by DGR News Service | Oct 8, 2019 | Movement Building & Support, Strategy & Analysis
Image by Tim Gouw (example of a purely symbolic action)
by Liam Campbell
Most Deep Green Resistance Cadre are more experienced than me, but I’ve had my fair share of action; having spent around 17 years attending and organising activist actions, ranging from anti-war protests to anti-fracking blockades, I’ve seen a wide range of tactics and outcomes.
I’ve followed Extinction Rebellion closely over the last few months, especially in Ireland, and I think it plays an important role in the broader ecosystem of environmental activism. Mass mobilisation is important because it builds public awareness, reduces public backlash against radical activism, and provides a recruiting ground for more assertive tactics (e.g. monkeywrenching). Although I understand why some radical ecologists refuse to engage with these sorts of groups, I personally think they’re worth actively supporting so long as the investments are made with nuance, patience, strategy.
Today I joined the Extinction Rebellion events in Dublin, out of a combination of genuine support for mass mobilisation efforts, and also to analyse the actions, police response, and public reactions.
Although I have clear critiques about their specific organising tactics, I’d like to step back and provide analysis at a strategic level because I think there’s one major issue that needs to be pointed out: the differences between symbolic and pragmatic actions.
Eric Oliver, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, has made staggeringly relevant observations about the difference between “intuitionists” and “rationalists.” Although his research focuses on their interactions with conspiracy theories, I think his findings broadly apply to many forms of political activism. In summary: humans fall into a spectrum between rationalists, who make decisions based primarily on facts and logic, and intuitionists, who make decisions based on feelings and symbolism. Neither group is inherently good or bad, but they view the world through profoundly different lenses. Professor Oliver estimates that strong intuitionists outnumber strong rationalists by about 2-to-1 in the United States.
What is a symbolic action? In Ireland the government is currently making important budgetary decisions, so Extinction Rebellion’s Dublin activists decided to occupy the front gate of the parliament (Dáil). In terms of measurable outcomes, this achieved essentially nothing because the members of government were still able to leave through the back door, and it was a poor choice of location due to low visibility and low foot traffic. However, it was the most obvious symbolic target because the building represents the government’s key decisionmakers. Choosing this target came at a significant pragmatic cost (i.e. lost momentum) but it created the clearest narrative (i.e. we’re blockading the uncooperative government).
What is a pragmatic action? When an action has a specific, measurable outcome, it is pragmatic. It doesn’t matter if the objective is to increase the number of participants in a march, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or deprive an opponent of a specific resource — the action remains pragmatic so long as it produces measureable and clearly defineable outcomes within a time limit.
Ideal actions are both symbolic and pragmatic but, if forced to choose between a strictly pragmatic or an entirely symbolic action, I would choose the pragmatic option because at least it’s measureable and if it’s successful its momentum can generally be redirected toward more symbolically effective actions.
“So what else could we do?” someone asked me today, while we were discussing the purely symbolic action at hand. The most obvious answer was to move protesters to a more visible location, rather than being quarantined on a street with so little foot traffic and external visibility. This would have been more pragmatic because we would have entered the consciousness of measurably more people. My second response was to suggest that it would be more effective to focus on blocking traffic at key intersections, which would likely cause citywide traffic jams, further increasing public awareness of climate change and feeding social media debates; these are also measurable through traffic reports and social activity (which I was measuring and noticed were mostly unaffected by today’s symbolic actions).
Having thought about it more, I’ve identified additional options:
- March through the large university, which was 2 blocks away, while students were leaving their classes. Encouraging people to join would probably have yielded a meaningful increase in the number of active participants.
- March through the large and densely crowded shopping street, essentially guaranteeing social media acitivity from both casual shoppers and also people who video record the many buskering musicians.
- Occupy one of the large, indoor shopping malls. There was concern about harming local businesses, but these shopping malls are almost exclusively run by fast fashion and ecologically exploitative multinationals, and even a brief occupation would have yielded immense public attention.
- Rig a sound system to something with wheels and turn it into a mobile dance party through the busiest streets in town.
- March onto, or near, the field of the nationally televised rugby game at the massive stadium, which was happening around the same time.
- Split into groups of 10-20 with flags and walk around town handing out information and inviting people to join the week ahead.
Most of the above approaches are less symbolic than sitting on a quiet intersection outside the parliamentary building, but I suspect they would have yielded more measureable outcomes and resulted in more momentum leading into the next 5 days of action. From my perspective, it’s better to focus on building momentum, awareness, and numbers during the beginning of an escalating week of activism — save primarily symbolic actions for when momentum has reached its peak.
by DGR News Service | Aug 15, 2019 | Education, Strategy & Analysis
Editor’s note: DGR acknowledges that Extinction Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion Ireland are valuable and necessary contributors to a broader ecosystem of activism. The analysis in this article is relevant for many movements and it’s republished from Medium with permission from the author.
