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Title: Black Seed: Issue 5 Author: Various Authors Date: 2017, summer Language: en Topics: green anarchy, Black Seed, anti-civ, eco-extremism, ITS Source: Retrieved via library source on July 2, 2020 Notes: Editors: Ramon Elani, Aragorn!, dot matrix http://blackseed.anarchyplanet.org (website down as of this upload) Thanks! the old Black Seed collective, HP Wombat, Brendon Holt, Dougie Frankenfurt
Perhaps you thought we were gone? Two years feels like an eternity in
these fast-too-fast times when epic conflicts have a full arc over a
weekend, 140 characters creates volumes of commentary and opinion, a day
seems like forever when you are refreshing a screen over and over. This
project is the opposite of this spirit. Herein we hope to share themes
that are fuller in scope, that merit reflection and contemplation. We
intend to plant seeds and to care for them as they flower, mature, and
decay. The half lives of our pleasures, concerns, and conflicts should
be measured in decades and not in the blink of someones eyes or even the
length of time the average radical stays active.
Welcome to issue five of Black Seed. If you have not seen or heard of us
before let us introduce ourselves. We are a small collective of green
anarchists who publish a paper-only (or at least paper first)
publication intended to broaden and intensify our perspectives. We
differ from green anarchist positions that precde us because we have a
deep concern about positive political programs (however they are dressed
up), the ability of our people to achieve them, and the efficacy of a
revolutionary mindset in the first place. Pointedly, we feel as though
the academic arts (anthropology first among them) are too mired in the
gauntlet of what it takes to become a practitioner to take seriously.
This is not to say that we arenât willing to learn about people, the
past, or whatever but that the citation of sources, and the othering of
people or their superior lifeways is not how we believe a green
anarchist perspective begins. But it does begin, mostly by conversations
with each other, with people who may also be anarchists but donât use
the term. Our experience is that those who are most likely to share our
attitude towards an earth first, anti-authoritarian, and
anti-ideological perspective are people who are also indigenous.
Indigeneity is a confusing smear of bodies, practices, and conversations
that we know will continue to inform Black Seed.
This issue dwells on these building blocks. New editor Ramon and I write
new manifestos contemplating what it means to be a green anarchist in
this post-manifesto age, what it means to have an approach that
prioritizes pacing and contemplation rather than one of being in such a
hurry all the time. Of having big plans that always fall through
unnoticed.
This issue also is concerned with the immeseration of daily life. How
did we get here? How are we rising above the mediocrity of our times?
Are we? Black Seed is quite concerned about the small things that
reflect the cyclical way of the world.
What does it mean that the world is coming to an end, forever? Perhaps
most importantly what is the role of violence in our movement (cough)
today and in the ushering of a new one? Anarchists have always been the
party of imagination but also of morality. Violence cuts through both of
these gordian knots but to what end? These are the questions that Black
Seed issue five attempts to answer.
The original idea of Black Seed was to be a spiritual successor to the
magazine Green Anarchy (out of Eugene, OR, 2001â2008), taking from it an
attitude, an anti-civilization type of total critique, and the legacy of
a green anarchist perspective. While I would still maintain that our
project lay in the same historical vein as Green Anarchy, the only
editor of GA living in a city has made it very clear he does not
appreciate the direction Black Seed has taken. (The others, living
outside the city, have been privately encouraging of this project) This
provides some space. Up until now we have attempted (in our way) to be
respectful about how we treated the legacy we saw ourselves within. But
if we are publicly declared outside of that tradition then letâs make a
clean break. Let us be forever done with the rhetoric and empty promises
of the so called âanti-civilization journal of theory and action.â Let
us leave grandfather Zerzan to his mealy- mouthed mutterings about the
state of the NY Times every Tuesday night, and leave his protege to the
dusty histories of white-man anthropology and boring sectarian whittling
projects. Let us consider a new green anarchist perspective in its
grandeur rather than its failures.
If we restart a story about what Green Anarchism was we could begin with
the writing of Elisee Reclus and his grand Universal Geography and tell
a balanced story that passes through the broader ecology movement, the
history of a Great Anarchism that died in Catalan, the thoughts of
Murray Bookchin, and ends with Grandfather Zerzan and the catastrophe of
post-pre-collapse civilization. This is a fine story and obviously we
know it exists but our work is somewhere else.
For us green anarchism predates the term and is a way to talk about our
politics (anarchist: no state, no exchange relationships, and a vigorous
critique of daily life) and our spiritual life (green: earth-based,
concerned with cycles not progress, not moral). For us green anarchism
does not begin with a set of bearded European men but in the conditions
of Turtle Island (North America). The turtle (Hah-nu-nah) is the earth,
and is our life. A green perspective worth its name begins with the
story of how humans came to this place. A place that was doing just fine
without us. It begins with the stories that composed a social reality
that was disrupted by visitors who have long outstayed their welcome.
Black Seed hopes to be a place where those stories are remembered and
shared.
A green anarchism set thusly in clay is about the direct experience of
hearing a story, of being part of the continuing story. It prefers the
face-to-face and the immediate. It does not process its relationship to
small things (like the whole of nature) through the specialized jargon
sets of the Western metaphysical project. Not biology or botany. Not
anthropology or sociology. Not a history or historiza- tion of real
living people. It can include the stories of those warriors engaged in
the infinite war against the Great Black Snake of capitalism and the
state, of colonization and genocide. It can also include the stories of
our lives here on this Earth now. Those of us who live in the shadows of
the Grey and the Black (cities, asphalt, and concrete), who root about
in the weeds and offal of the shit-city, who survive.
This new old Green Anarchism, this elder god of many origins, is about
survival in a world-not-of-our-creation, how to face its end, and how we
would rewrite its story if we were to start over. To be clear, these are
three approaches to a body of ideas we are calling Green Anarchism but
we are only using that term to be generous about our own origins (and
not because we think they are the best or most accurate terms to
describe what we are talking about). In point of fact this new old Green
Anarchism will be unrecognizable to others who have used and copyrighted
the term. It attempts a base in and orientation towards Turtle Island
(and not Ymir, Gaia, Yggdrasil, eight pillars, bhu, etc) and
acknowledges its metis or amalgamated characteristics. This is not an
exercise in a new geographical puritanism but in holding a position in a
world that seems to have accepted a kind of postmodern pastiche that
leaves out every individual experience.
The start of our story, sadly, is one of a ship of Spaniards landing
nearby and raising holy hell. Not only did they rape, slaughter, and
enslave everything/everyone they saw. which was strange and awful but
they then encamped and started drawing lines around our homes and
hunting grounds. These lines were very important to them and were in
fact the second arm of their strange religion of death. Death and
property (eventually known as Capitalism) were their beliefs, which are
impossible to reconcile with our lives: lives that are not abstract, are
not filled with proclamations of vengeful gods and geographies, are
lived in the here and now.
So we chose a different option. We saw these fragile little boats for
what they were and we sunk them. It was a tragedy to see the metal-clad
individuals sink to the bottom of the sea but we saved the rest. We
saved those whose lot in life was the pull of an oar and to serve these
who ordered boats around Turtle Island to rape and enslave. We saved the
people and let the metal shod, technologically advanced, and civilized
die. These enslaved travelers became part of who we were and not
transmitters of their strange and foreign virus. They became us.
As the years went by the phenomenon of these boats and others like them
became more and more common. As a result we had to increase the
communication we had with the peoples of other islands and of Turtle
Island more generally. This increased travel-as-a-form-of-life. This
meant that our relatively stable social circumstances became more
complex as we had to accommodate a type of self-defense that also
included a bit more of a, dare we say, worldly component.
To defend against the new threat, which we later identified as European,
we had to find a way to defend against their incursions. We did this by
network.
Of course networking wasnât new to us. The shifting relations most of us
had to the particular piece of Turtle Island we inhabited was a story of
ebbs and flows, of tribal affiliation and disaffiliation, of rhizomatic
relations. The difference was that rather than defense from people we
now had to defend against not-people, against ideology made material,
against little boats that came a long way to destroy us. Defending
against the abstract was new to us.
As the years went by the nature of Turtle Island began to change, in
some ways good and in some ways bad. Our borders, especially the Eastern
Coastline, became hardened by people who became fascinated by conflict
and the composition of not-people. Their neighbors began to take an
interest in healing rituals and how to talk people down from a war
footing. Others began to hear these stories and some sent their youth
east to learn what this new composition of war (aka Clausewitzian war,
Total War, inhuman war) was. This idea did not spread.
What spread was the idea that something like communication had to happen
between people. This required an examination into what nodal
relationships could look like. This required tribes and nations to
formalize beyond what was ever anticipated.
Spiritual life, aka life, was also changed by this new era. The
consequence of drowning these little boats and sinking metal-clad men
was a great sorrow and obligation to the spirits. Equivalent contrition
for each act of violence had to be borne by the people who committed it.
The spirits demanded this much and it was important that warriors not
learn to love violence as the metal-clad did. With every arrival and
repulsion was a month of ceremony and cleansing. The rites had to be
observed otherwise the difference between war and the performance of war
(ie bravery by other means) could get confused.
Economic life, aka exchange, was also transformed. With the sinking of
little boats came the reclamation of what items existed on those boats.
Through this mechanism the people of Turtle Island learned about metal
forging, the existence of horses (long since thought disappeared),
books, and more. Stripped of weapon- ization, these items became
curiosities and topics of long conversations into the night. The East
Coast people became central to new sets of conversations about what it
could look like to be people and what they had to offer The People. This
changed the motivation for increased networking and travel and
cross-pollination by complicating self-defense with new kinds of
relationships based on interest in new ideas.
Over time Turtle Island became less isolated. It was no longer possible
to destroy 500 nations by picking them off one by one. The power of the
little boats decreased, to the extent that at some point these boats
were allowed to dock and make their individuated cases for dialogue and
survival. The people of Turtle Island became members of the world rather
than subjects of it. The history of Europe shrank to the size of
appropriate limits and their attempts at colonization. The history of
Turtle Island became one of establishing clear boundaries while
maintaining a healthy curiosity that was, and is, culturally
appropriate.
The day after the revolution (ATR) we will sit and meet with our
neighbors and explain our plan. This plan is largely described in the
little book bolo bolo but letâs get down to brass tacks. First step, our
block. It contains about 30 households or about 75 people. If optimal
bolo size is around 500, that would be about seven city blocks. Our
superblock (bounded by major streets) is about 8x14 or about 15 bolos in
size. Berkeley as a city is about 120,000 so roughly 200â220 bolos in
size. Oakland, CA (our neighbor to the immediate south) is about 3.5
times our size and I imagine that over time the blurring of our
boloâbolo would disintegrate the historical line between the cities
(which was only a hundred and forty years old anyway).
In the book there is a great deal of emphasis on counter-cultural
continuity as the glue that holds together a bolo. In our hypothetical
ATR scenario, on the other hand, human geographical happenstance at the
end of property relations would be that glue. Perhaps over time and
generations there could be a rise of lesbolos, alcholobolos, and the
myriad of thought experiments from the bookâ but for this exercise the
difficulty that would rise from this transforming into over 200
different bolos is enough of a stretch. Plus it would only be a small
part of what the end of Spectacle would inflict everywhere at once.
A central part of the definition of a bolo (a group of about 500 ibu who
live and depend on each other) is the idea that it would necessarily be
materially independent. The end of exchange relations means an end to
trading paper, credit, and coin for food. This means we have an
immediate urgent problem to address, together. Obviously in parallel are
all the problems of converting seven blocksâ worth of former-consumers
into ibu (individuals) and kana (households). Clearly our anarchism
directs much of this conversation in that we would prefer to destroy
organization, leaders, and bureaucracy (and those who enjoy these
things) but getting down to it (planting in this case) would be rather
important.
Logistics first. If seven blocks of 30 households can be chopped up itâd
probably look like 30 times 1/16^(th) of an acre or 14 acres plus all
the area currently covered by automobile detritus (25%). One bolo in the
former city of Berkeley would probably have around 18â20 acres of land
to structure (for kodu: agriculture, sibi: craft, and pali: energy).
This means the first order of business (if you can pardon the term) is
deciding whose home gets taken down, how to tear out the concrete etc,
and how to build the remaining gano (homes) into structures that will
work for 500ish socially-broken but socially-needy ibu. A related topic
is that we will need at least 50â75 acres to feed everyone (which is a
first principle of boloâbolo) and as Berkeley is only about 18 square
miles we have to do some math.
Two hundred bolo equals the land need of at least 10,000 acres. Eighteen
square miles is 11,520 acres so there is a serious pinch there. This is
a utopian exercise from the word go but if we are going to be frank
about this green anarchist boloâbolo exercise we probably have to
commandeer the hills above Berkeley (which are largely empty and/or
filled with trails, university research labs, reservoirs, and the
bourgeoisie). This requires something like a tram or a low -power way to
get people up to farmland for a portion of their day/lives. More thought
about this is necessary but perhaps the problems will fade as the need
for 6+ million people will blow away from the Bay Area along with
capitalism.
The opposite problem is possible though. We likely have at least seven
generations of global warming and other nasty problems associated with
petroleum culture coming and the Bay has a naturally temperate climate,
is near a natural Bay, the Ocean, and some reasonably-sized natural
preserves that are desirable along several metrics. It could be that
rather than getting out of dodge, many people will want to come here
from the toxic agri-bowl of the Central Valley, the scorching hills and
valleys of Southern California, or what could very well be the racist
bolos of far Northern California and Oregon. Even an impossible utopia
isnât immune to idiots.
The project of tearing down and rebuilding the bolo into the shape that
makes sense for 500 would be an especially fun and interesting one. I
have often thought that the structural limitation brought about by
humans (in Turtle Island) mostly living in single family dwellings is
one of the under-appreciated sites of abuse, limitations, and toxicity.
Iâve never been a fan of the nuclear family model that necessitates the
single family dwelling and I love the idea of what transforming it could
look like. Dorms for (nearly) everyone from 13â30; yurts for honeymoon
periods; multi-family environments with chickens and dogs. The ideas are
limitless and could be fluid if we use materials more local than sticks,
pressboard, and nails.
Similarly there are questions that come up around what our sibi (work,
craft, industry) could look like. Obviously at the point of ATR we would
still find use for wood crafting, shearing and refining wool, and other
overlapping needs related to human-land-animal husbandry, but in the
category of sibi are also conversations like âwill we keep networked
computer technologies around?â or âdo the genetic labs have to go?â or
âwill the university have to burn entirely or should some of it be
saved?â These questions will be central, alongside how we do it (what
organization looks like when it is no longer top down), how we will
survive, and what will be the new principles (sila) of our new,
fantastic, ATR world.
Even in this small drift towards talking about a green anarchist future
world, you can see the biases and problems. I, in fact, come at a desire
for green anarchy from counterculture and anarchy. I do not have any of
the traditional baggage of family, job, or an identity wrapped up in
this world. I have everything to gain by destroying where we have come
from and accepting ATR as my new home. I have been rowing for the bulk
of my adult life when I havenât been hiding entirely from boats and men
wrapped in metal. When I dream of a future it doesnât include them.
This inflection on green anarchism also includes ideas that we are
allegedly against. In this ATR we can imagine the windmills and long
town hall meetings of Bookchin. We can imagine a local set of bolo
hosting a traveling hunter-gatherer bolo and losing some of our people
to the persuasion of their lifeway. I can even imagine living next door
to a bolo that primarily believes in their own identity as laborers who
are not as fascinated with the whole self-sufficiency life of our bolo.
I can imagine desiring contradictions to all this nice, destructive,
future ATR thinking.
There is no happy story about how we move from here to there. It is not
possible to get there from here. This means that we do not spend our
time practically planning on transitions from this life, from this
world, to another. Instead we spend our daily lives on survival, on
coping with the demons of Capital and State. We wait for paychecks, deal
with commutes, and then sit at work waiting for the apocalypse, or just
about anything else, to stave off boredom. We pick fights and flirts
because the intellectual energy for either is about all that we have. We
are not our best selves in the shadow of spectacular boredom, we are in
fact just like everyone else.
As self-described green anarchists, revolutionaries, or whatever, we do
not have unique resources to make our dreams a reality. Those who seem
to have these resources also seem incapable of dreaming beyond their own
pleasures and conservative impulses.
This is so true that it seems naive to believe that if we or our friends
had the power to change the world that any of us would make different
choices. I feel strongly that our most political of frenemies would make
exactly the same choices that I despise from enemies, as evidenced by
the name calling, bullying, and shunning they perform towards anyone who
disagrees with them. Their future would be a nightmare for anyone who
doesnât subscribe to leftist us-them simplification.
The Black Seed project, if we are brave enough to state it out loud, is
to find a way to hold these ideas forward. We are the monks of this era,
illuminating on sheets of vellum the hidden truths of this world. Power
seduces, not corrupts. There is no good or evil in this world but a lot
of mediocrity. The world we walk on is more important than the work we
do. Relationships are better than ideologies. We attack out of love and
not politics. Activism is the enemy of anarchy. Our enemies should be
ignored and not engaged with.
If we are lucky, a future generation of people will come who love the
idea of wild nature, complexity, and heresy and who have the power to
inflict these ideas upon the idiots and politicians of the world. They
will know what our illuminations portray and will not judge us for the
fact that we have settled for survival in this shitty world and did not
instead choose the quicker end of taking on everything, everywhere at
once.
Compost, not posthuman.
~Donna Haraway
Evoking the spirit of Fredy Perlman, let us say that there is wild joy
left to be had by those who continue to dance the circle dance. Green
anarchy, as a framework for thinking, seeing, writing, acting, living,
is and remains inspiring to many who desire a world of passion, freedom,
and wildness. In this regard, however, it is vitally important to
reframe and rethink in order for a particular set of ideas to feel
dynamic and alive.
In this essay we present a vision for what green anarchy means today.
First, we reject the dualism that defines anar- cho-primitivism. The
world is far more complex than reducing everything to civilization or
hunting and gathering. Second, we remain conscious and skeptical of the
Western, academic institution of anthropology and its inheritance of
colonialism, racism, and eurocentrism. Third, we acknowledge the
importance of coming to terms with eco-extremism and engaging with the
ideas in a meaningful way, regardless of whether we agree with every
aspect of the movement. Fourth, we revisit some of the sacred concepts
of green anarchy and question whether they remain meaningful in todayâs
world. Fifth, we attempt to reignite interest in our history by
re-engaging with some of the foundational documents of green anarchy.
Sixth, we insist that sophisticated critical analysis is not the same
thing as postmodernist obfuscation. The solution to a valueless,
abstract, theoretical discourse cannot be reductive, one-dimensional,
essentialism. Finally, we must understand that the world is different
than it was twenty years ago. Global warming and climate catastrophe are
no longer marginal ideas. As green anarchists we must decide what that
means to us. We are no longer crying in the wilderness.
Black Seed was founded with the notion of maintaining some sense of
continuity with Green Anarchy magazine as well as pushing forward and
beyond, honoring the past and recognizing our debt to those who came
before us, but also committed to vitality and growth. From the start
Black Seed was very explicit in this regard, especially in terms of its
grounding in the lived experience of those struggling to understand the
world as well as the indigenous voices, which have not been stamped out
and silenced despite centuries of attempts to do so. Black Seed reminded
us that indigenous people are still here and they are still fighting.
And even more, it forced us to confront the world not merely in the
realm of abstract theories but as a lived reality.
Thus we continue to chart a new direction for green anarchy. We believe
that the ideas deserve better than they have lately received. When there
is nothing new to say, conversation becomes stale and devolves into
narrow-minded bickering. Regretfully, this is exactly what has been
happening over the last decade or so. Far too often green anarchist
discussion devolves into dogmatic feuds and personal grudges. If people
are not inspired, if they are having boring conversations, the horizon
for life and action likewise appears bland and lackluster. If the
conversation is so narrow that it is only capable of promoting a select
few authorized avenues for action then people will be easily
discouraged. We know there are opportunities for meaningful engagement
out there. It is likewise very clear that certain ways of thinking,
discussing, and acting have reached a point where they can go no
further. Part of the problem has been the terms of the discourse.
This is where the distinction between green anarchy and
anarcho-primitivism is relevant. In the case of the latter, there is an
unfortunate tendency to reduce the world, in its vastness and
complexity, to a Manichean binary. There is only civilization and
not-civilization. This critique is so totalizing that it leaves very
little room for nuanced thinking or joyful action. Paleolithic-or-bust
is not a compelling battle cry. The one thing that a totalizing critique
is good for is dogmatism. If, as green anarchists, we dismiss
agriculture, technology, cities, or any kind of mediated experience or
symbolic culture, we simply wonât have much left to do. And we will have
to write off the experiences of the vast majority of human communities
that have existed for the last several thousand years.
In illustrating the new kind of vision that we are promoting here, let
us think of Donna Haraway, admittedly a surprising choice. In her
current work, Haraway urges us to make kin and compost. This is to say,
we have to derive our strength from the confluence of forces,
experiences, and substances that surround us and occur within us. By
doing so we can find our kinship with fungus, termites, jellyfish. We
can learn to live like moss and be cousins to the wolves once again. Use
everything! is the credo of the com- postist. We are not in the position
to look back over thousands of years of human communities and blithely
disregard everything that does not fit a prescriptive vision. If the
experiences of a particular community teach us something important about
how to negotiate a place for freedom and wildness in the world, we will
not ignore them because they are agriculturalists.
Civilization is such a broad term that carries so many different kinds
of meanings to different people. It can only ever be a massive catch-all
label that we use for convenience. We cannot treat it as a scientific,
objective fact. Civilization is imprecise, both linguistically and in
reality.
In this devastated world we are compelled to muddle through ruins and
fragments. There may not be a holy grail buried beneath the rubble but
we have much to work with if we look. Does the modern appropriation of
northern paganism by racists and nationalists mean that there is no
value to be found in the eddas and the sagas, for instance? That is a
lazy conclusion, just as it is lazy to denounce indigenous cultures
because they practiced some version of something historians have called
âslavery,â while the cultures that informed the worldview of those very
historians and anthropologists were responsible for largely wiping out
those indigenous communities and imposing a brutal global system of
colonialism and industrialism. Again, if the only positive vision of
uncivilized life is restricted to communities that meet specific
criteria established by a handful of authors, then we are left with very
little.
As Haraway says âwe need stories (and theories) that are just big enough
to gather up the complexities and keep the edges open and greedy for
surprising new and old connectionsâ
The solution to a fractured world cannot be a rigid and unbending
dualism. Donna Haraway is again useful here via the concept she is best
known for, the cyborg. While green anarchist readers may immediately
bristle at the use of term that is synonymous with technology,
dehumanization, and militarism, it is important to note the subtleties
of Harawayâs conception of this figure. For Haraway, humanity has always
been cy- borgian. To take it further, all life bears cyborg features.
When a bear uses a stick to draw ants out of a hollow tree, it is
absorbing something alien and external into its own composition. Life is
a coalescence of differences and distinctions. What does this mean?
Simply put, we are never only what we are. The cyborg exemplifies
hybridity as a condition.
As living, breathing, eating, shitting, fucking things, we are
constantly absorbing and integrating the other into ourselves. As home
to millions of microbes and bacteria, as the primary transportation
system for countless species of viruses, we are and have always been
much less than completely human. Ancient people understood that eating
the flesh of an animal meant incorporating part of its spirit into
themselves. This model for life and the world, as we shall see, carries
with it radical potentialities for being. We are not who we think we
are. We are, each of us, a multitude of things that explode in infinite
directions and draw us constantly out of the borders of our being and
penetrate beyond. We are a part of the multiplicity that we confront.
What does this have to do with green anarchy? In 1979 the editors of
Fifth Estate wrote: âLet us anticipate the critics who would accuse us
of wanting to go âback to the cavesâ or of mere posturing on our
partâi.e., enjoying the comforts of civilization all the while being its
hardiest critics. We are not posing the Stone Age as a model for our
Utopia, nor are we suggesting a return to gathering and hunting as a
means for our livelihoodâ In other words, the green anarchist vision has
always been a hybrid one. It has always been a position that is based on
responding to the crisis of techno-industrial society, as well as
looking at contemporary indigenous cultures and communities of the past.
The world we live in, as traumatized and horrific as it is, is real. We
are not creatures of the Paleolithic, who, by the way, were themselves
very likely not entirely what we assume they were. We stand, here and
now, against the domination of the techno-industrial world even while we
are products of that world and inescapably influenced by it. We are
strange, misshapen things. Partly this, and partly that. And we always
were. Our challenge and our joy is born from this. To always be
creating, dismantling. The cycles of decay and growth. There is no
ur-moment. The symbol has always dwelt within us. Our claws and tusks
are made for many purposes.
But we are also obliged to heed the ominous whispers in the darkness.
There is a darker shade of green that runs through green anarchy, which
we will not shy away from. It is a bloody vein that tracks through
grisly pagan rites, the cosmic inhumanism of Robinson Jeffers, the
savage violence of the primitive warrior, and the serene detachment of
the daoist recluses. What these strands weave together is a vision of
the world in which humanity does not sit upon a throne. We insist that
the world was not made for man and as such the concerns of humanity and
human society are not of primary importance. Following Jeffers, we must
try to de-center our thoughts and our actions from the merely human
perspective.
As the writers of the Dark Mountain manifesto put it, âHumans are not
the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt
to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage
with the non-human world.â As green anarchists we must be sensitive to
what it means âto step outside the human bubble.â A vision of a world of
spontaneity, joy, and desire, that boldly asserts a cosmic wholeness
beyond human values will not resemble the kinds of leftist utopian
visions that we are accustomed to. In his foundational âPrimitivist
Primerâ John Moore writes âPolitics, âthe art and science of governmentâ
is not part of the primitivist project; only a politics of desire,
pleasure, mutuality, and radical freedomâ In other words, the emphasis
here moves away from traditional realms of social justice. Green anarchy
is not about advocating for egalitarian politics.
This brings us to another point, which was always central to Black Seed
and Green Anarchy, the role of anthropology. While it is certainly true
that we rely on anthropological and ethnographic works to give us a
picture of how many indigenous communities lived, as green anarchists,
we cannot ignore the racism and colonialism that inspired and made
possible much of that work. Furthermore, we absolutely cannot put
forward a vision for a way of life that depends entirely on the truth or
accuracy of these historically-situated anthropological studies. If we
put anthropology forward as our main evidence for being green
anarchists, that means we are accepting a whole series of assumptions
based in fantasies of cultural superiority, hegemony, and scientific
objectivity, some of the very pillars of civilization that we oppose.
Anthropological works are taken seriously because they are academic and
scientific. Ways of knowing that our ancestors have relied on for
millennia are dismissed because they are mystical or superstitious. This
is an imbalance that needs to be corrected within green anarchy. If we
argue and fight against totalizing systemic thinking but uncritically
fall back on anthropology as the foundation of our position, then we
have a huge problem.
As a corollary to this, the role of the primitive or indigenous
themselves within green anarchy must be considered. Too often there is a
tendency to reduce traditional peoples and communities into static,
one-dimensional figures to be blindly or superficially emulated, rather
than recognizing them as dynamic, evolving cultures with their own
histories and stories, which have their own sense of how they fit into
the larger world. Again, to correct this would mean being willing to
challenge the values and truisms that we are often unaware of and
engaging with traditional communities in the world today rather than
losing ourselves in daydreams and fantasies of a long-forgotten world,
one that bears little or no resemblance to the reality we and the
communities we claim to admire actually inhabit.
As we have said, if green anarchy does not stay engaged and connected to
the world it will become increasingly tone-deaf and meaningless, it will
become nothing more than a parody; like arguments about which forms of
social media are acceptable and which are not. Thus, picking up where
Black Seed 4 left off, we must consider the question of green anarchy
and its relation to nihilism and eco-extremism. This has become an
extremely divisive issue over the last several years. Concurrently we
have also seen a dramatic intensification of techno-utopianism on the
left and a worrying growth in a kind of hybrid leftist vision of anarchy
that enthusiastically embraces technology and utterly dismisses a
nonhuman planetary perspective.
The bottom line is that there are no easy answers. Black Seed wants to
remain with the trouble and continue to push through important issues
that challenge us to our core. As we acknowledged in Black Seed 3, there
are likely to be points of disagreement between some green anarchists
and some nihilists. These disagreements are not insignificant but they
also do not necessitate the kind of hostility and dismissiveness that
have characterized much of the interaction between the two perspectives.
The kind of energy and force that recent eco-extremists have shown both
in their words and action clearly demonstrate what has been lacking in a
lot of green anarchy over the last several years. Regardless of what
individual anarchists feel about indiscriminate violence, nihilist
eco-extremism has tapped into a current that resonates with many in the
broader green anarchist community. Again, if we find an idea or a type
of action challenging, we believe we have an obligation to dig into that
discomfort and to engage with it, regardless of whether we end up
agreeing with it or not. New paths can be charted, new formulations, new
courses of action, new stories can be told. If, however, our resistance
turns out to only be a vestigial form of leftist humanism then we have
to consider other options.
Nihilist eco-extremism is also not the only other contemporary strand
that can be woven into a broader green anarchist critique. We should be
open to expanding our sense of what green anarchy can mean, rather than
becoming increasingly dogmatic and myopic.
Let us ask together, can an idea or an action only work within a green
anarchist perspective if it conforms to a fixed definition of what
anarchism means? If the broad concerns and commitments are consistent,
if there is even a marginal point of convergence that may give rise to
inspiration and creativity, can we really afford to dismiss it because
it doesnât fit into our own constructed identities? There is nothing
free about that. The dominant form of anarchism that one sees,
unfortunately, appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with freedom.
Sometimes looking forward and remaining engaged with the present
requires a reevaluation of the past. Revisiting the history of green
anarchy may also help us reorient, refocus, and revitalize ourselves.
Once again, from his âPrimi- tivist Primerâ John Moore:
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as anarcho-primitivism or
anarcho-primitivists. Fredy Perlman, a major voice in this current, once
said, âThe only -ist name I respond to is cellist.â Individuals
associated with this current do not wish to be adherents of an ideology,
merely people who seek to become free individuals in free communities in
harmony with one another and with the biosphere, and may therefore
refuse to be limited by the term âanarcho-primitivistâ or any other
ideological tagging. At best, then, anarcho-primitivism is a convenient
label used to characterise diverse individuals with a common project:
the abolition of all power relationsâ e.g., structures of control,
coercion, domination, and exploitationâand the creation of a form of
community that excludes all such relations.
And from the âBack to Basicsâ series of pamphlets put out by Green
Anarchy magazine:
Originary considerations have to do with how human life used to be, with
who we have been and, in some fashion, may be again. Such investigations
give us things to look at, to reflect upon; not as a source of an
ideology to impose, not some âHow It Must Beâ dogma. In this
unprecedented and fearful time, the question of practice is open. In
fact, maybe one thing many can agree on is that something new is needed.
It seems to us that examining the beginnings of this ongoing disaster is
a worthy exercise. Do we not need all the help we can get?
At this point, both of these passages were written more than a decade
ago. A number of interesting issues are present here. First of all, we
can see that even in its early days green anarchy was concerned about
the same pitfalls that we address here. Namely, that we recognize the
need to prevent green anarchy from becoming dogmatic, ideological, and
prescriptive. We would do well to keep in mind John Mooreâs words, when
he writes âAt best, then, anarcho-primitivism is a convenient label used
to characterise diverse individualsâ As time goes on, the diversity of
the ideas and individuals who adopt this label seems to be fading. It
appears to have become more of a group affiliation and dogma. The people
who are comfortable with the term resemble each other more and more
(young disaffected white males) and their ideas become less and less
distinguishable.
In the passage from âBack to Basicsâ we see the familiar call for
something new, though it still remains unclear what is new. We can also
see in the passages above a reiteration of the call to use everything
available to us in seeking to develop responses to the world around us.
John Moore felt that among new courses for action was the creation of
communities of resistanceâmicrocosms (as much as they can be) of the
future to comeâboth in cities and outside. These need to act as bases
for action (particularly direct action), but also as sites for the
creation of new ways of thinking, behaving, communicating, being, and so
on, as well as new sets of ethicsâin short, a whole new liberatory
culture. They need to become places where people can discover their true
desires and pleasures, and through the good old anarchist idea of the
exemplary deed, show others by example that alternative ways of life are
possible.
It has been decades since Moore wrote these words and it is not clear
that many such communities have been attempted.
Another point, which has been discussed in previous issues of Black
Seed, is that there seems to be a growing lack of interest in action
among green anarchists. In its early years green anarchy was largely
defined by its commitment to militant direct action: animal liberation,
black bloc tactics, arson, sabotage, etc. This raises the question, has
the primitiv- ist project failed because itâs been difficult for anyone
to do much more than attend primitive skills workshops and fantasize
about homesteading? Primitive skills and homesteading are, of course,
wonderful and may be desirable to many. But it is difficult to claim
that these choices have any relevance beyond oneâs own personal
lifestyle; they simply do not threaten techno-industrial society. Again,
there is a relationship between how we think and how we act. As we have
said, new ways of thinking, talking, and dreaming can lead to new ways
of acting and living.
In recent years an overwhelming amount of green anarchist writings and
discussions have centered around domestication and rewilding. When Green
Anarchy magazine put out their âBack to Basicsâ series, for instance,
the pamphlet on rewilding was twice as long as any of the others. If we
are serious about avoiding the lapse into an increasingly insular,
marginal, dogmatic, and out of touch sideshow, let us not hold any idea
above critique.
