden I just

heard him scream for his life. He was just bobbing up and down in the

water and as he came up there was something all the way on top of his

head,’ she told King 5 News. The otter continued to attack as they left

the water. ‘Even after it got into the river and out of our way it stood

on its hind legs looking at us like, ‘Don’t do it again; don’t come in

here.’’

Boy Attacked By Mountain Lion in Cupertino, CA

from www.ktvu.com, September 8th

A child was hiking about 10 feet in front of his family at the Picchetti

Ranch Zinfandel Trail when a mountain lion jumped and attacked him from

a hidden position. The large cat bit his neck and head and attempted to

drag him off before two adults from the group scared it off. The boy was

taken to the hospital under serious, yet non-life threatening condition.

The authorities claim that the mountain lion followed them back toward

their vehicles after the attack, and that they will kill the mountain

lion “in the interest of public safety” when found, yet the mountain

lion remains free and at large as of this publication. “This is the

leanest time of year for all wildlife,” Rebecca Dmytryk, president of

the Wildlife Emergency Services, said. “There is less out there to eat

and this is the driest season we have had in decades… We should expect

more and more of these encounters just the way the cards are stacked.”

Two Men Killed in Bull-Running Festival, Won’t Stop Festival

from huffingtonpost.com, September 14th

Authorities say two men, aged 46 and 27, were killed in a bull-running

festival where the bulls are let loose inside barricades throughout a

city and people are allowed in the barricades to taunt the bulls. People

are warned of the dangers of this “festival” and it continued the next

week.

Black Bear Kills Hiker in New Jersey

from huffingtonpost.com, September 22nd

A small group of hikers found themselves being followed by a black bear

while hiking in the Apshawa Preserve and without knowing any better,

decided to run and split off in different

directions. Two hours later, one of them was found dead with the bear

enciricling his body even while authorities attempted to scare it off.

The bear was killed by authorities, and wildlife officials claim that

the attack may have happened due to a shortage in acorns and berries,

integral parts of their diets.

A Voice From the Grave

Editor's Note: The entirey of this article has been posted here,

although it originally appeared as two parts in Issues 1 & 2.

by S-kw'etu? Siceltmot

On occasion I have made the acquaintance of travellers who come from the

lands that lay across the shqwun’u. It is customary on my territory to

receive visitors with respect and courtesy, to make them feel welcome,

but not too welcome, in light of the behaviour of their predecessors.

What unfortunately occurs during some of these exchanges is the very

awkward confession from the visitors that they are very much surprised

that I am not dead because they have been encouraged to believe that I

had died long before I was ever born. This myth—that the genocide of the

indigenous people of North America is a historical event that, although

sad and possibly wrong, is a reality that cannot be altered—is quite

chilling when it is you and your family are the people who are still

being annihilated.

My name is S-kw’etu’?, I am not dead, that is a myth, and I am not

actually even an Indian, that too is a myth. I am a Salish Warrior. I

have the great honour of being a descendent of my ancestors who have

existed on our territories for well over ten thousand years, something

that is very sacred to me. We are of the Mother, without her nothing

would exist. It is my responsibility as a Warrior to protect my

territory and the life that exists on her, including the settlers. I put

myself at risk to protect people being assaulted as well as to prevent

resource extraction that is doing harm to the Mother.

Many people would not understand why I would even include the settlers

considering all the misery they have created and continue to create.

However, if I excluded anyone that would be assimilating to colonial

culture which would require that I discard my belief in equality for all

and become a racist myself. This I cannot do. Not only is it not

physically possible being I am not ‘pure anglo stock’ (nor is anyone

else), but settler culture requires me to despise myself and my family,

which is out of the question. I am very proud of my family and love them

dearly, in fact I cherish them, and will long after I join the

ancestors. No, I cannot even pretend to be a settler, not even to

prolong my life and even if I did it would make no difference to the

state who is occupying our territories, because with racial genocide

nothing you do will alter the attitudes and beliefs of those who are the

perpetrators or the state. Basically, assimilating to the dominant,

oppressive, Aryan culture will not change your race; ergo assimilation

will not save your life. It will, however, cost you your soul, which is

too high a price to pay when it comes to your own racial extermination.

Colonial Canada has established itself as very much active in the

genocide of indigenous people, despite the cover-ups and denial that

have caused most people, even some natives and the larger percentage of

the settler population, to be unaware of this fact, or, due to the

horrors of this reality, stay sane through its denial.

Admitting to or facing something as horrific as racial extermination is

not easy for anyone, least of all me. Writing about my own experiences

is in fact very difficult. However, allowing the truth to be continually

swept under the rug will in no way alter that reality. Is it safe to

assume, or even intelligent to believe, that what is being told to you

is the truth, even though it contradicts what is occurring right before

your eyes. Are the lies more cunningly told any more believable than the

ones more commonly uttered? Are untruths and myths made any more factual

based only on the quantity of voices repeating what they have been told

of tale? Not at all. But from their point of view, putting a positive

spin on genocide is not a very easy thing for even the greatest

wordsmith to do, so best we just shh, keep that quiet, the economy may

suffer if we don’t.

Secrets. I dislike secrets a great deal. The whole nefarious world has

secrets, and relies on them to continue plaguing all life with

destruction for economic reasons. And we keep these secrets, only

because for the most part it is too dangerous to speak the truth or to

cry out for help. Instead, we whisper in each others ears, which

excludes many from ever knowing who preys upon the vulnerable in their

communities. The children, the elderly, the disabled, women, men—it

makes no difference when the mandate is ethnic cleansing.

The differences at times are subtle, indiscernible to the untrained or

disinterested eye. The superior eye of course see things through their

own narcissistic blinders, other times they see things that are vile,

sensational and extreme but if ignored or discredited these things will

eventually go away so things can get back to normal. Canada’s “normal”

being getting our genocide back on track and progressing. I am a

genocide survivor who is not Jewish, nor am I hundreds of years old. I

am not even close to reaching one hundred years of age, and there is

less chance of me living to that age than there is of my dying a violent

death. These are the realities, not the myths.

So what then does genocide look like when not being perpetrated by Nazis

and the SS? What does it look like when not on the television, edited

and formatted for the viewers’ entertainment or pleasure, heroically

portrayed by Hollywood’s finest actors, who are very willing, for money,

to provide everyone with steady streams of indisputable evidence of all

that is right and just in the world? This caters to its advertisers’

needs for money, nothing more. Genocide and racial cleansing are not

known to generate much interest in car financing or electronics so don’t

expect to see much footage on the subject, but do expect to see a great

deal about money and its importance.

For those of you who are unaware, or kept in the dark due to systematic

racial intolerance, I will tell you what genocide looks like. It looks

like apathy. It looks like deliberate marginalization based on race. It

looks just like Canada, the multicultural home to racial oppression,

human rights violations and injustice in North America.

It looks like Timmy. Timmy is also not century old (this I can attest to

because when I was a child not long ago so was he). He had the most

amazing smile. Crooked teeth only made his face that much more handsome,

and that smile made it easy to want to be his friend, to play with him,

except by the age of ten Timmy was already incapable of playing—or much

else. Before Timmy was transferred into the settler public school system

he, as a status native, had been receiving his special privileges so he

had been educated in a private school, unlike the common settler rabble.

The special privileges are designed by Canada who assumes legal

entitlement to natives by making them Canada’s wards. This is due to our

racial inferiority and the privileges are kind of in lieu of rent on the

property which colonial Canada now occupies.

Timmy’s privileged lifestyle meant that he had been kept as an inmate of

the settler government on the remote Penelakut Island. The residential

school on Kuper Island, as the settlers erroneously referred to it,

first opened its doors 1890 and operated up until 1975. It is better

known by its nickname, Alcatraz, due to its location and the fact that

so many children drowned while trying to escape from the institution.

Catholic-run under the watchful eye of the settler government, the

inmates ages four and up were starved, beaten, raped, murdered, and

tortured, many to death because their emaciated state made them

wonderful subjects for Canada’s medical experiments. Of course, these

private school educations that the modern multicultural settlers now

accuse Natives of being ungrateful for (or in Canada-speak, ‘Taking the

free educations we gave them and using them against us’) were funded by

the slave labour of those students—another couple myths down the toilet.

Thirty percent of all the inmates who were condemned to exist at that

institution did not survive the torture and abuse. They died. Was Timmy

a survivor? No. He was technically alive, but his future after all that

education was not looking too rosy. Have you ever met a person, a child,

who had been so severely starved from an early age that their body and

mind simply stopped developing?

Someone who was denied the right to grow, speak, interact or respond, to

mature and have children of his own? This is the point of racial

genocide. There are many like Timmy who I have met. It is extremely

disturbing that a government would do such a thing, much less one that

delights in condemning other people’s human rights violations despite

the fact that they pale by comparison to Canada’s ongoing crimes.

Calling them out on it also has no effect. The Chief Medical Officer of

Indian Affairs, P.H. Bryce, called them out in 1907 when he saw what

they were doing and how they were manipulating the records to cast the

blame onto the parents. His book on the subject, titled The Story of A

National Crime, was published in 1922 and sold for thirty-five cents a

copy. It is now available free online for anyone who is interested in

the truth. The fact is that none of this has been a secret, genocide is

a cultural reality that many settlers accept and even justify to this

day. If exposing the truth was all that was required to end the horrors

then Timmy would have never been like that, he would have been healthy

and happy. He attended one of those institutions fifty years after the

first book exposing Canada’s deliberate abuse and slaughter of children

was published.

Timmy was not his real name, his real name was unknown to me and is

likely that no record of it exists, because the settler government began

to destroy the school records in 1937. It is unlikely that anyone will

ever know who he was. Timmy, you see, was not returned to his family. He

was instead put into the care of a lonely, elderly, white spinster,

which was not unusual. It still isn’t. Native children are still removed

from their families and put into foster care, and are still often abused

in those situations as well. The parents of the children who perished

while receiving their special privileges never learned what happened to

them. It is safe to assume that his family believes he is one of the

many children who now lay in one of the mass graves at the school site

or drowned in an attempt to escape. This is the norm. Many parents still

have not found out what happened to their children, or whether they

became grandparents and lost their grandchildren as well. Many of the

girls who were raped in those institutions did bear children, and those

babies were dispatched to hide the evidence. They did not hide Timmy

though, not after what they did to him, because as he was he served

Canada and settlers, he was evidence of their racial superiority and of

our inability to take care of our own children without their generous

ongoing help.

Dr. Bryce must have been a rare exception as a doctor back in those

days. My own doctors, who operated half a century later, had much poorer

attitudes towards healthcare and children than he did. Shortly after my

birth, I became afflicted with a common baby malady: an intolerance to

cows milk. Due to that simple problem I was incarcerated in the hospital

for an extended period of time. My condition in the hospital has been

described to me as wretched. I was uncared for and covered in bed sores.

When my grandparents expressed concern about the open sores, they were

promptly informed that the wounds could not be felt because I had no

feelings. At that point they, along with all my family members, were

banned from entering the hospital when I was a patient. This ban

extended far beyond that initial hospital visit, and extended beyond my

family members.

