by DGR News Service | Aug 7, 2019 | Climate Change, The Solution: Resistance
By Max Wilbert / Image by Pierre Markuse, CC BY 2.0, shows 2019 melt ponds across the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet)
Official temperature records for July 2019 show that it was the hottest July and hottest single month ever recorded globally, at 1.2°C hotter than the pre-industrial average.
This comes after a June that was the hottest June every recorded, and a January, February, March, April, and May that were all in the top four hottest months every recorded.
Greenland: 12.5 Billion Tons of Ice Lost in 24 Hours
On August 1st, more than 12.5 billion tons of ice melted in Greenland as temperatures reached 30 degrees above average. Video here. This level of melting is consistent with what some climate models were predicting—for the year 2070.
The last four years, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 are the four hottest years on record globally, but 2019 may break the new record for the hottest year ever recorded.
As we recently noted, climate chaos is accelerating. Industrial civilization and the global capitalist economy are wreaking havok on the planet. And as Christian Parenti has written, “Climate change arrives in a world primed for crisis. The current and impending dislocations of climate change intersect with the already-existing crises of poverty and violence. I call this collision of political, economic, and environmental disasters “the catastrophic convergence.”
The Unfolding Climate Chaos
The scale of unfolding catastrophe is almost unimaginable. One report concluded that “The number of climate refugees could increase dramatically in future. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could become so hot that human habitability is compromised.”
William R. Freudenburg, and professor of Environmental Sociology, released a report in 2010 finding that new scientific findings almost always underestimate the severity and speed of global warming.
“Reporters need to learn that, if they wish to discuss ‘both sides’ of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate ‘other side’ is that, if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date,” he said.
Solutions to the Climate Crisis
Deep Green Resistance does not believe that climate marches will save the planet. This has been happening for decades, and no progress has been made. Emissions are higher than ever. The U.S. is now the world’s leading oil producer and mainstream climate movements have had zero success in stopping this.
Instead, we advocate for organized militant resistance, including coordinated sabotage against the industrial system. We don’t believe the ruling class will stop the murder of the planet unless they are literally forced to stop.
Here is an excerpt from the Deep Green Resistance book:
Historians now believe that Allied reluctance to attack early in the war may have cost many millions of civilian lives. By failing to stop Germany early, they made a prolonged and bloody conflict inevitable. General Alfred Jodl, the German Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command, said as much during his war crimes trial at Nuremburg….
[In this future scenario,] Resisters aimed to reduce consumption and industrial activity, so it didn’t matter to them that some facilities had backup generators or that states engaged in conservation and rationing. They celebrated nationwide oil conservation and factories running on reduced power. They remembered that in the whole of its history, the mainstream environmental movement never even stopped the growth of fossil fuel consumption. To actually reduce it was unprecedented… Targeting energy networks was a high priority to resisters. Many electrical grids were already operating near capacity, and were expensive to expand. They became more important as highly portable forms of energy like fossil fuels were partially replaced by less portable forms of energy. Resisters recognized that energy networks often depend on a few major continent-spanning trunks, which were very vulnerable to disruption.”
To learn more about effective strategies for defending the climate, read the Deep Green Resistance book or browse our website.
by DGR News Service | Aug 5, 2019 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Male Supremacy, The Solution: Resistance, Women & Radical Feminism
Editors Note: This essay by Deep Green Resistance co-founder Lierre Keith was originally published on the DGR News Service in August 2015 under the title, “The Girls and the Grasses.” We think it an exceptional piece, and would like to share it again. [Photo by Max Wilbert, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.]
by Lierre Keith
Captured in a test tube, blood may look like a static liquid, but it’s alive, as animate and intelligent as the rest of you. It also makes up a great deal of you: of your 50 trillion cells, one-quarter are red blood cells. Two million are born every second. On their way to maturation, red blood cells jettison their nuclei―their DNA, their capacity to divide and repair. They have no future, only a task: to carry the hemoglobin that will hold your oxygen. They don’t use the oxygen themselves–they only transport it. This they do with exquisite precision, completing a cycle of circulation through your body every twenty seconds for a hundred days. Then they die.