Image credit: Truthout.org on Flickr
by Roderick Campbell
Extinction Rebellion Ireland (XRI) is growing at a decent speed and has already hosted a number of public marches and street art performances. The movement currently follows the Extinction Rebellion International principles and policies, which make it a fully decentralised and non-hierarchical movement which is open to anyone who wants to participate. In Ireland they are currently opting for a consensus based approach to decisionmaking rather than a democratic process, and they are experimenting with using “circles” to organise around key issues like finance, tactics, and policies. The community is somewhat divided on the details, especially regarding the ambiguity of some of Extinction Rebellion’s principles and how they should be interpreted. There is also contention around the details of decisionmaking processes and key financial decisions.
This is very much a social experiment, and you can tell the movement is young and raw. Individual participants run the gamut from brand-new activists to seasoned community organisers, from upper class people to significantly underpriveleged people, and from those living in intensely rural settings to those living in the big cities. The diversity of participants is staggering. There seems to be a central division between those who espouse fundamentally capitalist beliefs and call for incremental progress through government lobbying and public relations stunts, to outright socialists who are calling for the abolition of capitalism and profound restructuring of government institions. Likewise, there is a division between those who believe that climate change is a serious concern but a vaguely distant threat, to those who believe climate collapse is actively occurring and poses a risk of near-term extinction. These divisions are obviously exploitable, and will inevitably identified by opposition forces (e.g. fossil fuel industry propaganda teams).
Below I outline some of my most immediate security concerns. Please note that I’m highlighting these concerns in order to help XRI identify and address them before they fall victim to malicious parties. I will approach these concerns from the perspective of an oppositional force in order to highlight the seriousness of these vulnerabilities.
Crippling Through Consensus
Perhaps the most easily exploitable aspect of Extinction Rebellion Ireland (XRI) is that they’re currently using consensus rather than democracy, which means that they only progress on a tactic or solution if everyone agrees. If one participant wishes to block the decision they can grind everything to a halt. There is no process for dealing with people who consistently obstruct decisions, so it would be easy for a member of the opposition to join XRI meetings and simply blockade all decisions while pretending to do so in good faith — though even if they blockaded XRI without pretending to be sincere, there are no existing procedures for dealing with them. A small handful of malicious individuals could easily cripple XRI and prevent most progress.
Scenario: I am the head of a PR (propaganda) agency for the fossil fuel industry and I’ve identified this weakness. I hire a small team of individuals to join XRI Facebook groups, join the XRI Slack, and participate in all key meetings both in person and via Zoom. These individuals do not need to be skilled at all, so I would select them based on their cover stories. I would give preference to older individuals, since they are perceived to be more trustworthy, and I would favour anyone who has a background in “feel good” activism so that they seem credible. Their entire job will be to bring up “legitimate” concerns about every issue and to trade off on blocking decisions, that way it’s not too obvious.
Outcome: XRI decisionmaking is ground to a halt, effectively the only actions which become possible are those which the fossil fuel industry has authorised because all others are blocked by the small team of paid trolls. These blockade participants may arouse some degree of suspicion, but it is impossible to definitively accuse them of maliciousness. This tactic will continue to work so long as consensus decisionmaking is in effect and/or so long as participation is open to the general public.
Consistent, Controlled Conflict
Groups like XRI are highly diverse, and they always include big personalities. There are a handful of especially divisive issues which are guaranteed to generate conflict and endless argument. Some of the prominent issues include:
- Urgently dismantling capitalist systems (“capitalism relies on infinite growth on a finite planet, which is irrational”).
- Emotional violence as violence (“if we hurt someone’s feelings it constitutes violence and is against the XRI policies”)
- Property destruction as nonviolence (“if we sabotage a pipeline it does not directly harm anyone and is therefore nonviolent”)
- Quantifiability of tactics (“we should not pursue tactics which have no quantifiable outcomes”)
- Naming and shaming (“we cannot mention any names” & “no naming and shaming only applies to XR participants and the general public”)
Leveraging these key issues to generate internal conflict would be effective because they all address valid, but generally unresolveable issues. They divide people along key lines: capitalism/socialism, idealist/pragmatist, and analytical/emotional. Each of these groups constitute a large ratio of XRI’s participants and can therefore generate substantial conflict with very little prompting. Most of these debates occur on Facebook and Slack, and can therefore be instigated and sustained by fake accounts.