I can still clearly remember spending days, weeks, and months on end in

that place, in total seclusion. The doctors or nurses would come to me,

but did not often speak to me. They jabbed me, examined me, and left.

During all those incarcerations I was not permitted to exit my room, or

crib, if that was the only place they had for me. I spent many days

confined to a crib at seven and eight years of age when I was shuffled

out of the way when a non-native child was admitted. I was not allowed

in the playroom, so I had to sate my boredom by watching while all the

other sick children played with their family members who were encouraged

to visit. Those people were not Indians, they were white and

uncomfortable having us around. In those days segregation was common,

still is actually.

In all that time I had two conversations. They were so unexpected and

rare that to this day I remember them very well. One with a nurse who

was trying to make me eat my hospital food, which was crap. She promised

me pudding if I ate it all, so I did. My reward, the pudding, was far

worse crap than the meal. I still remember the gross texture, taste, and

my disappointment as that was the only offer of anything child-friendly

I got there. Now I always refer to it as settler pudding, a lie, some

blatant manipulation followed by a generous serving of crap as your

reward. The second conversation I had was with a nice lady whose baby

was occupying another crib. Her baby, unlike myself, fit the bed. She

spent a lot of time up there with her baby, and my lack of company

bothered her to the extent that she finally made the effort to make her

way to my crib and visit me for a bit. On reflection, my lonely state

aided those who deliberately and calculatedly harm us. By banning my

native family members, they provided the anglo parents with evidence of

the neglectful behaviour of native peoples, reinforcing their belief

that the genocide is a wholesome and righteous act.

My ailments, whatever they were, where never disclosed to me or anyone

else. My health is extremely poor, although I pay it no heed most of the

time because being ill with an unknown problem that baffles medical

people is not the most comforting position to be in. It is so bad here

that often we turn away from ourselves, if only to remain sane in this

multi-generational deliberate genocide.

The state and corporate paid media often spin the situations of at-risk

people to appear as something that they, usually dead, must have surely

created themselves. They should have known better or they would not be

dead. Race and sex are both powerful elements in this colonial design,

which they wield quite effectively. This is no surprise, the European

elite mastered it through religion thousands of years before these

colonizers ever stepped foot on our shores. It is a carefully crafted

bias which colonial politicians use effectively. Can people who have not

been permitted to be exposed to any other cultures can even hear them?

Having nothing to compare their own culture to is a form of blindness

that is very hard for the afflicted to remedy when it is so rampant and

they have been taught to distrust and hate everything different from

what their leaders tell them. They do not understand that the

never-ending accusations and mudslinging that they believe is a proper

democracy is little more than a corporate plutocracy. They could have

easily looked to Iceland, an indigenous community of anglos who are not

suffering like they are with the never ending enslavement to the

capitalistic machine and elite. They instead prefer to blame us for

their colonial reality, they blame us for the economic woes that their

government creates and uses to justify their need to take more from

everything and everyone. Their tax system was not created and is not

managed by indigenous people. We don’t even have the right to raise our

own children on our own land, to exercise our rights. We don’t even have

human rights based on your government’s racist view points. Their own

leader has stated that ‘human rights are a threat to democracy.’ One

would think that would raise a little suspicion at least as to who they

are allowing to control their life.

There is seemingly no practical point in creating biased spin against

natives except to further bring about our extermination. Settlers are so

incensed that their government treats natives differently—although they

don’t know how or why—that they do not hesitate to inflict violence,

often fatal, on any natives person they come across on the native

territory they illegally occupy. Unprovoked, or government-provoked

violence is common here. Be warned if you are not white; our territories

are not safe for visitors. The sound of a bullet whizzing past my ear is

another early childhood memory that I doubt many settler children have.

I had been learning to fish. The shot was fired from across the lake

from someone concealed in the forest. The bullet struck the water with a

plop. I remember the ripples clearly, ripples that were first created by

a colonial government determined to kill the Indians. Those words are in

their own documents and the British Aryan Nation of North America is

also found there. “Canada” is the theft of a native word that they use

to describe their British Aryan Nation. Accidents do happen: had that

person been a better shot, then I, too, would now be ‘just another dead

Indian’ and the blame would have been mine somehow.

I bring history in to point out that this history is also present and

alive today. This genocide is unlike the ones people understand better,

the ones that rise up suddenly and are extinguished. Our genocide is

past, present, and future because it has now gone on so long that it is

accepted as rational or just the way things are and have to be. Many

settlers and natives accept it because they were brought up with it. To

them it is normal, unhealthy and destructive, but normal. The settlers

who call themselves ‘white men’ do not want to look at what is going on

because it is extremely unpleasant and they have grown used to nice,

gentle, positive consumer messages. Natives cannot look because that

only brings us more despair and hopelessness. The potential for suicide

is another reality that has to be considered. In fact, I just found out

that three days ago that another beautiful young person took their own

life. Again, this is our normal. The onus is on the settlers to look. It

is not up to us to tell them. They need to free themselves and learn to

think for themselves, to become human beings again, not higher status

slaves to oppression.

Violence and abuse has been a huge component in my existence and such

accepted practice that it was not until I was in my early 20s that

anyone bothered to even try to inform me that there were laws that

prevented people from assaulting each other. That was news to me. That

was my normal, and their reality was not much different—less, due to

racism—but they, too, had suffered assaults that had not been addressed

or remedied. The settler who told me that this was against the law was

correct. The law somehow made them feel safe, except they refused to

acknowledge that laws are applied on a sliding scale and never on my and

many other people’s behalf due to their race, sex, or position in

society. I am not a criminal. I behave in a moral, respectful manner

towards all life. Technically, I break their laws constantly, but what I

do is harmless; the laws I apply for myself are those of my own people

not theirs. Even in their system I have no criminal record. My own

arrests have been due to civil orders, they are deliberate violations of

my rights as the inherited land owner, allowing businesses to remove

resources from my territory against my expressed consent. Arresting

natives for resisting the theft and destruction of their property is not

a simple matter—they constantly have to break their own laws to do

it—but they seem to have no problem managing it. The process is stupid:

the province decides to sell some of your forest without your knowledge

or consent. You object, as it is technically your land. You are

arrested. You are released. You then have to go to court to have the

charges dismissed because they are in violation of your rights and

should not have been pressed in the first place. The fact that the

police, judges, lawyers, and government agents conspired to create the

illegal civil order in the first place is never addressed. Actually, I

don’t know what they talk about at those trials, I never bother

attending. No justice is ever served, it is all just a corporate

subsidy. On criminal matters, however, they are very lax and prioritize

their responses by their busy schedules: “Sorry, we can’t help you with

that assault. We have a pre-scheduled appointment on behalf of the

economy. You should be getting yourself to the hospital anyway, you are

bleeding all over the place.” That is the response for non-native

peoples. With native peoples who have been assaulted, it is often: “Hey,

come back here. I noticed that they missed a few spots.” There is plenty

of evidence of police assaulting native peoples: beatings, sexual

assaults, starlight tours, the list is endless and because there are no

repercussions for this, it continues today. Not knowing this can cost

you your life if you are native. Reporting crimes is risky. Many people

have gone in to report an assault only to be arrested. This behaviour,

too, has been documented and sometimes is even reported in the press,

but only if it is horrific and will sell media time and advertising.

Depending on the level of nastiness, books, plays, and movies could

bring in even more revenue. After we become dead Indians they pick apart

our corpses because there is still a little more left to take and put in

their own pockets. The true crime entertainment business is in no way

suffering from a lack of consumers or material in the modern free world

where whatever is good for the economy is the only thing that matters.

As the result of the police’s refusal to enforce the law and investigate

and charge people who have assaulted other people, I have had those

people come to me for shelter and protection instead, people whose faces

are bloody messes, yet have been turned away and denied not only police

aid but any other aid such as medical assistance or shelter as well.

Finding themselves just sent back out and still in fear of whomever it

was who hurt them, they come to me and stay with me until the violent

party has had time to cool down and it is safe for them to be out again.

Usually three days is adequate, depending on the nature of the problem.

Actually, now that I reflect back a bit, I have done a considerable

amount of policing on behalf of the people they are supposed to be

aiding, and for no remuneration. I have broken up brawls, prevented

assaults, corrected the behaviour of sexually deviant males, aided

people in distress, helped temporarily homeless human beings

re-establish themselves in securer, more fulfilling environments, simply

because it needed to be done. However, I do not racially exclude anyone

from this. The non-native people are extremely shocked, declaring that

no one had ever done such a thing on their behalf before, not even the

people their government pays to do it, pays with the money generated

from the stolen resources from my people’s land. The truth is, the

people being paid to take care of other people would probably arrest me

for doing their job of helping people because that steals from the white

man, instead of doing what they are supposed to, which is to do their

job and respect my cultural rights. (These rights go beyond harvesting

and hunting; culturally we take care of everyone and everything.) This

does happen. They have created laws specifically prohibiting indigenous

people from competing with them in the labour and resource market, which

effectively set the norm in modern hiring practices. This took some time

and effort as many of the settlers did not hate natives, that had to be

ingrained first. Simply doing the opposite, creating a law in order to

make amends while painting natives as the enemy, accomplishes nothing.

Racists do not simply stop being racists because a law was created. They

simply ignore the law, beyond complaining about it, and continue their

racist hiring practices, because that is how it is done in the

mythological land known as Canada. If natives find employment it is

because the employer has chosen that person, not because of any

laws—even many in the government still discriminate when hiring.

The fact people chose myths over facts is very concerning. The foolish

narcissism of adopting this attitude is not only detrimental to the

people you choose to put beneath you and stomp on, it is also

detrimental to yourself, your family, and those who are yet to come.

People determined to believe that Canada is legit and perfectly

wonderful in order to fulfill their mandate of feeling happy always at

all costs to everyone else, blind themselves to the truth. The truth is,

whether you like it or not, that the failure to recognize and see the

truth can kill you. We all have to die anyway; I have almost expired

more than a few times. Death is inevitable, that is, unchangeable. How

we appreciate the gift that is our life by using it is our decision. We

have the ability to change a lot of things, including our lives and our

deaths to some extent. We can chose how we do not want to die, we can

put a little effort into that I think: we can chose not to allow

ourselves to be poisoned by businesses, industries, drug companies,

doctors, and food-producing industries. We can also chose not to be

killed by mentally ill people who are not receiving treatment or

support. We can choose not to be killed by members of other racial

groups who are supposed to be our enemies. We can choose not to be

killed by the gangs who are taking advantage of corrupt systems and

unhealthy social conditions for profit (they are not all on the street

either). We can choose not to be killed by state police agents or

military who are being paid to protect us. We can choose not to fall

prey to a sexual deviant or predator, of whom there are many alive and

operating in the land of myths.