Letâs be serious about asking ourselves if ideas, even foundational
ones, are still playing the kind of inspiration and galvanizing role
they once did. As the ancients ask, does this grow corn or not? Is
rewilding, a concept ultimately born from the discourse of wildlife
conservation (conserved by whom and for whom?), really an idea and path
of action that challenges techno-industrial society? Perhaps the answer
will be an affirmative yes. But if thatâs the case, letâs really get
into it without relying on the fact that for the past twenty years
everyone has been treating the question as settled.
It also seems that green anarchists need to be mindful of the ways that
these foundational ideas and core assumptions interact with notions of
purity that are ultimately indistinguishable from religious ideas that
are so often mocked and derided in green anarchist circles. This is not
to say, however, that there is anything wrong with accepting the
spiritual or religious implications of green anarchy. The old anarchist
maxim âNo God, No Mastersâ may need to be revised.
Whatâs wrong with rewilding, or learning primitive skills? Absolutely
nothing. For that matter, there is nothing wrong with homesteading,
hunting, going off the grid, or any other kind of lifestyle choice.
These are all great things. The point is that they do not threaten or
challenge civilization or techno-industrial society. As green
anarchists, we need to make sure that we make space for action and ideas
that do threaten or worse. We need to stand with those who act, even if
we as individuals choose not to. This is not meant to be read as an
attempt to chastise. Our hope here is to open an exciting new chapter
for green anarchy, one that is bold, alive, and dynamic. One that sees
possibilities for joy, radical freedom, and profound kinship with the
world.
We will not prevent the catastrophe from coming. It is here. It has been
here, long before we acknowledged or named it. We need a form of
critique and action that is flexible, honest, and sophisticated to keep
up with the world. To end by making kin with Starhawk and ecofeminism,
we conclude with a poem:
Breath deep.
Feel the pain
where it lives deep in us
For we live, still,
In the raw wounds
And pain is salt in us, burning. .
Flush it out.
(new and improved version)
Atomization : to treat as made up of many discrete units
Empiricism : the theory that all knowledge is derived from
sense-experience
Experimentation : the process of testing various ideas, methods, or
activities to see what effect they have
Rationalize : to bring into accord with reason or cause something to
seem reasonable: such as (a) to substitute a natural for a supernatural
explanation of a myth (b) to attribute actions to rational and
creditable motives
Causality : the relation between causes and effects
Methodological naturalism : an essential aspect of the methodology of
science, the study of the natural universe. If one believes that natural
laws and theories based on them will not suffice to solve the problems
attacked by scientistsâ that supernatural and thus nonscientific
principles must be invoked from time to timeâthen one cannot have the
confidence in scientific methodology that is prerequisite to doing
science.
Revolution can no longer be taken to mean just the destruction of all
that is old and conservative, because capital has accomplished this
itself. Rather it will appear as a return to something (a revolution in
the mathematical sense of the term), a return to community though not in
any form that has existed previously. Revolution will make itself felt
in the destruction of all that is most âmodernâ and âprogressiveâ
because science is capital.
~ Jacques Camatte
Science is a system of knowledge acquisition based on empiricism,
experimentation, atomization, rationalizing, causality, and
methodological naturalism and that is aimed at finding the truth.
Theoriesâ predictive hypothesesâare the basic unit of knowledge in this
system. Science also refers to the bodies of knowledge stemming from
this research.
Most scientists feel that scientific investigation must adhere to the
scientific method, a process for evaluating empirical knowledge under
the working assumption of methodological materialism (which explains
observable events in nature by natural causes without assuming the
existence or non-existence or the supernatural). Particular specialized
studies that make use of empirical methods are often referred to as
sciences as well.
Conversations about science get complicated since the word refers to
distinct yet connected things. For example, physics is a science (a
field of specialized studies) that is not always scientific (according
to the above definition), since quantum physics moves away from the
distinction between observer and observed that is fundamental to
experimentation. However, to the extent that physicists reject the
implications of that moving away, physics continues in the trajectory
that science (as a way of thinking) has established.
As the modern problem-solving technique, it behooves anarchists to be
skeptical of science. Science is so widely accepted that for many people
it has in fact become synonymous with problemsolving. Even people who
are critical of most other aspects of the culture we live in, find
themselves reverting to science when pushed to defend their ideas, e.g.
anti-civilization anarchists who refer to biology when attempting to
convince about an optimal diet, or to anthropology to prove the
superiority of their blueprint for future societies.
Of the various ways to critique science, the most fundamental addresses
the scientific method, which emphasizes a) reproducibility, b) causality
(that a thing or event causes another thing or event), and c) the
relevance of things (material reality) over all elseâmore accurately, it
emphasizes a specific perspective on material reality, the only
perspective that science recognizes as valid, one with, for example,
inactive objects acted upon by active agents. One problem with the
scientific model is how it maintains and relies on a perspective of the
world as a frozen (static) place. Also problematic is the idea that
everything can be broken down into discrete, quantifiable parts, that
the whole is never more than the sum of its parts. Underlying both of
these perspectives is the premise that the best or only way to know the
world is to distance ourselves from it, to be outside of it; that this
distance allows us to use the world; that use is, in fact, the
appropriate relationship to have to the world.
On a practical level there is the understanding that scientists are
operating within a system that is based as much (if not more) on
hierarchy and funding as it is on paying attention to what is actually
going on around us. There are multiple accounts (even from conventional
sources) showing that who is funding a study has a substantive impact on
what the study discovers, from tobaccoâs impact on health to the
possibility of restricting the spread of genetically modified organisms,
but these examples are merely the most obvious.
The more subtle ones have to do with how we ask questions (âwhen did you
stop beating your child?â), who we ask questions of (related to the
questionerâs access, biases, language, etc.), what questions we think to
ask, and how we understand the answers we get, as well as what
meta-interests the questions serve (how are the assumptions of this
culture fed and/or challenged by who asks, and how and of whom these
questions get asked?). If scientists are seeking to discover or define
truth-as-a-static, how does that search itself effect the world?
Western education predisposes us to think of knowledge in terms of
factual information, information that can be structured and passed on
through books, lectures, and programmed courses. Knowledge is something
that can be acquired and accumulated, rather like stocks and bonds. By
contrast, within the Indigenous world the act of coming to know
something involves a personal transformation. The knower and the known
are indissolubly linked and changed in a fundamental way. Coming to know
Indigenous [ways of knowing] can never be reduced to a catalogue of
facts or a data base in a supercomputer; for it is a dynamical and
living process, an aspect of the ever-changing, ever-renewing processes
of nature.
And on a philosophical level, knowledge is created from foundations that
limit and construct it in specific ways. While on one hand science is a
response to the superstition and hierarchy associated with religion, it
also continues christianityâs theme of a pure abstract and universal
truth, separate from the sludge of everyday life, with scientists and
doctors in the position of clergy that is, people who know more about us
than we do. Some people believe in science (as something they donât
understand that can solve their problems) in ways similar to how others
believe in god. Some people cite scientific references the way that
other people cite scripture.
Traditionally, science posits a neutral objective observer, a
fantastical being to compare to any angel or demon: this neutral
observer has no interest other than truth, which comes from informa-
tionâinformation that can be trusted because it is found inside of
laboratories or other managed locations, with carefully identified
variables and carefully maintained control sets. The mystification of
this awesome observer is only magnified, not ameliorated, by the
addition of peer review, in which a body of knowledgeable colleagues
examine the experiments and data to verify their validity. Added to the
stories of peer review being compromised even from the perspective of
proscience people, we now have information about researchers writing
their own positive reviews and submitting them from catfish accounts.
Currently people writing about science and scientists might admit that
everyone has biases, but treat those predilictions, associations, and
assumptions as if theyâre shallow, easily recognized, andâonce
recognizedâeasy to work around.
Science exemplifies this cultureâs tendency to specialize, and
consequently to create experts, people who know every little thing about
specific bits, but not how those bits interact with other thingsâclearly
a result of thinking that is thing-based (vs. for example,
relationship-based). So for instance, practitioners of allopathic
medicine prescribe multiple medications to people, frequently without
having any idea about how these specific drugs will interact with each
other, much less any idea about how a personâs feelings or other life
experiences are related to their physical health.
In The Origins of Authoritarianism, Hannah Arendt uses the word
scientism to express the logical extension of scientific thinking, which
makes otherwise impossible moral or ethical questions (such as, âCan
someone be worthless? And if so, can that person be euthanized?â) easily
resolvable. In other words, the inhuman aspects of totalitarian states
are related to the reliance of those states on science as the ultimate
arbiter of value: indeed, the idea that everything must be of measurable
value is part of the scientific paradigm. In this way science takes on a
role that religion has played in previous times, that of a
state-sanctioned morality.
By definition, anthropologists scientifically study groups of
peopleârelation- ships, customs, behaviors, and social patterns. (The
âscientificallyâ is what separates anthropologists from say artists,
comedians... or just curious people.)
The history of anthropology is of civilized men and the occasional woman
going to cultures foreign to them and reporting back about these
cultures to their audience, including their funders. As scientistsâwith
all the quantifying and rationalist implications of that
wordâanthropologists are responsible for interpreting primitive/Other
peoples to the mainstream. To the extent that anthropologists are
mediators between the civilized and the barbaric, they are also part of
a cultural trajectory that includes missionaries, who historically have
often been the first or second wave of a so- called civilizing
influence.
Anthropologists, as well as other social scientists, extend the realm of
science by making peopleâs homes into laboratories, by presuming that it
is possible and appropriate to engage objectively with people in
cultures very different from their own (or even people from their own
culture), for the purpose of distilling the most meaningful information.
And, as with all sciences, what is considered most meaningful is part of
an ongoing debate (with many unexplored and unquestioned assumptions), a
debate ultimately framed by fundersâfrom private grantors to
universities. Why do people get paid to study people? What do the
funders get for their money? They get increased markets (in the form of
the studied), increased control of existing markets (more information
about what motivates peopleâthus how to sell more effectively), and more
products (from tourism to books to drugs).
As a discipline, anthropology is compelling for a number of mostly
obvious reasons, including that it provides a more holistic view of
people than the views from economics, political science, sociology, etc.
More significantly, it provides evidence that our options as a species
are more varied than we are taught to believe. Because anthropology
provides people (who become anthropologists) with a funded way to do
interesting things and have interesting conversations, and the kind of
people who want to find out about other cultures can be intriguing
people, it is tempting to conflate the people, and their experiences,
with anthropology itself. The experience of living among people who
demonstrate really different life ways can also be deeply enriching for
the individuals involved. There can even be books written that are
illuminating for readers who are far away. But the impact of those
experiences is at best a safety valve for a stultifying hegemonic
society. Anthropologists, in other words, can have only good intentions,
can care deeply for the people theyâre studying, and can produce things
that imperialist-cultured people learn a lot from, but the benefits are
far overshadowed by the negative consequences.
The study of people scientifically, the creation of experts, the context
of meeting and learning about people for the ultimate benefit of
corporations and increased hegemony, is inherently skewed and
manipulative, no matter the intentions or integrity of the people
involved.
In âAnthropologists and Other Friends,â esteemed American Indian writer
Vine Deloria Jr. refutes the possibility of exploring people in a
vacuum. He describes the reciprocal creation that happens between agents
of mediation (in this case, anthropologists) and the mediated (in this
case, Indians). Deloria examines how the anthropologists, by having
clear ideas about âwhat Indians doâ (ie, who is Authentic) and by
attending only to those Indians who are willing to act the way theyâre
supposed to, encourage those Indians to continue acting in so-called
authentic ways, which then reinforces the anthropologists in their
definitions and expectations. This creates a self-perpetuating cycleâa
closed loop in which people from two groups create and support mutual
judgments (which they take as fact). Two of these judgments are âreal
Indians do specific kinds of ritualsâ and âreal anthropologists are
experts in the culture that they study.â It is the very premise of
purity, of a static identity (a premise required by science) and one
that can be recognized by outside observers, that is so falsifying to
experience and so limiting to the sort of information that studiers can
gather about the studied. (This model of knowledge creates a similar
dynamic between activists and the targets of their activismâleading
people to embrace concepts like âreal women,â âthe real working class,â
and âreal wildness.â) To the extent that an activist is interactingâin
theory or practiceâwith abstractions rather than with actual
relationships, to that extent activists become invested in maintaining
the distance between themselves and whatâor whomever they are attempting
to save. And interaction with abstractions (vs. relationships) is what
is required for things like funding and school credit; it is what makes
a work scientific.
Anthropologists will always emphasize the difference between the studied
and the studier. This tendency is also demonstrated by all people who
want (for reasons of money or status, or both) to be experts on another
group of people and it usually means reifying the studied, attempting to
keep them distinct, pure, Authentic.
In Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, David Graeber encourages us
to âbreak down the wallâ between cultures studied by anthropologists
(cultures frequently described by words like âprimitiveâ and
âkin-basedâ) and modern societies. He posits this wall as the belief
that some inherent, essential shift occurred to create modern cultures
as fundamentally different from previous cultures. He suggests that it
is much more interesting and relevant to look at the ways that we are
the same as the people being studied. While his point about the
usefulness of the wall is unassailable, the more significant point is
that creating and maintaining this wall is exactly what anthropology is
for. As Graeber himself notes, itâs anthropology when people are talking
about âprimitives,â but sociology, political science, economics,
architecture, psychology, etc. when talking about people like the
studiers.
Science insists that we distance our- selvesâboth as groups and as
individualsâfrom the rest of the world, so as to more effectively study
and ultimately use it. The social role of anthropologists is that
particular category of distancing that involves cultures that are
different along specifically those âprimitiveâ and âkin-basedâ lines.
While major paradigms (like science, like anthropology) will always have
offshoots that grow in tangential directions (for example physics, as
already stated, and some of the newer emphases in anthropologyâmoving
away from the exotic, becoming more and more like sociology), these
branches grow only to the extent that they are useful to the main body.
It is also true that interesting people will want to test the limits of
the tradition; to the extent that these people expect, and work for,
recognition within the field, to the extent that they are judged by
standards set within the field, to the extent that their work is used by
corporationsâthen they are part of the scientific trajectory with all
that that implies. Anthropology in particular has had significant
shifts, on the one hand de-emphasizing studies of people far from
western European culture, and on another, dealing with real world events
like wars in the Middle East. This seems to be a response to a changing,
increasingly mono-culture world, including increasing alienation from
each other and ourselves, but perhaps that is a topic for a different
essay. At any rate, I would argue that this means that anthropology
becomes less and less anthropology, and more something else; that as
there become fewer and fewer options for an exotic, un-tamed Other in
the world, then the Others must be found closer to home, with developing
ramifications. (Thereâs an argument, for example, that this is one
thread in the increase in the ethnocentric, racist violence that becomes
increasingly visible these days.)
Regardless, it remains true that the only reason to stay distant from
the Other, the whole purpose of an Other, is for control and
manipulation of both the Other and the Same. Put extremely simply,
Others are easier to kill (however that killing might look in different
circumstances), and the easier they are to kill, the more both sides of
the Same/ Other split are pressured to conform.
Anthropology, like the other sciences, is useful to the status quo in
its ability to make the studied into objects that can be manipulated and
consumed by the current system, and in its ability to increase control
over the studiers.
âThe Indians who rose up against the New England colonies in 1675 had
been exposed to the merciless concepts of European total warfare and had
the improved technology and tactics to inflict heavy losses on the white
populace. In their desperate attempt to save their culture and to take
back their lands, the Indians abandoned most of the self-imposed
restraints that had limited the death and destruction in their
traditional patterns of warfare.â
-Patrick Malore, The Skulking Way of War
ââMan,â whatever people think of him, is never anything more than a
temporary bourgeois compromise.â
-Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf
âThe lesser the motive, the better the murder.â
-Answer Me! Motto
There is a never-ending debate among anarchists of the left regarding
what constitutes violence, what revolutionary violence is acceptable,
and whether or not it will motivate the working class to rise against
its oppressors. Nowhere in these banal conversations do people take the
position that interpersonal violence is inevitable, or even desirable,
as it is part of our nature. It puts into question social projects aimed
at bettering the world. The Homo Sapien has always been a bad lot, there
is no denying that. The earliest skulls dug up have shown evidence of
blunt force trauma. Even if every person on earth (currently over 7
billion people) had all our needs met, we would still find reasons to
bludgeon one another. There is no rescuing humanity from itself.
Illusions of a peaceful and safe world come at a huge price. You merely
need to look at the prosperity and peace (mislabeled freedom) of the
West, compared to the constant battle for survival in exploited
countries.
My obsession with cruelty among humans began at a young age. I grew up
in a European country with a much longer history of empire building than
the US, but of course that brutality was not in our schoolâs curriculum
(which centered around religious studies). I wouldnât learn about what
empires and colonization meant until I was much older. What was etched
in my mind were the endless horrors of the Monarchy, sadistic methods of
torture, how to instill fear of all manners of deviance, and the equally
cruel methods of execution (which attracted huge crowds to see the gory
spectacles of be-headings, hangings, andâmost horrific of allâthe
burnings). Along with these nightmarish tales came stories of the misery
of peasant life and the diseases that spread quickly in cities that grew
more and more populated and filthy. I was fascinated by the black plague
and other diseases that came with industrialization. Along with these
gruesome history lessons came the implication that our society has
progressed, materially and spiritually. And again, no mention of the
brutal subjugation of and robbery from people in far away lands.
Most anarchists believe monsters are a product of society, rather than a
uniquely human problem that no utopia, no matter how well prefigured,
could ever banish. Anarchists shy away from being called terrorists when
we should be accepting that label with open arms. Instilling fear in
your enemies when they are much bigger and more powerful is an age-old
military tactic for a reason. But lately there has been a reaction
against any notion of individual power and the incomprehensible violence
it can sometimes take the form of. âEdgelordâ is now a common
denigration by leftists and others who desire a social revolution for
those who talk about the human impulse towards violence and cruelty and
what that means for those who believe in a social revolution. In the
words of author Christian Fuchs, âthe exclusion of killers from humanity
makes our world a phoney planet where every serious discussion of
violence is repressed.â This is especially true in times where there is
a real fear of terrorism and power-hungry authoritarians.
âWe are all murderers to a greater or lesser extent.â
-Octave Mirbeau
We live in a world saturated by violence, but for most people it is
distant and mediated. Despite all the evidence to the
contraryâlive-streamed suicides and murders on social media, police
killings shot on body cameras or civilian cell phones, or the various
acts of anti-social violence experienced in the cities and townsâthe
civilized want to deny that they themselves are capable of cruelty.
Those who do violence are the barbarian others, beyond the gates, on the
other side of the tracks. Most of the physical violence inflicted on
people wonât be seen or felt by those living in prosperity (barring a
natural disaster or painful death), who are as removed from this
violence as the drone operator sitting safely in a container in Nevada.
Itâs as invisible to them as the cancer growing in a childâs lung from
the choking industrial smog in far away places and as the violence
perpetrated within a stoneâs throw of Hollywood against those on Skid
Row (to those who never have a need to go there).
Like alchemists, anarchists think they can turn shit into gold if only
enough people will rise up. The people will revolt and bring on the
socialist utopia. Anarchists might envision this magical leap happening
through violent actions but the nitty gritty of political violence isnât
clear. How will people be targeted? Who will be up against the wall? How
do you eliminate a global capitalist system that so many humans now rely
upon to eke out a miserly existence, without increasing suffering? Would
anybody be capable of dropping the blade of the guillotine in this age?
Itâs very messy. Those who take the war against society seriously will
be denounced by the very same people who believe in the overthrow of the
ruling classes, as if a spiritual awakening will bring about their new
world. Remember, utopian attempts have notoriously had effects opposed
to what their dreamers envisioned.
The belief that humans are inherently peaceful creatures, enlightened
through our reason. is still a tightly-held belief, even for anarchists.
There are far too many who would have us also forget those who bombed,
assassinated, and plundered until their deaths. A common question among
revolutionary anarchists is, why are anarchists so weak? Despite the
revolutionary platitudes glorifying violence against the ruling class,
the cops, the state, fascists, and every other form our enemies can
take, the threats ring hollow for all but a few. Pointing out the
brutality that would be necessary to accomplish this task is not macho
posturing, it is an observation of the failures and excesses of
revolutions. This is why the actions of the lone wolf will always,
despite their vileness, be important: they arenât waiting for a critical
mass of âpower from below.â They take power in their own hands.
Sometimes this looks very ugly but at its core is always a desire for
freedom.
Like a lion in a zoo, our freedom only extends to a concrete fence,
making whatever small patch of grass she has to stretch out on seem even
more pitiful. Being wild and free in the midst of mass society looks
more like attacking anything and everything in the most vicious way
possible. To seek freedom means making people, including ourselves,
uncomfortable through attacking long-held beliefs, such as those telling
us we deserve to be safe and that human life is more important than
anything else.
What I call ecologically-motivated murder is more likely to be equated
with fascist ideology (the volkisch movement has been researched
extensively) than are âlone wolvesâ who have no clear ideology to
explain their disturbing actions. These loners can only be degenerates.
Society, including many anarchists, would rather forget its demons, but
lately it seems that pessimism could be making a comeback, much to the
chagrin of those doing positive social work. Few accept those existing
on the fringes who are likely to be more apolitical and morally
objectionable to a majority of people, but whose actions reverberate
through society in a powerful way.
Cruel and violent people who transgress civilized boundaries, such as
the rules of war, are not marketable to the masses, making them
irrelevant to anyone who wants to brand anarchism as a cure- all for
societyâs ills. There is a notion that the viciousness of society is a
side effect of civilization, rather than something innate in humans.
Those who want to keep anarchy palatable to broader society quickly
distance themselves from acts of savagery, and severely compromise
anarchist principles (for example working with nationalists). Yet it
takes savagery to successfully attack a much larger and stronger force,
to instill fear. and to become offensive rather than reactive. Like
George Bataille, I also believe we need a thought which does not fall
apart in the face of horror.
One of the only Amazonian tribes to successfully fight off the Spaniards
knew they had to match the ferocity of the invaders. And match them they
did, by using the Spaniardsâ own torturous method of execution. In the
jungle the Shuar were used to moving to avoid conflict, but a man named
Quirruba had a better idea. He gained followers who swore secrecy and
ordered them to seek out as much gold as possible.
When the Governor of Logrono arrived in their area, they stealthily
approached at midnight. One account reports that an army of over 20,000
Shuar surrounded and conquered the settlement, slaughtering the
Spaniards in their homes before they could come together. Quirruba
entered with troops carrying the gold they had amassed and the tools
needed to melt it down. After everybody besides the Governor had been
killed, they told him to prepare to receive the tax he had prepared:
âThey stripped him completely naked, tied his hands and feet; and while
some amused themselves with him, delivering a thousand castigations and
jests, the others set up a large forge in the courtyard, where they
melted the gold. When it was ready in the crucibles, they opened his
mouth with a bone, saying that they wanted to see if for once he had
enough gold. They poured it little by little, and then forced it down
with another bone; and bursting his bowels with the torture, they all
raised a clamor and laughter.â
It would be amazing to see earth shoved down the throats of mining
executives, or hot oil poured down the gullets of oil executives, giving
them only a small taste of the excruciating pain they have caused so
many others. Unfortunately we donât live in the time or the world of the
Shuarâs fierceness. We are taught from an early age not to solve
problems with violence (unless, of course, you are a nation), and
history likes to portray all âsocial progressâ as a more or less
peaceful expansion of the enlightened civilization of the West. But
there are still Quirrubasâ in the world who disregard the rules of
engagement and fight on their own terms.
John Linley Frazier was a typical middle-class American in the late
1960s. He had a wife and good solid work as a mechanic until he
discovered drugs and the hippie subculture. Along with his new
lifestyle, he also got interested in ecology. Suddenly, on orders from
the Almighty, the mechanic stopped driving and quit his job, explaining
that he would no longer contribute to the death cycle of the planet. As
you can imagine, his new found love of Nature put a strain on his
marriage. He left his wife and moved to a hippie commune, where he
proceeded to scare the fuck out of his fellow hippies. They saw him as
paranoid and volatile, something that, post-Manson, most in the
counterculture were desperately trying to distance themselves from.
Wandering from commune to commune Frazier began living what one article
described as the lifestyle of an Aquarian Age hermit, and moved into a
six-foot-square shack in the woods, (predating by decades Ted
Kaczynskiâs similar retreat from society) not far from a prominent
ophthalmologist, Dr. Victor Ohta.
Dr. Ohta had also not ingratiated himself with the local hippie milieu.
He flaunted his wealth: a Rolls Royce and a Lincoln Continental,
expensive clothes and jewelry, sons enlisted in the best private
schools, an opulent mansion designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.
On the 19^(th) of October, 1970, it burned to the ground.
As the firefighters made their way up the two dirt roads leading to the
property, they found both blocked by Ohtaâs vehicles. After they had
cleared the obstacles and reached the house they made a horrifying
discovery: floating in the swimming pool were the bodies of Dr. Ohta,
his wife, and their two sons, aged and 12. The doctorâs secretary (a
wife and mother of two herself) and the family cat were not spared
either. They had all been shot execution style, one bullet each, with
the exception of the Doctor, who received four.
Frazier had entered the mansion and found Dr. Ohtaâs wife Virginia
alone. Holding her at gunpoint with her own .38, he bound her with one
of her colorful scarves and waited. One by one the rest of the family
along with Ohtaâs secretary were taken hostage and bound with the same
luxurious scarves. Moving them outside next to the pool, the doctor was
given an ultimatum: burn your house to the ground and renounce your
materialism, or die. The doctor couldnât part with his worldly goods,
and like an avenger for the forest that had once lived where he was
standing, Frazier executed them all and tossed them in the pool. In the
midst of the bloody carnage, Frazier sat down at the doctorâs typewriter
before lighting the mansion ablaze. The note would be found under the
windshield wiper of one of the cars.
âHalloween, 1970. Today World War will begin, as brought to you by the
People of the Free Universe. From this day forward, anyone and/or
everyone or company of persons who misuses the natural environment or
destroys same will suffer the penalty of death by the People of the Free
Universe. I and my comrades from this day forth will fight until death
or freedom against anyone who does not support natural life on this
planet. Materialism must die, or Mankind will stop.â
-Knight of Wands, Knight of Cups, Night [sic] of Pentacles and Knight of
Swords.
In the end it was the local hippies who squealed on Frazier, whoâeven
while locked upâcontinued to make people uneasy, showing up to court
with half his hair, half his beard, and one eyebrow shaved off. Despite
his odd behavior and bizarre crime, he was declared competent to stand
trial and received the death penalty. After California put its
executions on hold, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He was
found hanging in his cell on August 13, 2009.
A more contemporary ecological murderer is Adam Lanza. I know that to
even mention him is a cardinal sin among morally righteous anarchists.
He is the person who killed multiple people, most of them children, at
his former elementary school. On December 10, 2011 he wrote on a forum
he frequented: âI should call in on John Zerzanâs radio program about
Travis. Iâm really surprised that I havenât been able to find anything
heâs written or said about the incident, considering how often he brings
up random acts of violence. It seems like Travis would be a poster-chimp
of his philosophy.â [added emphasis] In his call to John Zerzanâs weekly
radio show, Adam Lanza, who Zerzan described as being very articulate,
discussed the effect domestication had on Travis the Chimp, who after
ripping a womanâs face off in 2009 went on a violent rampage that only
ended after the police unloaded their fire power on him:
âTravis wasnât an untamed monster at all. Um, he wasnât just feigning
domestication, he was civilized. Um, he was able to integrate into
society, he was a chimp actor when he was younger, and his owner drove
him around the city frequently in association with her towing business,
where he met many different people, and got along with everyone. If
Travis had been some nasty monster all his life, it would have been
widely reported, but to the contrary, it seems like everyone who knew
him said how shocked they were that Travis had been so savage, because
they knew him as a sweet child. And there were two isolated incidents
early in his life when he acted aggressively, but summarizing them would
take too long, so basically Iâll just say that he didnât act really any
differently than a human child would, and the people who would use that
as an indictment against having chimps live as humans do wouldnât apply
the same thing to humans, so itâs just kind of irrelevant.â
A year later, Lanzaâs crime sent shock waves through the nation. Zerzan
had little to say about the incident. It was of course portrayed as
another tragedy of civilization, and not as a natural response to an
unnatural way of existing in the world. Like Travis, we were raised to
be something we are not. Also like Travis, some humans escape the world
of the civilized through acts of uncontrollable violence.
He left no manifestos and has been essentially erased, probably due to
his immorality. While Zerzan said little to nothing about the nature of
the shooting, society (including anarchists!) as usual in their
desperate search for answers zeroed in on the easily digestible
explanations of access to guns and mental health care. When tragedies
occur, the liberal mask of many anarchistsâ politics reveals itself as
they also cry for the safety of answers. Lanza had demonstrated his
interest in anti-civ ideas, not only wrestling with the ideas, but
putting those thoughts into terrible action, yet people still seem
mystified as to why anybody would do what he did.
People who cared to read what he wrote, knew exactly where Adam was
coming from when he opened fire in that classroom. He couldnât have been
any clearer about his motivation. He was the embodiment of Travis the
Chimp, Tyke the Elephant, and other beasts who viciously cast off their
shackles, their violent rebellion ending with their own deaths. Like
skirmishes in wars long forgotten, there is mass cultural amnesia
surrounding these acts of hostility toward the civilized. The town of
the elementary school destroyed the school (building a new one over it),
and also razed the house that Lanza had grown up in. Apparently unsavory
people had begun showing up at the site. Perhaps some of those people
listened to Zerzanâs show and were making a pilgrimage to pay their
respects. The erasure of Lanza extends to his Wikipedia page, which
redirects to the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting page. This is
true of personal wikis for many other school shooters as well.
Attacking innocents is incredibly taboo. Even to admit you understand,
much less are sympathetic to, the actions of people like Frazier or
Lanza, will cause you to be shunned. This is especially true when the
taboo against the killing of children is transgressed. Everything must
be palatable to the masses. Nothing is more sacred to the masses than
children, who represent hope for the future of the human race. But that
future will no doubt be as horrific in its banality as the world now. An
article in Newsweek summarized Adamâs motivations (adding of course that
this way of thinking is deranged):
âchildren were indoctrinated from a very young age to become part of a
sick machine that was self-perpetuating. They were manipulated to live
unhealthy lives. In Adamâs deranged world-view, they were already doomed
to live in a joyless world that would use and abuse them. By killing
them, heâd be saving them from the hell he was enduring.â
Both Frazier and Lanzaâs messages were clear to those who understand,
but mystified everyone else: humans have, to their detriment, completely
removed themselves from nature and through the ways of civilization we
have all been imprisoned. Frazierâs fury came from a transcendent moment
where he saw the obscenity of materialism that we are bound to while
Lanza saw how we are shaped from birth to accept this fate and enjoy
being caged. Like warriors before them they refused to see humans as
more valuable than other life on earth and had no moral qualms about
extinguishing lives no matter how young and innocent. In fact, they may
be seen as having acted from a place of kindness, as suggested by Adam
Lanzaâs very personal killing of his mother before he left for the
school. In his mind he wasnât deranged; he had been pacing his cage his
whole life, until he could pace no more. Then he pounced. We are all
capable of nurturing and compassion, but we are also capable of the most
horrific brutality, given the right conditions. These instances of
cruelty, whether from long ago or in our lifetime, shouldnât be swept
under the rug. They are not horrible abominations that we must do
everything to forget. They are human responses, maybe one of the last
meaningful human actions we can observe, which is perhaps what terrifies
people so much. As Fuchs observes, âDeep down in every one of us there
is a ruthless primal killer inside. Perhaps this is the fundamental
truth from which all censors, moralists and inveterate optimists flee in
panic.â Let us not flee in panic from our own impulses, but learn from
them and come face to face with society, its warts and all.
âFUCK!!!â The primal and anguished cry emanated from the refrigerators
in appliances, followed by a loud thud. It was just Brad again...Brad
resembled George Wendt from the âDa Bears!â â90s SNL sketch. He was from
Chicago, and of course a diehard Cubs and Bears fan. Heâd worked at
S-Mart for almost ten years, and had increasingly begun to unravel. Heâd
go off into the rows of fridges to vent, sometimes pounding them with
his meaty fists.
I didnât hold any of this against him. I knew how he felt. I was a
refugee from back east. Iâd moved to the west coast several years
before, mostly in a vain attempt to escape politically motivated
harassment. Iâd gotten involved in anarchism through punk rock. Exposure
to bands like Crass and Millions of Dead Cops had molded my worldview.
The events after 9/11 had motivated me to become more politically
active. I had hooked up with a network of Anarcho-Communists, a
Platformist federation..I was also active in antifascist activism. I was
doing prisoner support for a Palestinian detainee. He was locked up
without charges in the hysteria following the attacks in New York and
DC. Iâd grown up in the suburbs of Baltimore, but had gone to college in
a small town in Pennsylvania and, until I moved west, I had never left.
It was a right wing town that didnât appreciate the presence of
agitators in their midst. My name had appeared in the local media more
than a few times because of an anti-ICE demo weâd planned.
