A collection of writings on green anarchy and vegan primitivism by Ria Del Montana
Essentialism and The Problem of Identity Politics
Text from the zine:
“Essentialism is the idea that there exists some detectible and objective core quality of particular groups of people that is inherent, eternal, and unalterable; groupings can be categorized according to these qualities of essence, which are based on such problematic criteria as gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, and class. These external qualities are almost always marked by visual cues, making the categories more obvious and/or easier to notice. These qualities contain social and — more importantly from an antiauthoritarian perspective — hierarchical signi cance to those marking the cues and those marked by the cues: sexism, in the case of gender; racism in the case of skin tone; the unwanted attention of authorities in the case of any and all different looking/acting people. Racism, sexism, classism, and most other forms of historical oppression are ideologies and policies maintained and justified by essentialism.”
Fragment: Violence
From back cover:
“Outside of the UK many of the comrades have a much closer relationship to “violence” and “criminality” through bank robberies, organising attacks, fierce demos, stealing, fraud, counterfeiting etc. and added to that possibility the experience of clandestinity or living underground. Illegalism is the bread of the insurrection. Many have gone to prison already and we can learn about their cases in many places. In the UK there is a widespread lack of experience concerning the organisation of the attack, the recognition of the ideas and relationships of the affinity groups to the “criminal acts”. Going beyond the law is part of developing the anarchist-insurrectional project and this is part of the reason why the civil anarchists despise and neglect the cases of the imprisoned and fugitive comrades- because they reject their actions, the tendencies of attack and the global discourse of anarchists of praxis. Individual acts of violence/negation which are not approved by their group-think are regarded as part of the “criminal” or “terrorist” sphere and smeared as provocations. In this way, the civil anarchists become part of the discourse of power and compose themselves as a sector of repression.”
In Defense of Smoke and Fire
Originally published in Wild Fire no. 4, an anarchist prison solidarity newsletter. This essay is part of an ongoing conversation between anarchist prisoners on tactics.
wildfire.noblogs.org
Sean Swain is an anarchist held captive in the Ohio prison system. For more information, check out his support site. seanswain.org
From Politics to Life: Ridding Anarchy of the Leftist Millstone
Text from the zine:
“From the time anarchism was first defined as a distinct radical movement it has been associated with the left, but the association has always been uneasy. Leftists who were in a position of authority (including those who called themselves anarchists, like the leaders of the CNT and the FAI in Spain in 1936–37) found the anarchist aim of the total transformation of life and the consequent principle that the ends should already exist in the means of struggle to be a hindrance to their political programs. Real insurgence always burst far beyond any political program, and the most coherent anarchists saw the realization of their dreams precisely in this unknown place beyond. Yet, time after time, when the fi res of insurrection cooled (and even occasionally, as in Spain in 1936–37, while they still burnt brightly), leading anarchists would take their place again as “the conscience of the left”. But if the expansiveness of anarchist dreams and the principles that it implies have been a hindrance to the political schemes of the left, these schemes have been a far greater millstone around the neck of the anarchist movement, weighing it down with the “realism” that cannot dream.”
From Identity to Individuality: A Nihilist’s History in Leftism
From back cover:
“Rather than adhering to these strict rules, we felt free to communicate our individual desires…
…My friends of all different socially constructed identities – by race, gender, sex, etc – could behave as they wished, without being concerned that they were fulfilling stereotypes or betraying their identities.
It’s far from utopian, but as leftism continues to demonstrate, utopia is impossible without authoritarianism.”
From Identity to Individuality_ A Nihilist’s History in Leftism pdf
Fuck Your Red Revolution: Against Ecocide, Towards Anarchy
From back cover:
“Collectivism, whether it be communist, fascist or capitalist ideologically isn’t something that serves my interests as an indigenous subsistence farmer and forager living in these remote mountains. Whatever industrial dogma I’m ordered to live my life by only serves to fill my heart with sorrow. I will loudly reject the idea of a collective society at every opportunity, regardless of its ideological alliance. All industry kills all life.
I’m an anarchist. Even the idea of a “society” governing my way of life makes me vomit a little. Your needs aren’t my needs, I don’t want to go where the collective wants to take me…
…I want to be liberated from the system, not become the system. The collective isn’t my master. The collective is really just another state, however nicely you package it.”