Very recently, Maryanne Pearce published a book titled An Awkward

Silence: Missing and Murdered Vulnerable Women and the Canadian Justice

System. She took this task on herself, researching and compiling a

database of all murdered and missing people in Canada. She now suffers

from post traumatic stress disorder, which she should, she took the onus

and learned the truth, and these truths have to be known. The reality

that Canada is a safe place is another myth. There are currently many

dangerous and violent people wandering around free and at large and no

effort is being put into apprehending or imprisoning them. This I was

already well aware of, because the predators know that native and other

minority women are marginalized by Canada, which means we are excluded

from receiving the same rights, protection, and benefits many do receive

only because of their race. For many years now, voices have risen in

protest stating that there are six hundred missing or murdered native

females who the police and government do nothing about because we are

excluded. Six hundred missing or murdered is astronomical if you

consider we are only two percent of the population that Canada claims to

be responsible for. The number of six hundred was provided by an

organization that Canada shut down in 2010 in response to the this fact

coming out. Canada and the police have publicly denied this. Maryanne

Pearce’s database proves there is now 824 missing or murdered native

women, which means from 2010 to 2013 at least 224 more native women and

girls were allowed to be murdered due to the Canadian government and

their police agents’ deliberate attempts to sweep the problem back under

their rug of nasty.

Even the United Nations condemned Canada for this ongoing crime.

Canada’s response at the last crown speech? They stick by their

prostitution laws. Of the 824 missing or murdered, she discovered that

659 were not prostitutes. Some were high school students, some even

younger; many were young mothers, many were university students. The

government, police, and media always apply the standard racist,

colonial-logic formula (native + female = prostitute), claiming that

consent was given for all abuse and violence, so these women had it

coming. This is the same formula the police and the judicial system

apply to any violence perpetrated against any indigenous woman or child.

The male formula differs slightly (native + male = drug and alcohol

crazed savage). He was the instigator of the violence, so had it coming.

This is law by stereotypes, or “We reserve the right to judge any person

who has been savagely violated and murdered based on our biased racist

criteria before addressing the behaviour of the criminal who committed

the crime, no matter how heinous the act.”

Only six were murdered by their significant others, which is quite low

and deviates from the norm with non-natives. Thus, we dispose of the

myth that it is native males who perpetrate the crimes. I do know more

than a few native men. It is true that we have been subjected to

never-ending streams of sexual, physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse

from the colonial occupiers, which has resulted in us having numerous

friends and family members who are now suffering with severe emotional

and trauma issues. This will happen when the priest or foster daddy

routinely shoves it in you from an early age in order to demonstrate

what his god/culture thinks of your race.

Unless they have assimilated to ‘white culture,’ which is brought about

through torture, I have no fear of native men. I actually admire them a

great deal to have endured that and still come out of it sound,

wonderful, and supportive. Native men are good men. They respect and

admire us as well, something people who identify as being ‘white’ do not

comprehend. Their culture does not promote equality between the sexes

and they accept that as natural.

So what Maryanne Pearce discovered was that there are currently a large

number of killers and more serial killers free and at large in Canada.

The RCMP and police show little interest in the problem which everyone

should be well aware of by now. Maryanne Pearce’s findings were used by

several journalists to compose stories expressing the urgency of the

problem. More than a few people are condemning those stories for being

racist because they are not about white women who have been murdered.

Dead white woman syndrome is a reality for racist cultures: twenty-seven

times more news coverage is rewarded to missing white females than to

missing native women and children. The deliberate racial bias in the

coverage is also significant in that missing white females receive

heartfelt, positive and impassioned coverage, designed to get that

person back to their loved ones safely, whereas native females and girls

who go missing get little more than “Missing native female, age, missing

from, missing since and oh yeah did we mention she is brown?” Mug shots

taken from previous arrests, if available, are the preferred images that

accompany these messages. Many self-described ‘white’ people are now

complaining about all the racism they have to endure because of these

news stories. It is so tragic how these ‘white people’ have to suffer

from so much racism which is due to the fact that other races do still

exist and some journalists, especially Caucasians, actually have the

audacity to remind them that there are still natives actually living on

the territories they have been occupying. The very idea must chill them

to the core: if that is true then there may even be other kinds of brown

people out there too. Oh, will the horrors never end?

Maryanne Pearce’s work does include all women. She, like many people,

had had enough of the vile racist, toxic attitudes within the Canadian

government, police, judicial system and far too many of the settlers who

continue to deliberately and remorselessly pursue their god-given right

to harm the people whose lands they continue to occupy. I thank her for

having the courage to to stand up and say, “Although I did not begin

this, that is not the point. I am still a part of it and do want this to

end.” The reality that over two percent of native women and girls in

this population are being slaughtered indicates that racism is a serious

factor behind this. This is very important to be aware of, especially

when the foundation of your society and your claim to our territories is

based upon ethnic cleansing.

Not every Caucasian who was born on our territories is a racist, despite

the government and media’s continued anti-native propaganda. In fact, a

steady growing number are beginning to stand up against it. Not every

Caucasian wants the blood of innocent people on their hands, or on their

conscience. No one should be comfortable with any government that sees

human rights as a threat to democracy, or as something that is only

given to those they allow to have them. One day you too may earn

yourself or one of your grandchildren some of the ‘special privileges’

we have been receiving from your government. No one is immune to

violence and horrors just by their superiority complex and lack of

empathy for others. Even the self-described white people can just as

easily be taken unawares, actually more easily due to their insisting on

wearing ass hats. Whether or not you are the one who is subjected to

being physically restrained, vilely and sickly tortured, raped,

degraded, and slaughtered in order to sate a sadist’s urge depends not

upon you, but upon them, they chose the prey. A high percentage of

predators are racists, being that Canada is a racist culture, but some

predators are ego-based. For them, whites are more suitable because they

get the bonus of all that publicity. Many are opportunists, watching,

waiting for the right moment. Only they define who they are and only

they know what they need as far as a victim goes, what kind of suffering

will sate their desires.

The predators who have been caught are primarily white males and

strangers to their victim, Sometimes they even work in teams; four men

gang-raped and murdered a young student. Only one of them, years later,

received a five-year jail term. The racial motive has been repeated by

killers and serial killers repeatedly. The response by police and the

justice system is racist but what is all this racism actually achieving?

Canada is condemning children and young women to death because of their

race. Their handling of the long term violent sexual offenders is

shrouded in secrecy. The names, charges and sentences are all kept

hidden under legal publication bans. They selectively chose who the

public is allowed to know about and that is a very rarely done. They

have the power to allow the public to know if the person they are

releasing is still a threat to the community, which means it is likely

that the racist killers’ releases are not ever disclosed. They also take

great pains to cover up the truth about the deaths of native children

whom they have removed from their parents’ care and placed into foster

care. This is another high-risk factor that is behind the missing and

murdered native girls phenomenon. The criminals are often not even known

to the victims in racially-motivated attacks. How are young girls, 13,

14, 15 years of age, who have been removed from their families and

placed in strange communities for educational purposes, supposed to

protect themselves from sadistic sex killers?

Youth and young women are targeted because they are naive, friendly, and

their innocence makes them easy prey, but that is okay with Canada.

There have been documented and published cases like that of a young

native woman who was forced into sexual solicitation and the police

being aware for over a year that the pimp was advertising her over the

internet. They even arrested him for assaulting a male and recorded him

threatening her on their jail system. They knowingly allowed him to

force her to continue selling her body in order to pay his fines and

provide him with canteen money for months. Not only did they not

intervene, but the prison system and judicial system took the money.

They knowingly accepted money generated from the forced sexual

exploitation of a minor child. When they released the pimp after his

fines were paid off, he physically assaulted the girl in the jail

parking lot before driving home. They did nothing until a member of the

public who saw the extent of the injuries on that child’s face phoned to

log a complaint. Only then did they decide to obey the law. This was

published in the mainstream press but publish any story about a native,

the accusations against natives, and defense of the RCMP, and other

police agencies rise up in a clamour. Clearly, the secrets have a

purpose and the laws are deliberately ignored by police and the justice

system. What happens when a child is sexually abused like many native

children still are in their foster care or group homes where the state

places them? They are severely traumatized and without support turn to

drugs and alcohol, and prostitute themselves so they can afford their

relief. By being forced down this path by the systematic racism that

defines Canada, they eventually end up as bait for the steady stream of

sexual predators and sadists.

Janet Henry, one of the many missing women and girls, is from the

KwaKawQueWak Nation. She had two loving parents, her father was employed

full time in fishing and logging, and they were living happily on their

traditional territory until the Canadian government seized Henry and her

siblings and placed them into the residential schools or foster care

homes. While in foster care, she was abducted and drugged but not

murdered for reasons only known to serial killer Clifford Olson, who

slaughtered many children. One of her sisters was also murdered and

another sibling committed suicide. Despite this, she finished high

school, became a hairdresser, married, had a child. When her name was

put on the missing persons list for women who disappeared from the DTES

Salish Territory, it was assumed she was just another prostitute who

fell victim to the pig cannibal killer Robert Pickton. However, no

evidence has ever been found of her whereabouts or remains. It is quite

likely yet another unknown serial killer took her life, or perhaps she

is just vanished for her own protection; that also happens.

Three times in my life I have had encounters with known and released

violent offenders, one of whom worked as a performer for children. That

encounter for me was not traumatic; he tried to scare me, failed, and

because I was clearly not frightened, simply went away kind of scared

himself. It was not until a couple of days later, when I told my

employer, that I found out how nasty he really was. She repeated the

story to a female neighbour who he had attacked and violently assaulted

years before, who had a severe PTSD attack just hearing that he was

residing in the area. It kind of made me wish I had known his identity

before. Then the police showed up. I hate those guys. They were

annoying, but they seemed to be aware of his potential for violence,

although did not confess anything to me.

The second violent offender I encountered had done time for breaking and

entering a couple’s home and threatening them with a hand gun. He began

showing up wherever I would; after work I rode a bicycle for a bit to

the store, then out for dinner and he clearly knew my schedule. He found

out where I lived, knocked on the door, and pretended he had been

looking for my neighbour. I was not amused and sent him away. After

telling the neighbour (who had not invited him over), and that same

neighbour overhearing his conversations in the pub about me, let’s just

say the boys got together and went to have a talk with him. Whatever was

said stopped him.

The most recent offender I encountered, however, is by far the worst. He

is a confirmed, listed sexual predator who has been convicted many times

of sexual assault, assault, and also of sexual assault of a minor. His

first juvenile conviction was for attempted murder. His famous attempted

murder charge (which he got off) included several assaults of people

with a weapon and unlawful confinement. The intended victim was thrown

from a third story window into a dumpster, which saved his life.