The core of hemoglobin is a molecule of iron. It’s the iron that grasps the oxygen at the surface of your lungs, hangs on through the rush of blood, then releases it to wanting cells. If iron goes missing, the body, as ever, has a fallback plan. It adds more water to increase blood volume; thin blood travels faster through the fine capillaries. Do more with less.
All good except there’s less and less oxygen offered to the cells. Another plan kicks in: increased cardiac output. The heart ups its stroke volume and its rate. To keep you from exploding, the brain joins in, sending signals to the muscles enfolding each blood vessel, telling them to relax. Now blood volume can increase with blood pressure stable.
But still no iron arrives. At this point, the other organs have to cooperate, giving up blood flow to protect the brain and heart. The skin makes major sacrifices, which is why anemics are known for their pallor. Symptoms perceived by the person―you―will probably increase as your tissues, and then organs, begin to starve.
If there is no relief, ultimately all the plans will fail. Even a strong heart can only strain for so long. Blood backs up into the capillaries. Under the pressure, liquid seeps out into surrounding tissues. You are now swelling and you don’t know why. Then the lungs are breached. The alveoli, the tiny sacs that await the promise of air, stiffen from the gathering flood. It doesn’t take much. The sacs fill with fluid. Your body is drowning itself. This is called pulmonary edema, and you are in big trouble.
I know this because it happened to me. Uterine fibroids wrung a murder scene from me every month; the surgery to remove them pushed me across the red cell Rubicon. I knew nothing: my body understood and responded. My eyes swelled, then my ankles, my calves. Then I couldn’t breathe. Then it hurt to breathe. I finally stopped taking advice from my dog―Take a nap! With me!–and dragged myself to the ER, where, eventually, all was revealed.
Two weeks later, the flood had subsided, absorbed back into some wetland tissue of my body, and I felt the absence of pain as a positive. Breathing was exquisite, the sweetest thing I could imagine. Every moment of effortless air was all I could ever want. I knew it would fade and I would forget. But for a few days, I was alive. And it was good.
Our bodies are both all we have and everything we could want. We are alive and we get to be alive. There is joy on the surface of the skin waiting for sunlight and soft things (both of which produce endorphins, so yes: joy). There is the constant, stalwart sound of our hearts. Babies who are carried against their mothers’ hearts learn to breathe better than those who aren’t. There is the strength of bone and the stretch of muscle and their complex coordination. We are a set of electrical impulses inside a watery environment: how? Well, the nerves that conduct the impulses are sheathed by a fatty substance called myelin―they’re insulated. This permits “agile communication between distant body parts.” Understand this: it’s all alive, it all communicates, it makes decisions, and it knows what it’s doing. You can’t possibly fathom its intricacies. To start to explore the filigree of brain, synapse, nerve, and muscle is to know that even the blink of your eyes is a miracle.
Our brains were two million years in the making. That long, slow accretion doubled our cranial capacity. And the first thing we did with it was say thank you. We drew the megafauna and the megafemales, sculpted and carved them. The oldest known figurative sculpture is the Goddes of Hohle Fels, and 40,000 years ago someone spent hundreds of hours carving Her. There is no mystery here, not to me: the animals and the women gave us life. Of course they were our first, endless art project. Awe and thanksgiving are built into us, body and brain. Once upon a time , we knew we were alive. And it was good.
__________
And now we leave the realm of miracles and enter hell.
Patriarchy is the ruling religion of the planet. It comes in variations―some old, some new, some ecclesiastical, some secular. But at bottom, they are all necrophilic. Erich Fromm describes necrophilia as “the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction; the exclusive interest in all that is purely mechanical.” In this religion, the worst sin is being alive, and the carriers of that sin are female. Under patriarchy, the female body is loathsome; its life-giving fat-cells vilified; its generative organs despised. Its natural condition is always ridiculed: normal feet must be turned into four-inch stubs; rib cages must be crushed into collapse; breasts are varyingly too big or too small or excised entirely. That this inflicts pain―if not constant agony―is not peripheral to these practices. It’s central. When she suffers, she is made obedient.
Necrophilia is the end point of sadism. The sadistic urge is about control–“the passion to have absolute and unrestricted control over a living being,” as Fromm defined it. The objective of inflicting pain and degradation is to break a human being. Pain is always degrading; victimization humiliates; eventually, everyone breaks. The power to do that is the sadist’s dream. And who could be more broken to your control than a woman who can’t walk?
