A RESPONSE TO THE DEEP GREEN RESISTANCE

Background: The following critique is of the group Deep Green Resistance (http://deepgreenresistance.org/) and is written by author Kevin Tucker of Black and Green Press.

So, years ago, Craig Rosebraugh and Leslie James Pickering dropped their roles as spokespersons for the ELF/ALF Support Group to found ARISSA. They felt the ELF/ALF weren’t enough to create real revolutionary action, so they started something else which was much more directed.

The result was a uber-militant, ultra-left vanguardist movement. Platform, talking with bodyguards, etc.

The very first bit of rhetoric they put out for their “new project” was ridiculously familiar to any anarchist: it reeked of the proto-Leninist/Maoist/Stalinist garbage that seeped through the 60’s.

All of us at G.A. spotted it instantly and when they pulled out positions that were all too familiar, we bombarded them. It never took off and remains a faux-academic publishing group that has backed off the “party line”.

The question I have to ask is why, when we do the exact same thing to the “Deep Green Resistance” are “anarchists” towing the “let’s all work together” line?

What has changed?

The DGR mess is strictly authoritarian, signed code of conduct all based around propping Derrick and Lierre as the primary vanguard. That’s not only ridiculous on the face of things, it’s a dangerous proposition considering that Eric McDavid is doing time for agreeing that the premises spelled out in Endgame are worth acting upon.

Now what I’m saying (and I can speak for JZ as well here) isn’t that we are trying to kill action. We’re not condemning Derrick’s work and give props to 90% of it. Nor are we holding Derrick accountable for those sitting in prison. And by no means would we try to sway people away from acting how they feel they must (by all legal means, of course).

What we’re pointing out is that the missing element here isn’t just anarchist principle, but anarchist critique. It’s the reason we’re anarcho-primitivists and not just primitivists.

You simply can not have a critique of civilization that overlook the prevalence and central role that power and the conditions which make power possible hold over any society, indigenous or modernized.

That is something Derrick has spoken about, but it’s clear that he’s just playing lip-service. He has literally said that he has no problem with authority, and as he and Lierre have shown, they’re rather fond of calling the cops.

It’s ironic that this needs to be pointed out, but apparently it does. Not only are the things DGR promotes dangerous and stupid, their complete and utter bullshit. They are about building an authoritarian movement with a set of guidelines that sets forth, from the outset, the terms for banishment and the lack of accountability they hold for their own statements and positions.

What we’re saying about DGR is the exact same thing we’ve said, as anarchists, about civilization: power will get you nowhere, authoritarianism will get you nowhere, allegiance to leaders will get you nowhere. That is aside from jail.

Do you trust these people? Why? Why should you? What are they offering? And, most importantly, how is this different from the same old bullshit from the ultraleft who have, once they had the power and followers ready, oppressed indigenous peoples and the dispossessed while exploiting the earth.

DGR posits no understanding of history, no understanding of power, where it comes from and how it works. It has no underlying realistic perspectives on the nature and span of state power nor the depths of oppression and government surveillance.

It is a fantasy at best and a delusion at worst.

We address this as anarchists. As persons with a deeply held hatred for civilization and what it has done and continues to do to this earth and all its inhabitants.

We want to see an end to this and we know it must happen. We know it is happening.

And we know we can always play a more crucial part.

But as our friends sit in prisons, await trials, are watched, and as hundreds if not thousands of agents attempt to seep into our communities and lives, we know we have to be smart.

The lessons of history surround us. The left has used revolution and revolutionary struggles to attempt to take power for hundreds of years now and those struggles have always carried gallows in their wake.

We don’t need leaders. We don’t need followers.

We don’t need book sellers and faux-thinkers who are afraid of critique and banish those who question them.

We don’t need consent forms. We don’t want consent forms.

We put a middle finger up to those in power and those who seek power. As anarchists, we recognize the symptoms of power. As primitivists, we know that power is central to civilization. As anarcho-primitivists, we reject it all.

And we’re not swayed into thinking that there is room for compromise or discussion with those who have goals at odds with our own. We don’t just reject power, we reject those who seek it.

If you don’t like the approach that I’ve had with the DGR “leaders”, or that Zerzan has had, or the hundreds of other enraged anarcho-primitivists that the DGR folks have convinced are “following” what JZ and I have said or done (think again!), then fuck off.

We’re not out to win supporters. DGR has shown for years that they don’t care what anyone thinks and long before their policies and positions were firmed, we tried to show them what they, as people’s not inclined to opposing the state or understanding the history of dissent, weren’t seeing: power itself is the target, not the means.

Like all those well-intentioned revolutionaries before them. They felt the power and took it. They’ve built an insular space for their ideas to propagate and snowball until the false reality where their plans play out with their original intentions seem plausible.

It’s our job to bring them back down to earth, just like anyone who thinks civilization and its innate power structures can or should be perpetuated.

For wildness and anarchy,