Fortunately for that person the police showed up just in time. The man

was unknown to me when I first encountered him. I was unaware at that

time that I was not unknown to him. When I refused his invitations to

spend more time with him, he physically grabbed me and began to force

his intentions on me in a busy public park. I had to force him off of me

which was not easy. During our grapple apparently my elbow struck his

penis and that was taken by him as consent. That was the beginning of my

long game of cat and mouse with potentially deadly consequences for my

children who he has promised to have sent to me a piece at a time. He is

not posturing. I was watched constantly for well over two years, I was

sexually assaulted more than I like to remember, and this has been the

first male I have ever come across who could best me. Of course, I am

getting old now, always have been physically challenged due to my early

childhood illnesses, and he is twice my size. The scope of bizarre and

twisted things that have taken place is beyond belief. Eventually he did

find out where I lived. My neighbours witnessed and called emergency

services because they feared for my life. He had a habit of shouting

threats in front of my home in public, some of these episodes woke the

whole neighbourhood. Despite the fact that he was on probation and had a

restraining order against him from another woman, as well as being

classified as a serial sexual predator, they refused to arrest him. They

also decided that I really had no grounds for fear: why should a

one-hundred-pound, ill, middle-aged woman fear a younger,

two-hundred-pound, fit, athletic sexual offender after all? I had been

suffering from pneumonia that day, which tends to happen sometimes due

to whatever is wrong with me. I found myself alone with a family to

protect, so we left the city and went into hiding for a few days to give

him a cool down and eliminate the potential for murder.

Upon returning, I found I still had an amorous, potentially deadly

admirer but now was also being harassed by police. The next thing that

happened is that the police came and hauled me in for questioning about

my ‘husband.’ They call him my husband. I have never been married and he

was on probation from charges stemming from an incident with his wife

which had occurred not even five months before. Finally, they told me

that they would provide me with a no contact order. I wondered just how

many women in the area that I was not aware of also had one. The loud

public verbal threats continued, people witnessed him trying to enter my

home on several occasions. They witnessed him hiding under my stairs in

the early hours and after dark. I recorded the times and dates for

several calls which came from his residence and provided them to police

who made up excuses that were false as to why they could not be used as

evidence of breaches against my no contact order. They basically put the

onus on me to prove to them that he was in fact the party on the other

end of the phone. My word alone was not enough evidence. Then, they

literally tried to convince me to speak to him, which is absolutely the

wrong thing to do with stalking and harassment situations.

He is an erotomaniac. One does not engage with an erotomaniac. The point

of a non-contact order is not to have contact with the mentally

disturbed individual because that will only make matters worse, but

apparently the experts are not aware of this. Not long after, strangers

were approaching me on his behalf, neighbours started receiving phone

calls and having their windows knocked on, more midnight threats came,

along with more harassment from police trying to pry into the sexual

assault business. The man, as I saw on his record, is charged annually.

He gets off on the rough sex defense. They know he is a rapist and

stalker and all they want to do is get me to tell them about the sex

bits, like that is not creepy. Eventually, because he was now harassing

my neighbourhood and everyone was pretty much terrified I moved my

family out of the city far away. Three months after I moved, the police

found out where I was and called, not to see how I was or if I was

alive, but because they had a warrant for his arrest stemming from the

initial 911 calls that were made on my behalf by several people. What

they wanted to know is if I could tell them where he was presently, very

comforting. Sexual offenders are supposed to be supervised. They are

supposed to report their addresses, working locations, car, and all

other information that the police require, and his probation officer was

supposed to have that information also. He did some time. Around six

months later, I found out that my new home was now under police

surveillance, which was kind of an obvious give away as to our location

in the community, it was quite rural. I confirmed he was again at large,

the surveillance continued, the RCMP kept coming to question me, but

would not tell me what it was all about so we moved again, and again.

That was a few years ago, we have had to completely disappear, to leave

the community where we had lives and friends, to create new lives while

he continues to terrify those people. But I guess at least they got rid

of a few more Indians. There are children and people back there who

relied on me to take care of them and now I can no longer do that. That

is what hurts the most.

The male does not worry me as much as the police. When the whole

business began, I did as I always do, I went to the library and

researched the problem thoroughly, and I am very glad I did. What I

learned, written by a police officer from the US who did not have

anything nice to say about his colleagues in this area, prepared me for

not only what the pursuer was doing but also how the police would fail.

His advice did save a life, that I will attest to. But the police’s

attempts to get me to engage with the stalker were very disturbing. They

were trying to set me up and put myself at risk by encouraging me to

talk to him and they had a twisted interest in trying to get me to speak

about sexual assaults. I did search out and find the procedures manual

they are supposed to use in situations like this. They clearly did the

opposite, so basically I have to wonder how many other native women have

been set up by the police? And one final note: there is a name on the

list of missing and murdered women which was brought to my attention by

a certain admirer several times. I haven’t read the new one through, I

wonder if my name is on it now too. I have gone missing, but once again

my death is actually a myth, only because I am one of the very few lucky

ones.

This has to stop. No person, especially a child, should be allowed to be

tortured, much less slaughtered, for the betterment of the economy.

Please do not buy stolen native resources, do not buy from Canada. I do

not want my grandchildren to endure what we have had to suffer for so

many generations. We need sanctions now!

The Dark Mountain Manifesto

We have published an excerpted version of this manifesto with the hope

that we were faithful to the tone and intent of it, here it appears in

its entirety. Dark Mountain is a literary group based in the UK that is

arguing for a kind of /dark ecology/ that is pessimistic towards

activist approaches to “saving the environment” and optimistic about the

possibility of us telling stories to each other. You can learn more

about them at http://dark-mountain.net/

Ways of Casting Wishes

by Vira Hawthorn

We all have ways of casting wishes. In the anarchist milieu, one of the

most common of these practices is the communiqué. Written as a story and

shared in our world, communiqués attach a group of intentions to their

departure. Each intention cannot be known, but every communiqué at least

wishes for connection. It is the desire for resonance, a sharing of

inspiration. The communiqué carries the wish for feeling and perceiving

between people, for speaking in the space that alienation strangles into

silence. Green anarchists know that civilization is responsible, at

root, for alienation – the impassable distance between all of life. When

we write about an event that has occurred, especially an event that

breaks with normalcy, we aim with our intention for that barrier. We

hope (despite our hopelessness) that even the slightest tingle of a real

feeling will be felt.

In “Naming All Of The Names,” Cedar Leighlais continues the great

tradition of criticism in our milieu. But, thrust into empty space,

their blade has a blunt edge. That is to say: We should critique their

criticism–even if only to make caricatures of ourselves-because they

have not only missed the point, they have articulated a position that

will only aid in the maintenance and growth of alienation, and the

weakening of the wish for communication.

Leighlais’ article argues that if – in a communiqué - you do not name

civilization as your enemy, explicitly, you have watered down your

ideas, and will fail to build authentic relationships. Despite the fact

that the communiqué they are critiquing in no way excludes civilization

as an enemy, and that Leighlais’ argument is simply a bad faith

criticism, we should still examine this position. Because there is a

tendency in the anarchist world to equate every effort at communication

with liberalism. Especially if the style of our communication uses

description rather than jargon.

I have a sister. She isn’t an anarchist. But she does care deeply about

the ways that society affects her and her loved ones. We talk about

that. We talk about it because it is a place where we connect. If I said

to her, “you feel alienated from yourself all of the time because you’re

domesticated, because of the modernist separation of mind, body and

spirit, because of the Leviathan and all of its limbs. We must attack

the limbs for the sake of freedom!” – she would say, “What?”

This does not mean that my sister and I cannot be comrades or

co-conspirators. There are places where we connect and can collaborate

if we so choose. This does not mean that my sister doesn’t understand

the world. She understands it in different terms. And this does not mean

that my effort to connect with her is in any way liberal, proselytizing,

or strategic. It means that I value the quality and content of our

communication. I care about her, and I care about communicating my ideas

to her, and I care about hearing what her ideas are, too.

If anarchists only communicate in jargon, our relationships will be

built on style rather than content. With the intention of keeping our

messages “pure,” we will find all else hollow. This is how the

enforcement of anarchism as a subculture (and all subcultures create

their own internal languages) contributes to the maintenance and growth

of alienation. There are many ways that we insulate ourselves in the

anarchist subculture, weak and shallow communication being second only

to non-communication. And there isn’t much difference, in effect,

between non-communication and poor communication.

To preemptively rebut an expected reaction here: I have a real, genuine,

longing desire to meet and connect with people. This desire cannot be

equated with the intentions of politicians and churches who, in an

effort to amass popularity and power, seek to collect people and impose

beliefs upon them.

For the communiqué, for conversation, for the wish of connection,

honesty and clarity are far more creative powers than the classic

anarchist or anti-civilization vocabulary. “Naming All Of The Names”

directly requests of anarchists a hollow and rhetorical style of

communication. Leighlais also writes in the style they are so

encouraging of. For example, referencing Os Cangaceiros makes little

sense in the context of the article. Os Cangaceiros was not the first,

the most recent, nor the most similar example to Seattle’s context of

anarchists putting their bodies in the way of labor to slow capital and

share messages. However, A Crime Called Freedom is probably one of the

most popular anarchist texts in circulation, and seems to be referenced

here for its popularity over its relevance. The same type of reference

is made to Against His-Story, Against Leviathan. I love that book, but

just calling civilization “The Leviathan” out of context makes no sense,

except that it’s hip in anarchist and anti-civilization circles.

Finally, there are three main pieces of writing that I found in

relationship to the Microsoft and Amazon transportation blockings in

Seattle. Two were the communiqués referenced in Leighlais’ article, and

one was an analysis and history of gentrification from the last 10-15

years. The analysis and history described the correlation between

gentrification, racism and colonialism, including an intimate story of

someone’s lost relationship with nature. “Naming All Of The Names” is –

to be blunt – a jaded, thoughtless, poorly researched straw-man

argument.

But the article did initiate a series of inquiries for me, and my wish

is that this response asks at least this question: How do we choose to

communicate and what are the intentions behind our communication?

In the course of my growing, I have experienced communiqués and other

forms of sharing as small openings into the unknown. Little splinters in

the skin of the existent. It is in practice and in actions that I’ve

searched for those pinholes and have attempted to tear further. As an

insurrectionary anarchist, I communicate with the desperate urge for

those moments. As a green anarchist, I believe that the material torn is

the spiritual body of civilization.

If we don’t know our intentions, our wishes easily become curses. It

feels likely to me that jargon and rhetoric belong to the capitalists.

Let us speak truly and aim our intention with care: toward the heart of

civilization.

It's All Falling Apart

The end of the world will not come in a bang, a clarion call of

trumpets, and the dawning of a new era. The end of the world will be

decades, if not centuries, of immiseration and degradation that will

humiliate and starve us. This starvation will be of the body and the

soul. This humiliation will be because at the same time we are taught

about God and Country we, especially North Americans, will wait by the

shore for our next barge of products from distant lands, believing the

promise that the next gadget will fill the void we paved over, cut down,

and wrapped in plastic in the first place. The end of the world isn’t

going to be exciting or heroic, it’ll be bright, flashy, and mediocre.