Fuck Your Red Revolution_Against Ecocide Towards Anarchy pdf
Guide To Closed Circuit Television Destruction
Text from the zine:
“The gaze of the cameras does not fall equally on all users of the street but on those who are stereotypical predefined as potentially deviant, or through appearance and demeanour, are singled out by operators as unrespectable. In this way youth, particularly those already socially and economically marginal, may be subject to even greater levels of authoritative intervention and official stigmatization, and rather than contributing to social justice through the reduction of victimisation, CCTV will merely become a tool of injustice through the amplification of differential and discriminatory policing.” “an instrument of social control and the production of discipline; the production of ‘anticipatory conformity’; the certainty of rapid deployment to observed deviance and; the compilation of individualised dossiers of the monitored population.”
How it is to be Fun
Text from back cover:
“So you caught wind of some of the media hype about the black bloc or maybe you saw us at a protest doing what we do and now you want in. Sweet, welcome! We’re not an organization so you don’t have to sign up anywhere, we are people all over the world who employ a certain tactic against domination when we see fit to do so and we’re excited to meet you. Together we’ll create and destroy history. However, before crossing that line into illegality with us there are some things you could benefit from knowing and considering.”
How Non-Violence Protects the State
In lucid and accessible prose, Gelderloos invites activists to consider diverse tactics, systematically debunking the notion that non-violent activism is the only acceptable or effective method of struggle.
How To Form an Affinity Group
Another excellent zine on affinity groups, what they are and how to form one.
How To Organize an Insurrection
Text from the zine:
“We humbly present one of the first inside reports from participants in the upheavals that shook Greece after the police murder of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in the anarchist neighborhood of Exarchia on December 6. This is only the first set of answers to come in from our Greek comrades. We hope shortly to receive further perspectives from other elements of the Greek uprising, so we can provide a comprehensive background on the context and dynamics of the revolt.”
I Am Also A Nihilist
Text from back cover:
“I don’t care whether it is Nordic or Oriental, nor whether or not is has a historical, political, practical tradition, or a theoretical, philosophical, spiritual, intellectual one. I call myself a nihilist because I know that nihilism means negation.
Negation of every society, of every cult, of every rule and of every religion. But I don’t yearn for Nirvana, any more than I long for Schopenhauer’s desperate and powerless pessimism, which is a worse thing than the violent renunciation of life itself. Mine is an
enthusiastic and dionysian pessimism, like a flame that sets my vital exuberance ablaze, that mocks at any theoretical, scientific or moral prison.
And if I call myself an individualist anarchist, an iconoclast and a nihilist, it is precisely because I believe that in these adjectives there is the highest and most complete expression of my willful and reckless individuality that, like an overflowing river,
wants to expand, impetuously sweeping away dikes and hedges, until it crashes into a granite boulder, shattering and breaking up in its turn. I do not renounce life. I exalt and sing it.”
Identity, Politics, Anti-Politics: A Critical Perspective
A critique of identity politics from a queer, anarchist perspective, arguing that identity politics runs the risk of forming cross-class affinities between queers, women, and people of colour, and assimilating radical struggles into establishment politics. Originally published in Pink and Black Attack #4, 2010, and reproduced in Queer Ultraviolence – A Bash Back! Anthology available from Ardent Press.
In Praise of Chaos
From back cover:
Anarchists are opposed to authority both from below and from above. They do not demand power for the masses, but seek to destroy all power and to decompose these masses into individuals who are masters of their own lives. Therefore anarchists are the most decisive enemies of all types of communism and those who profess to be communists or socialist cannot possibly be anarchists.
It is not by organizing into parties and syndicates that one struggles for anarchy, nor by mass action which, as has been shown, overthrows one barracks only to create another. It is by the revolt of individuals alone or in small groups, who oppose society, impede its functioning and cause its disintegration.
Insurrectionary Anarchism
Text from back cover:
“It is the accumulation of “petty” acts of defiance and refusal that make critical upsurges possible. They are not a substitute for revolution but a necessary condition for it. That is why the insurrectionary moment invariably escalates so rapidly – “as if from nowhere” – and
is why revolutionary elites ( the clownish ring masters of the vanguard) always find themselves hopelessly overtaken.”
Insurrection Anarchist Magazine Issue #4
An insurrectionary anarchist periodical which provides essays and clandestine actions, critical of leftism and formal organizing.
INSURGENCY: An Anarchist Journal of Total Destruction
This (long awaited) zine contains a few action reports and a collection of essays written from a post-left anarchist perspective. Topics include insurrectionary anarchy, queer nihilism, veganism, individualism, nihilist anarchy and anti-civilization.