My mental health, which was never great to begin with, had taken a turn
for the worse in October of 2005. I had broken off with most of the
ancoms by then. Theyâd had one of their conferences in Baltimore that
summer, and Iâd completely blown it off. I had suffered through one in
Philly, and that was enough. It was excruciating. Over 12 hours of
arguing and quibbling over workerist minutia and theory, and that was
only day one... Iâd sat there and endured it to be a team player. Iâd
gotten some calls from Philly antifa about this or that bonehead show
that was supposedly happening, but had let them all go to voicemail and
never responded. People had started walking by my house at night and
yelling profanity and abuse. They were kicking over my garbage cans,
following me around on foot and as I drove through town. A sadistic
woman had been brought in to the corporate bookstore where I worked for
the sole purpose of driving me out. Iâd been talking to some of my
coworkers about attempting to unionize through IWW and UFCW. Someone had
ratted me out to management. All of these factors combined to zap my
already highly neurotic brain. Iâd let my appearance and hygiene go
(more than normal).
I eventually had a massive nervous breakdown. I was shaking. I couldnât
sleep. After quitting my job at the bookstore, I was pacing back and
forth through the house. I ended up admitting myself into the psych ward
at the hospital in town.
As I was being admitted, I had to linger in a hallway where they had
cells for psychiatric holds brought in by the cops. I waited by one cell
where the occupant had smeared his feces all over the window. I found
most of the staff to be callous and uncaring. I tried to pathetically
escape from the less secure unit and was put in a higher security wing
with more chronic and serious (mental) cases. When I first entered the
day room there, I was greeted amiably by a Hispanic chap who stuck out
his mitt for me to shake. I immediately regretted this when I felt a
sticky film on his palm and fingers. I later saw him skulking around the
unit with his hands jammed down his pants. I was told that heâd been
admitted for chronic masturbation, to the point where it made it
impossible for him to hold down a job and function in society. Needless
to say, I washed my hands very thoroughly. I was later brought into a
room with a severe woman with a French accent, spectacles, and her hair
in a bun. She looked about 60. She interrogated me for awhile about my
political views and other things. When I was being transferred to
another area, I glanced at a clipboard with my chart on it. There was a
note on there from this woman thanking the hospital staff for allowing
her to interview me. At the time, I thought she was probably from
Homeland Security. She stated that I displayed âhomicidal ideation.â
News to me... After these preliminaries, I was placed in the ward with
the other patients. One teenage girl was in for her third or fourth
suicide attempt. A middle-aged man who looked like heâd listen
exclusively to classic rock and vote Republican was there with a bandage
on his hand. He had punched through the windshield of his car in a fit
of rage after his wife had left him. A young black teen was in a
wheelchair. I found out that she had shot her boyfriend. It was in the
paper that another patient read aloud while she wept softly. The most
interesting of the lot to me was one of my roommates. Canât remember his
name, but he looked to be in his late 40s. While the rest of us wore
street clothes, he wore a hospital gown every day. He was bearded with
longer hair. He didnât say much, and he usually sat in the common area
and watched TV all day. We had a hall meeting with one of the shrinks,
and he asked us what weâd like to do if and when we got out. His
response was: âTake off!â I found out that heâd been in and out of the
state hospitals many times, and was awaiting transfer back there. I
often snore. One night I awoke for some reason, and he was quietly
chanting âKiiillll Jaaccckkâ.
He was unhappy about my snoring. He repeated this a few times. Needless
to say, I didnât sleep very well after that...
A few years elapsed, and I had left Jess, my partner (in crime), and had
met and married Kim in a whirlwind romance. Her brother lived in the
Northwest with his wife, and through a series of phone calls and
letters, we had decided to make the trek across the country, partially
in a vain attempt to escape my ongoing persecution. A COINTELPRO- style
smear campaign had begun in earnest in late 2005, and had made things
rather difficult for me in that backwater town of 50,000. I had no way
of knowing that the same slimeballs, fully aware of my intention to
relocate, had already initiated similar corny tricks where we were
moving to. We arrived in October of â08, and things didnât go well. Her
brother and sister-in-law were intolerable. We were staying on their
couch in an expensive trendy flat. They fought constantly, and both lost
their relatively high-paying jobs not long after we arrived. We endured
four months of hell living with them and desperately looking for any
job. I finally tried a temp agency, and got placed in a position at a
carpet cleaning business. I drove around all day in a van with a
born-again Christian who was in his early fifties. I screwed a few
things up, as Im wont to do. I didnât hook the hoses up correctly. I
accidentally tracked some dirt from my boots on a rich ladyâs white
carpet. In a surreal moment, my co-worker got rather heated, angrily
denouncing me because I said I liked the Phantom Menace Star Wars film.
âJar-Jar Binksâ was racist, you see. After that disaster, I entered a
new level of hell as a canvasser. Out of extreme desperation, I became
one of those annoying idiots who stand on street corners and harass
hapless pedestrians for donations. My cause was the California gay
marriage initiative. A coworker and I stood outside of a yuppie grocery
store all day and pestered shoppers for money. If you didnât make your
quota more than a few days in a row, you were very sweetly and kindly
asked to seek opportunities elsewhere, and please donât let the door
shut hard on your way out..There was a core group of die hards who had
somehow lasted there quite a while. I found out later that they had been
fabricating credit card numbers and donations somehow. They all were
eventually purged as I had been. The smiley-happy-cheerful coordinator
told me âThis jobâs not for everyone.â My wife and I applied at fast
food places, anything. We wound up hitting the shopping mall when Burger
King and Popeyeâs Chicken snubbed us. I submitted a resume to a place in
the food court called Hot Dog on a Stick. You had to wear this goofy
multi-colored uniform and hat, just a bit less ridiculous than Judge
Reinholdâs in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
I turned out not to be Hot-Dog-on-a Stick material. I told myself I was
overqualified. The situation with the in-laws had hit critical mass. Kim
and I pondered our options. This whole west coast adventure had turned
into a nightmare. Her 2001 Nissan Altima was in their garage. We
seriously considered getting in, putting on our Supertramp greatest hits
CD, turning on the engine, and going to sleep. Another plan was to make
our way down to Arizona to link up with her other brother, Ben. He
worked for the Renaissance Faire and traveled around the country
year-round. We had sold the car in the interim, and one day we struck
out south for AZ, on foot. I had one of those big backpacks you see on
oogles. We had her little terrier Tyson with us. It was a nice day, and
the walk was pleasant at first. We wound up following the river, then an
unused rail line. We came to a bridge and thoughts of âStand By Meâ came
to me as I looked at the precipitous drop if we should slip or trip.
There was no railing or anything to stop us if we were to fall. It was
only a bit wider than the track. I had my wife go first, so I could grab
her or the dog if anything should occur. Before we got halfway across,
she had started crawling on all fours and was hysterically crying. I
donât know what we wouldâve done if a train had suddenly come round the
bend. Well, we wouldâve died. After that wonderful experience, we came
upon a rail tunnel through a large hill. It was this large black hole.
Alarm bells went off in my brain as we stood there in terror. It was
either go through it or retreat back over the hell bridge... I fished a
flash light out of my pack, and it flickered as I flipped it on. We
cautiously entered and saw evidence of past human habitation via the dim
flashlight bulb. Graffiti (âJIMMYâS A FAGETâ), shopping carts, plastic
Steel Reserve 40 bottles, human feces, empty cans of Spaghetti-Os. I
hoped and prayed with every atom of my being that any inhabitants
werenât still home. Every horror movie Iâd ever seen came flooding back
to me. The wind through the tunnel, dripping water, and our own
footsteps were all we heard as we made our way through this seemingly
endless black void. Kim was gripping my right arm so tightly that I
started to lose feeling in my hand. Halfway through, we saw a mattress
with what looked like a large pool of brown dried blood on it. My wife
had her face tightly pressed to my chest by then. One solace was that
Tyson seemed unconcerned. I thought that heâd notice any dangers before
wedid. Finally, after twenty minutes or so of white-knuckling it, we
came out into the glorious light. We danced, laughed, and hooted, in
celebration of not being murdered in some hideous way. After walking
most of the day, weâd only made it to the suburbs south of town. After
spending the night shivering in the woods, we shamefully negotiated a
return trip to her brotherâs through Kimâs mom. That same day, I got a
call. I had gotten a jobâŠ
I got a call from Mary, the S-Mart HR person. Could I come in to fill
out some paperwork and do my drug screen? I had gotten some Niacin pills
from Timothy (not Tim), my brother- in-law. My in-laws and wife smoked
weed 24/7, so it was difficult for me not to. It felt almost rude to
decline. The niacin pills were terrible, but supposedly cleaned up your
urine before testing. 10 minutes after ingestion, your face would turn
bright crimson and youâd have serious hot flashes. Sweat would ooze from
your pores, and I suppose this is how it worked. I passed the test... I
had to go twice because another idiot, Judy, sent me on an extended bus
ride to the testing facility without the proper documents.
Iâve been at S-Mart for several years now, and have had some truly
hellish experiences, of course. A big part of my job is getting
customers to sign up for our Citigroup MasterCard, with 25% interest
rate. I get between $2 to $4 per application. My first few months in, I
had a very large guy in his twenties sign up. He got approved, then
suddenly became unhinged. As an incentive for applying and getting
approved, the customer gets $15 off of their first purchase with the
card. I explained this to the cretin, but he started babbling about how
I âlied toâ him. He bellowed at me, âYouâre retarded! Youâre a nerd!â I
looked up at him (he was about 6â4), and calmly said, âThe only person
being retarded right now, is YOU.â This really set him off, and he
started following me over to Home Electronics. He wound up being ejected
by security. Itâs amazing I havenât been fired yet. I have a tendency to
act out when feeling bored or put upon. Iâve asked out customers at
work. I told another guy to shove a shop vac up his ass. He promptly ran
over and tried to get me fired. Iâve come into work completely stoned
and/or drunk. One of my previous supervisors, whose dad was a state pig,
attempted to get me terminated because I âsmelled like marijuanaâ and I
had physically threatened a particularly odious co-worker in front of
the store. Iâve been sober now for over 3 months.
I grew up in a bourgeois environment. Went to private Catholic schools
for several years until I was asked to leave in middle school. Grew up
in a big house with a swimming pool in white-flight rural Maryland.
Since the early â90s, Iâve been on my own. I failed out of college in
â93. Iâve worked as a day laborer, janitor, factory worker, night stock
boy in a grocery, warehouse drone, you name it. All of the ancoms and
communists who fe- tishize the working class or workers make me laugh.
My experience with the working class has been far from romantic. Iâve
worked with some really cool and chill folks, but many (or most) have
been a bunch of snitches and worms who would sell me (or you) out at the
first opportunity. Their worldview(s) are and were pretty horrifying
too. I had a redneck who worked at the grocery store feel the need to
tell me--unprompted--on the first day that he âhated ALL niggersâ and
wanted to âthrow them in a huge hole and cover it up.â A woman at the
box plant wanted to ânuke the Middle Eastâ and âkill all Muslims.â I
could go on and on.
We have these idiotic morning pep rallies before the store opens. They
alternately praise and chastise us for our performance. They were
forcing us to recite what I would call a âcult chantâ at the start. The
manager would say, âWhy are we here??â And we would bleat in response,
âTo serve, delight, and engage our members while they shop their way.â I
would refuse to say it, and even started using my hand as a puppet, my
fingers silently mouthing the words in lieu of speaking them. We had a
store manager from Germany three or four years ago. She would yell, âVy
aw vee heer?!â Sheâd get really excited, point her finger in the air,
and say, âYou must WOW the member!â But it would come out : âYou must
VOW ze memba!â I mocked her relentlessly behind her back, with sieg
heils and nazi references, of course, and Iâm pretty sure my coworkers
told her. I made the mistake of friending some of them on Facebook, but
soon had to block them when I discovered they were showing or forwarding
some of my more colorful posts to management. Our current store manager,
Melissa, is Mrs Perky Pants. She talks in this âValley Girlâ speak. She
sounds sorta like Will Smithâs sister on Fresh Prince of Bel Air. She
introduced herself on the first day as a âperfectionistâ who doesnât
âtolerate failure.â We grinned at each other because we all knew she was
in for a very rough ride. She then proceeded to inform us that her
husband was a cop. âI LOVE the police!â I felt my sphincter
involuntarily tighten and a thin sheen of perspiration start on my upper
lip.
S-Mart has been around since the late nineteenth century. With so many
consumers shopping on Amazon and other online retailers, traditional
âbrick- and-mortarâ stores arenât faring so well. S-Mart has been
experiencing whatâs referred to as âcorporate failure.â Theyâre
hemorrhaging money. Recording losses every year in the millions. Their
CEO is a former hedge fund guy who has been systematically dismantling
and selling off the companyâs assets. Heâs been closing less profitable
stores and selling the buildings. S-Martâs tool line was sold a few
months ago. My store was featured in the local paper as one slated to
close last December. Weâre still open, but the store looks like shit and
staffing/hours have been cut to ridiculous levels. Sometimes it just me
for hours alone on my floor, attempting to run appliances and hardware,
the phone constantly ringing, customers walking out in a huff. We
eliminated our electronics department. One happy development is that
right now, we have no âloss preventionâ or store detectives. They would
catch shoplifters, junkies, tweakers, and just poor folks. Iâd often see
cops taking some poor slob out in handcuffs. They mostly watched us, and
there are cameras all over the sales floor and store. They would rat us
out for any trivial thing. Management goes in the camera room to spy on
us or check the video from earlier in the day to nail us for something
or other. I often see and have witnessed kleptomaniacs going down the
escalator with tool sets, drills, even bicycles, and pretend not to
notice. We have one security clown in our store who floats between two
locations and is like a band aid on a severed limb. The other day, he
ran upstairs and shouts, âDid you see two black guys come up here?!â
Thereâs been so much thievery since they cut LP, that whole walls are
almost empty in the tool area. I see the same speed freaks with sores
all over their faces come upstairs two or three times a day to pilfer a
tool or headphones. All we can do is laugh about what a joke our store
and this company is. It deserves to go under, for the shitty pay and
benefits, and the way they treat their employees. They took away our
meager employee discount in January. I get emails from corporate and
âEddie,â the CEO. They talk about S-Martâs âtransformation.â A
particularly amusing recent email discussed how theyâd made the âtough
decisionâ to lay off 130 workers in their Midwest corporate offices.
Morale is at an all-time low in our store. Melissa still trots out in
the morning and gives her motivational spiel. âSmiles on the tiles
today, guys! I wanna see smiles on the tiles!â
The bones of Mayuk, the grizzly, lay strewn amongst the bones of the
forest that once had been her home, the same forest where, not long ago,
a small group of people (including myself) stood up against the
governments, the corporations, the Indian Government, and their agents
the RCMP. We had tried to protect this forest and failed.
Mayuk, like the trees that once stood here, is now no more, her
destruction is irreversible, as is the effects of this forest and these
types of clear-cut logging practices, which are causing landslides,
which are destroying the watershed, which is eliminating fish-spawning
habitat along with the habitat of so many other species, including our
own.
Presently governments, corporations, and their agents, are working
together to destroy the water, air, and food, which is beyond foolish.
Despite the evidence that this is our reality, many people still argue
that this is an unalterable necessity because of economics. Those people
frighten me as much as the compliant who choose to follow, never think,
and who are always silent.
The strewn remains of our fire is the only evidence that this is the
same location where a beautiful forest full of life and complex
ecosystems once thrived. Now those stones sit next to one of the
far-too-many ugly clear cuts that scar occupied Native territories.
Technically the clear cutters leave a few trees standing so they can
deny what they are doing: clear cut logging in forbidden areas so they
are loophole clear cuts. The trees that remain standing often fall
without the support of the forest. The logging practices that have been
creating issues with the waterways, fish habitat, and water quality
haveâdespite a great deal of effort to stop themâcontinued unabated
since 1969. Almost fifty years of struggling against the system for the
basic human right to clean water has only resulted in evidence of a
sickness that impersonates a democracy, and with no effective
environmental land steward ship, much less any concern for the health
and well being of the citizens it claims to to protect.
On a clear December day a few years ago, I sat alongside my family
members and participated in a ceremony beside that fire. Our spiritual
ceremony was interrupted rudely by agents of the crown, the RCMP, who
tend to show up when a corporation is paying for a civil order but
refuse to act whenever a person is being subjected to criminal activity,
violence, or abuse. We werenât surprised; the fact that they had long
planned to log that area was not unknown and the community had been
rallying against the logging for half a century to no avail.
Sadly the fact is most if not all of the people who rely on these
resources to survive do realize the horrible situation they face but are
completely flummoxed, or so they claim, when it comes to what to do
about it. They attempt to work within the system believing that the
systems have been put into place to prevent and protect them and
eventually all they discover is that their systems are simply convoluted
and pointless. The established environmentalists fail because they
refuse to acknowledge colonialism, or the genocide they too willingly
participate in. They do not understand that they have no treaties here,
yet are willing to promote the rights of the corporation over the rights
of the people, which is how British Columbia came to be; they believe a
crown trade monopoly trumps the rights of the existing nations. What
they fail to understand is that they to have no rights and they are the
ones who will suffer the consequences, not the corporations.
Moratoriums, law suits, petitions, and bringing up the issue at the
legislature all have had no impact; they continue to sell our timber,
our minerals, our fish, our water, and even our land despite the fact
that our land is unceded and no treaty exists between our Nation and the
foreign one destroying our territories. They continue to apply European
names to our territories, waterways, lands, and peoples while blatantly
denying that white supremacy is the underlying problem. Anything and
everything is being sold off to any and all comers without any
consultation with the communities, native or non-, and this is just how
it has always been since colonization. Nothing has changed, we have just
as few rights as Mayuk and the rest of the life that has long been part
of our territory.
Before the RCMP arrived that December day there were many unhappy people
in the area, some were members of local environmental organizations who
have long fought this issue. Most simply represented themselves. Most
would think that different people all being threatened in a similar
manner would serve to bridge the gap and give us the opportunity to heal
and move forward together to positive solutions, but that is not what is
happening here. Solidarity is not happening and equality is nowhere to
be seen.
After the RCMP arrived most of the home-owning non-native
environmentalists over the age of thirtyâwhich was the majority of the
groupâran off and hid in the forest, and the professional, fund-raising,
grant-collecting environmentalists led the way. They left elders,
disabled, and youth to fend for ourselves. This happened because older
Canadians are not well educated as to their civil rights and right to
protest; they also mistakenly believe that an arrest on a civil
injunction will result in having a criminal record, losing their jobs,
and all such other nonsense. Basically they fear the economic impact
because they are human beings under complete monetary control.
Those of us left, including a seventy nine year old elder, were
outnumbered by the RCMP. The police are often predatory in nature, they
are opportunists, and I did witness some violence due to their
involvement. An older residential school survivor was brutalized, as
were most of the youth. I witnessed one slight young man being torn
right out of his shoes by thug cops.
Once the RCMP had the young people taken away, their senior officer came
to the sacred fire where only native women sat and politely addressed
the elder Xwuâpâaâlich asking her to leave the site. She looked him
directly in the eyes and responded, âYou know I canât do that.â and so
began a stalemate that was very longâand I imagine very expensive
considering how many officers were present. The officers ceased their
arrests and simply stood in the cold waiting for instruction, the
logging operator was present as well, waiting. The ceremony continued,
the negotiations continued long into the day. This is a right by
tradition and it is also a right Canada has given us and is supposed to
respect, but does not.
When they removed Xwuâpâaâlich from the mountain later that day they
arrived to find a large crowd outside the station protesting against the
shameful act of removing an indigenous elder and respected member of
their community from her own land. The police were pretty uneasy about
what they had just done, the truth is they are not well-loved at the
best of times, not by any rational people at least.
Later in the day some of us were released but kept under police
surveillance. This civil order was very expensive and a waste of energy:
tailing octogenarian volunteers on their way to their knitting for the
homeless group. These resources would better serve by protecting us from
dangerous people who cause harm in the community. Policing is a novel
concept, but here it is only a concept. This is a corporate system that
fears repercussions for the conditions it creates, which is misery and
nothing more.
Not long after in occupied Vancouver a judge found in our favor and the
police had to back off. At the trial the crowd in the courtroom refused
to stand for the judge who represented the queen, but did stand for the
elders who came to defend the land defenders. No local justices would
sign this order, but they finally found one in a place called Vernon,
which is a considerable distance from here. The accommodating justice
who would sign an order that violated native and citizens rights also
acted against the Secwepemc people when their unceded land was being
developed during the 2004 Sun Peaks Resort protest, again on unceded
indigenous territory.
Presently there is another blockade, it has been active for a month, and
once again it is being manned primarily by elders and disenchanted youth
who have voluntarily come to stand for the native elders. The youth make
camps at the blockade and live on site, out doors, in the cold and wet,
only coming off the mountain to get supplies or for work. Neither they
nor the elders are professional environmentalists, who are home owners
and very comfortable allowing the most marginalized people to put
themselves at risk on their behalf.
What I am witnessing is the deep divide between younger and older
Canadians. The youth are far more aware, they understand that it is
about racism and colonialism; they are also marginalized people, unlike
their parents. The youth of today are aware that their country is
economically and morally bankrupt and they have been condemned as
corporate slaves in retail and service industries, earning less than
they need for the essentials of life. So far there has been no
injunction against this blockade, the last company backed down and we
hope this one will consider the risk and expense of pursuing legal
actions not viable at this timeâthis is highly likely with the economic
realities as they are. We may be fortunate enough to avoid another
confrontation with the RCMP.
The logging has created ongoing land slides, and also is one cause of
dropping water levels. At this point the salmon cannot return to spawn.
The other cause is that there are simply too many people using too much
water from the same source that the salmon use to spawn.
Illegal land development has had a catastrophic effect. The populations
grew considerably when the economy was at its peak in the mid 2000s,
before the collapse in 2008. That population growth inspired more
development than the water supply could possibly accommodate. Combined
with the changes in weather patternsâless snow in winter along with long
and very dry hot summersâthe coastal region is now experiencing serious
water shortages. Just as the economies collapsed in 2008, the Canadian
housing bubble inflated, the value of homes here increased seven
percent, which resulted in a ten percent more revenue going into
government coffers. This increase in property value, although created by
disreputable banking types, also inspired many shady corporate types to
begin acquiring, logging, and developing more and more land including
the watershed; it is all on the development block. The target consumer
for this highly priced real estateâin a community where clean drinking
water is not available and everything else is in short supplyâare
retiring Canadian seniors. Mostly these consumers have failed to
materialize, however the development plansâmuch like the plans for
pipelines and frackingâcon- tinue unabated.
Garbage and other items people no longer have a use for often find their
way into the creeks, streams, and rivers. While walking the dry creek
bed where the salmon used to spawn I found an automobile that had lain
there for years. Not that far from that spot a contractor has thrown
contaminated materials, asbestos, and all of the government paperwork,
next to the watershed. Further down the road there is a couch in a
stream. Basically you cannot turn around without finding more illegal
dumping. The smell of motor oil is not uncommon because that is how it
is disposed around here. The residents of the coast are doing just as
much to shit on their own plates as the government and industry; they
have the same contempt for the Mother Earth and other life forms as they
have towards native people. Personally when I am on the coast I do not
drink the tap waterâactually I do not trust it anywhere.
Canadians have long begrudged the âspecial benefitsâ that native people
receive. Most of the violence, hostility, and racism we endure is from
envy over fictional benefits, things that native people do not actually
receive. We are far less discriminatory on our occupied territories than
the settlers who live in the nice houses in the nice neighbourhoods, yet
they are sharing the same rez water as the natives who live in a
shithole ghetto that sits between the power lines and the open pit mine.
Many other settlers on other territories are beginning to experience the
same special benefits as the indigenous people: poor water, poverty,
inadequate health care.
So at long last we will soon have equality and they will no longer feel
so excluded. What can one expect when even for such horrendous crimes as
the ones at the residential schools, no effort is put towards
prosecuting the offenders, many of whom remain at large in our
communities today. We cannot expect justice or concern, that is for
sure.
The fact is there is more than adequate water, it falls from the skies
regularly. However, even in this dire situation I see no evidence of
rain water collection. Even though the salmon can no longer return I
have found no evidence that the department of fisheries has had any
involvement at any point during the forty seven year problem,,The people
who rely on fishing for their living have seen no evidence either. Even
though the salmon cannot return, the people who fundraise on behalf of
the salmon who spawn in that creek continue to gather money. Never do I
hear a word about the illegal dumping, nor do I see much effort to clean
it up. I am pretty sure petro-dollars are not edible, drinkable, or
breathable, however they seem to be the only thing most people are
concerned about, even people in the environmental movement.
There are fundamental systems in place that predate any that human
societies have created. These systems cannot be ignored in favor of
fantasies we have been foolishly creating. Our existence relies on these
systems continuing to provide us with the elements we all need to
survive, clean air, water, and food. These things are in very limited
supply and it is the responsibility of each and every one of us to
protect and conserve our precious resources. Failure to do so is an act
of suicide.
Stories of Land Defense and Indigenizing
Interviewer: Goat
This conversation was recorded in the recently constructed Healing
Center at the Unistâotâen Camp. For the past 6 years, the Unistâotâen
clan of the Wetâsuwetâen Nation have been occupying their traditional
territory and preventing government and industry from entering the land
to build pipelines that would transport tar sands and fracked gas to the
global market. The Unistâotâen Camp has served as a site of inspiration
where land defenders from disparate regions can meet, network, plan,
learn from the Unistâotâen strategy, seek wisdom, and heal.
Days at camp are spent tending the infrastructure of the site, being
with the river that has been protected as a result of the imagination
and responsibilities assumed by the Unistâotâen, conversing, cooking,
and laughing. Nights are spent beneath the stars, huddled around a fire
with fellow comrades, sharing stories, planning, and laughing. While I
was at the camp this winter I met Ishkadi and Lo âoks, Tatsetan Brothers
who are regular occupiers and visitors of Unistâotâen, and whose
territory is 4 hours drive north from there. They had stopped over at
camp en route to their land. One night as some of us were drinking tea
and eating snacks, they began to share stories about their home, their
language, and their work defending their territories from industry.
Several of us stayed up late into the night with the brothers, riveted
by their stories and their particular cadence as a duo. What is printed
below comes largely from what they shared that night. This conversation
was made possible in part by the unique space created by the Unistâotâen
where indigenous and settler radicals can encounter each other and share
their stories.
âI Like Devilâ: Pop Culture, Punk, the Church, and School on the Iskut
Reservation
Ishkadi grew up colonized on Iskut Indian Reservation No. 6, in
so-called Northwestern British Columbia, in Tahltan territory. He has
been involved in direct action and blockades in defense of his peopleâs
territory for over 10 years. He is pursuing the reclamation of his
indigenous identity.
toâoks was born in a hospital outside of Tahltan territory. He grew up
pursuing guidance and wisdom from his elders, especially his grandma and
grandpa. In his spare time he is crafting a diabolical scheme to
dominate the world. He calls it âWorld Peace.â Ishkadi and toâoks are
brothers and they are the two youngest speakers of Tahltan in the world,
of which there are currently less than 30 speakers.
toâoksâtoâoks ushye. Tlabane nasde. Tlâabanotâin sini jaâ. My name is
toâoks. I am from Tlâabane. And I am Tlâabanotâin.
IshkadiâIshkadi ushye. Châiyone es-datsehi. Tlâabanotâin sini jaâ
Talsetan sini jaâ. My name is Ishkadi. I am Wolf Clan. I am Tlâabanotâin
of Tatsetan people, what they call Tahltan. We grew up in a reservation,
ind res no. 6. The iskut first nations. We were contained there for most
of our lives. Pretty much what we know is res living. We grew up with
our grandparents who didnât let us forget what we are. They always told
us, âdonât be white. Donât forget where you come from.â Not necessarily
saying we come from the res. They brought us out. They gave us tools to
survive on the territory, living on the land, and they also taught us
culture and language.
tâFor me I had a good vocabulary growing up, but I never could find or
understand âcolonizationâ as a concept growing up. Like I could see it,
but I couldnât make it out. My whole vision as a young boy was to grow
up back on the land and to not live in modern day life. Living out in
the woods was exotic to me, it was something that we never did in those
days. And it was something I wanted to pursue as I got older. And I
looked up to my grandparents because they are the closest window I have
for that path. They are the ones who helped me along with that path from
the beginning.
IâYeah, it all has to do with, it came in stages. As a youngster I had
no clue about it.
I never really sought out particularly decolonization, I never really
quite understood anything. We grew up contained in a res, but we also
had small increments of going out on the territory for days or weeks.
Then we came back to the res. But Iâve always been looking for
something. When I was a kid playing with my older brother and our
cousin, my older brother would always choose to be the good guy, and
toâoks was a sidekick, like he was a supporting character in our games,
not a main character, and I was always the bad guy. So as early as that,
I never went what was the so-called âgood path.â
t -Yeah, our older brother had access to a lot of music and we would
listen to music he listened to. And one of the bands he liked was Guns N
Roses and at that point we shifted from the good side to the bad side.
(laughing...) We never really said like, âWe are gonna be bad all the
timeâ, but it was something cool, like we canât be good all the time.
I -There was something attractive about that to us because we would
always ask our friends, and we were just kids, and we would be like, âDo
you like angel or devil?â They all said angel and me and my brother
would be like, âNo we like the devil!â (laughing...) That appealed to
us. That kind of mentality was just inborn.
Now, reflecting on it that was part of us transitioning into what they
call âdecolonization.â And it all started with pop culture. We grew up
with pop culture. Everything about us. Like we can recall movies and
seedy movies we saw that challenged society. We listened to music that
was abrasive and was good and a lot of people would say, âYou canât
dance to itâ and we didnât care, it was something else. Eventually, as
we got older, in our age of self-assurance, we were still pretty
colonized in a sense, meaning things were still Biblical. In my case I
went completely against religion. That was the thing I went against, and
everything about me was like, Fuck Jesus and Fuck the Bible, and
everything, it was a different dichotomy, in a sense it was
decolonization, but it wasnât targeted at anything, it was just
basically aiming my target at Christian religion. Then I came up with so
many different rationales, like they burnt so many witches in Europe,
and killed so many people in all these places, but I had no clue what
they had done to indigenous people. Thatâs what I was missing. But I
still looked for other things in Nihilism and Anarchism and Satanism,
and all these different things that wasnât Christianity. But because we
grew up with Christianity, I went against it within the rules.
tâMy thing was trying not to do the same thing everyone else was doing.
Iâve always wanted to do something different than everyone else. During
school, colors of clothing was a big thing. Girls had their own thing
that was colorful, and all the colors the guys had were black, or white
if you were trying to be preppy. All the colors were really plain. The
jeans, black jeans, black or blue jeans. All predictable. I settled on
gray. That became something that fit me: gray. Iâve always preferred
something in the middle of something. Everything was always medium. Like
I would have medium shirts, medium pants, and gray always seemed to be a
color to stick by because itâs between everything. Instead of sticking
to one side, I observed all sides. When I was young I would ask my
parents, âWhy do we have to go to school?â âSo you can learn,â they
would say. âWhy do we have to learn?â âTo get a job.â âWhy do you need
to get a job?â âFor money.â And I remember being a toddler asking my
parents that and when I got older I would ask my teachers and guidance
counselors that and the answer was always the same and that goes with
everybody. It was all the same. And I didnât want my life to go in that
direction. And by the time I get to the end of high school everyone was
graduating-
IâAnd we were taken by that whole ethos, and it kind of started to
change when we ventured off of everyone elseâs music. And we went into
kind of a metal phase. This was long before the internet, this was
underground stuff. Back at home, no one knew about black metal, death
metal. This was strictly our thing because only we knew about it, no one
else had that. And the thing that was cool about them and all these
other metal rockers and punk rockers was that they had no jobs and they
said Fuck the System Fuck Society and Fuck Jobs and we were really taken
by that. And we were kids and we hated that stuff. We didnât want
nothing to do with it. We hated school. That was another part of our
decolonization, was getting away from school.
tâYeah, when we were in high school, we struggled with marks to pass,
eventually we both gave up-
IâNot quite giving up, we resistedâŠ
tâWe revolted. I donât want to write an essay on something I wasnât
really interested in. If a teacher gave me something to do, Iâm not
going to be interested in it because a teacher is telling me what to do.
IâExactly. And we hated when people told us what to do. That is one of
the reasons why we hated the church and everything.
tâI remember our cousin who had a girlfriend and he was about to
graduate, and he told us later on that his girlfriend said, âJust think
after we graduate weâll just be workinâ for the rest of our lives.â And
he told us that and we said, âFuck...â like, thatâs a scary thought!
(laughing...) That was like the worst thing to do! I didnât want that,
but it was like, we all have to do it. And if you donât go down that
road its gonna be dark and sad, you gonna be an addict, you gonna have a
bad life, you not gonna have good health, and you wonât sustain yourself
and you most likely will die of starvation or whatever.
IâWe stayed true. Weâve had dreams of becoming something bigger, better,
not being in the system. But eventually the system was all around us.
Like we worked, that
was the worst thing I did. That was the worst thing I did, I thought âI
look stupid.â I felt stupid. We spent the better part of our years
getting paid pretty much, doing stuff in the system. Giving the
government numbers for non-indigenous people. Every job Iâve had its
always gone against my principles, every one of them. Itâs pretty much
just grunt work, at the bottom, giving data, numbers or whatever, if it
wasnât making white people rich, it was serving white people for their
recreation times. It was always like that, the only way we could get
money is that way. I used to be employed for the Tahltan Fisheries. When
you think about the Tahltan Fisheries you think,
The Tahltan manage their own fisheries, but in reality theyâre just
employing Tahltan members in this field-and we were doing pretty high
level stuff, and getting paid and all-collecting data like measurements,
scales from fish, DNA samples, and you count them. So all those numbers,
theyâre not Tahltan numbers. You give them to the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans. Thatâs Canadian, thatâs a Canadian Department.