Liquid Food To Replace Eating Called “Soylent”

from the New Yorker

Three men living in a small apartment in the Tenderloin District of San

Francisco, CA were forced to come face to face with the inconveniences

of food when their startup failed (a startup is a project to create some

kind of new technology service that is funded by big-time investors

before it is even created, much like the companies and people who funded

colonial expeditions into North America in the 1500’s). Not having any

time nor facilities to tend to their cooking needs, one of them isolated

the nutritional needs required from food, ordered them over the internet

as supplements, blended them into one drink, and is now calling it

“Soylent.” Soylent’s production has been funded by Silicon Valley and

heralded by the press as “the end of food.”

DNA Company To Track Dog-Poop-Perpetrators

from newsfeed.time.com

Dog poop is enough of a problem at an apartment complex in Plano, Texas

that the management is deploying DNA tracking to find the

pooping-perpetrators. Residents are expected to bring their dogs in to a

lab to have them “registered”, and then they can be fined up to $250 if

their dogs are found linked to retrieved “samples.”

Driver posts Facebook Update Collision

from globalnews.ca, April 28th

A woman in High Point, N.C. is dead after a head-on collision with a

truck literally right after posting an update to her facebook that said

“The happy song makes me HAPPY!” Authorities said “The facebook text

happened at 8:33 a.m., we got the call on the wreck at 8:34 a.m..”

Google’s next data collection project: Human body

from Russia Today, July 25th

Google’s research arm is planning an initial study of 175 people to

collect anonymous health data from biological samples like blood and

saliva in the process of creating individual genome

databases that could eventually help fend off illness or disease. For

Google’s Baseline Study, researches will track one’s genetic history,

metabolic processes, and other aspects of an

individual’s body in efforts to create a baseline health standard. This

is reminiscent of many futurist science-fiction stories where characters

are plugged into a computer and diagnosed.

How far off are we?

Kid Climbs Trees With prosthetic arm

from Russia Today, July 29th

A 6-year-old boy has now been given the ability to catch balls and climb

trees from a 3D Printer and a group of charitable university students in

Florida. The boy was born with “right arm deficiency” and is missing his

right arm from just above the elbow. An engineering doctoral student

heard about the boy and decided to print a replacement arm with a 3D

Printer, a piece of technology that runs with off-the-shelf materials

and batteries. “We’ve already heard from another family who needs an

arm. We’re committed to helping who we can. I think 3-D printing is

revolutionizing our world in many ways. I believe changing the world of

prosthetics is very real. There’s no reason why this approach shouldn’t

work on adults too.”

River in China mysteriously Turns Red Overnight

from Russia Today, July 29th

A river in Eastern China has mysteriously turned red. Residents remarked

on how clean the water has been for as long as they’ve known it, “We

have always been able to catch fish and you can even drink the water

because it’s just normally so good.” While there’s no chemical plant

upstream, a professor of limnology (the study of inland waters) says “It

looks like a pollutant phenomenon, water bodies have turned red very

fast in the past have happened because people have dumped dyes into

them.”

“Occupy Hong Kong” Kicks Off, Demanding Democracy

Happening at time of printing

Many news outlets have been announcing the arrival of a large protest

movement in Hong Kong, some calling it “Occupy” yet all of the reports

differing in some degree. It seems that this is

a student movement demanding democracy, violently fighting police in the

streets and blocking avenues of traffic while all on their iphones, not

looking at each other. “Movement leaders”

stepped out of political negotiations with government officials after

protesters were physically attacked by people who were either “neighbors

who opposed their tactics” or “thugs hired

by the government.”

Two Steps Nowhere

by Tommy Brock & Dire Wolfe

(Caveat I: Communication Is Impossible)

There is much to be said about the differences and potential

collaboration between the green anarchist and eco-defense milieus.

However, nearly everything stands in the way of honest communication.

Critiques are both written and received in bad faith. There are those

too jaded to contribute anything but snark to our struggles and those

who take themselves too seriously to receive well-intentioned,

thoughtful criticism. There are those so caught up in who they are as

radicals, activists, militants, that they have completely lost the

ability to stop and think or to reflect critically on their own

activity. Our milieus are populated by so many personalities vying for

social capital, attention, meaning, purpose, or adventure that it’s

difficult to actually keep an eye on the thing that brought us into

these spaces in the first place.

There are those who try, though. There are those who critique because

they are frustrated by seeing things they care about fall into the same

traps again and again. There are those who are risking failure by trying

new things, by experimenting with new ways of resisting despite the

constant gaze of naysayers. And there are those who are keeping their

eye on the impossibility of total freedom while trying to throw

themselves fully at their own limitations in everything they do. It is

in this spirit that we write this—with an appreciation and respect for

those who are pushing back against the onslaught of civilization but

also with the knowledge that civilization is far too good at absorbing

any attempts to resist it.

(Caveat II: Labels Are Useless)

The anarchist milieu seems to have become increasingly distinct from the

space inhabited by people who participate in eco-defense. In other

moments, there has been much more overlap. These days, eco-defenders

(anarchist or not) have a network that feels mostly independent from the

anarchist milieu (whatever that is).

Green anarchists, in one sense of the term, are those who make up a

constellation of tendencies, all of whom, at the very least, situate

themselves against The Left and against Civilization (both very

ambiguously defined). Green Anarchy Magazine, along with others,

elaborated a diverse and broad series of critiques that drew from

insurrectionary, individualist, post-left, nihilist, anti-civilization,

and indigenous thought.

A common problem: if you don’t happen to live on the West Coast, “green

anarchist” is probably more often used in reference to a sort of

‘eco-focused’ anarchism that can be found in the radical

environmentalist movement. Usually big-tent anarchism with a particular

soft-spot for radical environmentalism: Noam Chomsky-reading,

pro-democracy, left anarchists whose main concern is the environment.

Some are perhaps more skeptical of cities and production, reading

Derrick Jensen instead of Murray Bookchin, but still lack the expansive

critique of domestication, colonization, morality, revolution, and

politics that characterizes green anarchy.

While some who fall under the Green Anarchist umbrella

(anarcho-primitivists, for example) propose courses of action

(rewilding, attacking the grid, etc.), what unites green anarchists is

perhaps a particular theoretical orientation to the problem of

civilization—a series of critiques and questions. Although these

critiques have inspired exciting actions, struggles, and moments of

revolt, they can be seen as experiments and gestures—not ‘correct

practices’ that all green anarchists engage in because they are implied

by the theory. From this point of view, it’s anyone’s game as to how we

might resist our situation.

Radical eco-defense, on the other hand, is a milieu that has coalesced

around a practice or set of practices. Usually centered on particular

campaigns (Tar Sands, Keystone XL, Mountaintop Removal, Logging,

Fracking), all sorts of people come together to protect this or that

parcel of land from those who would destroy it. Those indigenous to the

threatened land, bleeding-heart activists whose consciences just can’t

bear to see another tree cut down in the name of corporate profit, and

everyone in between gather under the banner of eco-defense. The same

people who attend a Earth First! Rendezvous can also be seen at Power

Shift or giving workshops for the Sierra Club.

That’s what makes the eco-defense space so complicated. There are lots

of different people with radically different critiques, goals,

strategies, and relationships with the current order working together on

a single campaign. Usually with predictable results: the people with the

highest stakes and those taking the greatest risks get sold out while

the NGOs and liberals pack up and go home, happy to have ‘made a

difference’ by compromising with those who are destroying the land.

Because everyone is, on paper, working toward the same immediate goal,

real differences in perspective and strategy are suppressed in the name

of unity, access to resources, or mass appeal. People who, from my point

of view, shouldn’t ever be on the same team, are. And there’s little

recourse to draw meaningful lines when there’s also an immense

repressive apparatus breathing down your necks and the only thing

protecting you from it are the well-funded NGOs and progressive

organizations.

Recently, Black Seed featured a critique of the radical environmentalist

movement generally, and Earth First! and Tar Sands Blockade

specifically. The article critiqued the way that Non-Violent Civil

Disobedience (NVCD) has become central to the rhetorical and tactical

arsenal of many direct action campaigns. Many anarchists share this

complete disinterest with any struggle that so severely limits itself

from the outset. However, the call for an increase in militant tactics

or harking back to the good ol’ days of black blocs and summit

shut-downs doesn’t feel very useful. An increase in militancy would

likely bring down the full force of the repressive apparatus—to up the

ante would almost certainly mean to go the way of the ELF.

Our struggles exist in the impossible space between absorption into

liberal activism on the one hand, and the crushing might of the state on

the other. Anarchists know this double-bind well. Many have learned the

hard way that working with individuals and organizations whose interests

lie in the perpetuation of this world leads to co-optation and exclusion

at best and at worst, the firing squad or the grand jury. As the dust

settles, the ones doing the heavy lifting on the front lines are swept

aside by the bureaucrats and career activists who take credit for all

the work and eclipse the possibility of further spontaneous, wild

resistance.

We live in a country that has crushed every struggle that it has deemed

a threat. The state unscrupulously murders or imprisons those who go toe

to toe with the forces of control. Any movement or group that enjoys

some amount of success is torn apart from the inside—it’s most radical

factions disappeared and the rest channelled into liberal activism.

The radical environmentalist movement is living with the legacy of

Operation Backfire and the reality of the green scare, of domestic

terrorism watch-lists, of FBI, state, and local police collaboration, of

snitches and informants, of trumped-up charges and constant

surveillance. Even the most liberal environmentalists are looking over

their shoulders more and more. In this light, it makes some sense as to

why the rhetoric of NVCD has become so central, why the protective

shadow of NGOs is covering so much of the landscape.

But it seems as though for most, the situation has escaped them. The

reasons given for infiltrating NGOs, for playing nice with movement

leaders, or for concealing their ‘real’ politics go beyond simple

tactical considerations. We have inherited a history of repression, the

implications of which don’t seem to have fully sunk in. Meetings are

attended, coalitions are formed, and internships are taken while talking

shit and having a laugh about how liberal and problematic everyone else

is. But, despite rhetoric that says otherwise, the whole situation runs

along smoothly—NGOs have little trouble finding interns and coalitions

usually find themselves with those willing to go to jail for a few days.

All this in exchange for a paycheck and the satisfaction of knowing that

you and your friends are the real radicals. For all the talk of using

resources for underground resistance, it rarely goes that far. The

defeats and recuperation of the past 40 years are still with us. It has

made us docile. Most are satisfied with patting themselves on the back

for being more militant, radical, and correct than others, while doing

little more than reproducing the subculture that makes us all feel like

we’re important, that we’re really doing something.

Much of what happens in the radical environmentalist movement both lacks

the capacity to accomplish its goals and the ethical commitment to

autonomy, spontaneity, and the constant undermining of authority that

allows revolt to flourish. On the one hand, many eco-defenders continue

with the strange ritual of lockdown-arrest-bail out while waving the

banner ‘No Compromise In Defense Of Mother Earth!’ all the while

becoming more and more entangled in the web of compromises weaved by the

non-profiteers, activists, and advocates who seem to be everywhere these

days. Victories for people with the most to lose are rarely won.