Some nouns: glass, scissors, razors, acid. Some verbs: cut, scrape, cauterize, burn. These nouns and verbs create unspeakable sentences when the object is a seven-year-old girl with her legs forced open. The clitoris, with its 8,000 nerve endings, is always sliced up. In the most extreme forms of FGM, the labia are cut off and the vagina sewn shut. On her wedding night, the girl’s husband will penetrate her with a knife before his penis.
You don’t do this to a human being. You do it to an object. That much is true. But there is more. Because the world is full of actual objects—cardboard boxes and abandoned cars—and men don’t spend their time torturing those. They know we aren’t objects, that we have nerves that feel and flesh that bruises. They know we have nowhere else to go when they lay claim to our bodies. That’s where the sadist finds his pleasure: pain produces suffering, humiliation perhaps more, and if he can inflict that on her, it’s absolute proof of his control.
Behind the sadists are the institutions, the condensations of power, that hand us to him. Every time a judge rules that women have no right to bodily integrity—that upskirt photos are legal, that miscarriages are murder, that women should expect to be beaten—he wins. Every time the Fashion Masters make heels higher and clothes smaller, he smiles. Every time an entire class of women—the poorest and most desperate, at the bottom of every conceivable hierarchy—are declared legal commodities for sex, he gets a collective hard-on. Whether he personally uses any such women is beside the point. Society has ruled they are there for him, other men have ensured their compliance, and they will comply. He can kill one—the ultimate sex act for the sadist—and no one will notice. And no one does.
There is no stop to this, no natural endpoint. There is always another sentient, self-willed being to inflame his desire to control, so the addiction is forever fed. With other addictions, the addict bottoms out, his life becomes unmanageable, and the stark choice is stop or die. But the sadist isn’t hurting himself. There’s no looming bottom to hit, only an endless choice of victims, served up by the culture. Women are the feast at our own funeral, and he is happy to feed.
_____
If feminism was reduced to one word, it would be this: no. “No” is a boundary, spoken only by a self who claims one. Objects have neither; subjects begin at no. Feminists said no and we meant it.
The boundary of “no” extended outward, an insult to one being an injury to all: “we” is the word of political movements. Without it, women are cast adrift in a hostile, chaotic sea, holding our breath against the next Bad Thing. With the lens of feminism, the chaos snaps into sharp focus. We gave words to the Bad Things, then faced down denial and despair to see the pattern. That’s called theory. Then we demanded remedies. That’s what subjects, especially political subjects, do. Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the British suffragettes, worked at the Census Office as a birth registrar. Every day, young girls came in with their newborns. Every day, she had to ask who the father was, and every day the girls wept in humiliation and rage. Reader, you know who the fathers were. That’s why Pankhurst never gave up.
To say no to the sadist is to assert those girls as political subjects, as human beings with the standing that comes from inalienable rights. Each and every life is self-willed and sovereign; each life can only be lived in a body. Not an object to be broken down for parts: a living body. Child sexual abuse is especially designed to turn the body into a cage. The bars may start as terror and pain but they will harden to self-loathing. Instilling shame is the best method to ensure compliance: we are ashamed—sexual violation is very good at that—and for the rest of our lives we will comply. Our compliance is, of course, his control. His power is his pleasure, and another generation of girls will grow up in bodies they will surely hate, to be women who comply.
_______
What has been done to our bodies has been done to our planet. The sadist exerts his control; the necrophiliac turns the living into the dead. The self-willed and the wild are their targets and their necrotic project is almost complete.
Taken one by one, the facts are appalling. In my lifetime, the earth has lost half her wildlife. Every day, two hundred species slip into that longest night of extinction. “Ocean” is synonymous with the words abundance and plenty. Fullness is on the list, as well as infinity. And by 2048, the oceans will be empty of fish. Crustaceans are experiencing “complete reproductive failure.” In plain terms, their babies are dying. Plankton are also disappearing. Maybe plankton are too small and green for anyone to care about, but know this: two out of three animal breaths are made possible by the oxygen plankton produce. If the oceans go down, we go down with them.
