Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
—G. K. Chesterton
The IRA had Sinn Fein. The abolition movement had the Underground Railroad, Nat Turner and John Brown, and Bloody Kansas. The suffragists had organizations that lobbied and educated, and then the militant WSPU that burned down train stations and blew up golf courses. The original American patriots had printers and farmers and weavers of homespun domestic cloth, and also Sons of Liberty who were willing to bodily shut down the court system. The civil rights movement had the redefinition of blackness in the Harlem Renaissance and the stability, dignity, and community spirit of the Pullman porters, and then four college students willing to sit down at a lunch counter and face the angry mob. The examples are everywhere across history. A radical movement grows from a culture of resistance, like a seed from soil. And just like soils must have the cradling roots and protective cover of plants, without the actual resistance, no community will win justice or human rights against an oppressive system.
Our best hope will never lie in individual survivalism. Nor does it lie in small groups doing their best to prepare for the worst. Our best and only hope is a resistance movement that is willing to face the scale of the horrors, gather our forces, and fight like hell for all we hold dear. These, then, are the principles of a Deep Green Resistance movement.
1. Deep Green Resistance recognizes that this culture is insane.
A DGR movement understands that power is sociopathic and hence there will not be a voluntary transformation to a sustainable way of life. Providing “examples” of sustainability may be helpful for specific projects geared toward people who are anxious about their survival, but they are not a broad solution to a culture addicted to power and domination. Since this culture went viral out of the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley, it has encountered untold numbers of sustainable societies, some of them profoundly peaceful and egalitarian, and its response has been to wipe them out with a sadism that is incomprehensible. As one example among millions, Christopher Columbus’s officers preferred their rape victims between the ages of ten and twelve.
The pattern repeats itself across time and culture wherever civilization has risen. Civilization requires empire, colonies to dominate and gut. Domination requires a steady supply of hierarchy, objectification, and violence. As Ellen Gabriel, one of the participants in the Oka uprising, said, “We were fighting something without a spirit.… [t]hey were like robots.” The result is torture, rape, and genocide. And the deep heart of this hell is the authoritarian personality structured around masculinity with its entitlement and violation imperative.
Lundy Bancroft, writing about the mentality of abusive men, writes, “The roots [of abuse] are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.” You could not find a clearer description of civilization’s 10,000 year reign of terror.
This letter was sent to a publisher with whom we signed a contract for our book Bright Green Lies. After the contract was signed by all parties the publisher unilaterally voided on the contract. The publisher voided the contract because we refuse to deny physical reality, that is, we refuse to say that male human beings can “identify” their way into becoming women. The book has nothing to do with that question, but is about how high technology will not stop global warming or the destruction of the planet.
This is the cult-like behavior of the postmodern left: if you disagree with any of the Holy Commandments of postmodernism/queer theory/transgender ideology, you must be silenced on not only that but on every other subject. Welcome to the death of discourse, brought to you by the postmodern left.
We are profoundly disappointed that you chose to void the contract. That’s not particularly professional or ethical. Nor is it what we expected from a press that bills itself as an alternative to the corporate model of publishing.
You asked for our views on “gender,” and then didn’t even bother to wait for an answer before voiding the contract. Again, not what we expected from a press that seems to pride itself on communication.
Here are our views on “gender.”
We are part of a global, multi-generational feminist struggle that is critical of gender. There are many aspects to this political tradition, one of which is criticism of modern gender identity politics.
To make clear our position:
We believe that physical reality is real. This includes biological sex.
We believe that women–adult human females–have been oppressed under patriarchy for several thousand years.
We believe that sex stereotypes–aka gender–are social constructions. There is nothing biological that drives women to wear high heels and makeup, and drives men to fail to show emotions. Those are created by society to keep men on top and women subordinate. Sure, it’s perfectly fine if men want to wear makeup and high heels, but a desire to do so does not make them women.
We believe that people should be allowed to dress however they want, love whomever they want, have whatever interests and personalities they want. And of course they shouldn’t be discriminated against or subjected to harassment or violence. But these fashion choices, sexual preferences, and personality characteristics do not change anyone’s sex. Insisting that they do is reactionary. The whole point of feminism was that both women and men have full human capacities and shouldn’t be constrained to half of our human potential. The catchphrase of the seventies “free to be you and me” has become its polar opposite, where a little girl who likes trucks must really be a boy and hence may be subject to profound and life-changing medical alteration.