Insurgent Ferocity: The Playful Violence of Rebellion
From back cover:
“Rebellion is the aggressive, dangerous, playful attack by freespirited individuals against society. Refusing a system of violence, refusing an organized, militarized form of armed struggle, allows the violence of insurgents to retain a high level of invisibility. It cannot be readily understood by the authorities and brought under their control. Its insurgent nature may even go undetected by the authorities as it eats away at the foundations of social control. From the rationalized perspective of authority, this playful violence will often appear utterly random, but actually is in harmony with the desires of the insurgent.”
Leftism 101
This zine collects two excellent essays by Lawrence Jarach: “Leftism 101” from Back to Basics: The Problem of the Left put out by the Green Anarchy collective and “Anarchists, Don’t let the Left(overs) Ruin your Appetite” from Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #48.
The first essay looks at the origins of Leftist thought and anarchism’s relationship to it. The second essay provides a brief overview of anarchists’ historical relationship with “the Left,” concluding that there is no point in engaging with it.
Let’s Become Dangerous: For the Diffusion of the Black International by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
Text from the zine:
“No, our burned banks are not a way of protest or a token of friendship and solidarity with the “poor person” who does nothing and sits on his couch. It is a way to express our “I”. An “I”, that wants to stand out from the herd of slaves, an “I” that does not bow the head down, an “I” not waiting for the crowd to revolt, an “I”, which claims his own name, his own “acronym” and does not hide behind anonymity. The meeting time of the revolted ‘Egos’ takes up the name that we give to it. Its name is FAI and it is our “we”. A collective “we”, armed with razors against our enemies.”
Liberation, Not Organization
From back cover:
“I desire liberation , not organization. While most leftists would claim that the two go hand-in-hand , or at least that the second is necessary to achieve the first ( and for some the second might even “ wither away ” sometime after “ The Revolution ”), to me , the two seem contradictory. I am not fighting for a world which is run better ( more efficiently and more fairly ), I am fighting for a world which doesn’t need running ( one which is radically decentralized ) . Here lies the contradiction between the Left , and those fighting for autonomy and anarchy.”
Lone Wolves Are Not Alone
From back cover:
“It is all those conspiratorial anarchists illegalists who made the anarchist insurrection their only home land. It is those who chose to stay away from the glory of the dead ideologies and bureaucracy of the social anarchism which awaits the masses in order to begin its insurrection. Lone and unique they armed their desires, put aside the pathetic rot of the mob and went on to the storming of heaven.
Their star fills our eyes, the fire floods our thoughts, the vendetta of revenge beats in our hearts and, our hands embrace the guns and dynamite which they inherited to us. We live for an endless explosion of actions, thoughts, feelings, desires, which reaches the edge of the world.
There is no nostalgia, there is only today, while tomorrow is already late. Today is our turn, our life, our time.”
Lions in the Brush: On the Anatomy and Guidelines of Cell Structured Resistance
From back cover:
“There are two types of cells, sleeper cells and phantom cells. The sleeper cell consists of one lone wolf individual; the phantom cell however is made of no more than 2-5 individuals. Anything beyond 5 members risks falling into the same pitfalls as the organization, and begins to lose its solidity and causes it to be more vulnerable to infiltration, thus compromising its effectiveness. More importantly, cell structure differs from the organization in that, if one cell is taken out and/or compromised, it remains physically impossible for that to have any effect on any other cell. If we drew one big circle or pyramid (the organization), imagine if it only took one pin to stick into the organization block to destroy it. In the case of cell structure, the only way to destroy the cells would be to pin them each one by one, which means you would need to first locate and identify each and every one, and pick them off individually. The chance of successfully identifying all of those unknown numbers of underground cells is usually quite small. This is what gives cell structured resistance its near invincibility.”
Lions in the Brush_On the Anatomy and Guidelines of Cell Structured Resistance pdf
Max Stirner, Individualist Anarchy, And a Critical Look at Egoist Communism
From back cover:
“I have no need for the herd philosophy of the self-deceiving and self-sacrificing fantasy of communization and its inner leftism. I am opposed to its collectivist conformist cult of the worker, which dissolves the individual into the permanent roles of producer and consumer. When I work, I do so because I am forced and blackmailed to. So I refuse the slave role of “worker”. I want to see work abolished as a concept. I want to see the means of production and distribution reduced to ashes, blown up, turned down, destroyed and replaced with vast food forests and lush colorful gardens grown on top of the rubble.”