How could it be otherwise? See the pattern, not just the facts. There were so many bison on the Great Plains, you could sit and watch for days as a herd thundered by. In the central valley of California, the flocks of waterbirds were so thick they blocked out the sun. One-quarter of Indiana was a wetland, lush with life and the promise of more. Now it’s a desert of corn. Where I live in the pacific northwest, ten million fish have been reduced to ten thousand. People would hear them coming for a whole day. This is not a story: there are people alive who remember it. And I have never once heard the sound that water makes when forty million years of persistence finds it way home. Am I allowed to use the word “apocalypse” yet?
The necrophiliac insists we are mechanical components, that rivers are an engineering project, and genes can be sliced up and arranged at whim. He believes we are all machines, despite the obvious: a machine can be taken apart and put back together. A living being can’t. May I add: neither can a living planet.
Understand where the war against the world began. In seven places around the globe, humans took up the activity called agriculture. In very brute terms, you take a piece of land, you clear every living thing off it, and then you plant it to human use. Instead of sharing that land with the other million creatures who need to live there, you’re only growing humans on it. It’s biotic cleansing. The human population grows to huge numbers; everyone else is driven into extinction.
Agriculture creates a way of life called civilization. Civilization means people living in cities. What that means is: they need more than the land can give. Food, water, energy have to come from someplace else. It doesn’t matter what lovely, peaceful values people hold in their hearts. The society is dependent on imperialism and genocide. Because no one willing gives up their land, their water, their trees. But since the city has used up its own, it has to go out and get those from somewhere else. That’s the last 10,000 years in a few sentences.
The end of every civilization is written into the beginning. Agriculture destroys the world. That’s not agriculture on a bad day. That’s what agriculture is. You pull down the forest, you plow up the prairie, you drain the wetland. Especially, you destroy the soil. Civilizations last between 800 and maybe 2,000 years—they last until the soil gives out.
What could be more sadistic then control of entire continents? He turns mountains into rubble, and rivers must do as they are told. The basic unit of life is violated with genetic engineering. The basic unit of matter as well, to make bombs that kill millions. This is his passion, turning the living into the dead. It’s not just individual deaths and not even the deaths of species. The process of life itself is now under assault and it is losing badly. Vertebrate evolution has long since come to a halt—there isn’t enough habitat left. There are areas in China where there are no flowering plants. Why? Because the pollinators are all dead. That’s five hundred million years of evolution: gone.
He wants it all dead. That’s his biggest thrill and the only way he can control it. According to him it was never alive. There is no self-willed community, no truly wild land. It’s all inanimate components he can arrange to this liking, a garden he can manage. Never mind that every land so managed has been lessened into desert. The essential integrity of life has been breached, and now he claims it never existed. He can do whatever he wants. And no one stops him.
__________
Can we stop him?
I say yes, but then I have no intention of giving up. The facts as they stand are unbearable, but it’s only in facing them that pattern comes clear. Civilization is based on drawdown. It props itself up with imperialism, conquering its neighbors and stripping their land, but eventually even the colonies wear out. Fossil fuel has been an accelerant, as has capitalism, but the underlying problem is much bigger than either. Civilization requires agriculture, and agriculture is a war against the living world. Whatever good was in the culture before, ten thousand years of that war has turned it necrotic.
But what humans do they can stop doing. Granted every institution is headed in the wrong direction, there’s no material reason the destruction must continue. The reason is political: the sadist is rewarded, and rewarded well. Most leftists and environmentalists see that. What they don’t see is the central insight of radical feminism: his pleasure in domination.
The real brilliance of patriarchy is right here: it doesn’t just naturalize oppression, it sexualizes acts of oppression. It eroticizes domination and subordination and then institutionalizes them into masculinity and femininity. Men become real men by breaking boundaries—the sexual boundaries of women and children, the cultural and political boundaries of indigenous people, the biological boundaries of rivers and forests, the genetic boundaries of other species, and the physical boundaries of the atom itself. The sadist is rewarded with money and power, but he also gets a sexual thrill from dominating. And the end of the world is a mass circle jerk of autoerotic asphyxiation.
The real brilliance of feminism is that we figured that out.
What has to happen to save our planet is simple: stop the war. If we just get out of the way, life will return because life wants to live. The forests and prairies will find their way back. Every dam will fail, every cement channel, and the rivers will ease their sorrows and meet the ocean again. The fish will know what to do. In being eaten, they feed the forest, which protects the rivers, which makes a home for more salmon. This is not the death of destruction but the death of participation that makes the world whole.
