by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 26, 2018 | Strategy & Analysis
Editor’s note: This is an edited transcript of a presentation given at the 2016 Public Interest Environmental Law Conference by DGR’s Dillon Thomson and Jonah Mix on the failure of the contemporary environmental movement to meaningfully stop the destruction of the planet. Using examples from past and current resistance movements, Mix and Thomson chart a more serious, strategic path forward that takes into account the urgency of the ecological crises we face. Part 1 can be found here, and a video of the presentation can be found here.
If you want to make a decisive strike against the industrial system, you need two things: a target and a strategy. Many organizations use the CARVER matrix as the gold standard for target selection. The United States Military has used the CARVER matrix to identify targets in every war since Vietnam. Police agencies use CARVER to target organized crime. Even CEOs use it when they are trying to buy another company. Since the American military, the police, and CEOs are kicking our asses in this struggle, we should look at what’s made them so effective.
CARVER is an acronym. It stands for Criticality, Accessibility, Recuperability, Vulnerability, Effect, and Recognizability. Criticality means, how important is the target? Accessibility: how easy is it to get to the target? Recuperability: how long will it take the system to replace or repair the target? Vulnerability: how easy is it to damage the target? Effect: how will losing the target hurt the system? Recognizability: how easy is the target to identify?
Some of these things tend to group together and others don’t. Plenty of targets may be recognizable, vulnerable, and easily accessible. Those targets aren’t usually critical, though, and they can usually be repaired easily. Examples include a Starbucks windows or a police station. Other targets are critical, almost impossible to repair, and have a massive effect, but they are hard to identify, access, and damage. These include oil refineries and hydroelectric dams.
The purpose of CARVER is to identify which target hits the most categories with the greatest impact. You will never find a target that is critical, accessible, not recuperable, vulnerable, highly effective, and recognizable, but with CARVER, you can figure out which target is most likely to succeed. The matrix is simple: you sit down with a list of targets and assign each one a score from 1 to 10 in every category. You then add up or average the scores. There are arguments about adding versus averaging, but you can do either one. You then look for which target has the highest score.
Let’s say you’ve decided on a target using CARVER. Now you need to decide what to do. DGR uses a chart called the Taxonomy of Action. The Taxonomy of Action organizes a variety of strategies and approaches that activists can against any system but especially against industrial civilization. We divided them into two categories: acts of omission (not doing something) and are acts of commission (doing something). Acts of omission are usually low-risk but require a lot of people. These include strikes, boycotts, and protests. Acts of commission require fewer people but come with greater risk.
Click for larger image
To be clear, when DGR talks about the need for offensive and underground action, the intent is not to disparage acts of omission. All of it is needed: we need boycotts, strikes, protests, workers’ cooperatives, permaculture groups, songs and plays, and more. Our movement isn’t inherently ineffective; it’s just incomplete. Many other organizations happily focus on the lower-risk acts of omission, and they are valuable. However, there is a lack of discussion about the higher-risk offensive actions. This does not mean that defensive actions aren’t valuable or that the people who do them are somehow lazy or traitorous.
There are four major categories of offensive action:
1) Obstruction and occupation;
2) Reclamation and expropriation;
3) Property and material destruction; and
4) Violence against humans.
Obstruction and occupation mean seizing a node of infrastructure and holding it, which prevents the system from using that node to extract or process resources. Reclamation and expropriation mean seizing resources from the system and putting them to our use. Property and material destruction is exactly what it sounds like: damaging the system so that it cannot be used. Defensive and offensive violence against humans is a last resort.
These four tactics work together. For example, a hypothetical underground could seize a mining outpost and reclaim explosives that are later used for material destruction. A group of aboveground activists could occupy an oil pipeline checkpoint while underground actors take the opportunity to strike at the pipeline down the road. Again, this is all strictly hypothetical. The point is that just as our movement needs both offense and defense, it also needs different kinds of offense done together in strategic pursuit of a larger goal.
This is a lot of information and it is a little abstract. The need for security culture can make it even more difficult to talk about these things as concretely as we would like. We’ve often found that the best method is to look to history to see which struggles have succeeded through the use of these tactics and how. Historical struggles have used these tactics and come out victorious. I’m going to describe two historical movements and one ongoing movement in more detail. All of these movements have utilized a broad range of tactics described in the Taxonomy of Action.