This is the reality that we all grew up with and I didnât like doing
shit for the Canadian Government, and there are a lot of principles I
broke just to get paid. It went from that work to hunting guide
outfitters and these rich white people would come visit our territory
and they pay the guide money and they take them out on a hunt to get
trophies, the biggest males of whatever, and me and my brother would do
the same thing and we would pretty much make fires to guide the
tourists, and it was fine. It was outside, it was physical work, it did
us better in the long run because at that time we were still getting
paid by the man. Thatâs what we hated. This system meant the man. And
not just any man, it was like the white man, the patriarchal male.
tâIt wasnât just the man. The image of the man was a white man who was
above all.
IâIt wasnât like a woman. A patriarchal woman is different than a
patriarchal male. And at the same time we developed a critique of the
macho man, and we know them as bros now. We were homophobic in our
teenage years but we grew out of that in our later years.
tâWe quickly grew out of that in our early teens, because of our
exposure to television which gave us insight to what was happening in
the world, like Womenâs Liberation, and the acceptance of homosexuality
and all of those things, we had access. We understood what was going on
the world. In the location where we lived, television was a big deal.
Iskut had many channels while other towns hardly had much television.
Because we had television with many channels we had access to learn what
was going on outside our world.
IâSo you add pop culture, and the fact that toâoks and I are two
like-minded individuals, and another factor is our ability to think, and
another factor is our ability to converse with each other. So we
developed a sense of difference and we went against every homophobe out
there, and we went against Christianity and religion, and we even went
against capitalism even though the jobs we did, every job we did was
pretty much capitalism. Whenever the money came from a rich person on
their vacation, it was never quite indigenous owned money, and if it was
indigenous ownedâthey didnât own it. They were just underlings of
another person that owned it. This was us in the system. We tried to
make the system work in our favor and it never quite did because it was
everywhere, so our path of decolonization was more internal from then
on, like in our early 20s-
IâWe had two choices: we can finish school, go out, continue school, or
get a job... tââDo well!â
Iâbe a part of the system, or we can stay back, quit school, and just
live the common res life, we can go look for bootleg 50 dollar bottles
everyday, go look for some job destroying our territory, go do all the
drugs we want, and that would be our life. And we didnât want to take
any of those routes, those were just like dead end routes to us, so we
decided to-
tâBut it separated us from all the other things we were tied to, once we
had to go to school its kind of like youâre tied to do work, and not
doing what we want to do. And our friends kept going on doing their own
thing, and within the community we stayed away from them. So we were
isolated from our friends in our community because our interests were
different. And some of them stayed, some moved elsewhere, and would come
in and out.
IâSome of them are really active members of society.
Teenagers hanging with their Grandparents: Reconnecting with Language
and Life
tâAnd what we always ended up doing is just going to our grandparents.
We would always pay visits to our grandparents all the time. Because
thatâs the only thing to do. And not only the only thing to do but the
only interesting thing to do. Because thatâs who we come from and we
learned a lot from them. Growing up, we were around them, so they were
people to hang around with and help and they taught us a lot of things.
So going to our grandparents was a refuge from everyday life.
IâThere was a point when toâoks started learning to speak the language
and I started later, but it was really hard to get our grandparents to
teach us at first because of the reservation mentality. The thing with
the reservation is the colonizers separated people from the land to keep
them away from the land and they contained them in the res and used that
system to keep them away from the resources that were on the land that
they want to exploit, and they kept the Indians, us Indians, away from
the settlers that came to occupy the territory and then on top of that
they created laws that prohibited us from being Indian, with the Indian
Act, and then they created Residential Schools, and they took kids away
from the community into residential schools, and the reason the
residential schools were created was to kill the Indian in the child.
That was the plan from John A. McDonald, the guy on the Canadian 5
dollar bill, he developed a lot of these systems, he was a white
supremacist and his whole model was to kill all the Indians. And then
these kids went to the residential schools and they had to have their
hair cut, and hair is a big deal to indigenous people, they had their
hairs cut to suit the colonial mold. They gotta look presentable, be
good Indians, and they told the kids they canât speak their language,
and itâs like a no good language, a primitive language, they instilled
that it was bad to speak that language and on top of that they were
prevented from singing their songs. Priests and teachers and the whole
government really enforced this policy. Those kids grew up thinking it
was bad to be Indian and then, if they were lucky, they would get to go
back home, for the summer. Their home was on the reservation, and on top
of that they had laws right up until the 1940s that said the Indians
couldnât leave the reservation, they had a curfew. In their own home
they were told that they were not to go out. So the generational affect
of Residential Schools and the Reservation System is traumatic nowadays
because people think itâs just only the Residential Schools and day
schools and such. With day schools, our uncle would tell a story that
Indian agents, priests, and RCMP officers came to our grandpaâs house
and said, âIf you donât put those kids in school, weâre gonna arrest
youâ Uncle John remembers all his siblings right there, and grandma was
taking it in and she had to take her kids to school. This was from when
our great grandfather was keeping our grandfather in the trap lines,
away from the Residential Schools. And so they caught up with his kids,
and they were mistreated in day school too. My dad and mom would tell us
stories. So youâve got the education system there that would tell the
Indians that they were bad, but the reservation system itself is just as
bad. Itâs keeping Indians from our territory to the point that when we
go camping, we called it camping. Our grandparents never called it
camping; it was going to Buckley Lake. It was going to, wherever. Like,
certain spots of the territory. And in our language, we would never
learn that, âgoing campingâ The word for going camping could be loosely
translated as, âgoing to live there, going to lay down there, going to
sleep thereâ Itâs like Iâm gonna live there, Iâm gonna stay there.
tâThereâs a whole different concept of home, and living. Home is not
just a house.
In our language, [home] involves the whole territory, thatâs what keeps
you living.
The whole territory provides the food you eat, the water you need to
drink, and if you donât take more than you need you could sustain
yourself forever. Living is another thing. When you say âI live over
thereâ in English, youâre pointing to a house where you go to sleep. But
in our language, we say Nasdeh, which means âIâm going to bedâ, or âI
stay here.â Because our people were nomadic, every night was a different
place we stayed. They never stayed in one place year-round. Every night
is a different country, throughout the whole territory. And so your
nights are spread out through the whole territory. So if you go to say
âI live over thereâ it translates to âI stay thereâ like âIâm staying
the night.â Itâs a nomadic language, from a nomadic lifestyle. If you
come into a village, and you make a tent in one spot, and then everyone
else has their tents in their spots, and you meet your friend and they
say Da da nande, it means like âWhere you stay,â it means youâre
pointing at a tent, âI stay over there, I live over thereâ âCause itâs
only for a short time, then youâre going to have to move on. You are
constantly moving on; you never stay in one place.
IâItâs still that captive curfew mentality that our people go through.
The colonizers put everything on that reservation, the funding, the
unhealthy foods, all the water, whatever, itâs all there, the housing,
the medical, the education, all that, itâs still that we need it. We
need those jobs.
The aid, social studies, science, English, math. We need to speak
English, we need everything that the colonizers say, thatâs what the
reservation represents.
tâIt gave all of us the things we needed to live, like education, go to
school and get a job to earn money. Everything is there, and we lost our
knowledge of how to do all of that on our own land. We lost our
medicines to heal us.
IâIt wasnât lost, it was taken from us.
tâIt was taken, and it hasnât been practiced, so instead of learning it
ourselves we go to a clinic because itâs convenient.
IâAnd itâs free, thatâs the whole thing. That word is a big thing in
this capitalist society. Now that Indians get âfree medical,â âfree
education.â The Indians get âtax-freeâ gasoline and tobacco. And
everybody says, âOh wow itâs free!â ya know? Really, thatâs just a
colonial tool to use to keep the Indians from being Indian. The
colonizers have done their job really well, the system is perfect to
trick Indians into thinking like that. This is what makes us different,
we can rationalize that, to us that is not cool, itâs not right, and
this is what makes us want to be different. Weâve always had that sense
of doing something else, not fitting in with the status quo of what we
were supposed to be doing. When we learned our language, that was a huge
thing. That opened up a lot of doors because we realized after speaking
the language of our grandparents and our ancestors, we opened up a whole
different doorway of lifestyle and way of living. It was a completely
different thing because we grew up white, Iâll say that all the time,
âwhen I used to be whiteâ Because thatâs what colonialism is, thatâs
what the reservation is, what the education is, that was everything that
weâve been spoon-fed ever since we were kids. Thatâs what that is,
thatâs the affects of colonization. Then youâve got two choices; go to
school and become pretty much white. When we were younger, our elders
would say, âOh that person turned white.â Meaning that theyâre making
money, theyâre rich, theyâre doing well in society, theyâre the ones we
would refer to now as sellouts. They come back all pompous, they come
back all arrogant. Oh look, they made it! Thatâs the thing, they feed
off of other people who look at them and say, âIâm proud of you, I look
at you and you make me proud.â Other people, who have not done that,
would look up to them as proud, hard workers. Even people who would go
to work in the mines, and when they buy a new truck for themselves,
everyone looks to them as higher ranking in our reservation, a hard
worker. So having a brand new truck means youâre a hard worker. And that
just shows how far, how deeply, the colonial situation is, how perfect
that they made it. Now we donât need Indian agents to come into the
reservation. Our own people can colonize ourselves too. As we grew up,
hearing the same thing with our friends, âYou look too Indian, youâre
acting too Indian.â That was a common thing. So the biggest thing that
we did was starting to learn our language, and our grandparents were
really well versed in our language and the culture and everything. We
were lucky to have them around âcause they could explain specific words,
specific concepts, and everything. So we got a greater, indepth look
into how they see the world. And it opened our eyes up, spiritually,
emotionally, and everything like that. It really helped us heal, really
heal, in a way that was far different than any seminar you could ever
do. (laughingâŠ)
tâNot only just learning the language, but our grandparents, just from
their whole lives, what they grew up with, stayed with them their whole
lives. And what they wanted to tell us or teach us, they would tell us
very sternly. One time, a person had passed on, and we didnât know what
to think about it, so we went to visit our grandparents. Our grandpa
asked us,
âYou went to see the family?â
âWell, noâŠâ
âAre you going to? Regardless of what a person has done in their life,
no matter who it is, you respect them when they pass.â
He told us to go over to the family. When we went there, everyone
thanked us for coming. That was a great move,
I thought that things were gonna be different but it wasnât. It showed
high honor on us, of our presence being there, that changed my thinking
of how our people thought as well. I always thought that everyone was
against each other, but when we did that, it changed their thinking of
us, and our thinking of them as well.
âThe uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in
the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still
remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature,
A.D. 1776, Lin- nwus declares, âI hereby separate the whales from the
fishââ
Moby Dick
What do stones want? What do we make of their insistent silence? There
is a marked quality of difference in our existence and theirs but stones
know something of the unfulfilling, predictable routines of daily life.
For some of us finding meaning means being receptive to the language of
phosphorescent trails left below the surface. If stones have desires
they are likely to be as resistant to being expressed in words as ours
are.
In Melvilleâs novel the science of classifying whales is shown in an
unfinished state because scientific investigations are always
insufficient, cursory, and in process. Ish- mael feels that the study of
cetology should be left uncomplete like the âCathedral of Cologne.â When
we ask about the significance of the sea all rigid systems will
eventually fail us. Even as we cast our nets the whale has already
evaded capture. When the perceived world is torn from the worlds of our
bodies and our intersubjectivity, we risk losing full participation in
it all. But, if our purpose moves beyond detached inquiry to attunement
with the sediment, we can embody the wildly civilized and primitively
sophisticated. We can take human form to become flora.
During the Precambrian era, a major uplift occurred when two continents
collided. The intensity of the pressure caused sedimentary rocks to turn
to metamorphic rocks, magma to rise to the earthâs crust and the land to
fold, break and tumble until it became the Black Hills. Volcanic
activity contributed to the rise of the Northern Hills but to the south,
massive sheets of granite intruded the preexisting beds of sedimentary
and metamorphic rocks, including 2 billion year old quartzite,
phonolite, and, most notably, dark, bountiful rhyolite. The granitic
pegmatites that thrust into their elders were rippled through with
crystalsâ quartz, feldspar, and beryl.
According to Lakota storytelling when the world was created everything
was at peace. Every creature was a contented vegetarian. At some point
the bison began to think they were the strongest and decided to kill the
people and eat their meat. The humans said âThat>s not right we should
hunt you instead, itâs only fair.â To settle the matter a great race was
held. During the race, to decide who could consume whom, a track became
worn down and created the boundaries of Paha Sapa (the Black Hills). We
all know who the victors were. We won our right to eat flesh.
1.8 billion years of watery caresses reduced this jumble of angles to
rocky hillsides and clastic pebbles, sand, and clay, which in turn
solidified into outlying beds of sandstone, spreading itself over the
Dakota formation, the primary rock formation of the area, also
sandstone, but born of sand from different rocks.
âAs one group replaced another over the last several centuries, these
locations [in the Black Hills] continued to be recognized as sacred
locales and to operate within a system of ethno-astronomical and
mythological beliefs. The falling star myth cycle clearly illustrates a
belief in a dual universe, wherein star people in the sky and humans on
earth occupied analogous and sometimes interchangeable rolesâ
Mirror of Heaven
For the Lakota, like many traditional cultures, the line between the
earth and the sky is undifferentiated or even nonexistent. Looking up at
the constellations, we can still find any pattern we are open to
sensing. We can see one star as dried willow or a buffalo rib. One thing
can contain a duality or be tri-fold. Animismâfrom Anima. the Latin term
for lifeâsignals the existence of spirit in all objects and phenomena.
By this definition the stones are still breathing. We can have fervent
threesomes with the clouds and mountains. We can be penetrated by deer
antlers or dissolve in newly forming rivers.
If life is defined by death, reproduction, or movement, at what point
does a hill become an orgy?
Love is open to interpretation like all experiences. Trying to define it
with the precise use of language can never guarantee an exact answer. As
with attempts at understanding the leviathan with Cetology our
conclusions will always be incomplete. The erotic life of stones remains
obscure to the scientific gaze.
Much more recently after the formation of the Black Hills, just 40
million years ago, on the other side of the same land massâ a crescent
of granite mountains were born. They pushed themselves up above sea
level, as the land between them fell below it, creating the Columbia
Basin. Many volcanoes erupted into the basin, spurting lava over and
over again, flooding it with a thick layer of igneous rockâ the Columbia
Plateau. This flood of rock spilled the inland sea out into a river,
slowly parting the mountains and dampening valleys.
Love takes the forms of agape (God), platonic (Friendship), or eros
(Passion). Other times it is desire in a general sense. From philos we
get philosophy, the love of wisdom or of knowledge as if these are
necessarily equivalent. Philia from the greek denotes friendship. In
this sense the use of words like pedophilia, or âfriend of boysâ could
seem euphemistic. We know what one means by the cliche âI love the
sunset,â but what if they intended to say âI am unbearably aroused by
the Sunâs rays,â or âthe ocean gets me so wet?â
38 million years later, the Ice Age brought massive glaciers, ranging in
height from 5,000â10,000 feet past the Okanogan Valley. This dam of ice
trapped the river channels, causing more water to flood into the
Columbia Basin. With the original channel buried in ice, the Grand
Coulee began to form. How this happened and the length of time it took
remains a mystery. Some geologists believe a succession of floods carved
it out, while others claim the Columbia River itself slowly eroded it
away from the mountains in its search for a new path. It is impossible
to know for certain.
The old Cascade mountains rose up from the earth, but were unable to
stop the riverâs searchâ a deep ravine, the Columbia River gorge, was
formed. Whereas ice can halt the flow of water, rocks are destined to
acquiesce to it.
In Colville Indian mythology, Coyote wanted to help his friend
Kingfisher who wasnât having much luck catching salmon. Four sisters had
set up a trap preventing any big fish from swimming up the river. He
changed into a small wooden bowl and floated on the water until he got
caught in their trap. The sisters lifted the bowl from the river and
used it to hold leftover fish. The next morning the bowl was found
empty. At this point, one of the sisters became angry and threw a stone
at the wooden vessel. On impact it turned into a baby boy. The sisters
decided to keep the child because he would grow up and be helpful to
them. When the sisters left to find berries the coyote changed into a
man and started digging up the dam they had created to catch fish. Ever
since then there have been new rocks and rapids in the Columbia River
basin. Coyote had changed its course forever.
Arousal by thunderstorms is a little researched paraphilia.
Ichthyophilia is the sexual attraction to fish. When bears masturbate
they often fantasize about inflexible park rangers or lust after
zookeepers in captivity, much like human prisoners imagine guards in leg
irons, or how the bourgeoisie play with the idea of being possessed by
sinewy lumpen beasts. Ecology is a love for living systems. But, when we
speak of pleasure, suffering is never far from our lips. Love almost
always conceals a will to sacrifice. Eco-extremists like Reaccion
Salvaje communicate this when they seem to say âFuck the World!â
Near the end of the Ice Age, volcanic cones formed the high Cascades. As
the ice dams of the glaciers began to thaw and break apart, lakes as far
as Montana broke free and washed over the mountains and the Columbia
Basin, carrying with them large boulders and flooding the area in 400
feet of water, icebergs, and sediment. After the ice finally, fully
melted and the floods ebbed, the river was able to return to its former
bed, but the channeled scab lands and large coulees remain, torn through
by cataclysm.
It is sometimes said that nihilists are masturbators. Instead of getting
on with the hard work of existing the unbeliever revels in an empty
space that absolutely nothing can fill. Nietzscheâs die liebe zum leben
(the love for life) is offered as free of contradiction, but where is
the instrument of love located if not the mind, the flesh, or the will?
Physicist Erwin Schrodinger defined life as that which âdelays the decay
into thermodynamical equilibrium (death).â One popular definition of
biological life is that itâs a sexually transmitted and inevitably
terminal disease. Organic life is resistance to disorder (to order?) in
the final instance.
The tribal trickster in native storytelling also affirms life, but
almost always while upsetting the peculiarity of communal stillness. A
story from Gros Ventre mythology describes how Nixant came upon an
Elk-skull while he was going along (like he always does). He noticed
some white mice dancing inside. In some versions told to anthropologists
he wanted to stick his head inside so he could dance with them, in many
others he inserted something else and it got stuck. He may be used to
changing into water-monsters to grab young girls but sometimes he gets
caught. Spider acts like he does because death is unknowable to him,
this is not always the case for us but we can still learn something
about avoiding the embarrassment of getting snared. The desire to have
others take our inclinations as universal is a wish to make frozen the
constant movement in this moment preceding the void of non-life, to try
to hush a screaming world into silence. If the political pessimist finds
love privately in a clenched fist, social anarchists live to jerk-off on
other people in the streets. The indigenous erotisim of trickster
sexuality leads us to question who and what we should be defiling. Did
the Cascades and the Columbia River consent to be bound and ravaged by
glaciers? Are they proud to have survived their traumatic past or the
beauty born from it?
The Ho-chunk trickster speaks about his sexual organ in the third
person. His parts are more like individuated personas than the
components of some discrete self reflective creature. Trickster is
enacting a new game for humans to play that we could tentatively call
hierarchy. In the space of these stories the tribe is becoming a
body-like form that circles towards a hardening unity. The tricky-one
Wakjunkagas sense-of-self is constantly fractured and his body is in
metaphysical conflicts with itself. Always driven to feed his insatiable
lust he wears a stone around his neck in order to get hard. When his
penis is eventually severed the plants arrowleaf, tokewe- hira, pqxe,
pond lily, and dogâs tooth grow from his phallic root. Egoists sometimes
gesture towards a self devouring urge to an expanding union that the
Ho-Chunk âbeing of reversalsâ might recognize. To be clear we can become
clowns in this world but never incarnate the tricksterâs irreverent
flesh.
Individualidades tendiendo a lo Salvaje recently left an envelope
containing an explosive device that was found by a young girl in Mexico
City. Their communique expressed a desire for ever growing attacks on
the social fabric in all directions. âMay explosive love letters
proliferate!â The love of the unhuman is a welcomed novelty in anarchist
spaces but if we really want to be done with humanism, why not consider
setting the ancestral forests aflame and blowing up the sacred mountains
as well?
Although we inhabit the same streams and valleys, the different origin
stories we draw from have a defining influence on how we perceive our
world and what we are drawn towards. As coyote we are always starting
anew. When we see the trickster he is always in midstep. The clown is a
constant state of predicament. Omaha rabbit anally impregnated Iktinike
when they became winktes (two-spirits) for a day. Stones transform one
another. Cliffs turn to sediment. As we create our star maps we play
them out and become part of them. We are always redrawing them, because
the constellations are constantly shifting. What tales have we heard and
which will we retell?
When we discover an unknown star we might find a path to the former
world.
In Moby Dick, the savage Queequeg is from a place that is not on any
map, because âtrue places never are.â Melvilleâs native wants to
experience more from civilized society than the taxonomy of captive
whales. The boundaries and borders of the New World and the Old World
are drawn only by our navigational markings. They do not exist on any
chart. Humans are animals. Cetacea can still be fish. Stones can fuck.
When we cross oceans we can be sailors, boats, whales, or currents. In
our search will we become salmon who shatter themselves on concrete
dams, or warriors who throw ourselves from the Nochixtlan Rock to crash
onto the conquistadors below, or something else entirely?
Suggested reading:
Cataclysms on the Columbia. John Eliot Allen and Marjorie Burns with Sam
C. Sargent
Living Sideways: Tricksters in American Indian Oral Traditions. Franchot
Ballinger
Mirror of Heaven: Cross-Cultural Transference of the Sacred Geography of
the Black Hills. Linea
Sundstrom
Transmotion. Gerald Vizenor
âI hate the word peace, as I hate hell.â
-William Shakespeare
âI shall try to make plain the bloodiness of killing. Too often this has
been slurred over by those who defend hawks. Flesh- eating man is in no
way superior. It is so easy to love the dead. The word âpredatorâ is
baggy with misuse. All birds eat living flesh at some time in their
lives. Consider the cold-eyed thrush, that springy carnivore of lawns,
worm stabber, basher to death of snails. We should not sentimentalise
his song, and forget the killing that sustains it.â
~J.A. Baker
As green anarchists and anarcho-prim- itivists, we have utterly
idealized indigenous or so-called primitive people. In doing so we have
failed to understand precisely the reason we should follow their path.
Most discourse around primitive life is drawn from western anthropology,
though from the conclusions most anarcho-primitivists and green
anarchists have drawn, it is clear that very few of them have actually
bothered to read the texts they are referring to. Even given the
Eurocentric bias of most anthropologists, those texts paint a much
richer, more complex, and more conflicted view of primitive life than
one finds in the vast majority of anti-civilization writing and
discussion.
The most egregious assumption is that primitive life is supposed to be
happy and easy. This is, of course, drawn from notions of primitive
abundance and leisure. The fact, however, that individuals in primitive
communities only worked for a very small amount of time per day does not
mean that there were not other difficulties and hardships to be faced.
Anarcho-primitivist and green anarchist writers suggest that modern
humanityâs neurosis and pathology is entirely a product of the
alienating forces of techno-industrial society. Indigenous communities
now and in the past had their own ways of understanding and addressing
anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Of course, it is likely that they
experienced these conditions differently than we do or to a lesser
degree but clearly they still exist regardless. To avoid essentializing
primitive or indigenous lifeways, we must understand that they
experienced as broad a range of emotional states as we do. In other
words, the old assessment that ancient hunter gatherers were happier
than we are is irrelevant and likely untrue. It is important here to
acknowledge the distinction between the terms anarcho-primitivism and
green anarchy. While green anarchy presents a wide range of conceptual
apparatus for confronting techno-industrial society, Anarcho-primitivism
dogmatically insists on a prescriptive vision of non-civilized life. For
anarcho-primi- tivists, the only communities that count are ones in
which no power structures or symbolic culture exist at all. In this
vision, since there is no oppression of any kind or rupture with the
non-human world, there are no social or existential problems. It is, of
course, unlikely that such a community has ever existed.
Primitive life certainly involved hardship and suffering. Contrary to
much received wisdom, violence was universal among primitive communities
and remains so in those that persist to this day. Primitive life was
also not a leftist utopia of perfect egalitarianism. Of course, the fact
that pain, suffering, trauma, and tragedy was always present does not
mean that joy, happiness, and pleasure were not also always present.
Perhaps it is so, as I believe, that the very presence of ubiquitous
violence and struggle intensified the feelings of happiness,
contentment, and satisfaction that ancient people experienced. But in
the end, this is neither here nor there. The point is that primitive
life is superior to our own because its impact on the biosphere was
minimal and people lived in close contact with the non-human world; that
is the only reason and that is sufficient.
People who do not know what it means to fight cannot understand
violence. They fear it because they have never experienced it. Aside
from posturing and play acting, most anarchists and activists have never
experienced violence. This is not to say, of course, that many of them
have not been brutalized by the police, etc. Fighting with an enemy is
not the same thing as being ruthlessly beaten by an anonymous employee
whom you cannot strike back against, or harassing racists and idiots in
the streets.
The violence of the mob, of the masses, is a different beast entirely.
It is more akin to being crushed by a blind stampede of herd animals
than anything else. Traditional people understood the need for ritual
combat, for battle enacted under the strictest and most sacred terms: tt
make a square within staves of hazel, to tie your strap to a spear
plunged into the dirt.
Among the ancient people of Scandinavia the power of the state was weak
and in the absence of a police or military to enforce the law,
individuals resorted to ritual combat to resolve conflicts without
disrupting the community as a whole. This practice, known as holmgang,
involved the voluntary participation of both combatants and stipulated
that the source of the conflict must end with the conclusion of the
duel. In other words, the rules of holmgang were designed to ensure that
other family members did not get caught up in the feud.
Moreover, holmgang did not require one of the two combatants to die. In
many cases the drawing of first blood was considered sufficient to
determine a victor. Unsurprisingly, the practice of holmgang was
outlawed in the early 11^(th) century as Christian law stamped out pagan
ways of life and hegemonic power grew in the region.
Even in such classic works of anthropology as Stanley Diamondâs In
Search of the Primitive, we find a picture of traditional life that
fully embraces violence. Diamond writes, âthe point is that the wars and
rituals of primitive society (and the former usually had the style of
the latter), are quantitatively and qualitatively distinct from the
mechanized wars of civilization.â This is to say, the type of violence,
the experience of the violence, makes an enormous difference. As critics
of civilization and techno-industrial society we have inadequately
accounted for this. Violence and war are not to be feared or condemned.
It is the nature of the violence that must be interrogated and
reconsidered.
The custom of counting coup, practiced by the tribes of the American
Plains, is an important historical example to cite here. To count coup
means to demonstrate oneâs bravery and courage by achieving a number of
increasingly difficult feats on the battlefield. As George Bird Grinnell
observed among the Cheyenne and Crow, âthe bravest act that could be
performed was to count coup onâto touch or strikeâa living unhurt man
and to leave him aliveâ Joe Medicine Crow, the last war chief of the
Crow Nation, achieved this feat a number of times as a soldier during
World War II. Among his many achievements include disarming and fighting
an enemy officer in hand-to-hand combat, as well as stealing 50 horses
from a German battalion and riding off while singing Crow war songs.
According to his obituary, Medicine Crow felt war to be âthe finest
sport in the world.â
As ancient people understood well through their war cults and warrior
societies, there is tremendous wisdom and meaning to be gained through
violence. In the first case you learn that pain is just another
sensation in the body, it does not need to be feared. In the second
case, to stand proudly against another, an equal, is to test yourself in
a way that we have little ability to replicate. It is a form of physical
relationship with another that is unique. You learn that you are strong,
that you are skilled. You also learn that there is strength in the
other. That sometimes your strength and your skill are insufficient and
you strive to make yourself stronger. You learn about the world, about
the nature of life, grounded in the body. Modern humanity is utterly
separated from this. To return to Diamond: âwar is a kind of play. No
matter what the occasion for hostility, it is particularized,
personalized, ritualized. Conversely, civilization represses hostility
in the particular, fails to use or structure it, even denies it.â
The violence that we experience, as modern, civilized humans, that we
perceive around us in countless ways, brings nothing but trauma. It is
utterly, radically distinct from the violence of the primitive
societies. It is depersonalized, sterile, and more destructive on a
previously unimaginable scale of magnitude. In techno-industrial society
we experience the violence of the police, the violence of men against
women, the desperate random violence of humans driven to madness and
hopelessness, violence against minorities, violence against the poor,
and most importantly, no matter where we are, all around us, every
single hour of every day we experience unspeakable degrees of violence
against the earth.
Moreover, the soldier is not the warrior. The warrior longs for meaning,
for connection with the cosmos and himself. The soldier is an automated,
anonymous employee. It searches for nothing. It kills because it has
been programmed to kill. It has no joy, no sorrow, no thought of what it
does. When such emotions do occur they are shoved deep into hidden
places in the soul and when they break out they cause insanity and
horror. The violence of the soldier is the violence of the machine. It
is a bloodless kind of violence, a violence that erodes the soul, no
matter what it does to the body. Those pitiful beings that serve as the
instruments of the brutality of the machine understand nothing, they are
numb and insensate. They are appendages of the thing that annihilates.
They have never felt the challenge of facing a foe who is trained and
prepared for them, to be joined in valor. They execute. They bomb. They
murder. Existentially, they count for nothing. Their lives are nothing.
Peace is understood as little as battle. Peace is not synonymous with
joy, nor with righteousness, nor with abundance. Peace has only ever
been achieved through historyâs greatest atrocities. Peace has only ever
meant power to the victor and misery and degradation to the vanquished.
We, in the heart of technoindustrial society, are experiencing what
peace means. A life devoid of joy. A sterile life. A non-life. And worse
still, it is a life maintained perpetually by the slaughter of those on
the fringes of our world. As the world-machine continues to expand
outward, more and more will be pacified and brought within our life of
shopping malls, endless highways, obesity, sickness, despair. And peace
will reign. Peace, peace, peace.
What do we long for? A life of joy and passion. A life that is alive,
throbbing with blood. A world that pulses with vitality. Do we want the
icy porcelain bodies of mechanized gods? Or do we want living animal
bodies that break and heal and decay and die? The latter is the body
that is shaped by violence, by suffering, by hardship. Just as it is
shaped by joy, pleasure, and robust health. Ancient people did not live
a life without pain. They suffered acutely and they experienced joy
acutely. We experience neither truly. What would you choose? Who would
not trade this world of atomic bombs, environmental annihilation, and
mechanized dehumanization for a world of primal war?
But let us be clear: the world we have is the world that exists. And
wishing will not make it otherwise. Moreover, the skill, courage, and
strength of the warrior will never defeat the impersonal mechanized
destroyer.
In our greatest manifestations and noblest moments, we are beasts. The
myth of human exceptionalism has poisoned us to the core. There is
nothing wrong with being animals, in fact it is a far greater thing than
the fantasies that humans tell themselves about their supposed
superiority. Anything good that has come from human action or thought
has come from our animals nature. The evil and vileness we do, contrary
to received wisdom, comes the part of us that no other animal shares. To
understand this means to understand that the world of beasts involves
its own kind of brutality. When lions slaughter hyena babies, it is not
because they are hungry. We dislike this because of our human
moralizing. We easily perceive that ânature, red in tooth and clawâ is
not the whole story. But it is an inescapable part of the story.
The only way for humanity to make itself immune to violence is to allow
the creation of a vast authoritarian system that protects individuals
from personal violence through the endless impersonal violence of the
state. If you canât protect yourself, you will rely on someone else to
protect you, whether you realize it or not, regardless of the cost.
Humanity is capable of radically limiting pain and suffering. We can
live longer and longer. We can cure diseases. We can create enlightened
societies with relatively low rates of violence. All of these things
come at the cost of the earth, the things of the earth, and our
connection to the earth.
Posing a vision of humanity without hardship or suffering denies the
reality of the wild world and it distracts us from what is truly
important: not the avoidance of pain but our unity with the myriad
things and spirits of the world. The strength and the future of the
human race lies only in its ability to show proper reverence to the gods
of the earth.
âClimate change specialist predicts human extinction in 10 yearsâ
âHumanity driving âunprecedentedâ marine extinctionâ
âArctic ice melt could trigger uncontrollable climate change at global
levelâ
Etc.
People are numb. They get so much bad news, economically, socially,
politically, and environmentally, it just rolls off of them now. Human
beings used to be equipped to handle lots of personal crises: injuries,
animal maulings, lack of food, tribal/band warfare... The most severe
crisis that modern humans (now over seven billion of us) no longer face
is the painfully high infant/child mortality rate. In some cultures,
children werenât even named until they were of an age when their chances
of survival were favorable. Our hardware is equipped for that sort of
tragedy: it hurts but we can pull through it. But the death of a planet,
of entire species, regions of the Earth, and potentially billions of
people? Thatâs preternatural, thatâs the Kantian sublime. Thatâs above
our pay grade, for the wages of humanity is ultimately personal death.
To Jesus, that problematic primitiv- ist of first century Palestine, is
attributed the saying, âno prophet is accepted in his own country.â The
prophets of old, like the contemporary prophets, often had only bad
news. And not just bad news: bad news that came down to an ultimatum:
change or else. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah, Elijah,
Jeremiah, Hosea, etc.) warned Godâs people that they had to turn away
from injustice and embrace the Lordâs ways. or the Lord would stop
fighting their battles for them and they would end up captives in a
faraway land. Their cities would be leveled, and their wives would be
made widows and their children orphans, and so on and so forth. Just
like today, people didnât like the prophets: some were stoned to death,
others were sawed in half, others faced great hardship on the run in
desert places.