Sometimes there are facts that require all the courage we have in our hearts. Here is one. Carbon has breached 400 ppm. For life to continue, that carbon needs to get back into the ground. And so we come to grasses.
Where the world is wet, trees make forests. Where it’s dry, the grasses grow. Grasslands endure extreme heat in summer and vicious cold in winter. Grasses survive by keeping 80 percent of their bodies underground, in the form of roots. Those roots are crucial to the community of life. They provide physical channels for rain to enter the soil. They can reach down fifteen feet and bring up minerals from the rocks below, minerals that every living creature needs. They can build soil at an extraordinary rate. The base material they use to make soil is carbon. Which means the grasses are our only hope to get that carbon out of the sky.
And they will do it if we let them. If we could repair 75 percent of the world’s grasslands—destroyed by the war of agriculture—in under fifteen years, the grasses would sequester all the carbon that’s been released since the beginning of the industrial age. Read that again if you need to. Then take it with you wherever you go. Tell it to anyone who will listen. There is still a chance.
The grasses can’t do it alone. No creature exists independent of all others. Repairing the grasslands means restoring the ruminants. In the hot, dry summer, life goes dormant on the surface of the soil. It’s the ruminants who keep the nutrient cycle moving. They carry an ecosystem inside themselves, especially the bacteria that digests cellulose. When a bison grazes, she’s not actually eating the grass. She’s feeding it to her bacteria. The bacteria eat the grass and then she eats the bacteria. Her wastes then water and fertilize the grasses. And the circle is complete.
The grasslands have been eradicated for agriculture, to grow cereal grains for people. Because I want to restore the grasses, I get accused of wanting to kill six billion people. That’s not a random number. In 1800, at the beginning of the Industrial Age, there were one billion people. Now there are seven billion. Six billion are only here because of fossil fuel. Eating a non-renewable resource was never a plan with a future. Yet pointing that out somehow makes me a mass murderer.
Start with the obvious. Nothing we do at these numbers is sustainable. Ninety-eight percent of the old-growth forests and 99 percent of the grasslands are gone, and gone with them was most of the soil they built. There’s nothing left to take. The planet has been skinned alive.
Add to that: all civilizations end in collapse. All of them. How could it be otherwise if your way of life relies on destroying the place you live? The soil is gone and the oil is running out. By avoiding the facts, we are ensuring it will end in the worst possible way.
We can do better than mass starvation, failed states, ethnic strife, misogyny, petty warlords, and the dystopian scenarios that collapse brings. It’s very simple: reproduce at less than replacement numbers. The problem will take care of itself. And now we come to the girls.
What drops the birthrate universally is raising the status of women. Very specifically, the action with the greatest impact is teaching a girl to read. When women and girls have even that tiny bit of power over their lives, they choose to have fewer children. Yes, women need birth control, but what we really need is liberty. Around the world, women have very little control over how men use our bodies. Close to half of all pregnancies are unplanned or unwanted. Pregnancy is the second leading cause of death for girls age 15-19. Not much has changed since Emmeline Pankhurst refused to give up.
We should be defending the human rights of girls because girls matter. As it turns out, the basic rights of girls are crucial to the survival of the planet.
Can we stop him?
Yes, but only if we understand what we’re up against.
He wants the world dead. Anything alive must be replaced by something mechanical. He prefers gears, pistons, circuits to soft animal bodies, even his own. He hopes to upload himself into a computer some day.
He wants the world dead. He enjoys making it submit. He’s erected giant cities where once were forests. Concrete and asphalt tame the unruly.
He wants the world dead. Anything female must be punished, permanently. The younger they are, the sooner they break. So he starts early.
A war against your body is a war against your life. If he can get us to fight the war for him, we’ll never be free. But we said every woman’s body was sacred. And we meant it, too. Every creature has her own physical integrity, an inviolable whole. It’s a whole too complex to understand, even as we live inside it. I had no idea why my eyes were swelling and my lungs were aching. The complexities of keeping me alive could never be left to me.
One teaspoon of soil contains a million living creatures. One tiny scoop of life and it’s already more complex than we could ever understand. And he thinks he can manage oceans?