For many anarchists, the terrain is murky. The mostly smooth gradient

between liberal activists and militant eco-defender is confusing—it is

difficult to know who is a potential accomplice and who is more

interested in making a name for themselves (or worse, the organization

they are a part of). Alliances can form in unlikely places and it’s

important to be open to these, but it is also important to know your

enemy.

It is clear enough to most anarchists that when at a demonstration or

action, the police are our enemies. In other moments, we might find

ourselves at odds with the loggers, surveyors, and construction workers

unfortunate enough to be working their respective careers at those

respective moments. More subtle, and for that reason all the more

deserving of our hostility, are those enemies among us: those who would

manage us in our struggles, those who would have us be little more than

foot soldiers in their campaigns, those who define the appropriate ways

to resist, those who need our energy to feed either their own egos or

the swollen organization that, in turn, feeds off of them.

There are those whose participation in environmental campaigns amounts

to little more than a desire to speak for others, to do ‘good’. We know

them well: the many activists, advocates, social justice organizers, and

career revolutionaries who spend their entire lives bouncing from one

injustice to the next, always for the fame, for the paycheck, or for the

peace of mind that comes with the knowledge that they’re dedicated to

something more important than themselves that populate our worlds. These

characters are the mechanisms by which Politics reproduces itself. They

are the agents of Progress, channeling the energy and potential of a

moment into the familiar avenues of spectacular activism.

This moral backdrop is a barrier for many anarchists’ enthusiastic

involvement in campaigns. From where we sit, people are far too ready to

sacrifice themselves on the altar of deep ecology with little but some

moving photographs and an FBI file to show for it. There can be little

affinity between anarchists and the martyrs caught up in their own

narratives of spectacular self-sacrifice and pseudo-militancy. This

isn’t to say that there aren’t things worth risking arrest (or death)

for and I’m not really talking about tactics either. Lockdowns, for

example, have been an important tactic in winning campaigns. Rather, I

am trying to get at the strange moral logic—the peculiar desire to

sacrifice oneself for The Good, to suffer— that motivates so many

radicals.

Morality is only part of the problem. For so many, our milieus are our

own specialized identity-machines. We become so caught up being

‘anarchists’, ‘militants’, ‘allies’, ‘activists’ or ‘eco-defenders’, so

captured by micro-economies of social capital that we care more about

appearances and our own stories than the things we say we’re committed

to. We are ensnared by the logic of the milieu: moved to action by the

reproduction of our selves as radical subjects, as individuals who know

who they are by virtue of a particular kind of belonging. Despite our

attempts, our desire to be something never amounts anything more than

being this world’s loyal opposition, always ready to play its game by

believing that it’s possible to belong or to honestly communicate who

you are to others within the logic of civilization. Whether by the

causes you are committed to, the clothes you wear, the news stories you

share, the words you use (or don’t), or who you hang out with, insofar

as we are motivated by advertising ourselves to strangers, we are being

managed, controlled, disciplined.

“And we forget everything but the minutiae of struggle, this struggle

which has become a way of life, and an end in itself. This struggle,

which we kid ourselves is about the world, is now no more than the means

of legitimising a microcosm, a milieu, a particular way of life that is

wholly reliant on its own defeat and the continuation of the world as it

is as the condition for its perpetuation.”

- frere dupont, Why Is It That Others Feel No Interest For Us?

The terrain is also populated by many organizations, each weighed down

by their own tendencies to expand, accumulate, and absorb. Every

organization—whether grassroots or multinational—falls into the same

trap. What might start out as a genuine attempt to formalize a group

dedicated to tackling a problem or issue quickly becomes its own monster

(Leviathan, anyone?), concerned primarily with it’s own growth and

permanence. As a group’s membership swells, as it enjoys a small parcel

of influence or success, as jobs are created or contracts signed, it

becomes increasingly concerned with securing more contracts, gaining

more influence, recruiting more people. Until you have Greenpeace. Or

the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Or Epitaph Records.

The most energetic and rowdy eco-defenders are put in the spotlight,

offered jobs, invited to write articles, and flown around to give

trainings—slowly sapping their energy as their commitment to a

particular set of ideas comes into conflict with the organization that

is keeping them fed and housed. People who once knew better end up

working for the same organizations that sold out other campaigns a

generation earlier. If campaigns are to maintain any autonomy, lines

must be drawn (and redrawn and redrawn) between those committed to total

freedom and those whose interests lie in Politics, their identities,

egos, morality, or the organizations they work for.

As was said earlier, we live and struggle in the shadow of the Black

Panthers, of Project M.O.V.E., of the American Indian Movement, of the

ALF and ELF. This is a history of inspiring moments, but also of defeat

at the hands of an unscrupulous enemy. What does this mean for current

eco-defense campaigns? For those who want to do-the-damn-thing (you

know, win), they must free themselves of any illusion that the state can

know their face or name and actually let them pose a threat to something

with as much capital behind it as the KXL Pipeline, for example.

What would it take to successfully defend an area of land? Do we have

the capacity to accomplish this? Are we willing to accept the risks or

consequences for our actions? Will it be worth it? We must keep in mind

the possibility that campaigns in response to the biggest, most

egregious assaults on the natural world will not be winnable unless

eco-defenders are willing to go seriously underground. We might be

tactically out-gunned. And if those campaigns aren’t winnable, what is

to be done?

There are a number of different ways to think about struggle. For many

anarchists, any struggle worth participating in happens on the level of

everyday life. They admit that we are not, and can never be agents in

something as inhumanly large as History, Politics, or Progress. To aim

our interventions at the level of meta-narrative is to admit defeat

before we start, but continue out of sheer stubbornness or sacrifice.

The activities of Nations, multinational corporations, even your own

city council (to say nothing of Capitalism or Civilization) are probably

out of our control. It is unlikely that a small minority of anarchists,

eco-defenders, or activists will ever manifest a force powerful enough

to save the environment or destroy the existent. Our activity matters,

but not really in the grand scheme of things, at least probably not in

the way we wish it did. Yet many continue to speak, write, and act as if

this weren’t the case.

A turn away from politics and from the constant defeat of activism and

revolutionary struggle would mean shifting the scale with which we

concern ourselves. We can disconnect the activity of our lives from

fighting an all-or-nothing war against some perceived totality. We can

instead find opportunities to be agents in our own lives and,

occasionally, in the towns, neighborhoods, or land that we call home. We

can understand that our situation is close to total but see our

surroundings as made up of fragments of power—a multiplicity of

connected but discreet apparatuses of control that can, in turn, be

interrupted and in some cases destroyed. While there is no clear escape

from civilization in sight, there are certainly lives and struggles that

are more wild, less domesticated than others. And there are certainly

enemies and weaknesses in the modes of control that order our lives.

This means a shift not necessarily in what we do, but rather, why we do

what we do. It has less to do with actual actions/ practice and more to

do with how we’re conceiving of our activity, struggles, collaborations.

We can do these things to play, to learn more about our surroundings and

how they’re controlled, to strengthen bonds, to form new ones. We can

find each other and build relationships in the context of a shared

project or deep affinity. We can engage in a relentless series of

experiments to find the limits of what we’re capable of and, each time,

push beyond them. We can explore the mechanisms of power that envelope

us, find the weak points, and celebrate in the pockets, cracks,

micro-ruptures that we’re able to momentarily create.

“As for civilisation, so for anarchy and anarchists — severely

challenged, sometimes vanquished; possibilities for liberty and wildness

opening up, possibilities for liberty and wildness closing. The

unevenness of the present will be made more so. There is no global

future.” - Desert

Moments of intense struggle and revolt seem to appear rarely and when

they do happen, it seems clear that they are the result of years and

years of groundwork, of careful relationship building between different

groups (anarchists, eco-defenders, farmers, those who live in

neighborhoods poisoned by fracking, etc). Our milieus are transient. We

are rarely capable of sustainable relationships or long-term

commitments. Our infrastructure is difficult to maintain and few are

willing to do the unglamorous behind-the-scenes activity that allows the

most intense struggles to flourish. We might find ourselves faced with

different questions were we to stop chasing fire for the moment and

imagine ourselves engaged in something that will last generations.

What would it mean to develop relationships that both last decades and

are increasingly incompatible with the current order? How can we

weaponize these relationships, remaining invisible enough to power to

survive, but visible enough to others to be seductive? What if the goals

were to connect with one another through our projects, to attack and get

away with it, to engage in activity that is worth doing for its own

sake— regardless of the consequences? What if we elaborated modes of

struggle that don’t rely on the hope of certain victory or the despair

of “well, we’ve got to try anyway, right?” What if we pushed ourselves

to become as wild, chaotic, and unpredictable as possible—not with the

goal of winning any particular campaigns necessarily, but to see how

far, how strong, how sustainable, and how broadly we can extend the

fight, while taking great care to disappear as the omnipresent

repressive apparatus closes in on us and reappear when they least expect

it. No faces, no names, no photo-ops, except perhaps of fire, defended

territory, and broken machinery.

Are sure arrests and the consequent no-fly lists, felonies, and FBI

files worth it if victory seems unlikely? Are there more liberatory and

empowering ways to struggle against the machinery of civilization?

Perhaps making some new enemies would be useful—maybe new generations of

eco-defenders will tell Sierra Club and 350.org to go fuck themselves.

Maybe we’ll see new relationships emerge between anarchists and

eco-defenders who aren’t accountable to NGO stakeholders. And maybe

we’ll be able to be more honest with ourselves and each other about who

we are and what we are doing. Perhaps we’ll figure out how to do it more

patiently, carefully, and without compromise. To the future

conversations, the forging of new alliances, the fierce new conflicts,

and the relentless expansion of those parts of us that are wild.

Review: Green Syndicalism: An Alternative Red/Green Vision

by Oxalis

These days, everyone from corporations to the government are “going

green.” There has been an almost endless barrage of “greenwashing”

campaigns aimed at painting everything with a shiny new “green” veneer

from chic eco-friendly cafes to “environmentally friendly” dog food.

Moreover, as the ecological crisis becomes ever harder to ignore, even

political groupings are getting in on the act, with socialists and

mainstream liberals suddenly discovering this fact and trying to dress

up progress as “green.”

In light of this, its not surprising that some anarchists would adopt a

similar approach, especially with many anarchists still clinging to the

vision of mass society and mass industrialism. A few years back, the

Northeastern Federation of Anarchist- Communists (NEFAC, since renamed

to Common Struggle) published a snazzy green-colored edition on “The

Environment, Industry, Crisis, and Alternatives” while the Industrial

Workers of the World (IWW) launched an “Environmental Unionism Caucus”

and this year organized a campaign called “Towards an Ecological General

Strike: Environmental Sustainability Through Economic Democracy.” In

many ways, they are efforts designed to “green” the industrial-focused

vision of anarchism expressed most often through anarcho-syndicalism,

with some re-branding it as “green syndicalism.”