Scenario: I am a member of a prominent opposition party and my objective is to cause enough sustained dissent within XRI to cripple an upcoming national strike. I coordinate a dozen party volunteers via Facebook. Each volunteer sets up 2–3 fake Facebook accounts and email addresses, primarily using images of attractive young women to ensure they are inundated with incoming friend requests, which significantly reduces the amount of work needed to create a realistic looking account. Once the accounts have several dozen friends the volunteers are prompted to add them to prominent XRI groups on Facebook, where each fake account regularly initiates arguments about one of the key issues outlined above. The volunteer trolls also engage with each others’ content in order to make the arguments appear authentic and lively. Once the accounts have become regonisable in the community they request to be added to the XRI Slack where they continue baiting arguments.
Outcome: XRI participants end up wasting time and energy on divisive arguments rather than working on actions or making progress toward resolving organisational gaps. Moreover, individuals who engage in arguments will be likely to form cliques and grudges until active members leave out of frustration and emotional exhaustion. XRI currently has no process for resolving these disputes or making critical interpretive decisions, so this tactic would work indefinitely.
Daylight Robbery
Extinction Rebellion and XRI have significant access to funding. The International account generally holds between €500,000 and €1,000,000 in cash and they are beginning to allocate relatively large amounts of funding to individual Extinction Rebellion groups. For example, XRI has been offered €10,000 without strings attached, and an additional €40,000 with minimal strings attached.
The biggest financial obstacle facing XRI and other regional XR groups is accessing funds, because they are often used for illegal activities. Under normal circumstances, XRI members would join forces and create a legal entity (e.g. limited company) to receive and process the funds; this approach requires individual XRI members to sign their name to the company and take on significant legal liabilities. Conversely, individual XR members could be directly paid out the funds as wages, which carries slightly less legal liability but lacks transparency, creates infighting, and makes resource purchases difficult. Another option is to set up an out-of-country legal entity, which provides significant legal protection but requires a trustworthy foreign national. The last option is to receive payment in bitcoin and withdraw cash from bitcoin ATMs, which provides the most legal protection but lacks transparency and requires several trustworthy individuals.
XRI is open to anyone and operates on a consensus model, which means that a dedicated group of thieves could potentially steal tens of thousands of euro by infiltrating the XRI community, driving financial decisions toward methods they can control, and working as a group to mask their actions and mitigate any risk of being caught.
Scenario: A group of 10 friends hear that XRI will soon receive €40,000 in funding. They join XRI groups, the Slack platform, and begin attending all meetings in order to build rapport. These individuals understand the logistical challenges facing XRI and they advise XRI to leverage bitcoin to receive the funds in order to take advantage of its many benefits, namely its anonymity and significantly reduced legal liability. XRI participants express concern about ensuring the funds are safely handled and can be transparently accounted. The group of thieves suggest a best practice: a “circle” of designated people should all have access to the bitcoin wallet in order to monitor the funds and keep each other honest. All 10 of the friends join the circle and insist that many people should have access in order to avoid centralisation and hierarchy. Once the funds are in the bitcoin wallet, they almost immediately disappear into another wallet and are then laundered through one of many services. The funds are eventually divided among the friends and nobody can identify who took the bitcoins.
Outcome: XRI loses €40,000 in funding and has a reduced likelihood of receiving additional funds. The Extinction Rebellion brand is tarnished and media coverage is diverted away from actions and toward the robbery. Extinction Rebellion funders are globally disenfranchised and become less likely to provide financial resources in the future.
Summary
By compiling this analysis I hope to highlight several significant security risks, which can be exploited by malicious third parties with minimal resources or expertise to cripple the Extinction Rebellion movement in Ireland. These approaches are not new, they have been used before to undermine movements, but they have not yet been used against Extinction Rebellion. My hope is that, by highlighting them, Extinction Rebellion can resolve the issues before oppositional parties exploit them or, at the very least, Extinction Rebellion participants will be more likely to identify them before they cause critical damage to the movement.
All of these weaknesses can be effectively counteracted, but only if we’re aware of them before we fall victim to them.
by DGR News Service | Aug 1, 2019 | Indirect Action, Strategy & Analysis
Editor’s note: this article is republished from an internal DGR community discussion.
by a DGR member
Definition: “Spiral theory” is a strategic approach adopted by some revolutionary movements in which violent acts are undertaken against state targets with the intention of provoking an indiscriminate repressive response against an associated social group that is relatively uninvolved with the action itself. This repressive response is sought for its ability to radicalize a population that is currently apolitical or unsupportive of violent revolution.
History: Spiral theory has been used to varying levels of success over the 20th century.