We believe that the modern gender identity movement is resulting in concrete and widespread harm, such as via dismantling hard-won protections like Title IX, private bathrooms, separate prisons, women’s sports, changing rooms, scholarship programs for women, women’s events and groups, etc. And of course it is causing harm through the destruction of discourse by the systematic silencing of anyone who disagrees with any portion of the gender identity movement.
We believe, as did Andrea Dworkin, that “Those of us who love reading and writing believe that being a writer is a sacred trust. It means telling the truth. It means being incorruptible. It means not being afraid, and never lying.” We believe the same holds true for publishers. Or used to. Or should.
We believe that there is a crisis in publishing and in public discourse, brought on by what has been named “the regressive left.” This movement bears no relation to the historic left that has spent decades fighting for a just and sustainable world. The historic left believed in the power of education and the free exchange of ideas as the foundations of democracy and as bulwarks against authoritarianism. The regressive left has instead based itself on harassing, threatening, deplatforming, and/or assaulting–that is, silencing–anyone who dares to disagree with any of its dogma. We are certainly not alone in noticing this. It has been remarked on by everyone from Noam Chomsky to Ricky Gervais. This regressive left has embraced authoritarianism, and has empowered both petty tyrants and smug cowards. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are deeply chilled by the regressive left’s rise to power. The values necessary for civic society to function and the institutions whose job is to embody and protect those ideals are eroding, and, with a few brave exceptions [for example, the above mentioned Chomsky, Gervais, various comedians, various old-school lefties like Chris Hedges; as well as The Committee on Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago, FIRE, Heterodox Academy, and Bret Weinstein], not enough people seem willing to stand and fight. Probably because when we do, regressive lefties threaten our careers, our livelihoods, and our very lives. They deplatform us. They get us fired. They void our contracts. Many threaten to rape and kill the women, and to kill the men. This has become routine. The new orthodoxy is anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, and fundamentalist in its mindset. Its tactics of bullying, deplatforming, stalking, severe social censure, and violence will never create a just and sustainable world. It will only create autocrats, self-righteous quislings, and in the case of gender identity, a generation of children who have been sterilized and surgically altered. Children are already being harmed by this project. Some of those young people are speaking out, and we urge you to listen to them:
If no one is allowed to disagree with any one particular group of people–whether they be capitalists or Christians or Muslims or those who support (or oppose) Israel or those who identify as transgender–then there can be no reasonable discourse. Allowing any group to hold discourse hostage is the death knell for pluralistic society. It leads to fundamentalism. It is a fundamentalism. It’s a classic trick used by despots and pocket despots everywhere: to ensure agreement with your position, make certain that all other positions are literally unspeakable. For the religiously minded, the epithet of choice has often been blasphemy. For the patriot, it’s traitor. For the capitalist, it’s commie. And for the liberal regressive leftist, it’s oppressor, or in our case, transphobe.
Here are some questions. These questions aren’t rhetorical. If you’re going to break our contract and not publish us based on internet slander, on an issue that has nothing to do with the book at hand, and apparently without bothering to find out our actual positions, we think you owe us the courtesy of at least honestly considering these questions.
Do you believe that a little boy who likes to dance and play with dolls should be put on puberty blockers and possibly have his genitals removed; or do you think that a little boy who loves to dance and play with dolls should be loved precisely for who he is, which is a little boy who loves to dance and play with dolls? Likewise, do you believe that a little girl who likes to play football and fix bicycles should be put on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and then have her reproductive organs surgically removed; or do you think she should be loved precisely for who she is, which is a little girl who loves to play football and fix bicycles? If you think there is nothing wrong with these children, and they should not be put on dangerous drugs, then you will be called a bigot, and publishers will refuse to publish your book about stopping the murder of the planet.
Do you believe that women, including those who have been sexually assaulted by men, should be forced to share their most vulnerable spaces with men? This has happened in spaces like homeless shelters, women’s prisons, and battered women’s shelters. As a result of unquestioning acceptance of the idea that men can simply identify as women, women have been raped. Women have been assaulted. We have spoken up about this. How many women have to be raped before it will be acceptable for someone who stands in solidarity with women to publish books on any other subject in the world, including stopping the murder of the planet? If you believe that women should not be forced to share their most vulnerable spaces with men, then many on the regressive left will call you a bigot, and publishers will break their contracts with you.