We’re going to have to match his contempt with our courage. We’re going to have to match his brute power with our fierce and fragile dreams. And we’re going to have to match his bottomless sadism with a determination that will not bend and will not break and will not stop.
And if we can’t do it for ourselves, we have to do it for the girls.
Whatever you love, it is under assault. Love is a verb. May that love call us to action.
Lierre Keith is the author of six books. Visit her website at www.lierrekeith.com
This essay first appeared August 8, 2015 on RadFem Repost.
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 30, 2019 | Direct Action, Reclamation & Expropriation
Editor’s note: DGR is not affiliated with the Secret Forest Society (Sociedade Secreta Silvestre) and does not endorse their statements or actions. This article is only for informational purposes. Some content in this article was sourced from the Rio Times Online.
by Liam Campbell
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s openly fascist President, is loathed by groups who care about preventing climate collapse and protecting the Earth’s last healthy ecosystems. According to the Guardian, Bolsonaro’s policies are now resulting in 3 football fields per minute of rainforest destruction, and scientists fear that the Amazon is reaching a critical tipping point, beyond which it will be impossible to save. If that “point of no return” is breached it will result in massive forest fires, which will release an immense amount of sequested CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating climate collapse and annihilating one of the Earth’s sources of oxygen. Violence is also increasing and loggers have begun killing indigenous leaders and resistors from the over 400 tribes who call the forest home. Bolsonaro has overseen major funding cuts and firings at the Brazilian indigenous affair agency, which has gutted the few remaining governmental protections for these people.
Presumably this is why the Secret Forest Society (Sociedade Secreta Silvestre) have now targeted Bolsonaro for assassination. Two weeks ago, Veja Magazine interviewed one of the leaders of the Secret Forest Society (SSS), a branch of an international organization called the Individuals Tending Toward the Wild (ITS). The leader, identified as Anhangá, claimed that Bolsonaro was supposed to be executed on the day of his inauguration, but they were temporarily foiled by an unexpected security presence. Since then Bolsonaro has cancelled several key events, including an open car parade. Anhangá stated “We could easily blend in and carry out this attack, but the risk was enormous (…), so it would be suicidal. We didn’t want that.”
It is unclear how or when the Secret Forest Society plans to assassinate Jair Bolsonaro, but their affiliates in the ITS have been linked to letter bombs, University explosions, and the successful assassination of a biotechnology researcher. Their organization claims to stand up against people and systems that lead to environmental destruction, and they advocate for using extreme measures against nature’s enemies.
An excerpt from the book Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet, Chapter 13: “Tactics and Targets.”
This leads us to the last major underground tactic: assassination.
In talking about assassination (or any attack on humans) in the context of resistance, two key questions must be asked. First, is the act strategically beneficial, that is, would assassination further the strategy of the group? Second, is the act morally just, given the person in question? (The issue of justice is necessarily particular to the target; it’s assumed that the broader strategy incorporates aims to increase justice.)
As is shown on my two-by-two grid of all combinations (see Figure 13-3), an assassination may be strategic and just, it may be strategic and unjust, it may be unstrategic but just, or it may be both unstrategic and unjust. Obviously, any action in the last category would be out of the question. Any action in the strategic and just category could be a good bet for an armed resistance movement. The other two categories are where things get complex.
Hitler exemplified a number of different strategy vs. justice combinations at different points in time. It’s a common moral quandary to ask whether it would be a good idea to go back in time and kill Hitler as a child, provided time travel were possible. There’s a good bet that this would have averted World War II and the Holocaust, which would have been a good thing, so put a check mark in the “strategic” column. The problem is that most people would consider it unjust to murder an innocent child who had yet to commit any crimes, so it would be difficult to call that action just in the immediate sense.
Once Hitler had risen to power in the late 1930s, though, his aim was clear, as he had already been whipping up hate and expanding his control of Nazi Germany. At that point, it would have been both strategic and just to assassinate him. Indeed, elements in the Wehrmacht (army) and the Abwehr (intelligence) considered it, because they knew what Hitler was planning to do. Unfortunately, they were indecisive, and did not commit to the plan. Hitler soon began invading Germany’s neighbors, and as his popularity soared, the assassination plan was shelved. It was years before inside elements would actually stage an assassination attempt.