Irish Republicanism – The Irish Republican Army realized early on in the campaign against British imperialism that attacks on military installations and against British settlers would lead to indiscriminate retaliation against ethnic Irish communities by occupying forces. IRA strategists soon learned that intentionally provoking this response radicalized previously unsupportive Irish civilians against British rule more than it alienated them from the Republicans. Many of the tactics adopted by the IRA, both before and after the creation of the Irish Republic, had the unintuitive goal of increasing British violence against Irish civilians for this purpose. This strategy was originally effective, but public support for militant resistance to British occupation waned in the latter half of the 20th century as IRA actions became increasingly erratic. By the 1980s, the spiral of government and Republican violence was more exhausting and demoralizing than radicalizing for large portions of the population.
Basque Separatism – Spiral theory is perhaps most associated with the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or ETA, a revolutionary nationalist organization with the goal of establishing a homeland for the Basque people in northern Spain. According to Cyrus Zirakzadeh, the ETA’s strategy centered around “elective attacks [that] would provoke the government into excessive and nondiscriminatory retaliation against all Basque residents.” This strategy was extremely successful during the regime of Francisco Franco, growing the ETA from a relatively small core of marginalized activists to a movement that was supported by the majority of Basque residents in Spain. The ETA was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing a Basque homeland, but their failure cannot be easily traced to their effective use of spiral theory. It is likely that spiral theory was merely insufficient, rather than ineffective, for Basque separatists.
Zionism – Early Zionist militants intentionally provoked repression against Jewish settlers in the hopes of radicalizing moderate Zionists who saw the British state as a potential ally. Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, adopted a policy of bombings, assassinations, and sabotage against British soldiers as well as Palestinian civilians for this purpose. However, the British occupation forces were generally unwilling to respond with indiscriminate violence against Jewish settlers, and no “spiral” formed.
Palestinian Liberation – Spiral theory is a central strategic approach of groups like Hamas, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. All of these organizations are well-known for their strategy of relatively harmless rocket attacks against Israeli settlements and cities, undertaken with the intention of provoking a disproportionate Israeli military response. These military responses further radicalize Palestinian civilians, as well as damage the international reputation of the Israeli state. Although many factors are responsible for the rise of Hamas and the marginalization of the PLO and PFLP, analysts generally see this strategy as having been incredibly effective. Hamas was relatively unpopular before adopting the policy of intermittent rocket attacks, but now holds an absolute majority of seats on the Palestinian Legislative Council. Further, public opinion among Palestinians has shifted towards militancy and away from compromise in recent years, while international criticism towards the Israeli response has intensified.
Considerations: Spiral theory requires complex practical and ethical considerations before it can be applied to Deep Green Resistance and our strategic model.
Practical – Spiral theory is traditionally utilized when an identifiable social group exists to be retaliated against. This is most commonly an ethic group, but it can be any relatively inflexible and publicly recognizable social category. Race, sex, and economic class are all at least potentially capable of being integrated into a strategy based on spiral theory, and Deep Green Resistance does some work revolving around all three. However, it is unclear what social group would be targeted by retaliation were spiral theory to be applied in the arena of environmentalism. A crucial element of spiral theory is the inability of the targeted social group to fracture, dissolve, or disassociate itself; in the face of Spanish repression, for example, Basque people cannot choose to stop being Basque. This contrasts with environmentalism, which is a political and social movement where membership is optional. Therefore, it is at least likely that intentionally provoking retaliation against environmentalists would result in people renouncing environmentalism rather than radicalizing against the corporate state. For this reason, traditional spiral theory is at the very least an uncertain strategy with the potential for severe failure.
Environmentalism is also a unique arena in which strategically effective militancy is often no more difficult than symbolic militancy. In many cases, it is much easier. Blowing up a dam, for example, is more pragmatically beneficial than violence directed at individuals, and it may also be safer and more straightforwardly accomplished. This is not the case for national liberation struggles, where striking decisive blows at the infrastructure of an occupying force is often much more difficult than violence towards “soft targets” like police, politicians, and settler populations. Spiral theory originally developed as a way to leverage relatively powerlessness by striking low-value targets and capitalizing on the response of the more powerful agent. Although environmentalists are similarly powerless, our focus on material extractive infrastructure as opposed to complex political and social organization means our ideal targets are often “softer” than those that would carry (purely) symbolic value. For this reason, spiral theory may be strictly unnecessary; it is likely that effective militancy as outlined in our DEW strategy would bring with it many of the same results that spiral theory intentionally produces.
Ethical – Spiral theory involves intentionally bringing harm to innocent people, including those who we consider allies and community members. Although we cannot legislate any individual’s moral response to strategies like these, it is likely that they conflict with Deep Green Resistance’s dedication to respecting human rights and avoiding oppressive actions. Combined with the previously mentioned practical issues, a straightforward application of spiral theory seems to be ethically unjustifiable.
