This is an essay from Black and Green Review no 1.
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Action
and Response
There
has been an uproar, stemming from the logical and important critique of
activism, that fears the reemergence of a civil disobedience ethic. On the
other side of action, theoretically, sits ITS.
The Individualists Tending Towards the Wild (ITS)
are individuals who have sent bombs to numerous universities,
professors, researchers, as well as journalists and non-profits in the name of
wild human nature. ITS has its cut throat communiqués stylized to provoke anger
and wrought with strands of logic pulled harshly and quickly together, making
arguments that seem pointless to engage with. In its communiqués ITS, though
contradictory at times, aims to be another theoretical bullet (as opposed to
the actual bombs) against the plague of pointless property destruction and
“sentimental environmentalism”. Swallowed in is indeed civil disobedience and
all other actions that would seem trivial (including non-human targeted arson
as they have specifically named ELF as a sentimental “group”) in the face of a
bomb.
But how real are the
differences from a strategical perspective? ITS has not aimed to disable areas
of the grid or take out large swaths of data (no matter who they kill the cloud
holds all). Though they have taken the most
serious actions in terms of prosecution and state punishment have they
nevertheless been culled by the plague of sentimentalism? Surely only the sentimental would play into
the cultural idea of murder being the worst and most effective crime when there
may be more effective non-murder focused tactics?
The answer seems obvious
enough, of course they are drawn into a sentimental and fundamentally emotional
reality when confronted with the daunting question of “what to do” in the face
of a civilization gripping at the final fuels, the final predators, caught in
the last series of pushes before a cascading and dynamic shift that will be
more horrific than any mail bomb.
Civil disobedience, in
particular Earth First! has been condemned in this supposed resurrection of
demonized tactics, is not evil. The
discussion between these two tactics, though I don't think they are adequately
described as “ends of the spectrum”, is vital. ITS has made numerous dubious
claims about the legitimacy of its targets, which have included establishment
journalists and Greenpeace. They refuse
to acknowledge when an attack goes awry, saying that an unintended casualty
does nothing to deter their struggle for ego driven wildness. ITS opens themselves up for maximum
prosecution but their obsession with Ted Kaczynksi makes them zealots for the
killing of humans with no desire to understand the inherent limitations of
their tactic. This is not to make an argument that “they have become like that
which they fight”. My point here is to
engage with our biases. Because something is more extreme does not make it more
effective. We seem perfectly capable of
criticizing civil disobedience, and I understand how easy that critique rolls
off the tongue, but other tactics become immune from engagement, even more so
as we turn to an egoist and radically subjective view of the world
In this egoist turn away from
our inherent sense of connectedness we see each action as existing in a bubble
and the analysis of ITS among some, including the fine folks at Free Radical
radio, has boiled down to ITS “destroying something that is ugly to them”. This
hollow and pointless analysis leaves us in a vacuous space filled with
ambiguous meandering. The subjective nature of “destroying something ugly” can
only lead to an ultimately moralistic view of the world where purged and
un-purged egos sit apart from each other. Always purge your ego of every
perceivable reified notion or that ego will be “tainted” by something or
possibly, if you are a nihilist, everything. The ugly can become anything. With
no grounding, no analysis, action departs from effectiveness. The analysis of
civilization is left by the wayside as we search down pathways of logic devoid
of the material culture which constructs our daily behavior. The struggle is
isolated and subjectiveness takes the reigns as community becomes more and more
irrelevant to our analysis.
Our self is a manifestation of
experience and neurosis as well as conscious and unconscious absorption of
ideas, senses, and communication. That
this blurry matrix of self-realization or ego-actualization is a starting point
for action seems, at best, unhelpful. Destroying something ugly is meaningless
in and of itself, the world driven by ego is manifested in countless ways and
the end point is left purposely undefined to such a degree that no one, not
even the ones taking action, have any idea what sort of world they want. The
contradictions develop quickly as the hyper consciousness of our “self” spins
into an idea of subjectiveness that can only be described as pointless and,
ultimately, if we are to believe the premise, completely unrelatable. If it is true that our subjective experience
is all that matters then we can just turn to transhumanism to fulfill the goal
of realizing our true self.