Max Stirner_Individualist Anarchy_ And a Critical Look at Egoist Communism pdf
The MOVE Organization: A Revolutionary Struggle for Black Liberation and Eco-Defense
The MOVE Organization was a radical movement that surfaced in Philadelphia during the early 1970’s. Characterized by dreadlock hair, the adopted surname “Africa”, a principled unity, back-to-nature green politics and an uncompromising commitment to freedom and equality, members practiced the teachings of MOVE founder JOHN AFRICA.
The MOVE Organization A Revolutionary Struggle for Black Liberation and Eco-Defense pdf
Manifesto Against Schools by Armeanio Lewis
From back cover:
“After being expelled I rushed home to write this essay. I didn’t think, I just wrote. I wrote how I was feeling, what I was thinking. I was nothing but a pure-being of anger and hatred. Arguably, I still am, but for this essay to really make sense, you must know this information. It may seem like the ramblings of an angry teenager, and technically it is. However, this essay caused a ruckus. Shortly after the publishing of this essay, 15 ARMATARK Trucks, the company that supplies school lunches and prison lunches, were sabotaged. Their tires slashed, and bleach poured into their engines. No news reported this, other than a communique found around schools in Portland. Shortly after that, an entire condo complex was burned to the ground. This fire was the biggest fire seen in Portland, and everything was torched. A claim was made, by Students For Insurrection (SFI for short). They declared they would not stop, and they didn’t.”
Mapping the Fire: International Words of Solidarity with the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
Text from the zine:
“The following texts were translated and edited by the imprisoned members of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and by the comrades of Contra Info. We warmly thank them therefore, as well as the comrades A,M and E who contributed decisively in the handling of this attempt. Finally we greet the Chilean comrades from Entropia Ediciones for the version in Chile, and the comrades of Actforfreedomnow, boubour(A)s and 325 for the version in English.”
“They might have imprisoned our bodies but not our ideas, beliefs and values, which will continue to escape through various projects of insubordination. One of these projects is the creation of “Black International” editions, which are supported by us, the imprisoned members of the Anarchist Revolutionary Organization Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, and from certain comrades who every day, every moment, embody practically the value of SOLIDARITY.”
My Iconoclastic Individualism
From back cover:
“But when we are condemned to hear socialists more or less theorizing in order to impudently and ignorantly state that there is no incompatibility between Individualist and collectivist ideas…when we hear someone try to make an invincible and unsurpassable iconoclast like Max Stirner out to be some tool for the use of frantic proponents of communism, then we may certainly have an ironic smirk on our lips. But then it is necessary to resolutely rise up to defend ourselves and to attack, since anyone who feels that he is truly individualist in principle, means and ends cannot tolerate being at all confused with the unconscious mobs of a morbid, bleating flock.”
Never Work!
Text from back cover:
“When Guy Debord of the Situationist International graffi tied the slogan “Never Work!” onto the walls of a Parisian street in 1953, he struck a blow in solidarity with the radical current of left communism which locates the wage-labour relation as the central pillar of capitalist relations and therefore the prime locus of attack. It is, of course, a banality that we need to work in order to produce for our basic needs. But what is at question here is the naure of that work, for whom, and to what end? Useful work? Or useless toil?”
No Hope, No Future: Let the Adventures Begin!
From back cover:
“But this reality, however dismal, motivates my desire to make my life, through fierce revolt, as joyful and fulfilling as possible! My hopelessness does not paralyze me with fear or depression; I celebrate it with hysterical laughter and ecstasy in spite of civilization’s death march. I arm my desires with the urgency to live… against the social order of monotony and peaceful enslavement, to sleep beneath the stars, to feel sunshine and a breeze with every hair on my body, to listen to the late-night conversations of the insects, to become wild…
Nihilist Anarchy, Insurrection, & Anti-Civilization
Text from back cover:
“The total liberation that I am speaking about could be nothing less than aggressive and in total conflict with the existent. The earth and the nonhuman animals as well as the human animals are parts of chaos. I am a nihilist and I see myself as an individuality inside the entire physical environment away from anthropocentric societies as the cities. Cities are prisons made by society and normality and must be torn down. Without the physical environment there would be no life. But without the cities there would still be life besides the changes this might involve that will occur, and i reject all views that state life is only viable within cities and civilization. So we should connect the struggle for liberation of our ego from every chain, with total liberation which goes beyond the destruction of the state and delves deep into the search of the destruction of anthropocentrism and civilization as two well hidden major ghosts, chains and ideologies.”