Applications: Spiral theory, while effective in some revolutionary contexts, contains many liabilities and structural constraints that make it a poor fit for environmentalism. Nonetheless, environmentalists can and should analyze spiral theory to look for ways in which its underlying philosophy can be harnessed in the fight against industrialism.
Utilizing Repression for Propaganda Purposes – While it may not be justifiable to intentionally provoke retaliation against environmentalists, retaliation is nonetheless expected as the ecological catastrophe worsens and environmental activism becomes more militant. With this in mind, spiral theory can help us understand the ways in which we can utilize this retaliation and make the most of it. Already, the Trump administration’s increasingly hostile relationship to both state environmental agencies and non-state activists has altered public perception, and further crackdowns can be leveraged to increase this antagonism. Anti-environmental actions that specifically impact indigenous and non-white communities may be especially open to the dynamics described by spiral theory; although intentionally provoking these actions is likely to be unsuccessful and unethical, the strategies of revolutionary movements like the ETA and Hamas can help us understand how best to leverage these actions once they do occur as a natural byproduct of the worsening ecological crisis.
Utilizing Repression Strategically – As adherents to DEW, we recognize that legal aboveground action will not be enough to reach our goal of dismantling industrial civilization. It is likely that continued reliance on and belief in these sorts of actions is a major impediment to revolutionary success. For this reason, it may be advantageous to intentionally provoke increased legal sanction against common aboveground actions with the hope of creating conditions where underground action becomes the safer alternative, all things considered. This could be considered a form of legal spiral theory. At the very least, it is valuable to identify what aboveground actions would most likely 1) publicly fail in a way that encourages dissatisfaction and radicalization, or 2) succeed in ways that provoke increased legal sanctions and therefore create corresponding incentive for underground action. In contrast, actions that fall in the middle of this spectrum – being effective enough to maintain individual personal satisfaction but not effective enough to compel a strong state reaction – may be the most deleterious form of resistance.
Applying Spiral Theory to Bright Green Environmentalism – The proliferation of liberal reformists in the environmental movement is another serious impediment to revolutionary success. Although violence against these “bright green” activists would be unjustified, the dynamics of spiral theory can also be applied to the social relations between environmentalists. Provoking mainstream environmental organizations to adopt radical positions is, of course, the most desirable goal. However, if this is judged to be unlikely or impossible, it may be beneficial to pursue the opposite response and encourage increasingly ineffective and futile actions. This could have the effect of alienating their potential supporters. As stated above, mainstream environmental organizations that are effective enough to provide contributors with emotional gratification but not effective enough to achieve real goals may be the most harmful form of activism. If this is the case, and radicalization is unlikely, increased irrelevance and ineptitude may be preferable
Takeaways: It is likely that spiral theory as conventionally practiced by revolutionary movements would be unhelpful or harmful to the environmental movement. This is due to three primary reasons: First, there is no cohesive social group to experience and respond to state repression in the case of environmentalists. Second, effective actions against infrastructure would compel state repression to the same degree that symbolic violence would. Third, there are serious ethical concerns that would be both categorically problematic and practically harmful to the image of environmentalists.
Nonetheless, some elements of spiral theory can be applied to the struggle against industrialism in ways that are very helpful. Spiral theory can help us understand how to best leverage the inevitable state repression that will occur as the ecological crisis worsens. Spiral theory can also be applied more directly to our dialectical relationship with the legal system. Closing off unhelpful avenues of aboveground activism by provoking legal sanction may be a helpful way of steering activists towards more decisive action. Similarly, if mainstream environmental organizations reach the point of being unsalvageable, it may be beneficial to encourage their incompetence with the goal of alienating those who previously supported them.
by DGR News Service | Jul 23, 2019 | Direct Action, Education, Strategy & Analysis
Editor’s note: this article contains extensive excerpts from the Irish Republican Army’s Green Book, one of their key training documents during their 20th-century struggle against British occupation.
Written by Liam Campbell
“Don’t be seen in public marches, demonstrations or protests. Don’t be seen in the company of known Republicans, don’t frequent known Republican houses. Your prime duty is to remain unknown to the enemy forces and the public at large.”
Like all successful underground organisations, the Irish Republican Army maintained a strict firewall between their aboveground and underground movements, this ensured that publicly identifiable individuals could not be pressured into revealing underground militants, providing a certain level of safety for both groups. The Irish Republican Army also emphasized the importance of abstaining from alcohol or other drugs, which they identified as the single greatest threat to any guerilla organisation.
“Many in the past have joined the Army out of romantic notions, or sheer adventure, but when captured and jailed they had after-thoughts about their allegiance to the Army. They realised at too late a stage that they had no real interest in being volunteers. This causes splits and dissension inside prisons and divided families and neighbours outside.”