That famous attempt took place—and failed—on July 20, 1944.
What’s interesting is that the Allies were also considering an attempt on Hitler’s life, which they called Operation Foxley. They knew that Hitler routinely went on walks alone in a remote area, and devised a plan to parachute in two operatives dressed as German officers, one of them a sniper, who would lay in wait and assassinate Hitler when he walked by. The plan was never enacted because of internal controversy. Many in the SOE and British government believed that Hitler was a poor strategist, a maniac whose overreach would be his downfall. If he were assassinated, they believed, his replacement (likely Himmler) would be a more competent leader, and this would draw out the war and increase Allied losses. In the opinion of the Allies it was unquestionably just to kill Hitler, but no longer strategically beneficial (Figure 13-4).
There is no shortage of situations where assassination would have been just, but of questionable strategic value. Resistance groups pondering assassination have many questions to ask themselves in deciding whether they are being strategic or not. What is the value of this potential target to the enemy? Is this an exceptional person or does his or her influence come from his or her role in the organization? Who would replace this person, and would that person be better or worse for the struggle? Will it make any difference on an organizational scale or is the potential target simply an interchangeable cog? Uniquely valuable individuals make uniquely valuable targets for assassination by resistance groups.
Of course, in a military context (and this overlaps with attacks on troops), snipers routinely target officers over enlisted soldiers. In theory, officers or enlisted soldiers are standardized and replaceable, but, in practice, officers constitute more valuable targets. There’s a difference between theoretical and practical equivalence; there might be other officers to replace an assassinated one, but the replacement might not arrive in a timely manner nor would he have the experience of his predecessor (experience being a key reason that Michael Collins assassinated intelligence officers). That said, snipers don’t just target officers. Snipers target any enemy soldiers available, because war is essentially about destroying the other side’s ability to wage war.
The benefits must also outweigh costs or side effects. Resistance members may be captured or killed in the attempt. Assassination also provokes a major response—and major reprisals—because it is a direct attack on those in power. When SS boss Reinhard Heydrich (“the butcher of Prague”) was assassinated in 1942, the Nazis massacred more than 1,000 Czech people in response. In Canada, martial law (via the War Measures Act) has only ever been declared three times—during WWI and WWII, and again after the assassination of the Quebec Vice Premier of Quebec by the Front de Libération du Québec. Remember, aboveground allies may bear the brunt of reprisals for assassinations, and those reprisals can range from martial law and police crackdowns to mass arrests or even executions.
There’s an important distinction to be made between assassination as an ideological tactic versus as a military tactic. As a military tactic, employed by countless snipers in the history of war, assassination decisively weakens the adversary by killing people with important experience or talents, weakening the entire organization. Assassination as an ideological tactic—attacking or killing prominent figures because of ideological disagreements—almost always goes sour, and quickly. There are few more effective ways to create martyrs and trigger cycles of violence without actually accomplishing anything decisive. The assassination of Michael Collins, for example, by his former allies led only to bloody civil war.
by DGR News Service | Jul 29, 2019 | Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
by Max Wilbert
The planet needs commandos
It wasn’t until the 1940’s that what we think of as the “commando” or special forces units were standardized by the British Army. With the goal of disrupting German forces in western France and later in the Mediterranean and North Africa, the first commando units were modeled on small groups of Arab fighters who had great success pinning down much larger British Army units during the uprisings in Palestine in the 1930’s.
These units proved to be very effective during World War II and have since become a staple of modern warfare. Today, the U.S. empire largely projects military force through targeted special forces operations and bombing campaigns, rather than outright warfare and traditional military maneuvers.
The Case for Ecological Commandos
Our planet is on the verge of total ecological collapse. Nothing is getting better. Governments and corporations continue business as usual while every day, carbon dioxide levels rise, forests are cut down, and 200 species are driven extinct. Forty percent of all human deaths can be attributed to pollution. Ocean fish may not exist by 2050.
Even in ecological preserves, life is suffering; there has been an 85% decline in mammals in West Africa’s parks. Major dams continue to be built. Environmentalists being are murdered around the world. African lions are in precipitous decline, as are tigers, leopards, elephants, polar bears, rhino, and countless other species. Most of the species who are driven extinct haven’t even ever been described by western science; they slip into extinction with barely a ripple.
