BAGR3: Opening Editorial - John Zerzan

From Black and Green Review no 3.

Inaugurated only last year, the focus of BAGR seems already in need of adjustment. Kevin Tucker’s “Opening Editorial” announced that the Review would emphasize the promotion of critique and discussion within the anarchist milieu. That milieu, sadly enough, now appears undeserving of much attention.

         A few years back, around Occupy time, 2011-2012, various voices proclaimed the ascendancy of anarchism. Its time has come, now is the opening to anarchism, etc. This has not blossomed into anything, and Occupy is one place to explore this failure.

         The spontaneous outburst of Occupy energy was aimed at the excesses of capitalism. Even when militant, which was rare, it only amounted to more leftism. Occupy Oakland was its high point and anarchists were quite active there, but, fatally it seems, failed to add content to the Occupy energy. Supposedly post-Left and even anti-civilization, Bay Area anarchists apparently provided no voices along these lines.

         A potential turning point of Occupy would have been, for starters, to rechristen it De-Occupy. But that would have constituted an actual turn away from the Left, in favor of waking up to the indigenous dimension, and how very much could be found there. Anarchists largely voted with the (rest of) the Left to reject such a proposed name change, having been easily fronted off by a few identity politics thugs who wanted to be in charge of the De-Occupy (or “De-Colonize”) position. Our post-Left anarchists gave no voice to that outlook overall and when Occupy fizzled out were left with the hangover of their non-presence. Even now, it seems, little insight and even less energy can be seen. A persisting postmodern haze prevails, where egoists and nihilists compete to now even deny that reality is knowable. How this is anarchist at all escapes me. It more resembles the insular scenes of cynical hipsters, offering no analysis, no inspiration.

         The very ambitious To Change Everything tour in fall 2015 was a Crimethinc. production, involving speakers from various continents. Civilization, domestication, mass society, industrialism, and other institutions foundational to our immiseration and the systematic environmental devastation were never mentioned.

         On the other hand, there certainly are those who confront the nature of things, how we got here. And put such concerns into practice, such as anarchists in British Columbia and Arizona who’ve striven to be “accomplices not allies” to Native people whose ties to the land have not been broken after all they’ve had to endure, who still resist. The DOA (Dine-O’odham-Anarchist) black bloc, Phoenix 2010, was one instance among many of collaboration in Arizona. Others find a helpful challenge in anarcho-primitivist ideas in lots of places, a phenomenon that seems to be steadily gaining ground. An indirect testimony along these lines is the Black Seed zine, which feels the need to call itself the successor to Green Anarchy, even though its overall agenda is egoist-nihilist-postmodern.

         Many things are at a low ebb these days and we don’t have a real clear picture of where the anarchist milieu is at. It is clear that everything’s at stake and that we are not interested in in-group parlor games. Anarchy seemed promising pretty recently, but lately too much of it has almost no bearing on what is going down, little interest in that, and not much relevant to offer. The conversation about technology, for example, is apparently ignored by anarchism. We are anarchists and in no way are we shutting the door on anarchists. But a mammoth challenge faces us all, so we haven’t time to waste.