That great envoy of God in the Christian Bible, Jesus, also taught
people to turn from their ways, and gave the same ultimatum. In this
case, Jesus warned of the Romans coming and destroying Godâs temple,
sacking Jerusalem, and casting Godâs people once again to the winds. The
first followers of Jesus after his crucifixion thought that his second
coming was just around the corner. This even had ecological
implications, as Paul proclaimed in his Epistle to the Romans:
âFor the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the
manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to
vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same
in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travai- leth in pain
together until now.â
The famous last book of the Bible, The Apocalypse, shows the meek man of
Nazareth returning to judge the wicked world by fire.
But the eschatological message of Jesus was quickly co-opted to make it
friendly to imperial aims. Within a few centuries, it was re-tooled and
weapon- ized to create the official ideology of the wealthy and
powerful, with illustrious churches and âJesus Christ Conquersâ engraved
on battle shields. The coming of the end times that Jesus proclaimed
only served as a battering ram to conquer the rest of the world. If this
could be done with the book and the Cross, so much the better. If that
didnât work, there was always the sword and the torch. The same attitude
(minus the cross) was taken up by some upstarts from the Arabian
peninsula in the seventh century who also weaponized Godâs word of
judgment and mercy (for those who repent) and who made conquest a sacred
duty.
Fast forward through the centuries, and we will see a whole litany of
names of those who railed against the worldliness of what Christianity
had become: the Gnostics, the Manicheans, the Bogomils, the
Albigensians, the Spiritual Franciscans, the Jansenists, the Diggers,
the Puritans, the Shakers, etc. etc. In the spirit of the original
prophets, these groups believed that the world was evil and doomed, and
they shouted their message from the rooftops. And like the prophets,
they were persecuted, because people still didnât like hearing bad news.
This cosmic indignation passed from belief into unbelief, first notably
with Thomas Malthus and his theory of population, and then, in the
popular imagination, to Karl Marx and his theory of revolution. A
disputed doctrine within Marxism is the immiseration of the proletariat,
that is, as the productive forces under capitalism develop, the
conditions of the working class must grow worse. Along with this is the
theory of economic crisis, which leads inevitably to social conflict and
war. Some of the most brilliant minds of their time were in and around
the largest Marxist party in the world at the turn of the 20^(th)
century, the German Social Democratic Party. One of its most famed
prophets, Rosa Luxemburg, issued a modern variation of the ultimatum of
old: âSocialism or barbarism!â Yet this party, like the nascent
Christian church before it, renounced and retooled the message of crisis
and killed its own prophets (including Luxemburg). In the meantime,
further east, Russia would take up the banner of Marxism, fight a bloody
civil war to defend it, and use an ideology based on societal collapse
to create its own bloody fundamentalist regime. All of this with the
benefit of modern machinery (to paraphrase Lenin, savagery plus
electricity).
And we could go on: fascism in Italy, National Socialism in Germany,
anarchism in Spain, all the way up to the environmental movement and the
modern day Cassandras of the scientific community. The point of bringing
all of this up is what I stated at the beginning of this essay: human
beings are ill-equipped to deal with social and environmental crises.
That is why collapse happens. And citing all of the historical examples
shows that the problem, along with the understanding of the problem, is
not new. Humans seem to need some sort of mediating narrative or myth
through which to view this problem: God, sin, judgment, science, human
nature. just to name a few. These narratives allow them to grasp the
problem, but through a glass, darkly. They smash problems down to a
human size so that they can digest them, and even âdo somethingâ about
them, but in the process they also distort them. At best, they are
well-drawn maps for an unruly and unexplored territory.
The fundamental misunderstanding here is epistemological. Here I must
spell it out clearly lest people not get the point:
Understanding gives the illusion of control.
The fundamental doctrine of the modern mind is that if one has all of
the information there is to know about something, one can have complete
control over it. And, conversely, if one acts with understanding, the
right outcome always occurs. All knowledge that doesnât give control,
that doesnât show how to utilize oneâs means to obtain the best outcome,
is not knowledge worthy of the name.
The categorical imperative is simple in this case: give people the
information, all the information, and they will act on it. This is what
birthed the Green Movement, anarchist or not. Show the people how much
the environment is hurting, how much civilization hurts people, how
awful civilized life is, and they will wake up and oppose it. Ideologues
cite trends such as increased recycling, emissions regulations, electric
cars, and the like, as examples that this approach works. Just a few
more campaigns to enlighten and inform, and maybe, just maybe, weâll
save the Earth and destroy civilization. Just one more issue of the
Catalog of Horrors will finally get people to rise up, never mind that
this tactic seems to date from the dawn of civilization itself.
I donât completely blame the average person for going about their day
while the world falls deeper and deeper into environmental crisis. But I
donât let them off the hook either. The leftist wants to have things
both ways: he or she wants to place all power in âthe People,â yet blame
all ills on a tiny minority that the People could easily defeat. Which
one is it then? Could it be that people arenât the knowledge machines
that modern activism expects them to be, that they just want to get
through the day and not be bothered with questions above their paygrade?
Could it be that not everyone can be bitten with the bug of concern for
the Future, that such a preoccupation is by no means universal? Could it
be that even those who are driven to make a better Future for their
children have only a dim and partial conception of what that could
possibly look like?
I do not fault those with the prophetic impulse, that animal
hide-wearing feral thirst for justice that roams around the edges of
society. I share this impulse, but I have long ceased to want to preach
to people to repent and turn from their evil ways. Even if the prophetâs
voice crying out in the wilderness is only crying to itself, let the
voice cry anyway. Let the prophets rise up, even if only for vengeance,
as it is written:
âTake the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took
them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them
there.â
Most Hate It by Bellamy Fitzpatrick
â[...] we no longer take the position of being âdefendersâ of wild
nature, nor that of âanticivilization,â âprimitivists,â nor any of the
other terms that you have heard applied to us. We have positioned
ourselves as the enemy of the human being [...]â
~29^(th) Communique of Individualists Tending Toward the Wild
âLike any other deluded, sociopathic tyrant, these individuals have
declared themselves above reproach, critique, reason, or accountability.
They have appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner [...] As
absolutist authoritarians, [...] they think and act like the State.â
~Scott Campbell, âThereâs Nothing Anarchist About Eco-Fascismâ
Oneâs take on Eco-Extremismâthe militant anti-social and
anti-technological tendency embodied by such groups as ITS (usually
rendered in English as âIndividualists Tending toward the Wildâ) and the
now-dissolved RS (âWild Reactionâ)â has become something of a litmus
test in the North American radical milieu. It is a sad symptom of
adherence to the present technological infrastructure that far too much
theoretical positioningâand posturingâtakes the form of ingesting a few
media bits on people we have never met who are doing things in places we
have never been and subsequently solemnly assigning them our
self-important thumbs-up or -down for all to see.
Our discourse and thinking can be much more subtle than this dualistic
trumpeting: why not ask, What can we learn from this? How does its
presence reflect on us?, regardless of whether one has affinity or
projectual resonance with it?
Alike
The Eco-Extremistsâ (EEsâ) approach of âindiscriminate attackââthat is,
the commitment of violent actions that seriously risk harming not only
their intended target(s) but also any passersbyâhas made the EEs
infamous and brought them widespread condemnation. Undoubtedly
amplifying their odiousness for their critics is the the frequently
braggadocio-filled and mocking rhetoric of their communiques, which have
more than once highlighted their contempt for humans at large, who are
in their eyes all to some degree complicit with the destruction of what
they term âWild Na- tureâ.[1] Increasingly since their inception, the
EEs have moved away from their beginnings as a sort of fringe splinter
of anti-civilization anarchism still interested in a project of
liberation, and toward a theological/spiritual war on humanity that they
identify as an extension of historical indigenous Mesoamerican struggle
against colonization. Beginning in 2012 and especially in the past few
years, they have espoused a jeering hostility to anarchists and nearly
any anarchist ideas, including notions of liberation and others they
themselves formerly held.[2]
At the time of writing this piece, the most recent actions of some EEs
have reached their misanthropic zenith: the killing of a hiking couple,
simply because their presence in âsemi-virgin natureâ was an offense,
and the killing of an intoxicated woman on the street because she was,
in their words, âOnly another mass of flesh more, only another accursed
human who deserved to die.â ITS, the sect of EE claiming responsibility
for the killings, has indicated in word and deed a decisive turn toward
being the self-styled enemies of all human beings, whom they see as
irredeemable and compare to a virus infecting the Earth, worthless to
anything but itself and fit only for destruction.[3]
Correspondingly, the condemnations of EE by prominent voices in the
North American anarchist milieux have upticked, wandering into confusion
and incoherence in some cases highlighted here.
That self-described âdigital community centerâ of ârevolutionary thought
and actionâ[4] known as Itâs Going Down recently ran an article labeling
EE as âEco-Fascismâ in the title and, later, as un- adjectivalized
fascism in the last sentence of the article. Besides these two mentions,
nowhere else in the article is there any discussion of fascism, any
definition of it, or any explanation whatsoever of how it relates to
EE.[5] If the reader is troubled by what seems to be snarl words in the
place of analysis on IGDâs part, they are assured that it is best not to
think about it too hard, as at the pieceâs climax it is piously
declared, âIt is the peak of colonial, racist arrogance that those from
the safety of their U.S. or European homes feel comfortable debating the
finer points of an ideology that amounts to brown people killing other
brown people.ââa bizarre prescription that would morally preclude one
from analyzing, among other things, a huge swathe of the worldâs
nation-states and their discontents. Through ignorance and humility
comes virtue, apparentlyâand revolution works its way in there somehow,
I imagine, if we just refuse thought sufficiently. Correspondingly, they
condemn Little Black Cart, among others, for the publication of Atassa,
a journal discussing EE. One is left to assume that IGD themselves are
exempted from their anathema of âcolonial, racist arroganceâ when they
repeatedly and excitedly discuss the happenings in Rojava because their
coverage does not quite amount to âdebating the finer pointsâ of the
matter.
In a similar vein, Anarchy Radio has featured EE as a target of John
Zerzanâs habit of near-weekly denunciations of enemies, and he
fulminated in a recent episode that involvement in the publication of
Atassa was âa new lowâ for this author and his podcasting cohort.[6] And
even before the recent killings, the selfdescribed editor-in-chief of
Black And Green Review publicly wished death on the EEs.[7] Both have
followed suit in inexplicably employing the âfascistâ epithet, with
similar incoherence. In accordance with the slogan of Itâs Going Down,
the atmosphere is clearly one of âChoosing Sidesâ, wherein anything
short of overt moral condemnation is seen as insidious complicity.
Jaccuse...!
What is erased completely as a possibility by this frenetic binary
approach is to simply try to understand the tendency, contextualize what
is occurring, and reflect on how EE is the offspring of extant radical
tendenciesâincluding, perhaps uncomfortably, oneâs own.
In seemingly the most unpopular position of all, I have no moral
opposition to political violence; instead, I am deeply dubious about its
viability given the historical record. Revolutions have always been mere
reconstitutions of civilizations, and they have failed to deliver in
even the most promising moments: in Haiti (then the colony of
Saint-Domingue) 1791, when huge numbers of African chattel slaves rose
up as part of a patchwork revolutionary army that, incredibly, fought
off the armies of England, France, and Spain, a victorious new Haitian
regime immediately became a new elite with a new State and a new
slavery[8]; in 19^(th)-century England, when the land and the very
fabric of experience were being mutilated for the first time by
industrialization, no widespread uprising manifested, despite rumblings
of one.[9] Similarly, assassinations can fell particular foes at
particular moments; but they fail to damage, and may in some cases even
strengthen, the reified social roles occupied by their targets, many of
whom are easily replaced. Political violence tends toward the
continuation of politics-as-usual by other means.
The EEs, in spite of their extreme actions, appear to essentially agree
with my above analysis: they have dismissed revolution in the strongest
terms, and, despite their efforts at the assassinations of specialists,
they have repeatedly insisted on their disbelief in the effectiveness of
their own actions in creating significant change in the world. Their
actions thus constitute an odd, self-conscious performative
contradiction: it is useless to attack, yet we see no option but to at-
tackâwe see no option but the embrace of violent futility.
Granted, an urge to destroy is eminently understandable when one looks
unflinchingly at our shared world. For many, much of the time, life
seems a wasteland. Beautiful, inimitable lifeforms are disappearing at a
rate one thousand times faster than average, each one gone forever.[10]
From an ecological, anti-humanist perspective, the truest progress of
civilizations has been their increased pace of denuding the biosphere
and their reduction of the human being from a creature that interfaces
with the nonhuman world as kin to one increasingly dependent on and
familiar only with tech nological prostheses. And, most painfully ironic
of all, and which the EEs have never tired of pointing out, this crisis
is a product of mass submission. In a communique, the EEs quote
approvingly the words of anarchist prisoner Kevin Garrido:
â[...in] humanity I find the most civilized target (myself included).
These are the ones clinging to progress and who devote themselves to
destroying the untamed, all for the filthy and dis- gustingplastic
called money.â[11]
When I first read the above passage, I was immediately reminded of
similar sentiments from early 20^(th)-century individualist anarchists
like Renzo Novatore and Bruno Filippi, who made obvious their contempt
for what they saw as a voluntarily submissive proletariat. For both the
individualists and the EEs, there is the fiercest possible refusal to
victimize people and to instead insist on seeing them as complicit in
our crisis, whether as Ar- endtâs Eichmanns, bureaucrats and technicians
who are routinely rewarded for their small roles in unleashing the next
horror on the world, or simply as slaves too tired, fragmented, and
unimaginative to do anything but keep their heads down and shuffle
along. The major difference between the two is that for Novatore,
Filippi, and others, contempt for the majority of humans and
fantastically violent actions were adjuncts or ingredients to a project
of individual and small-group liberation, not an end in themselves.
Moreover, the individualists had a fierce respect and love for those who
refused submission and chose freedom. But for the EEs, such hatred of
most human behavior, and its explosive venting, becomes praxis unto
itself, seemingly because they see no other options and refuse the
possibility or desirability of liberation.
Indeed, the thoroughgoing anticivilization analysis[12] can very easily
become paralytic. What does one do about the enormous and fundamental
causes of our crisisâmass dispossession, agriculture as subsistence, and
reificationâand what does one furthermore do about the glaring fact that
the vast majority of civilizationâs slaves are and always have been
leagues away from sharing oneâs anticivilization perspective? In holding
an anti-civilization critique, there can be an overwhelming feeling of
facing an invincible, immortal, and abstract enemy; and thus it is that
so many answer What is to be done? by lapsing into a passive stance of
hoping for deliverance by catastrophe, or even into abject defeatism.
Living day after day in a bleak slavery while being acutely aware of it
entails an unbearable tension, and it is eminently understandable,
however mistaken, that one might break that tension by declaring war on
the world at large.
In doing so now at the highest levelâby murdering seemingly any human
and declaring them culpable and deserving of such a deathâthe EEs have
effectively completed their aforementioned six-year passage from a
praxis of liberation to one thoroughly partaking of theology, as has
even been observed in a very different valence by one of the editors of
Atassa.[13] Their theology manifests in at least two themes that have
been repeated across a diversity of EE communiques: that they do not aim
to convince or justify themselves to anyone, and that they have no hope
of significantly changing the world through their actions.
While the large volume of lengthy communiques makes the EEsâ claim of
being entirely uninterested in justifying themselves or convincing
anyone rather difficult to swallow (as I will expand upon in a moment),
the EEs can surely not be accused of attempting to politicize the
everyperson with passages like this one: âLet it be known, we have
invoked the accursed spirit of the Kawesqar, Aja- jema [...] It awoke
furious and full of hate for what the modern human has done to the Earth
[...] It has whispered in our ear that humans deserve death for
offending the wild with every breath. We respond that we feel the same
way. [...] The hyper-civilized human race is beyond help, it cannot be
saved. Joy bursts our hearts each time wild nature manifests itself
against civilization with ferocious natural disasters [...] And if
tomorrow we are the ones who are destroyed because of the wild, know
that we will succumb with great satisfaction.â[14]
Despite their many references to egoist and nihilist strands of
anarchism, including quite recent ones concurrent with the above, this
is plainly a holy war, not a deconstruction of civilization through
individual liberation. I see no room for a praxis of individual or
small, intimate group liberation in conjunction with such an ascetic,
semi-suicidal religious imperative, something that the EEs in other
places acknowledge. Instead, there is a divinized moral demand for a
self-sacrificial struggle. At best, the individual might receive the
satisfaction of personal vengeance against civilization, itself an
abstract moral indictment of the world at large.
Moreover, it is only through misanthropic distortionâmisanthropy itself
being a convoluted form of anthropocen- trism, in which reified Humanity
trades the role of the lone hero for that of the singular villainâthat
one can imagine a deity of Nature angrily calling for the deaths of all
humans. Humans are part of the world, part of the bios, one group of
organisms among many whose uniqueness possibly lies more in its unusual
anxiety with itself than in anything else. Insofar as one accepts the
paleontological consensus, humans are not the first organisms to help
bring about a mass extinction; we may reasonably speculate that they
will not be the last, either. The first and fourth mass extinctions were
caused in part, respectively, by cyanobacteria, the first photosynthetic
organisms, and methane- producing bacteria. In tragicomic irony, the
third mass extinction is believed to have been caused in large part by
climate change and eutrophication caused by the first trees, those
indispensable creatures of ecological iconography.
If Nature were a coherent, conscious entity, it would not be a Gaia, a
loving mother who creates all of her children in a careful balance and
loves all of them; nor would it be an Ajajema, a punishing father who
hates particular children for upsetting that order. Instead, it would be
Medea, who creates children and later decides to kill them on a
whim[15]; better yet, it would be a Blind Idiot God, who is enormously
powerful yet not even aware of itself or what it is doing.[16]
Wreaking havoc on the biosphere is something that oddball organisms do
periodically. Observing this fact is not to excuse it or say that it is
not something worth resistingâindeed, I absolutely believe it is worth
resistingâbut it is an act of profound sanity and necessary critique to
recognize that humans are incontro- vertibly a part of the biosphere no
matter what we do and to thus escape from these ideological moral
absolutes upon which every crackpot revolutionary scheme depends. As I
have written at much greater length and depth elsewhere[17], the belief
in Absolutes is the necessary basis of slave ideologies and has no place
in any thoroughgoing project of liberation.
As for their claims of no hope, it seems plainly to follow from an
absurd mission of killing all humans that one is bound to fail (after
all, like every pest, there are too damn many and the fuckers breed far
too quickly!). Moreover, the deliberate killing of seemingly almost
completely random persons, whom the EEs imply they know next to nothing
about, and who in all likelihood have less complicity than many in our
crisis, is an action so obviously far removed from even their erstwhile
goals that one is left to wonder whether the EEs were more interested in
some spiritual act of self- Othering via purposeless murder than
anything else.
What, therefore, do the EEs, with their self-serious divine mission,
really want with their aforementioned performative contradiction of
insisting both upon the necessity of action and the uselessness of
action? They seem to achieve nothing quite so much as a more
selftransparent, and a more depressed and self-loathing, form of
revolutionary militancy: they live ascetically and dangerously, they
perform direct actions and then publicize inflammatory communiques, they
assert the necessity of action and denounce dissenters and critics as
cowards and weaklings, they identify themselves as the inevitable
historical product of a corrupt humanity, they declare the current human
as insufficient and flawed and pursue a transformative praxis of moral
purification through violenceâthe primary differences between them and
their critics cited above are their anti-humanist individualism, their
currency of enraged misanthropic despair in place of defiant utopian
hope, and their self-transparency about their own theological analysis.
Shorn of a revolution, they nonetheless display its trappings.
Critics
If, as claimed above, it is a remarkable testament to the seduction of
morally dualistic analyses that the mere publication or discussion of EE
texts is taken as a championing of their position and actions, it is an
even more noteworthy instance of ideological blinkering that the
revolutionaryâand crypto-revolu- tionary[18]âcritics of EE cannot
recognize their morbid reflection in their foes and cannot learn from
them. For oneâas has been pointed out in considerable detail in the
much-maligned Atassa[19]âto be any kind of revolutionary is to be for
indiscriminate violence, however convolutedly.
Only the most guileless North American insurrectionary anarchistâwho
selfconsciously strives to increase social tensions, who champions and
joins in riots and ruptures, and who dreams of creating ungovernable
zones that become com- munesâcan believe that achieving their stated
goals to any substantive and lasting degree would not necessarily entail
enormous, protracted violence against not only State, paramilitary, and
volunteer militia forces, but also huge swathes of the citizenry who
would be, at best, ambivalent and, more likely, terrified and opposed to
such a (crypto-)revolution. In such a scenario of their dreams,
precisely the same everypersons whom the EEs openly malign and now
openly kill would become counter-revolutionaries that the revolutionary,
insurrectionary, and/or primitivist anarchist would have to malign and
either kill or subdue if they were not to falter in their imagined
uprising. In this way, the EEs are more honest with themselves and their
critics than the (crypto-)revolutionaries.
Feverishly, and very publicly, condemning EE allows their critics to
safely blind themselves to that uncomfortable morbid reflection. It is
easy and popular to slag as âsociopathicâ people who have killed hikers
and an intoxicated woman in the name of an unfamiliar, long-dead god.
After all, what does indiscriminate violence look like when it is
unvarnished by paeans to the everyperson and ensor- celling rhetoric
about a post-revolutionary world? It looks quite ugly. One can thus
avoid thinking too critically about oneâs own carefully veneered calls
for righteous, revolutionary violence, which sound almost benign and
more closely resemble the tragicomic history of civilizations with which
most of us are comfortably familiar.
To be unable to engage in nuanced analysis that eschews moral judgement
in favor of asking what the emergence of EE means about our current
crisisâexis- tentially, strategically, and in terms of the radical
milieuxâand to unequivocally condemn those who do, is a sad comment on
the critical capacity of much of the North American radical milieux.
Canned dismissals reign supreme, as too many willingly surrender their
critical capacities in favor of listening to, or being, competing
theologians endlessly slagging one another.
We share the following events not as an attempt to speak for our
non-human friends or the earth, but rather in recognition that we are
not alone. There are those who have been against civilization from the
start. We share their passion and howl alongside them in rage. We do not
aim to merely celebrate these acts of violence and certainly do not wish
to condemn them. When âwild animalsâ attack campers, they do so because
their homes and being are under pressure of annihilation. These stories
function as an acknowledgment of the ongoing war of the civilized versus
the wild, sometimes spectacular and sometimes mundane, but always a war.
You Fuck With UsâŠ
An elephant cow crushed and killed a South African big-game hunter in
Zimbabwe last week, falling on him after she was shot. That elephant
picked up Botha with her trunk, and one of the hunters shot her, causing
her to collapse on top of Botha. The elephant and Botha were both
killed.
The New Normal
A seven-year-old boy needed hospital treatment after he was attacked by
a flock of aggressive seagulls. Thomas West was eating a doughnut when
the first bird knocked it from his hand.
It clung on to the terrified lad as blood oozed from a cut to his
fingerâand four other gulls dived in.
Thomasâs dad, Gary, 37, said: âThomas was holding his food normally and
the gull came from nowhere out of the sky.â
Life Versus Drones Tigers 1, Drone 0
A streak of Siberian tigers in China turned a drone into a chew toy
following an impressive hunt and takedown of the tiny aircraft. At least
10 curious tigers chased after the drone as it buzzed around a
snow-covered sanctuary in the Heilongjiang Province in northeast China,
according to stunning video posted on YouTube by CCTV+. The video shows
the cats stalking the machine and one quick kitty suddenly pouncing on
it, sending it crashing to the ground. The tiger then chomps at the
machine, as others crowd around, before backing away when it starts
smoking.
Zebra attack! With Crowd
The enraged equine at the Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, China, bit
the man, identified as Li, in the arm and dragged him along the ground
into bushes to the horror of tourists. Several of his colleagues chased
after the beast to save Li, who suffered only minor injuries during the
two-minute ordeal. It was unclear what prompted the zebra to go haywire.
Too Much Handling!
Two zoo keepers were seriously injured after they were mauled by a lion
they were prepping for a photo shoot in Japan, according to a new
report. The caretakers were giving a bath to the 10-year-old male lion
inside a cage at Shonan Animal Production in the Japanese city of Nar-
ita on Monday morning when the beast went wild and attacked them, the
Daily Mail said. The feline began chomping on the faces, heads, and legs
of the unidentified workers. The victims suffered âsevereâ wounds but
were conscious after the attack, The Mail said. The lion tried to make a
break for it, but his chains prevented him from escaping.
On the Loose
More than 20 residents of Raiganj, India, were injured while trying to
subdue a wild leopard that ran loose in their town. The giant cat was
eventually caught, but only after evading capture multiple times.
Come and Play
Footage shows a sea lion grabbing a little girl off a dock and pulling
her underwater. The kid was feeding the male sea mammal bread crumbs
near the water near Vancouver, Canada, on Saturday, but when she sat
down on the edge of the jetty, the huge creature tried to make a meal
out of herâgrabbing her dress in its jaws and dragging her into the
water.
It Only Consented to a Peck
Authorities say a Florida man leaned in to kiss a rattlesnake â but got
bitten instead. News outlets report the unidentified man was bitten on
the tongue Tuesday in the Bostwick area and had to be airlifted to a
hospital, where he was listed in critical condition. WTLV in
Jacksonville quoted a friend of the victim as saying that he had been
drinking while handling the seemingly calm eastern diamondback. But when
he moved toward the reptile as if to kiss it, the snake bit him.
Infamously Bad Dental Care
An infamous pair of lions gobbled up nearly three dozen people because
their teeth were too rotten to tackle anything but âsoftâ humans,
according to a study released Wednesday. The big cats were, at one time,
believed to have eaten as many as 135 people over nine months in 1898 in
the Tsavo region of Kenya, before they were shot dead. For years, the
behavior of the Tsavo lions baffled scientists, who assumed that the
animals resorted to eating humansâa meal not usually on their menu-
because they were starving, according to Science. But the new study by
Scientific Reports shows the African lions suffered from serious tooth
decay, and ate around 35 âsoftâ humans because they were simply a more
convenient â and less painfulâway to enjoy a meal. Healthy lions
normally feast on animals such as antelope, zebra, and water buffalo.
I have up until now regarded eco-extremists as those with warrior
spiritsâpeople who value the wild as I do, but who feel compelled to
fight in response to the degradation of the wild. Not everyone has this
urge. Just like men of civilization can choose to raise a family, join
the military, or run for local government, men of savagery have many
different paths available to themâand only a few options will align with
their general character and disposition, still fewer are suited to their
conditions. A single mother in the U.S. might engage in conservation, a
bachelor in the Democratic Republic of Congo may sabotage oil rigs.
Neither can be called the calling of the wild will. They are simply
expressions of the same spirit. And some of those expressions are,
understandably and justifiably, violent.
But eco-extremism has recently made yet another ideological turn, and
with the turn I have to dispose of my former tolerance, at least toward
large factions of the eco-extremist âtendency.â They have become
extinctionists. They argue that they care for the wild, that humankind
will invariably harm wild nature, and that humankind must therefore go
extinct. This is a ridiculous philosophy, and while what follows will
explain the reasons why, I am not at all thrilled I have had to write
them out. Only a subset of extinctionismâs philosophical formulations,
usually pessimistic and nihilistic, are philosophically interesting (see
Better to Have Never Been by David Bena- tar); but the ecological
formulationâthat humans should go extinct for the sake of wild natureâis
never good philosophy. And explaining why entails a lot of nitpicky
philosophical talk that readers are probably not going to very much
enjoy. Nevertheless, because it is a recurring problem even in the
mainstream ecological movements, it is necessary, it seems, to disally
myself with it.
There is a catch, though. Recently it has become popular to refer to
eco-extremism as though it is a single, albeit loose, ideological
formulation. This is probably not the most accurate way to view all the
terrorism that has gone under that name. Our understanding is improved
if we forsake, for a moment, the label âecoextremist.â At the beginning,
there was only the terror cell Individualidades Ten- diendo a lo Salvaje
(ITS). As their later incarnations explained, the early group consisted
of âanarchists, liberationists, and Kaczynskists.â In other words, ITS
was not a representative of a single ideology so much as a group of
people with widely divergent ideologies who found a common place of
overlap, a nexus for common action. As the network grew, and terror
cells formed in Europe and all over South America, this loose basis for
affinityâor âcomplicity,â as eco-extremists like to say â continued to
typify the tendency. Some terror cells donât have a shred of ecological
thought at all. For example, the nihilist terrorists in Italy speak in
incomprehensible poetry and prose about a great existential Void. And,
as I just pointed out, there seems to be a division now between the
anti-civilization terror cells and the extinctionist terror cells. But,
despite their different ideologies, the cells have found it useful to or
ganize themselves into a network that is unified only in its absolute
opposition to civilization, progress, humanism. More concretely, each
cell must agree to attack cities, techno-industrial infrastructure, and
anything, human or non-human, that makes production of these targets
possible.
I do not think even the eco-extremists see it this way, but I tend to
interpret their network as an incarnation of some of the fears terrorism
analysts expressed during the heyday of the superterror controversy. In
short, the superterror theory is the idea that religious and ethnic
terrorism would supersede the political terrorism of the 70s, and that
combined with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, this
creates a volatile situation: groups unbridled by the typical norms of
morality, inconsiderate of human welfare in itself, and willing to wreak
massive destruction with their newfound power. (This, the analysts
noted, was quite different from political terrorism, which seemed to
cause the least amount of harm for the most amount of media attention.)
In many ways, this aspect of the superterror debate was and still is
overemphasized.
More interesting, analysts warned of a convergence of ideologically
distinct criminal organizations, networks, and cells. Jihadis and
Mexican cartel gangs, for example, might work together to infiltrate
U.S. borders (and they now almost certainly do). Or perhaps distinct
strains of terror could join up with a common end in mind, even if they
expected to go their separate ways later. This strategy is available to
many forms of ethnic terrorism, the analysts note, because unlike
Marxist political terrorism, which was inherently internationalist,
ethnic terrorism usually sought autonomy for a small region.
If many different regions fighting for autonomy fought together, they
could harm a common enemy and continue to let their allies run their
regions as they see fit.
Eco-extremism has a lot in common with the religious and ethnic
terrorism noted by the superterror theorists. Many strains of ecological
thought have repeatedly been pegged as religious in nature (see, e.g.,
the work of Bron Taylor). And while ecoextremists have no concern for
collectivist notions of ethnicity and nation, simply replace âethnic
groupâ with âindividualâ or âsmall groupâ and you have the same
strategic opportunity: many different individuals and small groups
fighting for their autonomy, and joining together to strike at a common
enemy.
None of this sounds particularly ineffective to me. Indeed, it seems
like one of the few strategic options available to an eco-terrorist with
eco-extremist beliefs. However, it makes the terms of my critique a
little different from what might be assumed. I am not critiquing
everything that has been called âeco-extremism.â Rather, I am critiquing
an ecological tendency within the superterror network. And this I do
only because I want to make clear, in light of my earlier tolerance of
the group, where my beliefs are and are not similar to theirs. There are
two possible repercussions of the differences. It could be that the
non-extinc- tionist ecological strain of eco-extremism will continue
unabated; that extinctionism was only absorbed into the network just as
the nihilist Europeans were. If this is the case, then my critique of
ex- tinctionism is largely irrelevant to my attitude toward the network
as a whole. I do not have an opinion one way or the other in regards to
the allies the non- extinctionist eco-extremists decide to make in their
reactionary battle against civilization. But if the non-extinctionists
have in fact converted to extinctionism, then there is no longer
anything of value, to me, in the eco-extremist network. No one there
would be acting in the name of values I hold in common.
A problem with some forms of ecological extinctionism is that they
incorrectly identify something other than the individual as the root of
moral force. It is exactly what Judeo-Christians do: God is good and has
given us a moral law, so to do good we must follow the moral law.
Replace âGodâ with âwild natureâ and you have ecological extinctionism.
But this is clearly wrong. There is no absolute moral good; âgoodâ is a
vague word that individuals ascribe, not gods.
In other words, the source of human values is human beings
themselvesâtheir natures or their wills. Collective moral rules are
simply ways of accounting for differences in moral opinions, for the
sake of cooperation or coercion. And there is no absolute measurement of
goodness; to even want that is borne out of weakness, a taught mistrust
of the self, an inculcated desire for oneâs own presence in the world to
be validated by some higher authority. Note that there are good
philosophical arguments to be had on this topic but those are for a
different essay.
I care for the wild. How do I act on these values in this world of many
different movements, tendencies, ideologies, moralities? There is no
clear answer. Paths forward will always look somewhat foggy, and Iâll
only be able to figure things out by placing my bets and acting. Still,
I can sharpen my image of the paths before me by simply looking at my
situation.
Some ecological extinctionists argue that the situation as a futile one.
No human will ever stop harming the wild. Therefore, if we care for the
wild, we must make all humans go extinct. If this is true, then the
eradication of most of humanity may very well be logically justified
(though there are problems other than logic here). But the eradication
of the individual who holds the values cannot be justified on the same
grounds. The wild is valuable to the individual because his will
requires wildness to flourishâjust like it requires social
relationships, food, etc. If he wants to extinguish his own life, he can
only justify this desire, potentially, with the reasoning of the
pessimistic and nihilistic philosophers, who claim that the willâs drive
to flourish is impossible to satisfy, the cause of the deep pain of
existence. But this is not environmentalism, it is pessimism or
nihilism.