Do you believe that women who have been sexually assaulted and call a rape crisis center should be forced to talk to a man? This has happened. The Vancouver Rape Relief Shelter operates a crisis hotline and was sued in Canadian courts by a trans-identified male who wanted to “man” the phone lines. The crisis center organizers fought back on the basis that a male voice answering the phone would create problems for women in crisis. They eventually won their case, but have since been under assault, including having funding taken away because they refuse to force women who have been raped to talk to men. If you believe that women who have been sexually assaulted by men should not be forced to speak with men when they call a rape crisis center, then those on the regressive left will call you a bigot, and publishers will break their contracts with you.
Do you believe that women in prison should be forced to share their cells with male prisoners who have been found guilty of rape? This has happened numerous times, and has led to the rape of women by these men. See, for example, Karen White in the UK. See, for example, any number of cases in the US. If you believe that women in prison should not be forced to share their cells with men, then those on the regressive left will call you a bigot, and publishers will break their contracts with you.
Do you believe that women should be allowed to compete in women-only sports leagues? Or do you believe that women should be forced to compete against males? Men who identify as transgender are already taking medals, money, and scholarships from girls and women, as, for example, in this case, in which a white male millionaire who identifies as transgender cost an indigenous Samoan woman who overcame childhood sexual abuse her gold medal. How can the regressive left rationalize supporting this? But they do. We are the ones called bigots for protesting this. This is an appalling statement of how demented, and regressive, the left has become. Women are being harmed by this–economically, socially, morally. If you believe in Title IX, and believe that women athletes should be allowed a level playing field, then you will be called a bigot and publishers will break their contracts with you.
Do you believe that women should be compelled by law to touch men’s genitals, or risk being hauled before a human rights tribunal? This is happening right now, as a trans-identified male named “Jessica Yaniv” is suing poor immigrant women of color in British Columbia because they refuse to wax his genitals. Yaniv has already forced several of these women out of business. If you do not believe that women should be forced to handle his genitals, you will be labeled a bigot and publishers will refuse to publish your work.
Do you believe that lesbians who do not want to have sex with men are bigots and should be shamed into having unwanted sex with men? This is common in modern lesbian communities. In fact it is happening right now to an entire generation of young lesbians. In any other circumstances, we would call this what it has always been called, which is “corrective rape.” But now the regressive left promotes it, and vilifies those who oppose it. If you do not believe that lesbians should be shamed into having sex with men, then you will be called a bigot and publishers will break their contracts with you.
If you don’t believe women should be forced to share their most vulnerable spaces with men, then we are baffled by your position. Our book is not about that issue, and our position on that issue has nothing to do with this book. Are you simply afraid of the backlash?
If, on the other hand, you do believe that women should be forced to share their most vulnerable spaces with men, then we are still baffled by your position. You publish lots of stuff we disagree with. Who cares? We came to you to publish a book on whether industrial wind and solar will save the planet. Your views on whether women should be forced to share their spaces with men are irrelevant to us and to that book. We are not fundamentalists, we are not afraid of open discourse, and we are not afraid of being somehow “contaminated” by contact with those who hold positions with which we disagree. But then again, we are not part of the new regressive left.
By the standards of our detractors, we have committed blasphemy and are now unclean. Our loyalty to women has rendered every other position we take on any subject to literally be unspeakable.
Welcome to the current state of discourse on the regressive left.
Resistance movements need two things: loyalty, and material support.
— Lierre Keith
As you read this, DGR organizers in Manila, Kathmandu, Auckland, Denver, Paris—all over the world—are building a resistance movement to defend the living planet and rebuild sustainable human communities.
To do our work, we need sustainable funding. We need to sign up at least thirty more people to our monthly donor program in the next month. Can you be one of those people?If you can’t donate, no problem. Most of us are poor. But we’re working hard. This weekend, for example, our permaculture wing distributed native trees, seedlings, planter boxes, and revolutionary literature to unhoused people on the West Coast; DGR Asia Pacific held its second-ever organizing meeting; and we planned the next steps in our tactical direct action training curriculum.
All this takes money. And our radical, uncompromising stance comes at a price. Liberal foundations and big corporations won’t fund any organization that actually represents a threat to the ruling class.
Instead, we rely on small, grassroots donations – averaging less than $50 per person – and have only one paid staff. Our current funding levels aren’t sustainable in the long-term, and we need to expand our fundraising base significantly to build a stronger movement and take our revolutionary action to the next level.
Can you join us as a monthly donor?For those who are already donating: we cannot thank you enough.
In this short excerpt from the last episode of The Green Flame podcast, Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith offer a poetic reading from a piece by C.S. Lewis, originally written in 1948, in which the author speaks of the threat of nuclear war and how to live in an age of existential threats.