For those of us coming from an anti-civilization perspective, this is

perhaps worthy of some attention as it is helpful to understand the ways

others approach the crisis of civilization. I hadn’t encountered these

theories until a few years ago, although I must admit to some small

glimmer of hope when a Wobbly organizer in my hometown told me that

there are currents within the IWW that envision the destruction of the

industrial system, not just the wage system. As a means of exploring

this idea, I sought out Jeff Shantz’s Green Syndicalism: An Alternative

Red/Green Vision (Syracuse University Press, 2012). While it was rather

dull and hard to read at various points due to its rather cumbersome

language, it did offer a good introduction to the theory.

Green syndicalism advocates for increased connections between anarchists

and other radicals who come out of what could broadly be called “the

radical environmental movement” and “the labor movement” (46) arguing

that both are incomplete without recognizing the other. Shantz argues in

Green Syndicalism that the two perspectives have considerable overlap, a

point that he makes by looking at Judi Bari’s role in building

connections between Earth First! and the Industrial Workers of the World

in the 1990s, as well as examining the historical reliance of both

movements on direct action tactics including sabotage. Moreover, Shantz

argues that the workplace provides a critical site of struggle (165) and

that workers are uniquely positioned to put a literal “stop” to the

destruction wrought by industrial society. Most interesting to our

perspective, Shantz comes out strongly against the productivism of

Marxism (xlvi) and argues that syndicalism is not simply a vision of a

worker-centered world (xlviii), but is a counter-cultural movement that

moves beyond pure economic concerns (108). He repeatedly asserts that

green syndicalism is a multi-faceted approach that recognizes that “the

mass-production techniques of industrialism cannot be reconciled with

ecological sustenance, regardless of whether bosses or sturdy

proletarians control them” (164).

When it comes to envisioning what a green syndicalist future would look

like, Shantz—like many anarchists—says that there isn’t a specific plan,

but rather it would grow out of the struggle (172). Still, in reading

the book, there are some indications of how this future would look.

Whereas previous visions of syndicalism may have seen industrialism as

containing some liberatory potential, green syndicalists do not believe

this (168). Instead, Shantz articulates a vision of producers against

industrialism (169) and argues that the goal (to some degree) is the

dismantling of factories. The theory includes “both a literal

destruction of factories and their conversion toward ‘soft’ forms of

small, local production” (54). According to Shantz, this would be

decided by the workers themselves who would make decisions about the

future of their workplaces (129). Beyond this, he speaks of the

potential for voluntary federations (171) and de-centralized

bio-regional communities (170-171) as potential ways of organizing

society. While talk of the destruction of factories is appealing, the

more one reads, the less certain this seems. There is a lot of talk of

keeping production going, for example: “...certain industrial workshops

and processes may be necessary (how would bikes or windmills be

produced, for example)” (169). In other cases, he asserts that

capitalist production would be replaced with “socially necessary

production through means that are ecologically sensible” (167).

Like many theories, when it comes to practical applications, green

syndicalism gets a little hazy. For the most part, Shantz argues in

favor of traditional syndicalist tactics and those that have been

developed in recent years such as “rank-and-file workers’ committees,

flying squads, and precarious workers’ networks” (161). He argues that

workers’ control is essential to stopping ecological destruction (113).

In getting to that point, tactics include “such direct, nonbureaucratic

forms of action as shop-floor sabotage, boycotts, green bans, and the

formation of extra-union solidarity outside the workplace” and the

ultimate weapon, the strike (130-131). Of course to do this,

considerable time must be spent organizing workers. Green syndicalism

rejects the concept of “boring from within” mainstream unions (131) and

instead advocates developing other structures. He asserts that

anarchists within the labor movement have been especially visible in

building rank-and-file power in recent years (133), through processes

including “building rank-and-file workers’ committees, flying squads,

and precarious workers’ networks” (161). For Shantz, this power is what

is ultimately important, not whether or not the structures are

specifically anarchist (160). As workers “reach the consciousness of

their own power and exercise this power in their daily lives” they are

“in a way consciously adopting the ideas of anarchism” (160). Arguing

the semantics of what is and isn’t anarchism is not all that exciting,

but a question that remains is how will workers arrive at the conclusion

that the factory system (or at the minimum suggested by green

syndicalists, certain components of it) need to be dismantled. Obviously

toxic forms of production might be easy targets (i.e. a company

polluting the river running through the center of a town), but how would

workers arrive at a more comprehensive critique of industrialism? In a

global economic system where the most destructive forms of production

are outsourced and obscured (for example, when using an iPhone, the

average user likely has no idea how and where it was made), many modern

consumer items seem to have relatively few environmental costs.

Similarly, the idea that “production” could be organized by workers in a

particular location is out-of-date, given both the declining number of

workers in such positions as well as the reliance on raw materials and

technologies from elsewhere.

While informed by radical ecological critiques, Green Syndicalism does

not spend a lot of time engaging with anti-civilization and primitivist

critiques. At one point, Shantz writes about

“...anti-technology/anti-civilization discourses arguing quite

persuasively that humans must abandon not only industry and technology,

but civilization itself,” but then moves to a discussion of the

abolition of work and/or its reconstitution along democratic lines

(128). Such a position is seemingly at odds with the statement, and if

the arguments are so convincing, why limit the discussion? Elsewhere, he

describes anti-civilization perspectives as being “fundamentalist,”

including those of “Earth First!, neoprimitivism, and Green Anarchy”

(21). He argues that those advocating such views neglect the importance

of class and “collapse capital and labor together” and fail to see how

working-class power could contribute to a radical ecological movement

(22). In keeping with this line of thinking, he argues that there cannot

be “an immediate break with industrialism” (168). Interestingly, while

Shantz says that “attentiveness to ecology means that entire realms of

work, leisure (work’s accomplice), sustenance, need... must be brought

into question,” his discussion does not raise civilization as an item of

particular concern (184). Moreover, in accepting the possibility of some

forms of industrial production, green syndicalism ignores the deeper

questions of what industrialism does to us and our worldview. The

interconnectedness of various forms of technology and methods of

organizing production are not explored, therefore it is hard to imagine

how one could have wind turbines without the entirety of the industrial

system. These forms and processes are inherently complex and

interrelated and we can’t generally have one technology without

accepting the entire system. Moreover, from an anti-civilization

perspective, it is important to understand that industrialism, factory

production, small-scale production, etc. are part of an interrelated

whole that is civilization and that its component parts cannot be

isolated. In other words, we can’t have “production” of bicycles and

windmills without the domestication, separation, division of labor,

etc., that removes us from the land.

Overall, Green Syndicalism doesn’t offer much to those of us coming from

an anti-civilization perspective. While it might be refreshing to see

anarcho-syndicalists coming out against some forms of industrial

production, the idea of “green syndicalism” falls short of fully

indicting the present order. Its examination of industrialism is

relatively limited and it leaves the larger question of civilization

unexplored. In the end, the book was indeed trying to paint a “green”

picture of a somewhat downsized future, while largely lacking in its

exploration of the consequences of industrialism and civilization. At

the same time, its tactical and strategic suggestions—largely more

workplace organizing—were not convincing. We obviously cannot ignore the

way in which workers are alienated in the current era, but at the same

time, we need to go deeper in our critiques if we want to get to the

root of that alienation and really reject industrialism. If anything,

Green Syndicalism is a reminder that we need to argue more forcefully

for our perspective and that in the absence of an anti-civilization

critique, efforts will continue to recast some version of the current

mass society as ecologically sustainable, whether that be green

capitalism or green syndicalism.

Jeff Shantz, Green Syndicalism: An Alternative Red/Green Vision,

(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2012).

Pulling on the Threads of Representation

by Hedwig

A communique on the release of pheasants from a Game Bird farm in

Gervais, Oregon by the Animal Liberation Front ends with “For anarchy

and animal liberation.” The insurrectionist group Individualists Tending

Toward the Wild (ITS) state that “what moves us is reason and instinct,

the defense of Wild Nature (including human) and consequently Freedom

and Autonomy.” Part of the description for a talk at the 2013 Boston

Anarchist Bookfair says “Natural anarchists see plants and nonhuman

animals as allies in a shared struggle for peace and freedom for

everybody.”

Once, this was an inspiration, during a time I tightly held the label

veganarchist; honestly, deeply believing in the revolutionary potential

of the animal and earth liberation movements.

Time passed and with time came an uncertainty I could not ignore, a

question that lurked inside. And now as I consider participating in an

action for anarchy and animal liberation, I am forced to pause.

Eventually, I turn away.

In whatever language is used, no matter how their ‘solidarity’ is

framed, I cannot get past the question.

“The problem of the head is the problem of representation, the problem

of the existence of a body that represents society in so much as a body,

of a subject that represents society in so much as subject.”[37]

The anarchist critique of democracy, political leadership, identity

politics—all are the critique of representation. Representation

flattens. Individual interests are universalized into dangerous ‘truth

claims’ that cannot contend with the volatility of the world. The

critique is the rejection of all acts that characterize individuals as a

certain kind of being or that allow one to speak on behalf of another.

“Practices of telling people who they are and what they want erect a

barrier between them and who (or what) they can create themselves to

be.”[38]

Representation is a form of alienated power. Individuals are separated

from their ability to act and forced to work through an intermediary.

These individuals are left behind as their representative barters with

other influences, making compromises for some greater good. Responding

to the will of majorities and other alienated powers, desperately

attempting to keep their sacred standing, the representative exploits

the bodies and spirits of those they claim to stand for.

Against all representation and mediation, this is what it means to be

anti-political.

Through the critique comes a new anarchist vision. My past was bound to

the current, viewpoints expressed as against that which exists:

anti-capitalism, anti-sexism, anti-speciesism... Our negativity must be

more: “that which breaks from such orientations in the most absolute

sense: the negating prefixes a-, an-, anti- ... anti-politics as a

provisional orientation, branching out into countless refusals.”[39] It

must think not only of the formulations but also the forms, a negation

of politics, morality, historical progress, and all of the other

backgrounds that act as our starting points. “We do not wish to run

society, or organize a different society, we want a completely different

frame of reference,”[40] a negativity that can only lead us to places

unknown.

I approach nihilism. My anarchist thought becomes more than a radical or

militant politics, it cannot be defined simply as a position against

hierarchy or against domination. It grows into a rejection of all

universal claims – moral and political.

The ground quivers. Old ideas are a comfort in the uncertainty—they are

difficult to move past. Still, I am willing to ask the question nihilism

brings, the question that lurks, that cannot be ignored.

What now of animal and earth liberation? What of these movements remain

for me?

Obstacle 1: Against all hierarchies, earth and animal liberationists are

against the human domination of animals and earth. In order to confront

these oppressions directly, they become representatives of animals and

earth.