How seriously, really, can we take the idea that no human will ever act
appropriately as a reason to be against their existence? All
philosophies are imperfect representations of our own beliefs. Applied,
these beliefs invariably have grey areas, exceptions, caveats. No one
ever fulfills a moral ideal. Further, there is a vast amount of evidence
that at least some people care very deeply for the wild and live in wild
conditions quite fine: remaining hunter/gatherers, pirates, etc.
Eco-extremists themselves recognize this. Some of them write:
...we know that there are individualists like us somewhere in this
beautiful Earth, and we know that they are very few, these acts are an
echo that comes to them, which perhaps inspires them to carry out
attacks like us.
If this is true, what does their do they mean when they say they are
against the human? Either they have contradicted themselves, changed
their mind, or expressed themselves badly. I can discern no other
possibility.
Finally, eco-extremists sometimes say that they are against humanismâthe
belief that all humans are part of a moral community, that they should
respect every member of that communitiesâ rights and get along in peace.
They are right that this ideology is the dominant one of global
civilization: preached by the UN, NGOs, universities, some corporationsâŠ
The eco-extremists say that they are against this morality because it
implies disdain for the natural human. In order to enforce it, you must
have civilization infrastructure and you must instill humanist values
into human beings through education, indoctrination, brainwashing. There
is a lot of evidence for this view (see, e.g., The Civilizing Process by
Norbert Elias or Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud).
This perspective implies that ecoextremists are concerned with
preserving their natures against the modifications of technological
society, perhaps even restoring them to whatever extent may be possible.
But when they argue for extinctionism, they contradict all that. And if
they arenât concerned with conserving and restoring their own wildness,
that is, living outside the bounds of civilization to the extent
possible, then what is the point of defending the wildness of non-human
nature? I say the wild is valuable because I value it. Why do
eco-extremists say that the wild is valuable? If they canât come up with
another good justification, then their reasoning for extinctionism
(âhumans destroy the wildâ) not only wonât have any forceâit canât have
any force.
All that said, I agree with the general thrust of the eco-extremist
argument. Vast amounts of humanity, possessing no conscious malice, are
nevertheless no better than enemies of wild nature. They will not give
up their comforts, will forever acquiesce to higher authorities like the
state, etc. And, as we can see in regions hit with natural disasters or
technical regression, natureâs attitude toward these people is fierce.
Those who say they support this reclaiming of the land, this transition
from artificial to wilder conditions, need to be able to tolerate the
ferocity, perhaps even become possessed by it themselves.
But our discourse, if it is to accurately assess our situation, needs to
acknowledge the presence of a small group of people who are willing to
embrace the wild. They may not have the ability to survive, and they may
not survive even with the ability, but that is the meaning behind that
most appropriate battle cry, is it not?ââlive wild or die!â
I, like the eco-extremists, speak in public only to reach these people.
I do not try to convince people who do not already feel the call of the
wild to come with me into the wild. Many people are interested in the
ideas, and I donât mind talking to them about it, but I am wholly aware
that their way of life, and their unwillingness to abandon it, is
precisely why the wild nature I care about is being so thoroughly
destroyed.
All these facts can be explained without recourse to extinctionism. The
eco-extremists, then, have to decide: do they do what they do because
they hate the human (for whatever reason), or do they do what they do
because they love the wild?
Hurry up and bring on your electric chair I want to leave here and take
a nose-dive into the next world just to see if that one is as lousy as
is this ball of mud and meanness. I am sorry for only two things. These
two things are I am sorry that I have mistreated some few animals in my
life-time and I am sorry that I am unable to murder the whole damed
human race.
-executed killer Carl Panzram
Every day, every hour, every minute people get fed the fuck up with the
world and lash out at society. Sometimes funny, often brutal, always
strange. From property destruction to murder and everything in between,
here are the best of the worst.
Facebook Live: The New Faces of Death
Back in the days of VHS the morbid and curious could find the infamous
Faces of Death series sitting on the shelves of their local video store.
With the advent of the internet a whole new world opened up for the
exploration of violence where early websites like Rotten.com exposed
even more people to both the real and fantasy spectacle of death and
suffering. Fast forward to today and there is a new revolution for the
mediation of pain: brutality streamed live right to your screen. Of
course this is not what it is supposed to be broadcasting and with every
nightmare streamed Facebook has to remind everybody that these horrors
are unfortunate, calling the events âextremely rareâ. These so-called
anomalies include the following:
In Chicago thousands of people watched as a schizophrenic man was
mentally and physically abused, even communicating with the torturers.
Easter Sunday a 37-year-old childrenâs counselor in Cleveland, Ohio
filmed himself killing a man at random before turning the gun on himself
after an extensive manhunt.
A 21-year-old robbery suspect was streaming live when he fell seven
stories to his death.
A 33-year-old musician in Memphis lit himself on fire and ran into the
bar in an effort to set his ex-girlfriend on fire. The application of
the fuel and his self-immolation are caught in closeup on video.
A 12-year-old filmed her own hanging.
A man in Thailand video-ed himself hanging his 11-month-old daughter.
Black Jesus Has Risen
A man in Fresno, California claiming to be âblack Jesusâ went on a
shooting spree killing 4 random white dudes. The cops using their
brilliant detective work (looking at social media posts) observed âhe
does not like white peopleâ and had âanti-government sentiments.â
The UK and Irelandâs Anti-Social Menace
Both Ireland and the UK have always had a mean streak with their
hooligan subcultures and recently a new moral panic has arisen in both
respective countries with numerous townâs youths receiving warnings. In
a few counties in Northern Wales, a dispersal order was put into place
âfrom 5pm 26/5 to 5pm 29/5.â Across the pond in Ireland police are
conducting âhigh-visibility preventative patrolsâ in West Belfast in an
effort to stamp out anti-social crime. The community representatives say
residents are âbeing tortured by youths involved in drug activity, car
crime, criminal damage and street crime.â Tourists are frequently
robbed. Of course it is snitches in their own so-called communities that
have been calling to make complaints, fearing for their safety.
Arsonist Targets Cars Outside Church
In San Bernardino, California somebody set fire to numerous cars in the
parking lot of a church before running away from the scene of the crime.
Police have yet to find a suspect or a motive.
Neighbor Denies Children Happiness
Video has surfaced online of a âneighborhood grouchâ unplugging a bouncy
castle at a one-year oldâs birthday party. This is the feel good news we
need in a time like this.
Shooting Rampage in Mississippi Kills Eight
After a domestic dispute a man went house to house killing people,
including two boys and a deputy sheriff. He told press âI ainât fit to
live, not after what I done,â and âSomebody called the officer, people
that didnât even live at the house. Thatâs what they do. They
intervene... They cost him his lifeâ (referring to the Deputy). âMy
intentions was to have God kill me. I ran out of bullets,â he said.
âSuicide by cop was my intention.â
I said to a friend, we see the darkness, and some go in.
It is the Abyss.
We have to find out what is there, to find out if there is meaning. And
we see only the abyss. And some go mad. And some never return. And someâ
And some, I said, come back wielding light against that darkness. Seeing
nothing, we bring back fire, we light lamps, candles, torches. We hold
light that isnât ours, as how else would any else see?
Terror often greets the far-off glances on the faces of those who return
from the Abyss. The lone wanderers who walked boldly into the darkness
past the boundary of fire- or street-light, the mad poet, the uncouth
heretic, the unshowered witch: their reckless journeys are not
celebrated when they return.
Like the ones who walk away from Omelas,â they did not know to where
they were going, only somewhere not-here, not the streets full of
opulent wealth and the joyous cries of liberation made possible by a
founding horror. But unlike in Le Guinâs story, the city is the world,
and there is nowhere else to go except back to those same streets, their
eyes no longer glinting with the shallow laughter of civilization but
nevertheless lit with fire.
It is their own fire, and it is a fire others are right to fear. It is a
fire that can reforge the world.
I am what some might call an Egoist. I can also be described as a
Nihilist, a mystic, an esotericist, a witch, a Pagan, an Anarchist, and
also a Marxist. None of these labels actually mean anythingâ they are
only useful when attempting to speak as the locals speak, to use the
prescribed language of Capitol/Capital, treating words that stay with
the same fetishism which Marx ascribes to com- modity-qua/cum-currency.
It is generally easier to list what I reject (for those of you
checking-off boxes on mental clipboards) than it is to begin the litany
of what I embrace. Few have the time: there are stories that must be
told for each thing before they can be understood, and such narration
seems mere obfuscation to those for whom re- ductionism and essentialism
(as endemic to the American âleftâ as it is to the ârightâ) are
unconscious requirements to get at the âtruth.â
I will tell you what I do not like. I do not like racism or racialism; I
do not like gender or genderism. I do not like property or propriety,
nor do I Iike borders and what they define. Also, Capitalism and Liberal
Democracy and Empire are my least favorite things in the world, along
with their shadow, fascism.
Here, though, I should remind you: âfascismâ means nothing at all. It is
a word invoked by people overcome with a strong urge to shore up the
ruins of Empire by recourse to even more tenuous concepts with even less
material basis: Tradition, Race, Gender, Morals, the Nation. Though the
words are mere sounds we make with our throats or symbols printed with
ink or displayed on screens, they each serve to outline vaguely (and by
their vagueness gain more power) ideas which nevertheless have great
power in the realm of the human social.
Max Stirner called these ideas âspooks.â Others would call these
âconstructs.â I prefer to name them spectres or Egregores. They are also
the mythic, and itâs the realm of the mythic I understand best, which is
also the realm the fascists are trying to take from us.
Carl Jung gave a speech in 1936 in which he suggested a âWotanic spiritâ
had begun to inhabit the National Socialists, as if the people had
become possessed by a god:
âPerhaps we may sum up this general phenomenon as Ergriffenheitâa state
of being seized or possessed. The term postulates not only an Erg-
riffener (one who is seized) but, also, an Ergreifer (one who seizes).
Wotan is an Ergreifer of men, and, unless one wishes to deify
Hitlerâwhich has indeed actually happenedâhe is really the only
explanation.â
Jung invokes his theory of gods as pre- and un-conscious archetypal
drives to defend his thesis, but like much of the rest of Jungâs work,
itâs always unclear whether he believed there was not really a god
there. But Jung does not quite mean what we generally think of as a god.
Wotan is a âburied driveâ within the Germanic people, one which
essentially haunts the âraceâ until it becomes manifest.
âBecause the behaviour of a race takes on its specific character from
its underlying images, we can speak of an archetype âWotan.â As an
autonomous psychic factor, Wotan produces effects in the collective life
of a people and thereby reveals his own nature.... It is only from time
to time that individuals fall under the irresistible influence of this
unconscious factor.â
Jungâs racial essentialism here is tragic and prefigures the biological
and genetic essentialism which now dominates Western thought. However,
the concept of a mass possession by an unconscious form fits incredibly
well with what we know of Nationalism.
Consider the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 in the United States.
After the attacks, people experienced (and were diagnosed with) trauma
from watching the explosions on television, so much so that some
(including otherwise sane and clear-thinking friends of mine) for a
little while believed they had either been present at the event or had a
close friend or family member within the destroyed towers. Worse, many
otherwise virulently anti-war people suddenly regained national âpride,â
literally waving flags with such civic devotion that one would have
thought their life depended upon it.
Devotion to the Nation after such traumatic events often takes on both a
religious quality (similar to that of evangelical Christians) while
displaying symptoms of mass hysteria. The Nation appears to haunt the
actions of the individuals, manifesting and reifying itself as if by
possession or seizing.
What Jung noticed regarding the possession of the German people by
âWotanâ is this same process. And while one need not believe it was
Wotan who possessed his people (I do notâIâve asked Wotan myself),
Jungâs assertion that a mythic force can operate on the psyche is hardly
a unique idea. The same function was described by Max Stirner as
âspooks,â ideological and philosophical forms which exert influence when
they are unconsciously accepted as really-existing. Spook, Spectre,
Egregore Jungâs theory of archetypesâas well as Stirnerâs theory on
Spooksâmay have been influenced by an occult theory regarding
near-deific spirits known as egregores. An egregore (greek for
âwatcherâ) is a spirit composed of the memories, knowledge, personality,
and intentions of a group, which either arises organically from the
activities and interactions of the group or is constructed willfully by
the group.
Egregores could be called âgroup minds,â though they exist autonomously
(like Jungâs archetypal Wotan) and maintain the cohesion, survival, and
collective identity of a group beyond the individual goals of each
member. Unlike an archetype, an egregore does not spring from the
unconscious/pre-conscious mind, but rather the myriad actions and
interactions of those within in. Unlike a god, an egregore is not
something one worships or necessarily invokes. They can be constructed,
but after their construction the apparent life they take on is much more
complex than what they were constructed to be.
A more accurate explanation may be to say that they are real-ised;
brought from the realm of infinite possibility, the world without forms,
into the more finite realm of social existence. Yet another theory is
that they become inhabited after- the-fact by pre-existing spirits,
similar to the way many animistic cultures build shrines as houses that
benevolent spirits (or fairies, etc.) will want to move into.
Like Jungâs Wotan and Stirnerâs Spook (and to some degree Derridaâs
Spectre), the Egregore describes the apparent realness of a thing
despite its disconnection from the material world. There is no âthereâ
there, and yet it functions always as if there were, manifesting itself
in the actions of those who live within its realm of influence or
meaning. And it thus acts also as if it were a god, making demands upon
its followers who constantly (and often unconsciously) manifest its
existence.
This same process has been described by other means by post-colonialist
theorists. Dipesh Chakrabarty, particularly, proposes in his
introduction to Provincializing Europe that it is precisely European
exceptionalism that prevents us from seeing how those of us in Liberal
Democratic societies still âinhabit these forms even as we classify
ourselves as modern or secular.â Similarly, Frantz Fanon and James
Baldwin speak to the way that belief in whiteness and its psychological
manifestations seem to inhabit those who, in Baldwinâs words, âbelieve
they are white.â
One need not necessarily accept a supernatural explanation for the way
the mythic manifests as-if it is real in order to comprehend this idea.
Benedict Andersonâs formulation of the Nation as an âimagined communityâ
also points to the same mythic and Egregoric functioning. For him, the
Nation is a modern constructed form creating an indefensible (yet
fully-manifest) sense of (false) horizontal kinship with complete
strangers, as Anderson says, making âit possible, over the past two
centuries, for so many millions of people not so much to kill as willing
die for such limited imaginings.â
America exists; yet we cannot point merely to the constitution of the
United States, nor to its government and institutions, soldiers and
politicians and police, and say: this is America. America exists within
the psyche of Americans, constantly reproduced through self-description
and unconscious acceptance of its goals, desires, and inevitability.
America is an egregore, a god-form, inhabiting the psyche of its
individual constituents, like Jungâs Wotan: â. an autonomous psychic
factor, ...produc[ing] effects in the collective life of a people. â
Race, Gender, and all other identity categories function this same way.
Gays imagine themselves part of a gay community, yet there is no such
thing, only an imagined kinship with people who just happen to like sex
with people who have the same genitals as themselves. A horrific attack
on people who call themselves gay (such as the Pulse massacre in
Orlando) thus manifests in individual gays elsewhere (as was the case
for myself and many of my gay friends) as an attack on us as well.
We see this egregoric manifestation even stronger in whiteness.
Whiteness has no material basis, yet it does not need one to manifest
through the social interactions of humans. Whiteness âpossessesâ the
white person, and appears to inhabit their interactions with people
possessed by other egregoric racial categories (Black, etc.) regardless
of their oppositional nature. In fact, the conflict and tension between
egregores only further refines and entrenches their influence and power.
Neither the conservative Right nor most of the liberal or radical Left
challenge these egregores. Instead, they strengthen and re-invest these
egrego- res with power by insisting they are real and meaningful fields
of social struggle (regardless of their final goals). We see this most
tragically on the Left, which generally accepts the constructed nature
of identities, yet also insists identity is a valid (if not
foundational) field of political struggle.
Consider the problem of Gender. Most Leftists accept Judith Butlerâs
proposition that gender is performative, not essential or biological
(likewise the Egoist position). Yet, particularly on the âSocial
Justiceâ Left, essentialism and a fear of straying too far from Liberal
Democratic forms creates a contradictory position, seen particularly in
the arguments around trans women. On the one hand, Leftists insist Woman
is a constructed category, yet then orient their politics towards
asserting that trans women are women. That is, Woman is constructed, but
in order to liberate another constructed category, they insist trans
women (as category) are absolutely (essentially) part of a woman (as
category), making both categories essentialist. Similarly, maleness is a
category that the Left generally seeks to make irrelevant, but then the
Left reduces men to an essential category in which every man essentially
causes exploitation, violence, and oppression (â#YESALLMENâ).
Even if it were only the Left attempting to define the boundaries of
these egregoric categories, we would find ourselves in an interminable
deadlock. Unfortunately, there is a much stronger and less
self-conscious current which already understands the great power these
egreg- ores have over the actions of humans.
A brief glance at the Nazi project is probably sufficient for us to
grasp how fascism not only is more comfortable with the egregoric nature
of these concepts, but also understands how best to manipulate them.
Nazi theorists (social, occult, legal, scientific, etc.) cobbled
together a new mythic reality for Germany quite quickly. Tibetan and
Hindu spirituality, Nordic and Germanic folklore, and general occult
studies as well as previously oppositional and antagonist political,
social, and scientific forms all became part of the egregore of Nazism,
seizing the mythic imagination of a (likewise mythic) Nation.
Consider: before the Nazis, the Aryan race was a mere fringe scientific
theory. During the Nazi ascension, the Aryan race was a thing, alive,
âself-evident.â So, too, Germany itself: suddenly a nation created only
three decades before arose fully-formed with an ancient history as if it
had always been there.
Did the Nazi theorists actually believe their own mythic creation? Or
were they consciously creating something new? Itâs impossible to know.
The same question could be asked of Lenin and Stalin: did they really
believe in the existence of the Worker?
Or more controversially regarding the identity politics of the Left:
gays did not exist as a category in the 1800âs, nor did trans people.
When the political cate- gory/egregoric identity of Gay and Trans arose,
suddenly they were self-evident, alive, meaningful, and strangest of
all: âtrue.â Did those who constructed gayness and trans identity know
they were making something up? How many who embrace these identities
(unless theyâve really read Foucault) even realize that they do not
stretch back into prehistory, let alone before the 20^(th) century?
The point here is not to unravel the nightmare of Left identity
politics, only to show how Leftists unconsciously do the same thing that
fascists consciously do. Leftists construct identities and egrego- res
without any reference to the material world, yet then quickly accept
them as if they have always existed, just as a Nationalist embraces the
Nation and a White Supremacist embraces the White Race.
Leftism (and anti-fascism) as it currently exists is thus insufficient
for combating the mythic power of fascism until we acknowledge how much
of this mythic, egregoric power weâve not only ceded to fascists, but
then clumsily mimic.
An essay in March of 2017 by Alexander Reid Ross recently warned against
the danger of fascist intersections with âPost-Left,â Egoist, mythic,
and anti-civi- lizational thought. What these âpotential intersectionsâ
with fascism all have in common, however, is a rejection of the
egregoric spooks over which the Liberal- Left and fascists are currently
warring. Also, they all have at least an apparent understanding of the
mechanisms by which the egregoric functions, and they each assert the
freedom of the individual over these forms as a primary goal.
Rossâs essay suggests that these positions seem close to the border past
which all is fascist. That apparent proximity, though, is not what he
suspects it to be. Rather, the extreme distance of most Leftism from the
mythicâand its long complicity with Liberal Democratic secular
exceptionalismâmakes these non- and anti-fascist positions seem âcloseâ
to fascism.
Leftismâespecially American anti-fascismâhas been so lost in the world
of identities and forms that it has forgotten that they are only merely
that: forms. Thus, any who reject the world of forms, or create new
ones, will be seen as immediately suspect.
Were the current forms (Liberal Democracy, Capitalism, the Nation,
Gender, Race, etc.) worth keeping around, then this error would not be
so catastrophic. Some are certainly anti-fascist only because fascism
threatens Liberal Democracy, and perhaps it is no longer true to say
that Leftism (at least in its American iterations) is anti-imperialist
or anti-capitalist any longer, regardless of how much it claims
otherwise.
If, however, we are anti-fascists because we are also pro-something
else, something besides the current egregoric forms which lead only to
exploitation, oppression, and the destruction of the earth, then we must
stop looking away from the mythic power we have ceded to the fascists.
We can see how weâve done this by looking at one of the symptoms that
antifascists use to diagnose whether someone is a fascist: the Black
Sun. Though proximity doesnât prove causation, this is generally a good
rule of thumb. However, little to no attention is ever given to why
fascists invoke the Black Sun.
The secret of the Black Sun is actually quite simple, and itâs one that
fascists do not own. Stare at the sun in the sky and something odd
happens. It appears first to turn deep red, and then goes black and
starts to spin as your retina burns. It also sears itself as an
after-image, lingers there for hours (if not days), and creates the
perception that there is actually nothing behind the sun. It appears to
go flat as it moves, revealing a deep Abyss as if all light and all
reality is merely a black hole.
I do not suggest every white boy and girl who uses an image of the Black
Sun as their iPhone background has experienced the same mystical
transformation that medieval alchemists name nigredo; nor do I assert
that it is an Abyssal truth limited to mystical traditions or
European-derived thought (the Sufis and many animist traditions describe
a similar experience). Still, it should intrigue us that in at least one
fascist strain, a rite exists which inducts the initiate into the
nihilist/spiritual âworld without forms.â
From that world, through such an initiation, it is easy to transcend
societal restraints and enter into the pre-formal realm of perception.
Outside the constraints of socially-constructed identity and morality,
any new thought is possible and any new form is acceptable specifically
because âpossibleâ and âacceptableâ no longer apply. More so, the
experience strengthens the will of the initiate: the vision was
survived, the mind intact.
Those whoâve studied and felt the inebriating mix of mythic power and
indomitable will evinced by fascists like Jack Donovan and the Wolves of
Vinland will understand my meaning here. Donovan has been able to create
an intoxicating, egregoric, mythic conception of the world, cobbling
together fragments of the past with terrifyingly violent new ideologies
which are pristine in their coherence. There is raw, seductive, violent
power here that functions on the âprimalâ (pre-conscious, libidinal)
level against which anti-fascists have no other defense except
no-platforming.
If I here seem full of praise for something so horrifying, it is not
because I am, but because you may have become so separated from your own
mythic power that youâve forgotten you can shift these forms the same
way the fascists do, except towards a more affirming and fair world
rather one of hierarchy and hatred.
I suspect we shun this power for two reasons. First, anyone returning
from the Abyss with such mythic visions, transcending the egregores by
which the rest of us are ruled, will always be initially marked as a
heretic or an outcast. Only when we find others who have seen the same
things or who find meaning in these new dreams can such mystics find
acceptance.
The other reason? Weâve so long ago ceded to others our power to make
the world that we are more happy to leave such delvings to the fascists
than realize we are complicit in our own enchainment.
The world without forms, where we can again reclaim our power, is what
Stirner and the Egoists embrace. It is also what Bataille sought, as did
his close friend, the Jewish mystic Walter Benjamin. From that world we
see both the infinite possibility of human liberation and the infinite
delusions under which we have for too long struggled. It is also where
we can learn how to be Walter Benjaminâs âreal state of emergencyâ which
will eventually make fascism untenable.
The Nation is a false thing that only has power because we give it
power. Gender, race, class, religion, moralsâeven the self itselfâare
all constructs. Civilization is a spook, one to which we are always
subject because we believe there is such a thing as civilization,
because other people believe there is such a thing as civilization, and
because all of us fail to remember that civilization is just an idea in
our heads that causes us to cohere around it and give it more power.
Thus, the fascist who warns that civilization is under threat from
Islam, or trans people, or Cultural Marxismâas well as the
Liberal-Leftist who warns that civilization is under threat from
fascismâ are both still merely fighting for control over the egregore of
Civilization.
Any anti-fascism which seeks to break not only the power of the fascists
but also the power of the forms the fascists wish to control must first
refuse to accept the forms themselves.
Race, Gender, the Nation, Civiliza- tionâthese are not our forms, they
are forms that enchain us, they do not exist in the world we wish to
build, and we must stop pretending otherwise. Instead, we must make new
forms while always conscious that they are only just forms, forms we can
change at will because it is our will which births them.
We must also refuse to cede the mythicâand the embrace of the selfâto
the Fascists. Contrary to Alexander Reid Rossâs warning, the
âpost-leftistsâ and the Egoists and those whoâve read Bataille, and also
those whoâve read Baldwin or Fanon or Chakrabarty, and especially all
those who would dare walk past the forestâs edge in darkness and find
there new truths, regardless the consequencesâit is to them where we
must look for the rituals which will free us all.
It is they, and the magics they find, which can finally help us exorcise
fascismâs spectre from our world.
âThere is much magickal appeal in aesthetics that arouse and intrigue
yet evade so- called logical explanation for their appeal, i.e. simply
finding something to be beautiful, for no reason, and from nowhere.â
~ Liber Nihil
Civilization is hideous, and few of its faces are more repulsive than
the city. Steeped in sickening fumes, cities present themselves as
nauseating confluences of cement and cable, brutalist filth. Walking
amidst the smog and trash, ears battered by claxon and engine-roar, I am
repulsed. My being yearns for something better, and my
mindâdisconnecting from my bodyâwanders in search of the vine- lashed
landscapes populating my dreams.
I reject the idea that we ought not fetishize so-called nature, that by
idealizing it we only alienate ourselves from it further. Iâve spent
enough time with trees and oceansides to know that they are beautiful,
to develop a fetishized Dream of earth; I would like little more than to
reconnect with soil and river by luxuriating in this beautiful, decadent
reverie. Idealizations of nature are in some ways farcical and
fantastic, but they are also gateways to be passed through, ladders to
be climbed and then kicked down from new heights. As I embrace a false
division between earth and human, I acknowledge the depths of my
alienation; in my life, the divorce of humanity from its aboriginal
habitat has been all too real, and I wish to dissolve this split by way
of rapturous embrace. Perhaps my idealizations will fade or transform if
I am ever fully surrounded by what I wish to be surrounded by (groves,
water, ivy). So be it. Until the night comes when I find myself ensnared
by the green thicket, I propose centralizing anti-civilization
aesthetics in our lives and projects, embracing a violence against the
domination machine informed by the relentless pursuit of beauty. Do we
want to be encompassed by trash heaps or rolling meadows?
This piece revolves around aesthetics, so I want to clarify what the
word means to me although I do not have a clear definition. I use it
gesturally and my understanding of it is comfortably cloudy at the
edges, an amalgamation of various definitions encountered throughout
life. To think of aesthetics is, for me, to think of clusters of qualia,
indescribable sensations and sensuality, gradients of beauty and
ugliness, pathos, expressiveness, impossible juxtapositions of sensory
impressions, transcendent experiences, what people typically call art,
and much moreânot to mention the processes of forming judgments and
drawing out values about all of the above. Civilized humans love to
focus on their own product-objects when they talk about aesthetics, but
I am additionally interested in the aesthetics of the non-human world
and of lived experience itself (inner and outer).
To view the world through an aesthetic lens means, I think, to reference
constellations of thoughts and values as we appraise our lived
experience: contingent, personal metrics about what is attractive to us,
what any given stimuli feels like and stirs within us. In this way, all
of our worldly experience undergoes some kind of aesthetic evaluation,
conscious or not, and therefore aesthetics inform our entire worldview,
whether we want them to or not. For me, these values are ineffable and
inexplicable, having emerged from the mysterious primordiality of
living. I can neither explain nor expel them, yet they have curious
resonance.
I was working under Walmartâs fluorescent light when this idea first
took hold in me. (Department stores, like cities, may also epitomize
abrasive ugliness.)
My goal at work was always to keep thoughts fully detached from what I
was doing with my body, in this case through a steady drip of podcast
audio wired from pocket to ear. As I shelved another box of Great Value
macaroni (dark coal of civilization), Free Radical Radio cohost Rydra
made a remark that stayed with me for a long timeâIâll quote:
âFor me, I really feel like at its core, anti-civ (and this is gonna
sound bad to a lot of people, but I donât think it needs to) can be a
purely aesthetic preferenceâI donât need to infer what human nature is,
or if thereâs a right way to live, or if people did something for
billions of years... all of that stuff may be true, it may have
happenedâ who knows? I donât know. I donât have the answers to those
questions. I can say thatâs likely true. I can say itâs likely that for
99.9% of human history, yâknow, people lived a [certain] wayâ but the
[most important] thing... is just that I donât fucking like cities. I
donât like the structure around it, I donât like the fact that resource
extraction is happening to create these things, I donât like pollution,
I like being able to swim in the ocean; on a purely aesthetic level,
[with regard to] my preferences for what I want to see with my own eyes
and feel and hear and smell, I am not interested in civilization. Itâs
that easy.â[20]
Those words lingered, sedimenting. Time passed and the concept of
mounting an aesthetic argument against civilization became more and more
alluring, resonant. Months later, I would be walking through the rain in
London, holding my breath to avoid inhaling motor fumes and staring down
the sidewalk, thinking: I do not like this place; the ugliness drains me
of life; the mechanisms by which it operates are profoundly grotesque. I
do not wish to be hereâand further, I wish this place were entirely
transformed, so that something more beautiful could take its place, so
that grasses and oldfields could grow and proliferate. I do not think
these are unreasonable desires.
In my youth politics were of little interest to me, seeming alien, ugly,
and out of my hands. Evading the political, I much preferred to plumb
inner worlds, until the day I stumbled onto the proselytizing of Noam
Chomsky. I found myself dragged down a rabbit-hole, suddenly awake to
the horrible nature of this world, suddenly anarcho-syndicalist, and
suddenly leaning into an asceticism as severe as that of the monkish
Noam himself. I could hardly bring myself to do anything artistic while
there was such boundless pain around meâafter all, I was one of the only
ones who could do anything about it. I was an Anarchist. Aesthetics were
off of the table and out of the question, shoved into the corner of my
mental room to wither and catch dust as I got down to the business of
saving the world.
Eventually I adopted post-left anticivilization theory as my primary
lens of viewing the world, but even then Rydraâs sentiment was somewhat
revelatory to me as I toiled in that Walmart. Anarchic anti-civilization
aestheticism could go far in resolving the tension between the
anesthetized political direness I had previously embraced, and my
lifelong fascination with the beautiful. I imagine this might be true
for others. Politics are generally quite ugly, rife with protests and
dumb slogans, tacky signs on sticks, and senate meetings. Moonlight,
summerâs wind, the infinity of oceans, leaves in early autumnâI will
orient myself towards these things, eschewing dingy political processes
and endeavoring to collaborate with like-minded others. I dream of
laying waste to mechanics that perpetuate ugliness so that I may better
venerate moss. To embrace this more directly is the aspiration of my
proposed aestheticism.
I am not suggesting an abandonment of politics entirely. This is
partially because the word is slippery, but I also feel that its
wholesale rejection may be overkill. (Better to cannibalize politics and
discard the rotten flesh.) What I want is a shift in focus away from the
polis and its manifold inhabitantsânot to mention debates with those who
will never agree with usâto the ravenous pursuit of beauty as an end in
itself. To relinquish designs of control seems prudent as collapse
seemingly sets in and climate chaos takes hold. The worldâs cities will
not be saved, and the sooner Leviathan falls the better; to fetishize
forests and ruins will only soften the destructive blow of collapse,
render it more ecstatic. And if collapse never comes, then let us still
carve out beautiful lives for ourselves and those we love.
Civilized people like myself have, to various extents, pornified views
of the world. Our senses are dulled on plasma televisions and polygons,
stereo systems and cheesecake. How can an earthen life compete with
movie theaters, death metal, and the Louvre? (Forests can seem gray and
dull next to a perfectly manicured synthetic experience in sixteen
million colors.) I donât actually think earth can compete, or, more
importantly, should. For me, reconnecting with a deep-seated (but
malnourished) appreciation for the natural world is an important
project, glutted as I have been on film and the music of high
technology. I think the anarcho-primitivists are right in that so-called
rewilding ought to be high on our to-do list. For those who love art as
it is now (the art of music, of painting, of cooking, of cinematography)
a critique of civilization will always be deeply and profoundly
contradictory. This is not to say we should strive to puritanically
purge ourselves of civilized fascinations (let us more simply
acknowledge our origins and move on), but most of the art I know and
love was built with tools and materials of civilizationâpiles of wiring,
paper and ink, fossil fuels, and gallons of vibrant paints. I would like
to expand my sphere of experience outwards and away from all of that.
This tension may not be fully resolvable, but it is worth grappling
with. At times I conceptualize success in this struggle as a return.
Pornification involves a contradiction: how can civilized life be both
profoundly ugly and disastrously over-stimulating in its luster? I think
the answer lies with specialization, compartmental- ization, and
sacrificeâin a word, economics. Art is typically a product dangled in
front of us as a reward for work. We drag ourselves through gray worlds
of toil and cramped apartments, hideous lives, in order to revel in
demarcated aesthetic experiences delivered via Netflix subscription and
concert hall, sterilized episodes of consumption with which we have
little interaction (or, alternatively, highly controlled and programmed
interaction). These are largely passive, flat experiences in which our
role is simply that of a user, a spectator. Sometimes it works and the
art is wonderful to usâI for one do love some art feverishly, after
allâbut the cost is high. If we conceptualize art, in its manifold
iterations, as one of the ends of civilization itself, then civilization
itself is the cost of art. Everyone works in the machine so that
everyone else can work in the machine, and consume art occasionally. I
am simplifying, but I hope my point resonates.[21]
So we are offered these aesthetic experiences as rewards for enduring
our numbing, slavish, ghastly lives, but these experiences have a way of
weakening us and indenturing us to the machine. We become like addicts
and for many of us the beauty of sunlit mountains and toadstool-dappled
ponds becomes harder and harder to perceive or care about.