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. How are we to live in an atomic age? I am tempted to reply, ‘why as you would have lived in the 16th century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might have landed and cut your throat every night, or indeed as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented, and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors: anesthetics. We have that still.
It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things: working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a a game of darts, not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies, a microbe can do that, but they need not dominate our minds.”
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
We are happy to announce that the DGR book is available in German! Our thanks goes to the volunteer translaters, editors and the Austrian publisher who did very good work.
The book can be ordered as print and e-book from the publishers website:
Wir freuen uns mitteilen zu können, dass das DGR-Buch in deutscher Sprache erhältlich ist! Unser Dank gilt den ehrenamtlichen Übersetzern, Redakteuren und dem österreichischen Verlag, die sehr gute Arbeit geleistet haben.
Das Buch kann als Print- und E-Book auf der Website des Verlags bestellt werden.
„In diesem Buch geht es darum, zurückzuschlagen. Die vorherrschende Kultur, genannt Zivilisation, tötet den Planeten. Und es ist längst an der Zeit für diejenigen von uns, denen das Leben auf der Erde etwas bedeutet, die notwendigen Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um diese Kultur daran zu hindern, alle lebenden Wesen zu zerstören.“
Tiefenökologischer Widerstand („Deep Green Resistance“) beginnt dort, wo die Umweltbewegung aufhört: Denn für die Anhänger dieser Idee ist die industrielle Zivilisation unvereinbar mit dem Leben. Sie glauben nicht daran, dass irgendeine Form von zukünftiger Technologie dem Klimawandel, dem Artensterben, der Luftverschmutzung, der Bodenversiegelung oder irgendeiner anderen ökologischen Katastrophe, die die Menschheit ausgelöst hat, Einhalt gebieten kann.
Auch mit „bewusstem“ Konsumieren oder „nachhaltigem“ Wirtschaften lässt sich der Planet Erde nicht retten, sondern nur mit einer ernsthaften Widerstandsbewegung, die die zerstörerische industrielle Wirtschaft zum Erliegen bringt.
Die AutorInnen Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith und Aric McBay vertreten diesen radikalökologischen Ansatz, der in den USA und an anderen Orten immer mehr AnhängerInnen findet. In ihrem erstmals auf Deutsch übersetzten Manifest erzählen sie davon, wie täglich 200 Spezies von der Erde verschwinden, jährlich eine Fläche im Ausmaß des Aral-Sees verwüstet wird und wie pro Jahr 23 Millionen Menschen an den Folgen von Wasser-, Luft- oder Erdverschmutzung sterben. Sie erzählen von einer Welt, die kurz vor dem Ableben steht – wenn wir uns nicht sofort organisieren und handeln.
Das Buch „Deep Green Resistance“ erläutert bis ins Detail unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten des tiefenökologischen Widerstands, von gewaltlosen Aktionen bis zur Guerilla-Kriegsführung. Und es nennt die Bedingungen, die für den Erfolg dieser Optionen erforderlich sind. Es ist ein Handbuch und Aktionsplan für all jene, die entschlossen sind, für diesen Planeten zu kämpfen und den Kampf zu gewinnen.
Die AutorInnen
Derrick Jensen, geboren 1960, ist ein US-amerikanischer Autor und radikaler Umweltaktivist. Er hat über fünfzehn Bücher verfasst, zu den bekanntesten zählen: „Endgame“, „A Language Older Than Words“ und „What We Leave Behind“ (gemeinsam mit Aric McBay).
Lierre Keith, geboren 1964, lebt als Schriftstellerin, Kleinbäuerin und radikal-feministische Aktivistin in den USA.
Aric McBay ist Autor mehrerer Sachbücher, Aktivist und Kleinbauer und lebt in Ontario, Kanada.
For years, Derrick Jensen has asked his audiences, “Do you think this culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of life?” No one ever says yes.
Deep Green Resistance starts where the environmental movement leaves off: industrial civilization is incompatible with life. Technology can’t fix it, and shopping—no matter how green—won’t stop it. To save this planet, we need a serious resistance movement that can bring down the industrial economy. Deep Green Resistance evaluates strategic options for resistance, from nonviolence to guerrilla warfare, and the conditions required for those options to be successful. It provides an exploration of organizational structures, recruitment, security, and target selection for both aboveground and underground action. Deep Green Resistance also discusses a culture of resistance and the crucial support role that it can play.
Deep Green Resistance is a plan of action for anyone determined to fight for this planet—and win.