Animal liberationists educate people about the experience of non-human

animals, describing the conditions on factory farms, slaughterhouses,

research laboratories, etc. (sometimes never having had first-hand

experience with these institutions themselves). Earth liberationists

become the ‘helpers’ of the wild and introduce words such as “defend,”

“save,” and “protect” to the dialogue. Actions such as veganism,

protest, or sabotage communicate a message about the desires of animals

and earth; assumptions are made about how other living organisms want to

be treated.[41]

A Thanksgiving pamphlet from the Black Paw Collective (a “crew of punks

and anarchists”) tells us to fight alongside the turkeys who are

protesting their death until their last breath.[42] We are told that

connecting to the land can put one in touch with the ‘suffering of the

earth,’ culminating in statements of “the personhood of plants… beings

who can emote and feel pain or respond to other stimuli.”[43] All these

claims to knowledge of animal and earth subjectivity…

These representatives then remind us that animals and earth are not the

only ones harmed by animal and earth exploitation industries, hoping to

bring more people over to the side of animals and wild nature. They may

even expand their claims, that their actions begin to represent all of

the ‘dispossessed’ (the actors sometimes simultaneously believing they

epitomize the ideas of the human majority yet must guide this

unconscious mass—as one communique states: “This was just a reflection

of what millions of people already know and feel”).

It is no trivial point that non-human living species cannot communicate

verbally,[44] they cannot speak their interests to any human, including

those who represent them. The people involved in animal and earth

liberation movements have no choice but to speak on their behalf. But

representation is a political act, always. What is politics if not the

belief that one can influence others in the name of some collective

interest?

“On this point, it is important that we define our anti-politics as

refusing all political logic: representation, mediation, dialogue with

power. And so, once again, we must abandon queer academics and their

easy answers.”[45]

Obstacle 2: Morals and ideals are asserted, often implicitly, hidden

beneath statements of plurality.

When individual interests are defined by another, they are often

shrouded in moral claims. Sometimes these moral codes are overt, and

most anarchists are willing to critique (and mock) these blatant

assertions (such as “veganism is an obligation and not an option”).[46]

But the anarchist critique of morality is more than just the critique of

strict moral codes, it is a critique against universal statements and

against the concept of the Good.

When animal liberationists fight for a world in which animals are no

longer oppressed by humans, they are making statements about what is

good, often involving a total rejection of any way of living that

involves animal exploitation, as defined by them. Earth liberationists,

particularly those with anti-civilization and primitivist leanings,

often demand a certain style of living which may not be possible or

desirable for others. Actions and communiques for animals and earth are

laden with claims to good and bad behaviour.

There is no one ‘true’ way of living with the earth (and animals).

Expanding the argument to say there are many or a variety of true ways

of living with the earth does not make the argument any less moralistic.

To flee from a definition of the Good only to be recaptured by arguments

of many Goods misses the point. It is a nihilism that denies the

validity of the singular Good at the heart of universalism, as well as

the distinct senses of the Good at the heart of pluralism.[47]

In order to upset the foundation of anthropocentrism, in Animal Dreams

John Zerzan reminds us of the ‘gifts of animals,’ describing the

complexities of animal lives.[48] He even references scientific

experiments that demonstrate ways in which animal capacities outstrip

humans. Establishing that all animals (including humans) have

exceptional abilities may help decenteralize humanity but it does

nothing to negate morality—it still relies on the concept of the natural

as the Good. The same argument can be applied to primitivism in which

the Good (living in harmony with nature) is distributed into multiple

goods as they acknowledge the variety in indigenous ways of life.

To be against morality is a negative act. There is (are) no Good(s). We

should be shaking the ground of others’ moral claims, not creating new

ones.

The step towards the anti-political has created obstacles that have kept

me from the animal and earth liberation movements. I cannot find a way

around the barriers, perhaps there are some things that cannot be

reconciled.

I have not abandoned green anarchy. I want to contribute to a project

building connections between the beginning of civilization, the

development of gender, the production of science, the destruction of the

earth, and the domination of animals. I am not ambivalent to the acts

performed by animal and earth exploitation industries – they are vivid

examples of why I want to see the current social order dismantled. The

links are not trivial. Capital takes all of life, human and non-human,

commodifies it, and alienates it, forcing the reproduction of

hierarchical social relations. The domestication of all life destroys

possibilities, forcing us to submit our bodies and minds to fixed modes

of being. When we talk about changing the ways in which we relate to the

world, our relationship with animals and earth should be a part of that

discussion.

I don’t want to ignore the issues. I want a completely different frame

of reference.

I am no longer interested in discussing the “animal problem” or the

“ecological problem.” I do not want to be a representative for animals

and earth. I do not want to speak in political or moral terms. I want to

escape politics, not reproduce them. I am afraid there is no

reconciliation. I’ve pulled on the thread of representation, and the

whole sweater has unraveled.

There are a hundred reasons to attack industries that harm animals and

the earth but we should be honest about where our motivations lie. I

have no critique for the individual who sabotages a factory farm that is

contaminating their water source or a worker who destroys the machinery

at the slaughterhouse they work at. But as for me, I will not lie so

that I can continue to challenge these industries—I will not pretend my

actions are the realization of my desires when the real motivation

remains my intention to save animals or the wild. I want to be honest

about my experience. There is no animal or earth liberation movement

left for me.

I am not sure what this different frame of reference is. I am not sure

what a nihilist practice will look like, at this moment I only have an

idea of what it is not. An anarchist friend asks me to join the Animal

Defense League to stop trophy hunting in B.C., and I am forced to pause.

Eventually, I turn away.

[1] The European Graduate School. “Ernst Haeckel Biography”. EGS Library

2012

[2] Kennedy, Gordon and Kody Ryan. “Hippy Roots & the Perennial

Subculture”. Hippyland May 13, 2003

[3] Ourednik, Patrik. Europeana. Dalkey Archive Press, 2005. Print.

[4] Biehl, Janet and Peter Staudenmaier. Ecofascism: Lessons From the

German Experience. San Francisco: AK Press, 1995. Print.

[5] NYC Antifa. “Why We Don’t Like Death In June”. NYC Antifa September

16, 2013

[6] Anon. “Fascists Rally at Stella Natura Collective” Who Makes The

Nazis August 19, 2013

[7] Circle Ansuz Collective. “Stephen McNallen Part 4: Stella Natura and

What Can be Done” Circle Ansuz September 9, 2013

[8] Flies On the Wall. “Report From Sentencing…”. Portland Indymedia.

June 1, 2007

[9] Antidoto and The Flaming Sword. “Esoteric Hitlerist: An Interview

With Miguel Serrano”. Black Sun Invictus 2008

[10] Block, Nathan. “Loyalty Is Mightier Than Fire”.

loyaltyismightierthanfire.tumblr.com 2014

[11] Whitehead, John W. “Charles Manson’s Race War: The Beatles and

Helter Skelter”. The Huffington Post August 3, 2009

[12] Block, Nathan and Joyanna Zacher. “First Epistle: Phoenix From the

Flames”. Portland Indymedia July 11, 2007

[13] Sunic, Tom. “Julius Evola On Race” The Occidental Observer May 1,

2010

[14] Evola, Julius. “Synthesis of a Doctrine of Race.” Hoepli 1941

[15] Evola, Julius. The Problem of the Supremacy of the White Race.

Rome: Lo Stato. 1936

[16] Stucco, Guido. Translator’s Introduction. The Yoga of Power By

Julius Evola. Rochester: Inner Traditions, 1993. Print.

[17] Kasama. “The Solstice: On the Rise of the Right-Wing Mass

Movements”. Kasama Project February 24, 2014

[18] Smiley, Lauren. “Post-Immigration March Scuffle Targets National

Anarchists” SF Weekly May 1, 2010

[19] Bookchin, Murray. Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology:A Challenge

for the Ecology Movement Burlington: Green Perspectives, 1987. Print.

[20] Apply The Brakes. “David Foreman”. Apply The Brakes 2014

[21] Foreman, David. “More Immigration= More Americans= Less

Wilderness”. Earth Island Journal October, 2013

[22] Devall, Bill and David Foreman. Interview With David Foreman.

Simply Living. Sydney: Simply Living, 1986. Print.

[23] Omni Magazine and Garret Hardin. “Interview, Garrett Hardin.” Omni

Magazine. June 1992

[24] Schneider, Nathan. Thank You, Anarchy: Notes From the Occupy

Apocalypse. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Print.

[25] Tunney, Justine as Occupy Wall Street. “Ending Poverty Isn’t a

Political Problem” Twitter. February 6, 2014

[26] Manuel, Rob. “Occupy Wall Street Wakes From Slumber, Thinks Some

Corporations Might Be Okay Actually If You Really Think About It, Man”.

Us Vs. Th3m.

[27] Russel, Kyle. “Meet the Google Engineer And Occupy Wall Street

Organizer Who Wants Silicon Valley To Run The Country”. Business

Insider. April 7, 2014

[28] Frkbmb. “Justine Tunney’s Bizarre Analysis of Silicon Valley and

Capitalism Itself” Storify. March, 2014

[29] Gobry, Pascal-Emmanuel. “At Google, Talking To Coworkers Can Get

You Fired”. Business Insider. April 30, 2011

[30] Google. “Our Workforce Demographics”. Google. 2014

[31] Pein, Corey. “Mouthbreathing Machiavellis Dream of a Silicon

Reich”. The Baffler May 19, 2014

[32] Sigl, Matt. “Dark Enlightenment: The Creepy Internet Movement You’d

Better Take Seriously”. Vocativ December 2, 2013

[33] Yarvin, Curtis. “Against Political Freedom”. Unqualified

Reservations. August 16, 2007

[34] Giridharadas, Anand. “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” New

York Times October 28, 2013

[35] Southern Poverty Law Center. “Bill White”. Southern Poverty Law

Center Intelligence Files. 2014

[36] Traynor, Ian. “Front National wins European parliament elections in

France”. The Guardian. May 25, 2014.

[37] Tiqqun #2 (2001). The Problem of the Head

[38] May (1995). The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism.

[39] Alejandro de Acosta (2013). Its Core is the Negation. AJODA #74. It

should be said that many of the ideas presented here owe a great amount

to this work.

[40] Green Anarchy Collective. What is Green Anarchy? Back to Basics

Vol. 4.

[41] Of course, the job of the representatives of animal and earth is

much less complicated than most, as there are no individuals able to

contradict their claims.

[42] You can find the pamphlet at:

http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/no-thanksgiving-leafletting-toward-total-liberation/13289

[43] Bison Wilder (2012). Wheat is Still Murder; Agriculture is Still

Rape: Veganism, Post-Veganism, and Anarchy. You can find this at:

http://earthspiritandanarchy. blogspot.ca/

[44] I would like to point out non-human animals can, of course,

communicate with humans non-verbally. When I cut my cat’s nails she

makes it very clear to me that she does not want to be there. Despite

this ability, humans are left to speak verbally for animals, making

various claims regarding their desires and interests.

[45] Baeden #1 (2012). The Anti-Social Turn.

[46] John Talent (2013). Leftistis and Animal Rights: Why Veganism is an

Obligation and not an Option. http://veganarchismaintnojoke.tumblr.com/

post/50418819697/leftists-and-animal-rights-why-veganism-is-an

[47] Ibid. 3.

[48] John Zerzan (2014). Animal Dreams. Black Seed Issue #1