Non-Western Anarchisms: Re-Thinking the Global Context
Text from the zine:
“The purpose of this paper is to help anarchist / anti-authoritarian movements active today to reconceptualise the history and theory of first-wave anarchism on the global level, and to reconsider its relevance to the continuing anarchist project. In order to truly understand the full complexity and interconnectedness of anarchism as a worldwide movement however, a specific focus on the uniqueness and agency of movements amongst the “people without history” is a deeply needed change. This is because the historiography of anarchism has focused almost entirely on these movements as they have pertained to the peoples of the West and the North, while movements amongst the peoples of the East and the South have been widely neglected. As a result, the appearance has been that anarchist movements have arisen primarily within the context of the more privileged countries. Ironically, the truth is that anarchism has primarily been a movement of the most exploited regions and peoples of the world. That most available anarchist literature does not tell this history speaks not to a necessarily malicious disregard of non-Western anarchist movements but rather to the fact that even in the context of radical publishing, centuries of engrained eurocentrism has not really been overcome. This has been changing to an extent however, as there here have been several attempts in just the past decade to re-examine this history in detail in specific non-Western countries and regions, with works such as Arif Dirlik’s Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, Sam Mbah’s African Anarchism and Frank Fernandez’ Cuban Anarchism. It is within the footsteps of this recent tradition that this paper treads further into the relatively new ground of systematically assessing, comparing and synthesizing the findings of all of these studies combined with original investigation in order to develop a more wholly global understanding of anarchism and its history.”
Off The Leash
Text from back cover:
“Feeling the need for revolt in their bodies, those of an individualist nihilistic bent never needed to justify their insurrection in terms of ‘the Will of the People’, ‘History’ or ‘Justice’; and have always been quite prepared to forego optimism in favour of honesty and pragmatism in favour of dignity. Amid the catastrophe of history, these individuals were free in the only way anyone can be free, by seizing their lives for themselves.”
On the poverty of “Joyful Militancy”
From back cover:
““Their notion of “troubled joy” that they implicitly allude to in such roundabout ways, comes off sounding somewhat like a ruined orgasm (but not in a kinky way), cut short by thoughts of white guilt and internalized Christianity roaming the back of its head. This truncated notion of joy, though carefully detailed as to be allinclusive, is felt as if manicured to trim off any palpable trace of lust, wrath, or any of the remaining “deadly sins”. Though they reproduce criticism of a Catholic moralism that warns against excesses, one comes off with the impression that if ever playing “fuck, marry, kill” they would only ever choose “marry”, under the Church no less, lest anyone think they are of ill repute.
Perhaps they should have titled the book “Sad Militancy” since it deals mainly with that, as a problem. Not daring so much to propose much less embody a concrete way out of that impasse, while also seemingly still being held hostage by its affects. One wonders how they thought they could ever overcome “rigid radicalism”, while paralyzed by the rigor mortis of academia that was so palpable to me during my intercourse with this text.”
Old Habits Die Hard: At Daggers Drawn with “Inhabit”
From back:
“They speak of collective power; no power can support itself without the voluntary servitude of those it dominates. Power is a social relationship, a social hierarchical organization model, a way of lifemanagement. Reformism acts on detail, quantitatively. It mobilizes vast numbers of people in order to change a few isolated aspects of power.
“Inhabit” is the sugarcoating of decentralized D.I.Y. biopolitics.
Security, territory, population. They encourage the reader to target an area with the logic of occupation.
Building hubs is an act of bordering, delimiting a zone of exclusion. An intimate act of social cohesion producing productive subjectivities, set apart from external superfluous strangers. The opposite of rewilding; recivilizing pockets of wildness…
…The time to attack is now.
There is nothing and no one to wait for. To act now, with determined projectuality where our
destructive tension is the defining factor in our lives, not something that is built upon by following a 9step program or a 5year plan.”
Overcoming The Psychology of High School
Text from back cover:
“It is selfevident that high school – as one of the institutions of capital – seeks to transform individuals into productive automatons. How it does this isn’t quite as clear. Sure, the same manipulative techniques are used as elsewhere in the spectacle, but what does this look like exactly and how does it feel? The high school student’s desire to explore and experiment with the world of knowledge – if it has survived years of previous schooling – is brutally perverted to serve the interests of industrial society. High school falsely satisfies this desire by offering a clockworklike sequence of curricular consumption and measured performance with the ostensible purpose of education and development.”