When recruiting, the Irish Republican Army recognised that successful underground members had certain characteristics; they were intelligent, reliable, and they were capable of giving their total allegiance to the cause. These characteristics ensured that they would consistently obey often difficult orders from the chain of command, regardless of the personal cost, and despite any personal issues they may have with their superior officers. Certain qualities could disqualify a person as a candidate: emotionalism, sensationalism, and adventurism were among them.
“The enemy, generally speaking, are all those opposed to our short-term or long-term objectives. But having said that, we must realise that all our enemies are not the same and therefore there is no common cure for their enmity. The conclusion then is that we must categorise and then suggest cures for each category. Some examples: We have enemies through ignorance, through our own fault or default and of course the main enemy is the establishment.”
One of the most essential features of the Green Book was the precision with which it defined enemies. You cannot wage a successful war if your targets are poorly defined. The Irish Republican Army identified three categories of enemy:
Enemies through ignorance are those individuals who can be cured through education. Tactics included marches, demonstrations, wall slogans, press statements, publications, and person-to-person communication. The Green Book stressed that self education was essential, which included ideological understanding and also tactical knowledge about how to organise large groups of people and how to successfully execute different actions.
Enemies through our own fault are the ones created by the Irish Republican Army’s actions, which includes personal conduct and the collective conduct of the movement. These enemies vary greatly. The elderly woman whose door was pulled off its hinges by an IRA member evading capture who doesn’t receive an immediate apology and recompense, the family and friends of an informer who has been punished without their being notified of the reason, and also the collateral victims of violence.
Members of the establishment who consciously take actions to maintain the status quo in politics, media, policing, and business. Although some of these enemies are clearly identifiable, most of them operate with various degrees of anonymity as bureaucratic cogs in a vast machine of oppression; this means that one of the greatest challenges is accurately identifying establishment members. Surprisingly, execution is not always the best way to make a member of the establishment ineffective, often it is better to expose them as liars, hypocrites, collaborators, or subjects of public ridicule.
“Many figures of speech have been used to describe Guerrilla Warfare, one of the most apt being ‘The War of the Flea’ which conjured up the image of a flea harrying a creature of by comparison elephantine size into fleeing (forgive the pun). Thus it is with a Guerrilla Army such as the I.R.A. which employs hit and run tactics against the Brits while at the same time striking at the soft economic underbelly of the enemy, not with the hope of physically driving them into the sea but nevertheless expecting to effect their withdrawal by an effective campaign of continuing harassment contained in a fivefold guerrilla strategy.”
The Irish Republican Army’s strategy included a war of attrition, the destruction of high-value assets, to make large regions ungovernable, to sustain a propaganda campaign, and to protect the movement against criminals, collaborators, and informers. The Green Book emphasized that volunteers need to achieve more than just killing enemy personnel, they must also create and maintain support systems that would not only carry the movement through the war, but would also facilitate a smooth transition after military victory had been achieved.
“Most volunteers are arrested on or as a result of a military operation. This causes an initial shock resulting in tension and anxiety. All volunteers feel that they have failed, resulting in a deep sense of disappointment. The police are aware of this feeling of disappointment and act upon this weakness by insults such as “you did not do very well: you are only an amateur: you are only second-class or worse”. While being arrested the police use heavy-handed `shock` tactics in order to frighten the prisoner and break down his resistance. The prisoner is usually dragged along the road to the waiting police wagon, flung into it, followed by the arresting personnel, e.g., police or Army. On the journey to the detention centre the prisoner is kicked, punched and the insults start. On arrival he is dragged from the police wagon through a gauntlet of kicks, punches and insults and flung into a cell.”
Capture was one of the greatest fears that volunteers lived with on a daily basis, so the Green Book addressed these concerns in detail and prepared volunteers for that possibility. This section was broken down into the actual arrest, the interrogation, and the legal process. There were three categories of torture that volunteers could face: physical, subtle psychological, and humiliation. Physical torture often took the form of beatings, kicking, punching, and cigarette burns. Psychological torture could include threats to family, friends, and self, or threats of assassination and disfigurement. Humiliation included being stripped naked, remarks about the prisoner’s sexual organs, and removing symbolic defense mechanisms.
One of the ways the Green Book prepared volunteers was by reminding them that they could only be held and tortured for a maximum of 7 days. Although the experience would likely be horrific, it could only last for a relatively brief duration; if they confessed or capitulated during their interrogation they could easily face a lifetime in prison where they would experience much of the same torture. One of the coping strategies they employed was to form images in their minds or on the surrounding walls, directing their concentration away from the interrogators and diverting it toward positive or neutral ideas, even something as simple as a flickering candle or a leaf.