If people are afraid of destroying civilization, perhaps this is an
important part of why. We do not want to give up the music we listened
to when we first had sex, the movie that showed us a new kind of beauty,
the video game with which we connect to our handful of friends and
escape this drab place. Indeed, we rely on these things so as not to
break down beneath the ugliness of it all. I share this sentiment, and I
will probably cling to my music collection until the day the power goes
out. But if we could somehow attain our wildest dreams of overthrowing
this awful machine (or, at least, escaping it), I suspect that
wonderfully new, beautiful experiences might come pouring in. This
possibility is worthy of unconditional exploration.
An uncivilized life could be full with adventure and beauty of a
different kind than weâve been made accustomed to. This is what I want:
a life that does not need the drug of civilized art to be bearable, a
life that is encompassed by tree and vine and lake and moon, a life
suffused with ambient, vitalic beauty. I want to be able to jump into
the ocean on a whim, or climb a tree to watch the sunset on any
twilight. I want to bathe in rivers with loving friends and forget
myself on forest floors. I want to make poetry and music with whatever I
can, draw with sticks and stones, and luxuriate in inner worlds with no
oppressive weight boring into me, without feeling like my art is
worthless as anything but a product. I want to free my imagination, and
I want other people to be able to do the same, most especially those I
love. Further, I simply want to be surrounded by less of the
anthropogenic: less that is human and more that is dirt, fur, leaf, and
water. These are wild dreams; I do not expect to fully realize them, but
they inform my life as objects to be striven for. And to me they are all
wildly aesthetic.
I do not require any sect to validate these concerns. When I am honest
with myself I realize that my sense of beauty and my aesthetic desires
are mine alone, untethered to (but not unaffected by) ideologies and
value systems, often defying logic and the political. As a knot of
ineffable, irreducible feelings, my aesthetics demand no justification,
indeed cannot be justified or reasoned with*. The idiosyncrasy of these
passions makes them strong, and I use this strength to fire my projects
and guide my life, seeking the beautiful in everything I do, and
fighting to eradicate the vileness haunting my lived experience.
[* note from above: I think there are threads to unravel in this
sentiment. Although I feel strongly about my aesthetics, I also feel
that they are temporal, necessarily contingent, mutable; this leads me
to wonder about others and about the formation processes of aesthetic
values. Is it possible to disrupt, redirect, transform the aesthetic
sensibilities of others? To what extent can aesthetic values emerge from
non-aesthetic modes of valuing? Having no satisfying answer, I would
like to see speculation and experimentation attempt answers to these
questions. Clearly aesthetic inclinations can and do morphâaccruing,
dissolving, fluctuating, reshapingâbut whatever excites these processes
is nebulous and usually met with a typical human resistance to change.
Attaining some foothold in understanding all of this may be beneficial
to our projects, I think, but I personally doubt that I will, or can,
ever understand these processes and properties in their entirety.]
Let us aestheticize ruins. The uncivilized world could be a gorgeous
patchwork of toppled ivy-laced chapels and bonfires. Stars pouring
through a clearing in the summerâs thick canopy could be more beautiful
than any painting. Let us destroy dark factories and insipid schools,
foul shopping malls and unsightly power plants, for the eviscerated
icons of this Leviathan will be truly beautiful to behold. As we disturb
the synthetic anti-soil of this astroturf world, let seeds take hold,
let weeds grow, let vines overtake, let berries fall and let new
hawthorns sway. We need not deny our lust! I say we embrace our desires,
ensnared as they may be in the pursuit of viridian ecstasy, and become
uncivilized artists, violent aesthetes.
Friends of mine have land where they are establishing a forest garden.
After a day spent with them, planting and walking through the woods, I
have noticed something special that happens when I close my eyes to go
to sleep. In the black ether, I see plants growing, stalks burgeoning,
ivy twirling: beautiful magic that I could not have anticipated, like
sprouts poking out from seeds planted deep in the soil of my mind. I
wonder what else might come of a life suffused in that beautyâ radiant,
verdant life.
Continued from Black Seed issue 4 (full text included here)
A few weeks ago, New Orleans went through the ten-year commemoration of
the Hurricane Katrina disaster. In fact, there were several quite
divergent modes of commemoration. At one end of the spectrum there was
the Tenth Annual Katrina March and Second-line, the most serious
political event of the day, which sponsored speeches and performances at
the site of the levee break in the devastated and still depopulated
Lower Ninth Ward. It had a significant turnout, though certainly under a
thousand participants.
At the other extreme was the Krewe of O.A.K, which practiced a kind of
âcommemorating by not commemoratingâ in its annual Mid-Summer Mardi Gras
parade and celebration. O.A.K. stands for âOutrageous and Kinky,â in
addition to âOak St.,â its starting point at the Maple Leaf Bar. The
parade, noted for its wild costumes and zany ambience, attracted perhaps
10,000 to this Carrollton neighborhood event. According to the
Times-Picayune, the Krewe chose the theme âTie Dye Me Up,â to evoke the
famous âSummer of Love,â and âbring good vibes to this annual parade.â
It added: âNo mention of the âKâ word, please.â
Most of the âKatrina10â activities fell somewhere between the two
extremes, but tended more in the direction of the Krewe of O.A.K., in
that they were overwhelmingly in a celebratory mode. This was certainly
true of the official commemoration that was sponsored by the city
administration and local businesses. It focused on recovery, economic
and educational successes, and, above all, the remarkable âresilienceâ
of the local community. It presented an upbeat official narrative that
erased many of the ongoing problems and tragedies of the city, in
addition to effacing many of the most significant struggles and
achievements of the community, when these did not fit into the official
story. The major concerns here will be this official narrative, which
pictures the cityâs post-Katrina history through the distorting lens of
a politics of disavowal, and the many realities that this narrative
disavows.
What then, is âdisavowal?â It is in fact something that is quite common
in everyday experience, and which we have all experienced many times. We
often face two psychological processes in which truth is negated. One of
these, which is called âdenial,â is a defense mechanism in which the
truth can never be consciously recognized or spoken. Denial is silence.
The other process, which is called âdisavowal,â is a defense mechanism
in which the truth is at times recognized or spoken, but is systemically
forgotten or silenced at every decisive moment, when it really counts.
Disavowal is re-silence. The Hurricane Katrina Ten-Year Anniversary has
been primarily a celebration of disavowal and re-silencing.
Much of this re-silencing has gone under the banner of âresilience.â
While this term has been used throughout the post-Katrina period, it has
become a kind of watchword and rallying-cry for the official
commemoration and the politics of disavowal that it expresses. Even
beyond its ideological uses, it is in some ways a strange term to use to
describe post-Katrina New Orleans. Resilience is defined as: âThe
capability of a strained body to recover its size and shapeâ and âan
ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.â[22]
Neither of these definitions describes post-Katrina New Orleans terribly
well. As for the âstrained bodyâ part, consider this. If someone had a
serious accident or disease and after ten years is alive and doing
tolerably wellâexcept at only three-fourths of his or her original
sizeâwe wouldnât think of that as the most admirable of recoveries.
There are also problems with the âeasilyâ part. Harry Shearer deserves
much credit for defying the forces of complacency and self-satisfaction
and boldly popularizing the term âthe Big Uneasy.â[23] Whether New
Orleanians have fully recovered or not, the last ten years have not been
particularly âeasyâ for most of them. Maybe these long years werenât so
hard for those who have had the good fortune to be extremely wealthy,
delusional, comatose or dead. But for a large segment of the rest, they
have been difficult and even excruciating.
But the major problem with the term is its ideological use. In
Post-Katrina New Orleans, âresilienceâ is associated with tendencies
toward regression and mindless compliance. The voice of resilience says,
âCongratulations, youâre still here! (Those of you who are still here),â
and asks, âHow about doing a second line, or cooking up some gumbo for
the tourists?â It asks, a bit more delicately, âHow about making their
beds, cleaning their toilets, serving their food and drinks, maybe even
selling them some drugs, and doing a special dance for them at the
club.â It urges, above all, âBe resilient. Be exactly what you are
expected to be.â
The ideology of resilience ignores the extraordinary creative
achievements and visionary aspirations of New Orleanians in the
post-Katrina period, and celebrates survival, bare life. It focuses
instead on the communityâs continued existence as a site for imposition
of corporate-state hierarchically-formulated development plans. All the
complements to the people of New Orleans for being resilient are a bit
condescending and demeaning. After all, itâs not the greatest tribute to
people to complement them on their ability to survive. âThank you for
not just giving up and dying en masse. If you had done that would have
been somewhat of an embarrassment to the greatest country in the world.â
The real post-Katrina story is not a story of resilience. More on this
later, but if you want to see the real post-Katrina story, check out the
film Big Charity.[24] Itâs an account of heroic courage and dedication
to saving lives and caring for the community. Itâs a story of crimes
against humanity that are systematically repressed and forgotten. If you
want to see the real post-Katrina story (in this case, of the larger
region of Southeast Louisiana), check out the film My Louisiana
Love.[25] Itâs the story of passionate struggle for the beloved
community and the beloved land. Itâs another story of crimes against
humanity, and also against nature, that are systematically repressed and
forgotten. Both sides of this story, the nobility of struggle and
dedication on the one hand, and the criminality and betrayal on the
other, are lost in the fog of resilience. They are lost in the
resilencing process. They are lost in the Official Story. It is versions
of this Official Story that were presented by former President Bush,
President Obama, and Mayor Landrieu as part of the official Katrina
commemoration.
According to Former President George W. Bushâs typically blunt and
non-nuanced judgment, âNew Orleans is back, and better than ever.â In
fact, he is amazed by what has happened in New Orleans. This is not so
astounding, since he specializes in being amazed. He was amazed by the
atrocities of September 11, 2001, claiming that ânobody could have
predictedâ that there would be an attack on the World Trade
Centerâthough about ten years before there had been an attack on the
World Trade Center. Hint! He was amazed by the post-Katrina flood in
2005, exclaiming that no one could have âanticipated the breach of the
leveesââthough several experts actually did, and it had already happened
in recent memory during Hurricane Betsy.[26] Hint!
So we should not be surprised, much less amazed, by Bushâs reaction to
Post-Katrina New Orleans in 2015: âIsnât it amazing?â What amazes him is
that âthe storm nearly destroyed New Orleans and yet, now, New Orleans
is the beacon for school reform,â[27] But what alternative universe does
he inhabit? On Planet W, âthe storm nearly destroyed New Orleans?â But
what storm? Hurricane Katrina didnât hit New Orleans and even what
missed New Orleans had lost much of its force by the time its winds came
our way. The disaster was not a storm, but rather flooding caused by
criminal governmental and corporate negligence. Furthermore, over a
quarter of New Orleans was not damaged at all by the storm and flooding
and most of the rest could have recovered relatively easily given a
reasonable level of response and support.[28] What should be truly
astounding is that the victimizers of the city made the recovery so
difficult for the victims. Also, Bush should also not be amazed by the
quasi-privatization of the school system, since his own administration
was responsible for promoting exactly the kind of predatory opportunism
and disaster capitalism that produced that system.
Does Bush remember anything about what actually happened? Please excuse
the foolish question. Of course, he has no idea, and heâs counting on
everyone else to forget, if they ever knew. As he twice implores of his
listeners, âI hope you remember what I remember.â This recalls the
delusional wife-killer Fred Madison in Lost Highway, David Lynchâs
classic story of monumental forgetfulness. As Fred announces,
unconsciously diagnosing his delusional rewriting of history, âI like to
remember things my own way.â Similarly, Bushâs voice is the voice of
denial. Never even reaching the level of re-silence, it is just dumb
silence about anything that counts.
Curiously, the same day that Obama visited New Orleans I got an email
from him saying, âLet me be perfectly frank â Iâm emailing to ask you
for $5âŠ.â[29] My first thought was, âWhy donât you pass by so I can give
you the $5 in person! That would give me a chance to be perfectly frank
too, and explain how things in post-Karina New Orleans are not quite as
rosy as youâve been painting them to be.â I was about to send the email
to Air Force One, and then it occurred to me that Obamaâs problem is not
really a lack of information, as his Katrina speech in fact confirmed.
Admittedly, Obamaâs speech was infinitely better than the ramblings of
Bush, whose unfortunate native tongue is English As a Second Language.
Obama usually manages to combine a certain amount of intelligent and
lucid analysis (even if it is often intelligently and lucidly deceptive)
with a calculated folksiness aimed at mitigating any sins of excessive
sophistication and erudition.
Folksiness prevailed in his Katrina anniversary address, which gets the
award for more clichés per sentence than any speech ever given here, and
perhaps anywhere else on Planet Earth. In just the first paragraph, he
managed to dispose of many of the obligatory local references, including
âWhere yâat,â âthe Big Easy,â âthe weather in August,â âshrimp poâ boy,â
âParkway Bakery and Tavern,â âRebirth,â âthe Maple Leaf,â âMardi Gras,â
and âwhatâs Carnival for.â [30] Fortunately, somebody caught him before
he told the crowd âjockamo fee nanĂ©.â
But the agenda was basically about re-silencing. Obama enthusiastically
promoted the neo-liberal corporate capitalist project, including the
quasi-privatization and de-democratization of the local schools. He
actually citied some damning statistics about child poverty and economic
inequality in New Orleans. And he noted that the city âhad been for too
long been plagued by structural inequalities.â âHad beenâ before
Hurricane Katrina, that is.
But this brief moment of quasi-recognition was lost in the deluge of
upbeat generalization. He told the city that âthe progress that you have
made is remarkableâ in achieving, among other things, a âmore just New
Orleans.â In case we didnât get his point, he added, âThe progress
youâve made is remarkable.â So we are told that post-Katrina New Orleans
is not only a model of opportunity for entrepreneurs and developers, as
the Chamber of Commerce will enthusiastically inform us, but also a
model for progress in justice.
Obamaâs voice is clearly the voice of disavowal. He knows the truth, and
he can even tell you that he knows it. But this truth is consigned to
footnotes and asides to a larger ideological pseudo-truth that is to be
the focus of our attention. The truth is there only to be strategically
forgotten. The dominant discourse remains the verbose but empty speech
of re-silencing. So much for les Menteurs en Chef.[31]
Next, the local political and corporate establishment, led by mayor
Mitch Landrieu, joined in the celebration. For the anniversary, Landrieu
and Walmart, along with other corporate entities, co-sponsored a
âCitywide Day of Service.â Itâs unfortunate that the community couldnât
organize a large-scale volunteer effort itself, as it did after Katrina,
when our state and corporate masters largely abandoned the city, except
as opportunities for incarceration and then exploitation emerged. The
mayorâs version of a âDay of Serviceâ was four hours of service projects
in the morning, followed by an hour of speeches and celebration, and
then a break, before three more hours of speeches and celebration.
From Landrieuâs perspective, there was much to celebrate. On his
âKatrina 10: Resilient New Orleansâ web site he claims that the Katrina
disaster turned out to be a positive opportunity and as a result âNew
Orleans has turned itself around and has built the city that we
shouldâve built in the first time.â[32] Presumably the city had to wait
287 years for the current experiment in neoliberal social engineering to
arrive. Landrieuâs boosterish assessment of Post-Katrina New Orleans can
be summed up in his depiction of it as âAmericaâs best comeback story.â
In a blatant attempt to mislead readers, he boasts that âthe New Orleans
region has now returned to approximately 95 percent of its pre-Katrina
population.â[33] In fact, as a recent report shows, âNew Orleans is now
at about 78 percent of its population before the stormâ and the recent
growth rate has been 1.4%.[34] Aggregating the population with
surrounding parishes is a transparent ploy to confuse the public.
Many have not come back to New Orleans because of lack of opportunities
here and because the dominant model of development has created obstacles
to their return. To make them disappear through fake statistics is an
outrage. Landrieu obviously didnât grasp the ludicrous but painful irony
of calling the post-Katrina era, in which almost a quarter of the
population did not return, âthe best come-back storyâ in U.S. history!
Landrieuâs voice is the voice of denial, deception and delusion. Letâs
be explicit about what is denied, silenced and re-silenced.
New Orleans, this city that has, according to Obama, made âremarkableâ
strides in becoming âmore just,â is second on the list of U.S. cities
with the most extreme economic inequality, and the gap between rich and
poor has been increasing.[35] The level of economic inequality in New
Orleans is comparable to the rate in Zambia.[36] It has very high levels
of child poverty in particular and widespread poverty in general. Recent
studies have shown that 39% of children in New Orleans live in poverty,
which is 17% above the national average, and childhood poverty has been
increasing since 2007. The 27% poverty rate for families is also very
high compared to other U.S. cities and by historic standards for New
Orleans. The Jesuit Social Research Institute recently issued a report
showing the shockingly high cost of living compared to income in
Louisiana, but especially in the New Orleans area, which has seen
skyrocketing property values and rents.[37] In addition, despite heroic
efforts by local groups, homelessness has remained a severe problem in
the city.
We must not forget the over 100,000 citizens of New Orleans who have
never returned, many because of lack of recovery support and the vast
proportional increases in cost of living for poor and working class
people. The replacement of public housing by mixed-income housing that
displaces most former residents has also contributed to a process that
should be recognized as a form of ethnic and economic cleansing. There
has also been a 55% decrease in public transportation service as of
2015, and the budget of the Regional Transit Authority was still almost
40% below its pre-Katrina level in 2013.[38] New Orleans was once
appreciated by locals and newcomers for its combination of joie de
vivre, rich culture, and modest cost of living, especially for housing.
But this financial accessibility disappeared in the post-Katrina housing
crisis and the drastic cutback in affordable public services.
The struggle over housing was a crucial one (and one in which I
participated actively for a long time). However, the movement
unfortunately fell under the influence of narrow leftist sectarians who
suffer from fetishism of the state.[39] The result was a one-sided
obsession with the less than 5% of pre-Katrina units that were in public
housing and an almost complete neglect for the half of all housing
consisting of commercial rental units, not to mention a lack of concern
for the less privileged home owners who were struggling desperately for
just and adequate compensation for damages. Almost 52,000 of about
79,000 seriously damaged housing units were rental property.[40] The
vocal activist focus on public housing divided the citizenry and played
into the hands of developers and their bureaucratic allies, who quickly
developed plans to reengineer both public housing and the housing market
in general for purposes of profitable ethnic cleansing and
gentrification. The possibility for a broad-based movement for housing
justice was lost and the result has been ten years of continuing
injustice to renters in particular.
Another area of acute injustice in post-Katrina New Orleans has been
health care. Medical services collapsed after the disaster, have
continued to lag in some areas, and have remained in a state of crisis
in others. Mental health care and addiction treatment have suffered the
worst. Emergencies related to mental health, alcoholism and drug
addiction are all most commonly treated in the same manner, by
consignment to Orleans Parish Prison. Furthermore, one of the great
tragedies of the neoliberal re-engineering of New Orleans was the
fraudulent condemning and closing of Charity Hospital and the deliberate
destruction of a historic mid-city neighborhood for the sake of
lucrative opportunities in developing its replacement. Charity could
have been returned to service within days when it was most desperately
needed, immediately after the disaster. The story of its permanent
closing is rife with lies by the Jindal administration, and involved
literal sabotage of the closed facility in an effort to secure FEMA
funds for a new medical center. The public was duped out of $283 million
dollars by deception and disinformation that disguised the fact that the
old hospital could have been successfully adapted to fulfill current
needs.[41] In addition, it is likely that many lives were lost and a
great many people suffered needlessly as a result of this criminal
injustice.
All of these injustices have been part of the neoliberal engineering
process that has gone under the rubric of âNew Orleans as a Boutique
City.â This concept was met with considerable contempt in the early days
after Katrina, but it has returned repeatedly with a vengeance.
Recently, Sean Cummings, a prominent real estate developer and CEO of
New Orleans Building Corporation, boasted that âthe city is a magnet
again for new talent and new ideas, co-creating a new New Orleans.â
Cummings disingenuously explained that âa boutique city stands for
something. Itâs original. Itâs authentic. Itâs one-of-a-kind.â[42] In
fact, this isnât what it means at all. New Orleans already stood for
something, was original, was authentic, and was one of a kind. Creating
a ânewâ New Orleans is based on a quite different agenda. To make it
into a âboutique cityâ means that it will be marketed to more affluent
tourists, to new residents from the entrepreneurial and technical
(âSilicon Bayouâ) sectors , and to wealthy buyers looking for a second
or third home in a town with appropriate entertainment and shopping
opportunities.
Post-Katrina New Orleans has gained considerable notoriety as the site
of one of the nationâs most far-reaching experiments in the destruction
of a public school system and its replacement with a network of charter
schools. Andrea Gabor, in a brief analysis recently published in the New
York Times, discusses many of the problems with charter schools in New
Orleans that critics have long found to plague such schools
everywhere.[43] The general case against these schools has been argued
convincingly, indeed devastatingly, by Diane Ravitch in a series of
articles in the New Review of Books starting with âThe Myth of Charter
Schoolsâ and in her book The Reign of Error.[44]
Gabor applies many of these same arguments to the New Orleans case. She
notes the discriminatory (a euphemism for âracistâ) nature of school
reform. She cites âgrowing evidence that the reforms have come at the
expense of the cityâs most disadvantaged children, who often disappear
from school entirely and, thus, are no longer included in the data.â
Even establishment education figure Andre Perry, one-time CEO of the
Capital One-University of New Orleans Charter Network, admits that
âthere were some pretty nefarious things done in the pursuit of academic
gain,â including âsuspensions, pushouts, skimming, counseling out, and
not handling special needs kids well.â In other words, the case for
charter schools depended in part on injustices to the less privileged
students: those who in reality have the greatest needs, and who, from
the standpoint of justice, deserve the most attention.
Gabor points out the questionable nature of claims for high performance
by charter schools. She observes that studies ignore the fact that many
disadvantaged students have been excluded from high-performing schools
or from schools entirely and do not appear in statistics. She cites a
recent study that concluded that âover 26,000 people in the metropolitan
area between the ages of 16 and 24 are counted as âdisconnected,â
because they are neither working nor in school.â The Cowen Institute for
Public Education Initiatives was forced to retract, due to flawed
methodology, a study that concluded that the re-engineered New Orleans
school system had âhigher graduation rates and better test scores than
could be expected, given the socio-economic disadvantages of their
students.â[45] The biggest innovation introduced by charter schools may
be that cheating on tests and reports, a practice once restricted to
naughty students, has now become official policy.
However, the biggest flaw in defenses of charter schools in New Orleans
is that they are based on comparison with the neglected and underfunded
pre-Katrina school system. They do not consider what would have been
possible if the same kind of support and resources that have been
lavished on charter schools had been devoted to creating a just,
democratic, community-controlled school system that is dedicated to the
welfare of every student and every neighborhood in the city.
In the midst of global turmoil over this issue, not a single politician
was able to even speak the word âmigrantâ in relation to our cityâs
recent history. As is often the case, the truth is too big to be
noticed.
I grew up hearing New Orleans called âThe Gateway to the Americas,â[46]
a term that was popular during the long tenure of Mayor deLesseps âChepâ
Morrison. It was only much later that I heard the story of United Fruit
Company and the part of the history of plunder of Latin America that was
directed from board rooms in New Orleans. I discovered that New Orleans
was a gateway to the exploitation of those Other Americas that are
excluded from the official definition of âAmerica.â[47] This aspect of
history is, however, systematically forgotten.
Another forgotten reality is the fact that in many ways, New Orleans,
âthe Queen City of the South,â is a northern city. This is true
geographically. Our city lies at the northern edge of one of our great
bioregional points of reference, the Western Mediterranean Sea,
consisting of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.[48] This is also
true culturally. We are a northern city because of our position at the
northern edge of Latin America. Louisiana was for its first 121 years
part of the French and Spanish empires, and New Orleans, in particular,
has never entirely lost its Latin character. It is becoming more Latin
once again.
Thus, we might have thought that the city would celebrate the renewed
ties with Latin America that were created when Latino and Latina workers
came to rebuild the city after the Katrina disaster. In reality,
government and business gave at best an ambiguous welcome to these
workers, even when they were most desperately needed. The authorities
then either abandoned them, or redirected their attention to disposing
of them. The local administration still gives lip service to the efforts
of these workers in rebuilding the city, at least on ceremonial
occasions. However, it does little to address their problems, while
creating additional ones, and at the same time facilitating attempts to
expel them from the city.
This treatment has been outrageously unjust and intolerable. For the
past ten years, migrant workers and their families have been, and still
are, subject to wage theft, dangerous health and safety conditions,
housing discrimination, police harassment, arbitrary arrests, ethnic
profiling, predation by criminals, terrorization by authorities, and
subjection to demeaning tracking with ankle bracelets. In the early
years after Hurricane Katrina, while migrants were hard at work
rebuilbing the city, they were commonly called âWalking ATMâs,â since
they were regularly preyed upon by thieves and had no recourse to a
legal and penal system that was only interested in criminalizing the
victims.[49] A recent interview with representatives of the Congress of
Day Laborers (Congreso de Jornaleros) from WHIV radioâs Katrina coverage
is an excellent introduction to the experience of migrant workers and
their families in post-Katrina New Orleans. [50]
We need to rethink that history and begin to celebrate New Orleans again
as âthe Gateway to the Americas.â We just have to remember one thing
this time: A gateway opens in both directions.[51]
Randolph Bourne famously proclaimed, paraphrasing Hegel, that âwar is
the health of the state.â What is usually forgotten is that war on its
own citizens is the highest expression of the stateâs health. After
Katrina we in New Orleans got to see what the state is like when all its
mitigating qualities collapse and it is reduced to its essential
repressive nature. This is the âminimalââbut maximally brutalâstate. The
state as a state of war against the people.
It is important that we remember the terroristic conditions that
prevailed in a city with a penal system (the stateâs essential moment)
and no legal system (the stateâs inessential moment). This is what
existed in New Orleans during the post-Katrina âstate of exception.â[52]
This period was a state of âexception,â not in the sense that it varied
in principle from the normal and unexceptional. It was âexceptionalâ
only in the sense that the normal reached a level of intensity that it
made it so conspicuous that it could not for a certain period of time
(before resilencing) be ignored.
But resilencing has followed. Thus, we must remember. We must not forget
the prisoners who were trapped in Orleans Parish Prison in the rising
floodwaters after Katrina, or herded away to spend countless hours on
overpasses in the hot sun. We must not forget the horrors of the
makeshift Greyhound Station Prison, âGuantanamo on the Bayou,â where
prisoners were put in outdoor wire cages, made to sleep on concrete
floors, in oil and diesel fuel, where they were harassed and
intimidated, and controlled by shootings with beanbag rounds.
We need to remember the subhuman conditions at Hunt Correctional Center,
where inmates from OPP and victims of often arbitrary mass arrests after
Katrina were herded together indiscriminately. Where they were thrown
naked in bare cells, sometimes with hardened criminals or schizophrenics
as cellmates. Where they were then given nothing to wear but jumpsuits,
and nothing to read for over a month. Where they were often kept in
cells for twenty-four hour a day. Where mattresses were taken away every
day so prisoners could only sit or lie on concrete or metal. Where loud
bells were rung every 15 minutes, every day, all day, in disciplinary
tiers. We must remember the intimidation of citizens into forced labor
with the threat of being sent to Hunt. We need to remember the period in
which there was widespread police repression while racist vigilantes
were allowed to terrorize some neighborhoods. We must remember the
period in which power as domination was allowed to reveal its true face.
The period in which archy reigned supreme.
Finally, we must remember one of the most horrifying of the realities
that have been silenced, not only in Katrina commemorations, but in the
everyday world of Big Easy business as usual. This is the brutal fact
that New Orleans has for all these years been the world capital of
âincarceration,â which is merely a sanitized, Latinized term for the
caging and torture of human beings. We must not forget that the United
States leads the world in incarceration, that Louisiana leads the United
States in incarceration, and that New Orleans leads Louisiana in
incarceration. We must remember that in some ways incarceration in
Louisiana has been the continuation of slavery by other means. We must
never forget the murderous nature of a carceral system that destroys
generations and destroys communities. This is a stark post-Katrina
reality that no politician dares mention or commemorate.
Beyond all these forms of resilencing lies the most extreme form of
post-Katrina disavowal, and disavowal regarding the fate of New Orleans
itself. This concerns the social ecology of the city in relation to
entrenched and accelerating global social ecological trends. No
meaningful discussion of the future of New Orleans can afford to ignore
the continuing loss of coastal wetlands, the implications of the
accelerating rise in sea level, and the very real possibility (and
long-term inevitability) of a much more powerful hurricane than Katrina
hitting New Orleans directly. The specter of doom, indeed, highly likely
doom, hangs over the city and it cannot be exorcised by denial, by
disavowal, or by any amount of happy talk by politicians and corporate
executives.
The depth of ecological disavowal was highlighted in a Katrina
anniversary segment of the public radio program âOn Pointâ Never during
the hour-long program was the severity of the global ecological crisis
and its implications for New Orleans really explored. However, I was
struck in particular by an exchange with Dr. Paul Kemp, a Coastal
Oceanographer and Geologist at Louisiana State University.[53] Kemp is
one of the major advocates of Mississippi River diversion to create
coastal wetlands. Paul Kemp is a good guy, standing up for the region,
and, in particular, for the need to restore the coastal wetlands. But
this is what makes his comments in some ways so troubling, since they
also reflect the larger dominant ideology of disavowal.
Kemp didnât take on directly the details of how we are to cope with
something between the three foot rise in sea level commonly accepted,
and the ten foot rise recently suggested by a team headed by James
Hansen and sixteen colleagues.[54] Furthermore, a rapid melting and
collapse of large segments of the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets
would produce a much more rapid rise that would be devastating to
coastal areas near or below sea level. The melting of the Greenland ice
sheet would produce a twenty-foot rise in sea level, while that of the
Antarctic ice sheet would produce a sixty-foot rise.[55] Most scientists
believe that such effects will not be seen until into the next century.
Somehow, few think of a century as a comprehensible time span that has
practical, concrete relevance. Even in relation to a three-hundred year
old city. One might learn something from the ancient Hebrews, who posed
the possibility that âthe iniquity of the fathersâ might be âvisited on
the children, to the third and the fourth generation.â[56] Or from the
Vedic Sages, who in the Rig Veda suggested that âthe older shares the
mistake of the youngerâ[57] Or from the Native Americans, who suggest
that we consider the effects of our actions on the seventh generation.
Or from the ancient Buddhist doctrine of karma, which, in literal terms,
means taking responsibility for the way in which all the causes and
conditions in which we are implicated have enduring consequences.
Kemp and others point out that if we can rebuild wetlands, to a certain
degree the land will rise with sea level rise. And it is indeed true
that in many ways our coastal wetlands are more ecologically adaptable
than other kinds of coastline. However, such restorative approaches can
only offer long term hope if global climate change is addressed much
more effectively than nation-states and corporations have done or are
indeed structurally capable of doing. If the worst scenarios occur, as
they are likely to, given the persistence of the dominant global
economic and political order, such projects will be no more than futile
gestures in the long run.
Kemp concedes that âIn a very large storm we are not going to be able to
keep all the water out,â but explained after evacuation there will be
âteamsâ that will âmake sure that the property will be protected. The
host, Tom Ashbrook, asks the incisive question: âIs New Orleans going to
be around as we get higher sea levels?â But Kemp evades this question.
In a conspicuously off-point response, he explains that the cityâs
âoriginal defensesâ were vegetation and that âthe marshes and swamps
provided protection against surge and waves.â He notes that âwe have a
big river to work with,â implying that these traditional defenses will
once again protect the city in the same manner that they once did, if we
work diligently on coastal restoration.
But the current threats are of a different order from those faced when
our âoriginal defensesâ did their job so well. In 2002, the Bill Moyersâ
Now program did a piece that outlined starkly the dangers to New Orleans
posed by what has long been called âThe Big One.â[58] In the segment,
Emergency Manager Walter Maestri points out that a direct hit from a
major hurricane that stalled over the city could fill up the natural
bowl between the levees and put twenty-two feet of water even in the
relatively high ground of the French Quarter. Maestri also remarks that
when his office participated in a mock Hurricane emergency[59] and saw
projections of the effects of a major hurricane, model storm âHurricane
Delaney,â on the city âwe changed the name of the storm from Delaney to
K-Y-A-G-B ⊠kiss your ass goodbye ⊠because anybody who was here as that
Category Five storm came across ⊠was gone.â
An exchange from the interview is instructive. Daniel Zwerdling asks,
âDo you think that the President of the United States and Congress
understand that people like you and the scientists studying this think
the city of New Orleans could very possibly disappear?â This is
basically the same question that Tom Ashbrooke posed thirteen years
later. But note the difference in the answer. Walter Maestri replies, âI
think they know that, I think that theyâve been told that. I donât know
that anybody, though, psychologically, you know has come to grips with
that as â as a â a potential real situation.â They know, but they cannot
act as if they know. In other words, they respond to the situation
through disavowal.