Analysis matters.
Infrastructure matters. For action to be effective we must simply look at
implications not divinate for one truth. There is no precedent for an ego
driven world yet anarchists seem to think they can open up a portal to liberation
through a convoluted notion of a perceivable self that is a manifestation of a
multitude of inputs both known and unknown, those in our consciousness and
those not.
All actions are open to
discussion. We can decide amongst ourselves which seem worthwhile and respect a
large array. It isn't about drawing lines, it's about understanding where we
are and where we want to go.
One could easily posit that me
making such claims, or calling into question ITS tactics, is heretical and that
to denounce such “productive” actions, while seemingly defending remnants of
petty and “outdated” tactics, does nothing to enhance our level of praxis. All this is under the deluded supposition
that one day we may just happen to stumble upon an answer of “what to do?” There is no shortage of prophets on the left
and right spending countless hours trying to articulate a “rational strategy”
that changes the world. The baseline
lunacy of this claim is self-evident and, historically, easy to rebuke. Success stories of theory and tightly woven
praxis are not in ample supply
To intellectually beat down
the one asking the question, or the one with the U lock, does not create or
clarify our praxis. The negation of
strategical techniques once and for all is simply about purity. This goes both ways.
There is of course plenty of
room for debate and questions addressing these issues, particularly around the
notions of violence, property destruction, and moralistic pacifism. But
discussion and critiques cannot, by a matter of necessity and actuality, exist
apart from action. This is why
discussion on ITS is important, at least tactically. Addressing the
philosophical musings of ITS is tantamount to addressing Ted K's take on
anthropology, forever frustrating and never satisfying. What this says about the psychology of those
who see humans as the only legitimate targets is something worth thinking
about.
However, ITS is presenting a
praxis of some sort and they are forthright about their immediate goals. We can dig into their formulations, we can
actually discuss the implications of it from the perspective of what is
currently happening. It would be easy to
construct numerous ways to knock it down, feel as though we had philosophically
kicked its ass and put the final word on “murder” as a tactic. As I read Black Seed I wonder what the
reaction to an article titled “Two Steps Back: the Return of Murder in
Ecological Resistance” would be. Didn't FC
show us the abundant failure of a few (or one) murderous earth avengers mailing
bombs? But for some reason, mostly aesthetic, there is a hesitation to make
those claims. I see that as a good thing, we shouldn't be making blanket claims
about tactics. But that hesitation does
not extend, for reasons that are, again, mostly aesthetic, to civil
disobedience. This is despite the fact
that Earth First! has had some, albeit quite small in the scale of global
civilization, successes protecting isolated areas. Of course there are serious strategical
problems with saving isolated areas but it does not follow that those areas are
irrelevant or that I am not personally happy that they still exist in some less
mediated state of wildness. All wild places matter. With 75% of the surface area of the earth
under human control, influence or habitation it seems relevant to stop new
areas from being taken over. If we want
a future primitive, this may be one of the most important things happening.
Wild spaces re-appear fast but healthy ecosystems take time. Overall, however, this is a large scale
failure, more is destroyed daily. While
I appreciate the spaces “saved” there are several missing pieces and each Earth
First! campaign can be looked at individually, something Black Seed does do.
They make a blanket assertion in the article but truthfully it is a critique of
select campaigns.
The point here is to address
the way we view debating tactics and strategy in a largely theoretical
vacuum. Theory and practice may very
well be tied together but words, much like a sanctioned march, are ineffective
at actualizing action in the here and now.