Overall, what the Green Book does is it clearly lays out the ideological foundations of the movement, the requirements of its volunteers, the methodology for identifying and categorising enemies, the tactics that should be employed, and it also addresses the greatest fears of volunteers and teaches them how to cope in the event that they must face them. These are the foundational psychological requirements that are needed to recruit and retain effective underground guerillas. They must know why they are taking action, what their actions will achieve, how to behave, who they are targeting, and they need to know that they will be able to overcome their fears should they need to face them.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 7, 2019 | White Supremacy
by Max Wilbert / Counterpunch
In his book Capitalism and Slavery, Trinidadian historian Dr. Eric Williams writes that “Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.”
Williams, like many others, argues that racism was created by the powerful to justify subjugation that was already in progress. In other words, the desire to exploit came first, and racism was developed as a moral system to justify the exploitation.
This has profound implications for how we approach the topic of dismantling racism and white supremacy.
Most people today know that race and racism are not “natural.” Scientifically, there is no such thing as “race.” Of course, there are differences in skin color between different groups of people. And it is possible to lump people into rough geographic groups based on their heritage and specific physical characteristics. But the concept of race is a vast oversimplification of this natural variation.
The fact that race is an artificial construct becomes clear when you study how “mixed-race” people are perceived in society today. In general, society considers a person who is half white and half black to be… black. In these sorts of examples, race is exposed as a set of stereotypes, a shorthand that people use to categorize people into a set of expectations and social boxes.
This, of course, isn’t to say that race isn’t “socially real.” In our culture, race is a material reality. But it’s a fuzzy one, a constructed one. This becomes obvious when we study the history of race and racism, and when we examine how these concepts have evolved over time to better serve the (fractured, not unitary) ruling class.
For another example of how race functions as a system of power, we can look at how various ethnic groups have shifted in and out of the privileged class “white” over time. The book How the Irish Became White traces this phenomenon, examining how mostly dirt-poor Irish immigrants to the US were treated as a sub-human race of lesser innate worth and intelligence, and how over time, the Irish became accepted as “white” in return for their largely collective agreement to oppress blacks and other non-white peoples.
Racism functions today, as it has historically, as a system used to justify the oppression and exploitation of billions of people of color worldwide. In his pioneering book The Nazi Doctors, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton writes that people cannot continue to commit atrocities without having them fully rationalized. He calls these justifications a “claim to virtue.” For the Nazis Lifton studied in particular, the mass murder of Jews was justifiable to create Lebensraum (“living space”) for the Aryan race.
Similarly, racism allows white supremacists (both overt and covert) to claim virtue as they brutally exploit people. The ideology of slavery and colonization relies on the idea that Black and indigenous peoples are “sub-human” and need to be “civilized.” Early white historians of slavery such as Ulrich B. Phillips wrote that slavery lifted the African people from barbarism, protected them, and benefited them.
From claiming that non-white people were separate species, to racist IQ tests, to Trump claiming Central American refugees are disease-ridden rapists, these campaigns of virtue have continued for hundreds of years.
If racism was born primarily out of political necessity to justify exploitation—this changes the way that we approach dismantling racism. Instead of a cultural attitude or idea that can educated away, this understanding has us see racism as fundamentally linked to a material system of exploitation. In fact, we could say that racism IS material exploitation.
Today, this system of racist exploitation takes many forms.
It takes the form of a massive private prison system that profits from the enslavement of the largest prison population in the world, a population that is disproportionately black, Latino, and indigenous. There are more black people in prison today than were in prison at the height of slavery, and these people are forced to work for free or slave wages (often $1 per hour or less) for private profit.
It takes the form of a complicit educational system that dehumanizes black and brown children from birth while railroading them on the school-to-prison pipeline.
It takes the form of an economic system that uses redlining, payday loans, and other predatory financial practices to steal from the poor black and brown people of this country, leaving people destitute and facing homelessness, disease, cold, and hunger.
It takes the form of the war on drugs, which originated in the crack cocaine epidemic in black inner cities started in the 1980’s. In 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb, who worked for The Mercury News newspaper in San Rose, launched his “Dark Alliance” series of articles with this: “For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.” This drug ring “opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles” and, as a result, “helped spark a crack explosion in urban America.” This helped fuel the drug war, a key pillar of US internal counterinsurgency strategy, and led to massively profitable asset forfeiture programs, internal security business, and a booming private prison system. After this report, Webb was attacked by the three largest newspapers in the country, run out of his job, went bankrupt, and eventually ‘killed himself’ with two self-inflicted gunshots.
It takes the form of a fossil fuel and real-estate boom making billions of dollars while bulldozing through indigenous lands and building on top of burial grounds and sacred sites, and more broadly of environmental racism through which toxic and radioactive industries, waste, and facilities are offloaded onto communities of color.