Our few, hard-won victories are temporary. Protections can be (and are) revoked. Ground can be lost. Despite all we have done, life on this planet is slipping away.
Small forces of ecological commandos could reverse this trend by targeting the fundamental sources of power that are destroying the planet. We have seen examples of this. In Nigeria, commando forces have been fighting a
guerrilla war of sabotage against Shell Oil Corporation for decades. At times, they have reduced oil output by more than 60%.
No environmental group has ever had that level of success. Not even close.
In the U.S., clandestine ecological resistance has been relatively minimal. However, isolated incidents have taken place. A 2013 attack on an electrical station in central California inflicted millions of dollars in damage to difficult-to-replace components used simple hunting rifles. The action took a total of 19 minutes, displaying the sort of discipline, speed, and tactical acumen required for special forces operations.
Characteristics of Special Forces Units
Physical Fitness
Mobility and secrecy are critical to the success of special forces. Therefore, physical fitness, as well as the use of appropriate aids, such as helicopters, bicycles, or pack animals, is essential. Commandos must be prepared to climb barriers, crawl, swim, carry heavy objects, endure long distance travel, maintain stillness, and so on.
Training in Infantry Weapons
Competency in firearms, knives, explosives, unarmed combat, and other handheld weapons are essential to these types of missions.
Focused on Stealth
Commandos must be capable of evading superior forces. This means they must have the ability to move silently and swiftly, and to hide in a variety of terrain. They should also be capable of killing or capturing opponents quickly and silently. However, stealth—the ability to avoid enemies—is more important than combat; fighting should only occur as a last resort. According to the book Deep Green Resistance, thus far the definitive resource on environmental sabotage, ecological commandos should seek to avoid causing casualties to avoid alienating the public further.
Comfortable Operating in Darkness and All Weather Conditions
Darkness is the element of choice for special forces units. Adverse weather can provide additional cover and opportunity. Therefore, units should train to operate in such conditions.
Capable of Operating on Water
Objectives often will be more accessible via water.
Flexible and Self-Directed
Communications during operations may be impossible, and comms equipment is always subject to failure. Special forces must be prepared with a plan. However, they should have a good understanding of mission objectives and be prepared to improvise.
Small Units
Unlike traditional military forces, commando units typically form small squads of 2-12 individuals. Multiple squads may come together for some operations, but small unit size allows faster reaction time and greater operational flexibility—critical in asymmetrical conflict. Special forces engaged in sabotage often split into two forces: one focused on demolitions, the second on covering the demolition force. Units in the field are supported by medical teams, researchers, supply officers, and other support staff at secure positions.
Proper Target Selection
Traditional military units operate by seizing and holding territory. Since special forces rely on tactical rather than strategic advantages, a different approach is needed. Commandos generally focus on high-value targets like supply lines, fuel depots, communications hubs, important propaganda targets, unprepared foes, and so on. Attacking such targets can destroy the enemy’s ability to fight. Clandestine units are always focused on attack, and not defense.
Intelligence Driven
The success of special forces operations depends largely on good intelligence. Gathering information about target locations, defenses, surveillance, cover, enemy reinforcements, escape routes, transportation options, weather, and so on is essential.
Doing What it Takes to Halt Empire
Our situation is desperate. Things continue to get worse. False solutions, greenwashing, corporate co-optation, and rollbacks of previous victories are relentless. Resistance communities are fractured, isolated, and disempowered. However, the centralized, industrialized, and computerized nature of global empire means that the system is vulnerable. Power is mostly concentrated and projected via a few systems that are vulnerable.
Even powerful empires can be defeated. But those victories won’t happen if we engage on their terms. Ecological special forces provide a method and means for decisive operations that deal significant damage to the functioning of global capitalism and industrialism. With enough coordination, these sorts of attacks could deal death blows to entire industrial economies, and perhaps (with the help of aboveground movements, ecological limits, and so on) to industrialism as a whole.
Implementation of this strategy will require highly motivated, dedicated, and skilled individuals. Serious consideration of security, anonymity, and tactics will be required. But this system was built by human beings; we can take it apart as well.
Good luck.
Originally published as Ecological Special Forces on the DGR blog.