The words may be more important than the march but to say that our
theory can firmly define our praxis verges on a neo-Marxist argument that the
people just need a rational argument, upon the perfect articulation revolution
happens. The likes of Deep Green
Resistance and the Revolutionary Communist Party have already found their
perfect articulation in Derrick Jensen and Bob Avakian respectively, and look
how far they have come! Action is tantamount to existing as a human, an
agreement I share with the ITS articulation of being human, but there is often
a chain of evasiveness in how we, as anti-civilization anarchists, address
action. There are some decent and
grounded reasons for this, prison among them, but the evasiveness needs to be
acknowledged.
A program is hardly needed, a
look to DGR solidifies this point. No
one needs another “above ground” political apparatus dictating ideology with a
“below ground” (that no one, in any circumstance, should ever admit to knowing
about) committing actions which the “above ground” may or may not take credit
for. This party-action structure has
shown itself historically to be not only authoritarian but ineffective. Nonetheless, we can be more instructive about
action when we talk, discuss, and confront.
The discussion usually shifts around issues of legality and or violence.
It may be more important to clarify what we want from actions and think about
our goals.
I do not think ITS (or its
contemporaries, Wild Reaction, Obsidian Point to name a couple) is harboring an
effective strategy. This is less to say about the moral affect of those
participating and more about the obviousness of their failure. Civilization
still exists, the universities still exist, the papers, the environmental
groups, even nanotechnology still exists.
Worse off, they are expanding. So
where are we left with this “destroy what is ugly to you” strategy? In the same place as the revolutionary as we
can only possibly hope, in order for total destruction of the reified world,
that there is a mass rising of egos motivated to destroy, in a nihilistic
fashion, all possible impediments to the ego.
The self at the center of actions seems increasingly bizarre in cases of
meticulous planning, particularly when that planning involves conspiracy to
commit an act which may lead to significant, if not permanent, prison time.
Somewhere in the middle of
this we have black bloc and other supposedly radical tactics loosely associated
with the idea of “insurrection”. While
helpful in many ways, and more often than not worth supporting, the idea of
effectiveness hinges upon mass participation.
While a move to lawlessness creates more opportunities for individuals
and small groups the setting is exceedingly important and what we can say for
ITS is that at least some planning is necessary to reach your short-term
goal. Is that goal embedded in an
overall strategy? A question worth asking,
though the answer need not only be yes.
Liberating your individual person
is a tiresome job and our concentration upon the fulfillment of our egos, even
in their supposed and likely “union”, leads us to a strategy or pure
self-determination destroying manifestations of ideas, with our very own idea
that liberation will come from their destruction. The institutions will have
their illusion shattered and then something will happen. The exciting nature of
this seemingly unexplored space is liberating for a moment but does this
radical strategy of waiting for the theoretical hammer to drop do anything?
I do believe there is an
effective strategy, I know that it cannot be fully articulated for reasons that
go beyond law. We can create massive
disruptions and heed the destruction of wildness, both internal and external to
ourselves and our families. The answers are far less complex than we would like
to believe. Continuing to hype an
insurrection coming any day, or supporting actions because of their ego
liberating bent, as well as demonizing any of these actions including all civil
disobedience is not generally helpful. We may harbor the day of insurrection
and I do believe that the unexpected is possible, even likely in the face of
our ultra-domesticated day to day, but ultimately the collapse of global
civilization will not have its primary driver be an insurrection or mass
revolt. The infrastructure and armies
cannot continue if we wish for a world of wildness. This is undeniable. It may be necessary that
consciousness shift but that does not mean that civilization will fall. To put it bluntly: I do not mourn the
nano-tech scientist, I celebrate wild lands, and insurrection in the streets
brings us each and collectively closer to touching experience, but civilization
will exist as long as the material structure exists with the fuel to run
it. The reality is simple, the
implications are striking, but we are stuck celebrating ineffectiveness,
rallying the masses, and diminishing any victories not deemed radical enough in
methodology. The implications of a critique of civilization are widespread and
in front of our faces. Let's not forget
them.
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