It takes the form of a US and western foreign policy that backs right-wing coups and wars in places like Honduras, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, The Philippines, and elsewhere for the sake of geopolitical and financial power, then demonizes refugees fleeing from this violence who can then be exploited for low wage jobs, prostitution, and practical slavery while they live in fear.
It takes the form of global trade agreements like NAFTA which impoverish millions of poor people of color globally and make it even more profitable and easy for corporations to make billions on the exploitation of cheap labor in sweatshops, maquiladoras, and electronics factories.
These are just a few examples.
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Feminist author Marilyn Frye described oppression as being similar to a birdcage. Examine any one bar of the cage, and it appears to be no obstacle. After all, a bird can simply fly around it. Only when you consider the inter-relationship between the different bars do you get a sense of how the cage works to immobilize and confine the occupant.
Racism works in a similar way. Education, prisons, mass media, banks, war, politicians, non-profits, developers, drugs and alcohol, entertainment, and various other institutions and forces combined form a cage that is locked tightly around people of color.
This brutal system is responsible for the deaths of millions and an obscene amount of suffering.
The routine public executions of black and brown people conducted by the police are a terrorist tactic no different from the lashing of slaves. For both white and black and brown community, these displays clearly teach and enforce the power hierarchy. Body cameras have only made these dominance displays more public, and thus more effective.
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When we understand how racism functions, we are better able to plan our attack against it.
If racism is a system of power set up to benefit the ruling class, education (the favorite method of liberals) can never be enough. Fundamentally, racism is not based on ignorance; it’s based on power and exploitation. That doesn’t mean education is worthless, but it does mean that ending racism is primarily a power struggle, not a matter of changing minds. Education is necessary, but not sufficient.
A radical approach to dismantling racism requires dismantling the material institutions that uphold and benefit from white supremacy.
To call this understanding of racism “economic” is an oversimplification. Systems of oppression function mostly to steal from the poor and reward the rich, but they are not purely rational. And this approach doesn’t mean subordinating racism to class struggle. Racism is not “less important” than class struggle, and arguments that it is (mainly from white people) have rightly drawn a lot of criticism from people of color activists.
That said, radical people of color have long understood that racism is one key pillar in a system of domination and exploitation that is much broader than racism alone. Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition in Chicago is a key example, bringing together black, Puerto Rican, working class white, and socialist groups, not to subordinate their struggles to a larger goal, but to coordinate their fight against the ruling class as a united front.
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Modern white supremacy has its foundation in ideas and in culture, but it expresses itself primarily through economic power, military power, police power, media power, and so on. These are all concrete institutions that can be destroyed. I believe that too little attention is paid to vulnerabilities in the global system of white supremacist empire.
This line of thought has not been explored much by radical leftists. Revolutionary traditions have been dominated by strains of Marxism, which focus on seizing state and corporate power and institutions, not on destroying or incapacitating them.
The revolutionary strategy “Decisive Ecological Warfare” (DEW) was originally described in 2011 as an emergency measure to address the environmental crisis. However, this strategy has implications for the fight against racism as well.
The DEW strategy calls for underground guerilla cells to target key nodes in global industrial infrastructure, such as energy systems, communications, finance, trade hubs, and so on. The goal is to cause “cascading systems failure” in the global capitalist economy while minimizing civilian casualties. If successful, this strategy could fatally damage capitalism and deal a major blow to the power of white supremacy.
The first objection most people in the global north have to this strategy is reflexive: we are dependent on capitalist systems for survival. This is the depraved genius of any abusive system; white supremacist capitalism systematically exterminates alternative ways to live, and thus makes us dependent upon the same system that exploits and murders us. It’s the exact same method used by abusive men to control and coerce their wives and girlfriends.
Capitalism does not care about us. The state does not care about us. In the face of global ecological collapse, these institutions will leave us to die while the rich retreat to gated communities with armed guards. They make us dependent on their system then profit from our misery and death. We need to build alternative grassroots institutions, food systems, self-defense groups, and communities outside of capitalism. This is essential whether we pursue DEW or not. But without DEW and other forms of offensive struggle, the corporate-state will destroy alternative communities whenever possible. Defending these spaces will be a losing battle without larger changes.
No war is won through defense alone.
No one strategy is a magic bullet. But Decisive Ecological Warfare offers revolutionaries a weapon that could strike decisive blows against white supremacist, capitalist power structures, and create opportunities for new types of communities based on justice to exist and flourish.
Max Wilbert is a writer, activist, and organizer with the group Deep Green Resistance. He lives on occupied Kalapuya Territory in Oregon.