This kind of brutal realism is refreshing, and quite necessary, since
our response needs to be proportional to the true magnitude of the
problem, and we have cope with the fact that we are normally unable to
respond in this manner. The documentary also included discussion of a
proposal to build a large wall around the older parts of the city that
are above sea level (more or less the quarter of the city nearest the
river that didnât flood after Katrina), with huge gates that would be
closed in times of heavy flooding, abandoning most of the city to
destruction. This rather dramatic scenario may not be the correct
approach, but at least has the merit of taking the long-term threats
seriously. Taking possibly catastrophic future sea level rise seriously
would require an even more ruthless sense of reality.
There is a fundamental obstacle to clear recognition of our true
ecological predicament. If one really grasps the problem, one is forced
to admit that the only sane, rational and humane response to such a
problem is to take action that gets to its roots. This means becoming
part of a local and global movement to destroy the system that is
producing the catastrophe. Faced with this crisis of conscience and
crisis of action, most who are not already lost in denial will succumb
to the path of disavowal and try strategically to disremember what they
have learned about the crisis. Fortunately for them, their path of bad
faith will be supported an entire world of systematically distorted
discourse and practice.
The final important thing that has been denied and disavowed, silenced
and resilenced is in fact the most positive thing that came out of the
disaster. This is the story of the community self-determination,
collective creativity, mutual aid, compassion, and solidarity that arose
out of the devastated city. This story is perhaps told best in scott
crowâs book Black Flags and Windmills and in Francisco DiSantis and
LouLou Lattaâs Post-Katrina Portraits.[60] It is a history that is
obscured, minimized and even negated by the ideology of resilience.
Resilience is in itself merely an objective quality of a being, usually
an organism or an ecosystem, and, by extension, a person or a community.
It is not a moral virtue deserving of praise, though it is absurdly
treated as one according to the resilientist ideology. The actual moral
qualities related to resilience include diligence, perseverance,
dedication, determination, and courage. Diligence or determination,
which implies steadfastness and fortitude in the face of adversity, is
in the Christian tradition one of the âseven Heavenly Virtuesâ that are
counterposed to the âSeven Deadly Sins. Similarly, both AdhiáčáčhÄna or
resolute determination, and VÄ«rya or diligence, are among the pÄramitÄs,
or âperfectionsâ in Buddhist ethics. And courage has been one of the
cardinal virtues since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers.
A community needs a measure of resilience merely to survive. However, it
needs resolute courage in order to break the chains of illusion and
domination so that it can become free and self-determining, so that it
can flourish and realize itself. The Katrina catastrophe loosened those
chains for a moment, and the spectacle of the abject failure of the
dominant political and economic system, and the flowering of grassroots
mutual aid and solidarity inspired the beginnings of a movement to shake
them off entirely.
In the wake of the Katrina disaster, Common Ground Collective volunteers
talked about âa crack in historyâ or âa system crackâ that had opened
up, so that something new could emerge. A new world was emerging out of
this fissure in the old, a new world based on values such as community
and solidarity, care for one another, and care for the earth. If one
reflects on these basic values, it is apparent this ânewâ world is in
many ways a return to the very ancient idea of the beloved
community.[61] It is a return to the commons, a world in which all our
ancestors once lived. Just as the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and
others fought in the name of a âRight of Returnâ to New Orleans, we need
to be inspired by a âRight to Returnâ to the freedom of the commons. It
was this spirit of the commons and the common that inflamed tens of
thousands of (primarily) young people who came to New Orleans as
volunteers, and sustained many thousands of local citizens who refused
to leave or who returned quickly in order to serve and to save their own
beloved communities.
The ideology of âresilienceâ is part of the process of paving over the
crack, silencing the voice of insurgency. But not everyone looked to the
Katrina anniversary as an opportunity to forget this history. In
addition to the Tenth Annual Katrina March and Second-line[62], there
was the Common Ground Collective Ten Year Reunion[63] and the Fifth
Annual Southern Movement Assembly.[64] All of these dissident
commemorations carried on the spirit of the post-Katrina radicalism,
looking back to a history of grassroots struggle and communal creativity
and forward to a future that will not only remember but also continue
that history.
Almost ten years ago, reflecting on the scenes of post-Katrina
destruction and on the recovery communities that were also emerging as
communities of liberation and solidarity, I made the following hopeful
observation:
âAt the same time that the state and corporate capitalism have shown
their ineptitude in confronting our fundamental social and ecological
problems, the grassroots recovery movement has continued to show its
strength, its effectiveness, and its positive vision for the future.
Most importantly, within this large and diverse movement, some have
begun to lay the foundation for a participatory, democratically
self-managed community based on mutual aid and solidarity.â[65]
I took as the prime example of this communitarian creativity the work of
the Common Ground Collective, which, I said,
âoperates several distribution centers, two media centers, a womenâs
center, a community kitchen, several clinics, and various sites for
housing volunteers. Its current projects include house gutting, mold
abatement, roof tarping, tree removal, temporary housing, safety and
health training, a community newspaper, community radio, bioremediation,
a biodiesel program, computer classes, childcare co-ops, worker co-ops,
legal assistance, eviction defense, prisoner support, after-school and
summer programs, anti-racism training, and wetlands restoration
work.â[66]
Fragments of this emerging community of liberation and solidarity have
endured and some have even grown and developed. True, this
transformative vision has remained, as of today, largely unrealized in
the face of the forces of normalization, cooptation and resilencing.
Yet, many in New Orleans, indeed a growing number, still strive to
realize this vision, and seek to learn from our traumatic history a way
beyond the chains of illusion and domination to communal freedom.
Perhaps the solution to our impasse is simply a matter of recognizing
the obvious and acting accordingly. We need to admit that the disaster
is permanent, and that it is of world-historical, indeed,
earth-historical proportions. It seemed like a miracle that ten years
ago, in the midst of devastation and abandonment, tens of thousands of
volunteers could come together in post-Katrina New Orleans in a spirit
of communal solidarity. Can there be a miracle today that is
proportional to the magnitude of our challenge? The Earth itself, the
Oikos, is our Common Ground. Our Time in History, the Kairos, is our
Common Ground.
In a sense, I must ask today exactly the same question that I asked
myself and others in the months after the Katrina disaster. In the
Spring of 2006, I wrote an article that probed the psychological and
ontological depths of devastation, and posed the political, and
ultimately existential, question, âDo You Know What It Means?â[67] This
is still the question. Will we put the disaster behind us, even as it
continues and indeed intensifies at its deepest levels, or will we
finally learn its lessons? Will we finally learn how to think and act:
for ourselves, for the community, and for the Earth?
The rest is resilence.
The condition of the biosphere continues to erode. Human society
continues to expand, leaving devastation in its wake. Climate crisis is
no longer a fringe idea and yet the vast majority of humanity turn their
backs on what it has wrought. There will be no ghost from the machine
that will magically restore what has been lost. Extinction is not a
metaphor. We will not rip out our eyes, like Oedipus in horror of what
he has done. We will be strong, staring unblinking into the abyss, until
we see the monster looking back at us.
An Ocean of Bones
The terminal condition of the Great Barrier Reef has been
well-documented. It is now becoming clear that coral reefs all over the
world are in a similar state of collapse. Over 70 percent of the worldâs
reefs are now threatened due to bleaching, the process by which rising
ocean temperatures cause the protective algae the covers the reefs to
disappear. Exposed and unprotected, the reefs quickly die. There is no
solution to this problem. It is not caused by direct human interference,
it is no longer a matter of reducing pollution or carbon. The planet has
moved into a hot phase and we have to confront what that means.
Salmon Boy Eats the Stars
Half of the species of salmon in California are on track to become
extinct within the next fifty years, according to the UC Davis Center
for Watershed Sciences. California has one of the most diverse salmon
populations in the US. The future of Californiaâs salmon is largely
threatened by the stateâs vast water infrastructure, required to sustain
the enormous human population in a region with limited access to water.
Because of these dams and levees, 95 percent of migratory salmon species
are no longer able to travel to their ancestral spawning grounds, which
they have been traveling to for 50 million years.
Doomsday is Not Enough
The Global Seed Vault, buried deep inside a mountain on an island in the
arctic circle, was designed to protect some of the most valuable food
crop seeds for human use in case of massive global disaster. The Vault,
which opened in 2008, was built to be protected by the deep permafrost
but scientists are now reporting than staggeringly high arctic
temperatures have jeopardized the projects success by melting much of
the permafrost and flooding the vault. The catastrophe, it appears, has
already arrived.
The Wasteland
As the mainstream news and politicians continue to fan the flames of
fear and paranoia around North Koreaâs desire to develop nuclear
weapons, the Western Hemisphereâs biggest nuclear waste site at Hanford
in Eastern Washington is currently leaking highly radioactive chemicals
due to a collapsed tunnel containing waste from its plutonium extraction
program. For decades officials have been warning about weakening
infrastructure at Hanford, which produced the nuclear material used in
the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki at the end of World War II. The
tunnel, which collapsed on ay 9^(th), contains some of the siteâs most
powerful radioactive material, was being held up by rotting wooden beams
more than 40 years old. As it is, damage from the leak to the
surrounding area appears to be minimal, though officials have said that
if it had happened to be a windy day, radioactive particles would have
been blown over all of Eastern Washington. This demonstrates how
precarious our position is, all it takes is for the wind to blow the
wrong way, and its all over.
Methane is the new CO2
The appearance of hundreds of mysterious bright blue lakes in Siberia is
a potent reminder that CO2 may not be the most dangerous contributor to
global warming for much longer. Siberian permafrost currently keeps
billions of tons of methane, 30 times more effective than CO2 at storing
heat in the atmosphere, locked up and frozen. For years scientists have
feared that as global temperatures rise, the permafrost would melt and
release these gases. These blue lakes, caused by algae attracted to the
methane, are evidence that this has in fact already occurred.
An End to Hope
While the vast majority of the human race refuses to engage with the
idea of climate catastrophe in any meaningful way at all, even some of
the attempted solutions that have been proposed have now been determined
to be ineffective. More and more scientists are arguing that none of the
âlarge-scale land-use and technical solutionsâ that have been proposed
would not succeed in mitigating the effects of climate change. For years
there have been theories that global warming could be ameliorated by
constructing biomass energy systems that would suck carbon dioxide out
of the atmosphere. Central to that plan would be the establishment and
maintenance of massive forest plantations that would capture and store
the extra carbon and could be later used for fuel in facilities that
would filter out the carbon and store it deep underground. This plan has
been proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
despite the fact that scientists agree that there is no way to
successful implement such a plan and that it is doubtful that it would
solve the problem in any case. The resources and materials required to
plant such massive amounts of trees would put an enormous toll on the
ecosystem and without the technology to burn biomass without rereleasing
the carbon into the atmosphere, which currently does not exist, the plan
is meaningless.
Fear of â Black Snake
Indigenous communities and environmentalists, who have expressed concern
over the construction of the massive Dakota Access Pipeline for years,
have had their worst fears confirmed as a leak in the pipeline has
already been reported at a pipe station in South Dakota in April. While
the leak was modest, construction of the pipeline has not even been
completed yet and it is impossible not to see this leak as the first of
many. One of the attorneys fighting against the pipeline stated:
âPipelines leak and they spill. Itâs just what happens.â There is no
satisfaction for the anti-DAPL activists in saying âI told you soâ but
it confirms how dire this situation is for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe
and the millions of people whose drinking water is at risk.
Going toe to toe with the forces of law and order... grappling with the
exhausting necessity of destroying civilization... hungering for
something more as the diet of riots and insurrections proves to be a
shrinking buffet of diminishing returns... sooner or later, all of us
pose to ourselves the question of opening up a wild space, where we can
be nourished through a healthy relationship with the earth, creating a
community that might serve as some kind of anti-civilization.
Maybe we reach this point after years of bruising our knuckles banging
on a brick wall. Maybe we come to a strategic analysis of the
shortcomings of the big social revolts around us. Maybe when we make our
first conscious acts of rebellion, we take one look at whatâs called
âstruggle,â based as it is in protests, acts of propaganda, and illegal
confrontation, and decide itâs not for us. Or maybe the attempt to
create some kind of community or build a material self-sufficiency is
the first step in our radicalization, to be followed later by acts of
confrontation and sabotage.
Those of us who do not come from colonized communitiesâor more precisely
from those who were colonized so long ago and so completely that we no
longer have any living memory of itâof- ten admire the struggles of
indigenous people. From our outsiderâs perspective, which is generally
exoticizing and maybe just as frequently annoying, it seems that
indigenous communities fighting to regain their lands and their
autonomous existence have something that we lack: ground to stand on, a
certain relationship with the world, perhaps.
Itâs very possible that Iâm wrong, but what is certain, in any case, is
that we ârootless onesâ feel this absence, and it defines much of what
we do. We suffer the predilection not only for abstraction that is
widespread in Western culture, but also the material and the historical
need to start from scratch if we aim to break with the festering
civilization that created us.
The Blank Slate is an old and perilous myth in our culture. It is the
God born of a Word, the freedom that means being unencumbered by
relations with the world, the mathematical equality from which good
things supposedly arise.
The suffering caused by the Blank Slate can be seen in Year Zero
revolutions,1 in utopias founded on stolen land, in perfect ideas
imposed at gunpoint.
Forming free communities is one of the most common methods people from
the West use to break with capitalism and create a new world. The
Anabaptists took this path to escape religious domination and break the
stranglehold of feudalism and a nascent capitalism. The early socialists
did it with their utopian communes. Jewish anticapitalists did it with
the kibbutzim. The hippies did it with the Back- to-the-Land movement. A
variety of groups, from MOVE to the Autonomen, did it with urban
communes. Anticapitalists are doing it today in manifestations as
diverse as squatted villages in the Pyrenees and the Alps, or Tarnac in
France. And there is also the steady stream of radical retirement to the
countryside.
Such a longstanding, multifaceted tradition of struggle cannot be
lightly dismissed, whatever criticisms we might have. The failure, so
far, of all these many attemptsâto âleave capitalism behindâ or to serve
as a springboard for attacks on the infrastructure of domination or to
plant a seed for a new world or whatever their specific pretensions
wereâis mirrored by nothing less than the failure of all the other
methods we have tried out to liberate ourselves. Failure is our common
heritage, so ubiquitous that it hardly constitutes a big deal or a mark
against us. Understanding the relationship between what we do and our
failures: therein lies the gem.
The varied attempts to create liberated communities cannot all be
measured with the same ruler, but one failing that crops up pervasively
in our present context is worth mentioning. Nowadays, most people who
have grown up with Western cultural values donât even know what a
community is. For example, it is not a subculture or a scene (see:
âactivist communityâ or âcommunity accountability processâ), nor is it a
real estate zone or municipal power structure (see: âgated communityâ or
âcommunity leadersâ).
If you will not starve to death without the other people who make up the
group, it is not a community. If you donât know even a tenth of them
since the day either you or they were born, it is not a community. If
you can pack up and join another such group as easily as changing jobs
or transferring to a different university, if the move does not change
all the terms with which you might understand who you are in this world,
it is not a community.
A community cannot be created in a single generation, and it cannot be
created by an affinity group. In fact, you are not supposed to have
affinity with most of the other people in your community. If you do not
have neighbors who you despise, it is not a healthy community. In fact,
it is the very existence of human bonds stronger than affinity or
personal preference that make a community. And such bonds will mean
there will always be people who prefer to live at the margins. Whether
the community allows this distinguishes the anti-authoritarian one from
the authoritarian one.
A group of anarchists or socialists or hippies who go off into the
mountains to live together will end up hating one another. It is the
very presence of disagreeable neighbors that teaches us to appreciate
the people we have affinity with. An âanarchist communityâ is an odious
proposition.
Today, the rural community as an anticapitalist project is often
motivated by the search for self-sufficiency. People who hate this
civilization want to recover their power to feed themselves, to heal
themselves, to relearn the skills necessary for sustaining life. A
worthy proposition, on the face of it.
Self-sufficiency might take on individualistic or isolationist tonesâas
when a single tiny community tries to meet its own needsâor it might
constitute a more collective projectâas when a network of communities
try to meet their needs together. It may contain the absurd belief that
we can get rid of capitalism by creating an alternative to it, turning
our backs on it, or it may be a modest attempt to live better and more
deliberately as we participate in multifaceted struggles against
civilization. In any case, the very construct of the idea will tend to
push us in a direction that, even if it does not represent a fiasco, at
the least constitutes a missed opportunity.
Every course of action we take comes back to us as representation, when
we talk about it and reflect on it. This representation often exists as
a visual metaphor that in turn suggests a strategy.
Self-sufficiency is a circling of the wagons. We imagine it as a
breaking off of relationships, the end of a dependency, the bearing of
our own weight, the closing of a circle. Some of these visual metaphors
and the strategies they encourage are benign, an average mix of
advantages and disadvantages. Others feed directly into a pioneer
machismo. But in both cases, they have too much in common with a puritan
idea of productivity and independence, and with the myth of the Blank
Slate.
A community based on self-sufficiency might get âwalled in together,â
true to the original meaning of the term (see: munis). Etymology is not
deterministic, since meaning is alive: contextual, fluctuating, and
resourceful. In this case, communityâs etymology can come to us as a
gift, a warning of what might come to pass if we are not careful.
We never bear our own weight, and to speak truthfully, we never feed
ourselves. It is the earth that feeds us and bears us up. Everything we
have that makes life possible is the result of a gift.
What we truly need in this war against civilization, this war for our
lives, is not to break off relationships but to create more abundant
relationships. We do not need communities with pretensions of
self-sufficiency, living off the product of their own labor, hacking
their means of subsistence out of the womb of an inert and passive earth
with the sweat of their own brow. We need communities that ridicule the
very ideas of labor and property by reviving reciprocity, cultivating
the gift, and opening our eyes to the worldview that these practices
create.
The earth gives us the gifts we need to survive, if we go looking for
them, and we can give back to the earth, with our waste, with our love,
and when we die with our very bodies. Wanting to live reciprocally is an
admirable purpose, and a project that can give us strength in our
struggles. In order to cultivate these gifts, we will have to relearn
many traditional skills that capitalism has stolen from us. In this
regard, the practice of the gift seems equal to the practice of
self-sufficiency. But instead of a miserly self-nourishment calculated
to close off dependencies, we can foster a rich web of interdependence
through an active generosity that erodes capitalist scarcity and
alienation.
When you have a garden, you have abundance. The same is true if you have
a skill that enables you to perform acts of art and creation. The moment
you start to sell this abundance, or to limit it in order to divert
energy to meet all your other needs within a closed circle, scarcity is
born.
Instead of a closed circle, the gift is a subversive invitation to
abandon capitalism and the worldview it inculcates. This is true whether
the gift is a basket of tomatoes from your garden, mushrooms or
calendula you have gathered, a day spent measuring and cutting door
frames for a neighborâs new house, or an afternoon taking care of a
friendâs children. Reciprocating gives us pleasure, and through the open
circle of the gift we form an exp an â sive web of complicities and
relationships through which we can nourish and support ourselves. Rather
than fleeing the cities, going back to the land in a mutiny destined to
isolation and failure, the practice of the gift allows us to return to
capitalismâs terrainâand all the people held captive thereâwith forms of
abundance and sharing that encourage further struggle.
Finally, the fundamental idea of reciprocity and bounty is incompatible
with the exploitation of nature, whereas projects animated by
self-sufficiency often give rise to pioneering and productivist
attitudes.
In the city, in the country, and in the mountains, wild nature and
struggle against civilization are ever-present possibilities. In those
inevitable moments when we seek some respite, when we try to nourish
ourselves as a form of struggle, and when we attempt to find a niche
that could allow us to form a healthy part of a web of living things,
the way we understand our goal and the vision it fits into will have a
great effect on what we reap.
The sharing of gifts seems like a simple gesture, but in truth it is a
rebellious practice and a kind of relationship with the world that, if
followed to its conclusions, will spell the abolition of property, the
throwing down of walls and fences, the destruction of every law, and the
liberation of every slave. All it requires is the boundless daring,
desire, and generosity to break with the isolation, the insecurity, the
misery, the loneliness, the addiction, and the fear that constitute our
culture.
[1] One among many examples of this tone and content is in the piece
âOur response is like an earthquake: It comes sooner or laterâ,
available at anarchistnews.org.
[2] ââOld ITSâ and âNew ITSââ, Maldicion Eco-Ex- tremista (weblog at
maldicionecoextremista. altervista.org), May 8^(th).
[3] â29^(th) Communique of Individualists Tending Toward the Wildâ,
Maldicion Eco-Extremista, May 7^(th).
[4] âAboutâ, Itâs Going Down, <https://itsgoing- down.org/about/>
[5] Through such epithetic usage, âfascismâ has of course been almost
entirely bleached of meaning; yet one would think its meaning is not yet
so exhausted that it would still, at minimum, require statism, which
ITS, whatever their other faults, are obviously not embodying in either
thought or action.
[6] Zerzan, John. Anarchy Radio, 02/14/17.
[7] âIGDCAST: Civilization, Climate Change, Resistance, Hopeâ, Itâs
Going Down,01/16/17.
[8] Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of
Emancipation. Vintage Books, Random House LLC. New York, New York: 2015.
[9] Sale, Kirkpatrick. Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their
War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age. Ad-
dison-Wesley Publishing. Reading, MA: 1995.
[10] Jurriaan M. De Vos, Lucas N. Joppa, John L. Gittleman, Patrick R.
Stephens, Stuart L. Pimm. âEstimating the Normal Background Rate of
Species Extinction.â 26 August 2014. Conservation Biology, Volume 29,
Issue 2, April Pages 452â462.
[11] âI hope that an infinite number of bombs explode against the
citizenryâ, Atassa: Readings in Eco-Extremism (from the weblog atassa.
wordpress.com). 12/03/16.
[12] Although at least some EEs have recently distanced themselves from
the label âanti-civilizationâ in favor of out-and-out misanthropy, the
tendency evidently influenced them and brought them in part to where
they are now.
[13] âOf angels and cyborgsâ, Wandering Cannibals: An Eco-Extremist View
from the U.S. Southeast (from the weblog wanderingcan-
nibals.wordpress.com). 04/14/2017.
[14] â30^(th) Communique of Individualists Tending Toward the Wildâ,
Maldicion Eco-Extremista (from the weblog http://maldicionecoex-
tremista.altervista.org). 05/18/2017.
[15] See the Medea Hypothesis of paleontologist Peter Ward.
[16] Yudkowsky, Eliezer. âAn Alien Godâ, Less Wrong (from the weblog
lesswrong.com). 02/11/07.
[17] See Corrosive Consciousness: A Critique of Anarcho-Primitivism from
Enemy Combatant Publications.
[18] For more on how Anarcho-Primitivism is a closeted extreme-Left
(rather than anti-Left, as its adherents claim) revolutionary ideology,
as well as how all revolutionary ideologies have their origins in
theology, again see my Corrosive Consciousness: A Critique of
Anarcho-Primitivism from Enemy Combatant Publications.
[19] âIndiscriminate Anarchistsâ, Atassa: Readings in Eco-Extremism. LBC
Books. Berkeley, CA: 2016.
[20] Bellamy Fitzpatrick, Cosmo Rydra. Free Radical Radio, âEpisode 75:
FRR Destroys Strawmen That Are Ugly To Themâ. Quote at 00:26:00. http://
www.freeradicalradio.net/2015/03/16/episode-
75-frr-destroys-strawmen-that-are-ugly-to-them/
[21] Other dangled carrots include vacations, luxuriant lives of wealth,
fine dining, etc.-which are all, to some extent, aesthetic prizes. All
of this does not account for the allure of power, or other various perks
of success in the civilized world; nor does it account for punitive
measures used to herd us along. The array of conditions securing our
predicament is vast!
[22] âFull definition of Resilienceâ in Merriam Webster Dictionary;
online at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resilience.
[23] See the website for his film The Big Uneasy; online at
http://www.thebiguneasy.com/.
[24] Website for Big Charity: The Death of Americaâs Oldest Hospital;
online at http://www.bigcharityfilm.com/.
[25] Website for My Louisiana Love; online at
http://www.mylouisianalove.com/.
[26] Hurricane Betsy was a larger hurricane than Hurricane Katrina and
hit New Orleans directly, with the passing slightly west of the city..
[27] Cain Burdeau and Jeff Amy âGeorge W. Bush Visits Disaster Zone, 10
Years After Katrinaâ (Associated Press, Aug. 28, 2015); online at:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_KATRINA_BUSH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT.
[28] It is significant, and not widely known, that 28% of housing units
in the city were not damaged, and 58% were not damaged seriously. See
Rachel E. Luft with Shana Griffin, âA Status Report on Housing in New
Orleans after Katrina: An Intersectional Analysisâ in Beth Willinger,
ed. Katrina and the Women of New Orleans ( New Orleans: Newcomb College
Center for Research on Women, Dec. 2008); online at
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jd9AwzZZSWgJ:https://tulane.edu/newcomb/upload/NCCROWreport08-chapter5.pdf+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.
[29] Barack Obama, âimportant (donât delete).â An email from Barack
Obama at dccc@dccc.org to John Clark at clark@loyno.edu (Thu 8/27/2015
11:59 AM).
[30] âTranscript of President Obamaâs Katrina speechâ in NOLA.com
(August 28, 2015); online at
http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2015/08/transcript_of_president_obamas.html.
The phrase âjockamo fee nanĂ©â from the song âIko, Ikoâ is a universal
favorite, but it is not generally known that it was an invitation by
Mardi Gras Indians to their rivals to engage in a certain humiliating
act. See âIf You Donât Like What The Big Chief SayâŠ. (An Interview with
Mr. Donald Harrison, Sr., Big Chief of the Guardians of the Flame)â in
Mesechabe: The Journal of Surre(gion)alism 8 (Spring 1991); online at
https://www.academia.edu/2948272/An_Interview_with_Mr._Donald_Harrison.
[31] âLying Chiefs of State,â which recalls the Chef Menteur Pass in New
Orleans East, which, according to one story, was named by the Choctaw
âOulabe Mingo,â or âLying Chief,â after the French colonial governor.
[32] Polly Mosendz, âNew Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu on the 10^(th)
Anniversary of Hurricane Katrinaâ in Newsweek (August 29, 2015); online
at
http://www.newsweek.com/new-orleans-mayor-mitch-landrieu-10^(th)-anniversary-hurricane-katrina-367046.
[33] Mitchell J. Landrieu, âAbout the Project,â in Katrina 10: Resilient
New Orleans; online at http://katrina10.org/about-the-project/.
[34] Jeff Adelson, âNew Orleans area population still growing
post-Katrina, but slowly: Post-Katrina increase slows to a plateau,â in
The New Orleans Advocate (March 28, 2015); online at
http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/11941581-172/new-orleans-area-population-still.
[35] This is according to a Bloomberg analysis, âMost Income Inequality,
U.S. Cities,â on Bloomberg Business (updated April 15, 2014); online at
http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/most-income-inequality-us-cities.
[36] Robert McClendon, âNew Orleans is 2^(nd) worst for income
inequality in the U.S., roughly on par with Zambia, report says,â on
NOLA.com (August 19, 2014), online at
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/08/new_orleans_is_2nd_worst_for_i.html.
[37] Jesuit Social Research Institute, âToo Much for Too Many: What does
it cost families to live in Louisiana?â in JustSouth Quarterly; online
at http://www.loyno.edu/jsri/too-much-too-many.
[38] See Ride New Orleans, âThe State of Transit Ten Years After
Katrinaâ; online at
http://rideneworleans.org/state-of-transit-ten-years-after-katrina/.
[39] Legendary activist and cofounder of Common Ground Malik Rahim once
replied to such sectarianism (at a US Federation of Worker Cooperatives
national conference in New Orleans) that the goal must be the
replacement of so-called âpublic housingâ with democratic,
resident-controlled community housing.
[40] See Luft and Griffin.
[41] See the âSave Charity Hospitalâ website; online at
http://www.savecharityhospital.com/ for extensive information on these
issues. The film Big Charity is a good introduction to the entire story
of deception, betrayal, and criminal opportunism. Spike Leeâs If God is
Willing and the Creek Donât Rise also covers many of the Charity
Hospital issues well. See the website for the documentary online at
http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/if-god-is-willing-and-da-creek-dont-rise.
[42] Oscar Raymundo, âNew Orleans Rebuilds As a Boutique Cityâ on BBC
Travel (11 February 2013); online at
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20130207-new-orleans-rebuilds-as-a-boutique-city.
[43] Andrea Gabor, âThe Myth of the New Orleans School Makeover, in The
New York Tims (Aug, 22, 2015); online at
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-the-new-orleans-school-makeover.html?_r=2.
[44] See the NYRBâs Diane Ravitch page at
http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/diane-ravitch/ and her book Reign of
Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to
Americaâs Public Schools (New York: Vintage Books, 2014).
[45] Jessica Williams, âTulaneâs Cowen Institute retracts New Orleans
schools report, apologizesâ at NOLA.com (Oct. 10, 2014); online at
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2014/10/tulanes_cowen_institute_retracts_report.
[46] New Orleans aspires to regain that image, as a recent editorial
story in New Orleans Magazine recounts. See âRebuilding the Gatewayâ
(June 2015); online at
http://www.myneworleans.com/New-Orleans-Magazine/June-2015/Rebuilding-the-Gateway/
[47] See Stephen Duplantier, ed. The Banana Chronicles, an entire
special issue of Neotropica magazine devoted to the story of the United
Fruit Company and the exploitation of Central America; online at
http://www.neotropica.info/.
[48] The other great bioregional reality is, of course, the Mississippi
River, and this is what makes us also a geographically southern city.
[49] When one looks carefully at the perseverance and determination of
these migrants in the face of struggles and extreme hardships, they make
the locals look a lot less resilient by comparison.
[50] For information on the Congress of Day Laborers, a project of the
New Orleans Workersâ Center for Racial Justice, see
http://nowcrj.org/about-2/congress-of-day-laborers/. For the WHIV
interview, see âMark Alain and Congress of Day Laborersâ (Aug. 29, 2015)
on WHIV radio; online at https://soundcloud.com/whivfm/sets. During the
program, Dr. MarkAlain Dery interviews Brenda Castro and Santos
Alvarado, representatives of the Congress of Day Laborers on the Katrina
Tenth Anniversary. WHIV was founded by Dr. Dery, medical director for
the Tulane T-Cell Clinic, and his coworkers. It is dedicated to âpublic
health, human rights and social justice,â and is New Orleansâ only
full-time grassroots community radio station.
[51] A clear recognition of the injustices done to migrants is so
difficult for many because it necessarily leads to a questioning of the
very foundations of nationalism and imperialism.
[52] For an excellent survey of post-Katrina penal and legal issues, see
Sideris, Marina, âIllegal Imprisonment: Mass Incarceration and Judicial
Debilitation in Post Katrina New Orleansâ (Berkeley: University of
California Berkeley, 2007); online at
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/disasters/Sideris.pdf.
[53] âOn Pointâ (August 26, 2015); online at
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2015/08/26/new-orleans-10-years-after-katrina.
[54]
J. Hansen et al, âIce melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence
from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations
that 2 °C global warming is highly dangerous,â in Atmos. Chem. Phys.
Discuss., 15, 20059â20179, 2015; abstract online at
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015.html.
[55] National Snow and Ice Data Center, âQuick Facts on Ice Sheetsâ;
online at https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html
[56] Numbers 14:18.
[57] Thanks to Quincy Saul for this reference, and many other helpful
suggestions concerning this discussion.
[58] âThe City in a Bowlâ (Nov. 20, 2002); transcript online at
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_neworleans.html. Excerpts
from the original documentary are included in NOVA scienceNOW,
âHurricanesâ; online at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/earth/hurricanes-new-orleans-threat.html.
[59] Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness exercise on 18 June
2002; see GlobalSecurity.org, âHurricane Delaneyâ; online at
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/hurricane-delaney.htm.
[60] scott crow, Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the
Common Ground Collective (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2014). The Post-Katrina
Portraits consists of images of survivors and volunteers sketched by
artist Francesco di Santis and accounts of their experiences written by
the subjects. A collection was published as a large format art book, The
Post-Katrina Portraits, Written and Narrated by Hundreds, Drawn by
Francesco di Santis (New Orleans: Francesco di Santis and Loulou Latta,
2007) and can also be found online at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/postkatrinaportraits/show/. See also Part
V: âNew Orleans: Common Grounds and Killers,â in Rebecca Solnit, A
Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in
Disaster (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), pp. 231â303.
[61] This idea goes back two and a half millennia to the Buddhist
concept of the sangha and two millennia to the Christian idea of the
community of agape. In American history, it had its explicit roots in
the thought of idealist communitarian philosopher Josiah Royce, and came
to fruition and concrete actualization, as is well known, in the
communitarian liberation theology of Martin Luther King. Before any of
this history started, it was already implicit in the way of life of
indigenous peoples everywhere.
[62] âNew Orleans Katrina Commemorationâ Facebook page; online at
https://www.facebook.com/thekatrinacommemoration
[63] âCommon Ground Collective 10 Year Reunionâ Facebook page; online at
https://www.facebook.com/events/774116122702802/
[64] Anna Simonton, âAmid Katrina Commemoration Spectacle, a Southern
Freedom Movement Takes Shapeâ in Truthout (Sept. 1, 2015); online at
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32590-amid-katrina-commemoration-spectacle-a-southern-freedom-movement-takes-shape
[65] John P. Clark, The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian
Anarchism (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 210.
[66] Ibid, p. 211.
[67] John Clark, âNew Orleans: Do You Know What It Means?â in New:
Translating Cultures/Cultures Traduites 2 (2006); online at
https://www.academia.edu/2559184/_New_Orleans_Do_You_Know_What_It_Means.