Over the last few days, a small gang of anarchists and social ecologists have been smearing Deep Green Resistance with accusations of “eco-fascism.” Normally, we like to ignore these ridiculous lies and the toxic people who make them. But for the sake of clarity, and because the issue of eco-fascism is an important one that we don’t often touch on, please know:

Deep Green Resistance is 100% an anti-fascist organization. All forms of fascism, “ecological” or otherwise, rest on a foundation of white supremacy, patriarchy, and industrialism – three atrocities that DGR categorically rejects. It is an inherently hateful, destructive ideology that has no place in the environmentalist movement or anywhere else. As part of our dedication to resisting all forms of oppression, many of our members have put their lives on the line organizing against white nationalists, Nazis, and other reactionary scumbags. Be assured that any endorsement of fascism is and always will be grounds for dismissal from Deep Green Resistance, and that we consider the entire notion to be morally depraved and philosophically bankrupt.

These most recent accusations are dishonestly capitalizing on an interview one of our leaders, Derrick Jensen, did with Hubert Collins. Collins reached out to Derrick and asked for an interview, which Derrick gave. Unfortunately, Collins posted the interview on Counter Currents, a right-wing news website that hosts anti-feminist, conservative, and white nationalist content. Derrick was unaware of Collins’ views and disavowed him completely upon finding out. Nothing in the interview itself even hints at any fascist views or duplicitous motives. And if you don’t trust us, trust them – Collins himself prefaces the interview by saying that Derrick is an opponent of white supremacy and “surely hates everything about Counter Currents.”

This is actually a fairly common problem with prominent leftist voices – Noam Chomsky, for example, once gave an interview to Hustler magazine without realizing it would be sandwiched in between vile pornography. Of course, the armchair activists attacking us are not receiving interview requests from anyone, so it stands to reason that they wouldn’t understand how things like this can happen. But happen they do, and only the most disingenuous and opportunistic trolls would see them as evidence of secret fascist sympathies.

There is nothing new to these accusations, of course. We in Deep Green Resistance have been routinely smeared as fascists for years now. The reason why is simple: Because DGR proudly rejects the white-chauvinist, Eurocentric settler mindset of the modern American left. Most fundamentally, we are not a human supremacist organization. We believe that environmentalism exists to defend the health and freedom of the whole living world, of which human beings are merely a small (but precious!) part. Further, we believe that, when our way of living comes into conflict with the health of the land and the non-humans with which we share it, our way of living is what must go.

For many people, these are upsetting statements; for those activists whose idea of liberation is tied up with air-conditioned subway cars and automated luxury goods, they can be downright terrifying! It’s no wonder, then, that so many techno-utopians are quick to assume that we support sterilization, eugenics, “population control,” or even mass killings or genocide. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. All those things are both morally unacceptable and practically foolish. DGR advocates for the targeted abolition of industrial civilization, not indiscriminate destruction or mass extinction. To be honest, we find it particularly sad that so many “environmentalists” simply cannot imagine a biocentric worldview apart from these atrocities – but their lack of imagination is not our fault, and we’d appreciate it if they stopped making up nonsense.

Deep Green Resistance has also been accused of supporting nationalism, Trumpian border walls, and even white separatism. These are more ridiculous lies. No one in DGR approves of the Trump administration’s policies towards migrants, or those of any imperial politician. However, unlike many other American leftists, our hatred of colonial borders comes from the colonial part, as opposed to the blanket rejection of any and all restrictions on movement. We believe that the land belongs to its indigenous keepers, and that their historical and cultural ties to that land are to be celebrated, revered, and protected. We don’t believe that “the Earth belongs to everyone,” or that a perfect world would be one in which the children of colonizers are allowed “free movement” over the lands of the colonized. In our perfect world, settler-colonialism is abolished and what belongs to the indigenous is returned to the indigenous – not redistributed to the settler nation.

Unfortunately, this is enough to have many anarchists and social ecologists – steeped as they are in the Manifest Destiny ideology and its pathological hatred of boundaries – to accuse us of closet fascism. Some have gone so far as to compare our defense of indigenous land ownership to the “Blood and Soil” politics of the National Socialists in Germany! The Eurocentric chauvinism required to conflate every possible form of national identity with the specific depravity of white supremacy is as dumbfounding as it is disgusting. We can only encourage these folks to look beyond 20th century European history for a change, as uncomfortable as that might make them. Hopefully, they would come to learn from indigenous notions of tribal, national, and ethnic identity that are distinct from Europe’s pathetic and vicious fixation on the colonial fantasy of race.

You may have heard the expression, “When you’re used to privilege, equality can feel like oppression.” Well, the settler-colonial left needs to learn that when you’re used to complete and total freedom, any boundary can feel like fascism. After all, prominent leftist heroes like Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault condemned the “police state” for preventing men from raping children. Other leftist figures in the United States denounced the Black Panthers and the American Indian movement as “bourgeois nationalists” for excluding whites. We in Deep Green Resistance are tired of this Eurocentric, patriarchal chauvinism, never moreso than when it is passed off as some sort of radical devotion to social justice. We will continue to organize as a radically anti-colonial, radically anti-patriarchal, radically anti-industrial – and yes, radically anti-fascist – movement. We encourage those who make a name for themselves smearing us to get off Facebook and Twitter for a moment and try to do the same.


Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0