The first example is the African National Congress. The goal of the ANC was equal rights for all South Africans regardless of their ethnicity. It put pressure on the South African apartheid government to implement constitutional reform and return the freedoms denied under the apartheid regime.
Power pylons sabotaged by Umkhonto We Sizwe
From 1912 to 1960, the ANC existed as an aboveground organization. It organized strikes, boycotts, protests, demonstrations, and alternative political education. These actions were all aboveground because the ANC figured it could achieve its goals by making its activities visible to the public and the government. In 1960, though, the government enacted the Pass Laws, which required blacks to carry identification cards. The ANC had protested similar oppression before, but the Pass Laws were much more stringent.
The opposition came to a head in a town called Sharpeville, where police killed 69 protesters and injured 180 more. After the Sharpeville massacre, the ANC was deemed illegal and driven underground. In response, the militant wing of the ANC formed in 1961. It was called the Umkhonto we Sizwe or “Spear of the Nation.”
Umkhonto we Sizwe had the same goal as the ANC but a different strategy. The situation was more desperate and the ANC’s aboveground strategies hadn’t worked. Umkhonto we Sizwe decided to use guerrilla warfare to bring the South African government to the bargaining table. In the early stages, the ANC underground did most of the organization and strategy for Umkhonto we Sizwe, but Umkhonto we Sizwe later broke off and developed its own command structure.
In the early 1960s it began sabotaging government installations, police stations, electric pylons, pass offices, and other symbols of apartheid rule. In the mid-1960s through the mid-70s, Phase 2 focused on political mobilization and developing underground structures. The Revolutionary Council was established in 1969 to train military cadres as part of a long-term plan to build a robust underground network. Most of this training took place in neighboring countries. In Phase 3, from the mid-1970s to 1983, Umkhonto we Sizwe engaged in large-scale guerrilla warfare and armed attacks. It sabotaged railway lines, administrative offices, police stations, oil refineries, fuel depots, the COVRA nuclear plant, military targets, and military personnel.
When it began Phase 4 in 1983, Umkhonto we Sizwe wanted to take the war into the white areas and make it a people’s war. The Revolutionary Council was replaced by the Political Military Council, which controlled and integrated the activities of the now-numerous sections of the organization. It continued attacks on economic, strategic, and military installations in white suburbs.
The ANC and Umkhonto we Sizwe simultaneously rejected the values of the system and attacked the structure, which successfully ended apartheid. ANC’s work to promote mass political struggle combined with Umkhonto we Sizwe’s armed struggle succeeded in pressuring the apartheid government to legitimize the ANC in 1990, and South Africa held its first multiracial elections in April, 1994. Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president.
Umkhonto We Sizwe combatants
Despite Nelson Mandela’s fame, his specific actions are largely unacknowledged. He had an integral role in creating Umkhonto we Sizwe. He himself organized sabotage and assassinations. Concerning these actions, Mandela himself said, “I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the Whites.”
The next example is the Irish Republican Army. Its goal was the end of British rule to form a free, independent republic. Despite Irish resistance, Great Britain had colonized and oppressed the Irish people for 500 years. The IRA developed a new strategy to make the occupation impossible: guerrilla warfare.
The Irish Republican Army was the underground wing of the aboveground Sinn Féin or Irish Republican Party. The Sinn Féin formed a breakaway government and declared independence from Britain. The British government declared Sinn Féin illegal in 1919, and the need for new strategy led to the creation of the IRA, just as Umkhonto we Sizwe grew out of the ANC in South Africa. Heavy repression led to broad support for the IRA within Ireland.
The IRA operated in “flying columns” of 15 to 30 people who trained in guerrilla warfare, often up in the hills with sticks as substitutes for rifles. Its tactics included hit-and-run raids, ambushes, and assassinations. It blew up police and military bases, destroyed coast guard stations, burnt courthouses and tax collector’s offices, and killed police and military personnel.
The IRA understood that an independent Irish republic was only achievable through confrontation with the British. It chose tactics based on the available resources and training. This was an asymmetrical conflict. The IRA was an underdog against the British military, but its broad base of support provided the necessary food, supplies, safe houses, and medical aid.
Military historians have concluded that the IRA waged a highly successful campaign against the British because the British military determined that the IRA could not be defeated militarily.
Flying Column No. 2 of the 3rd Tipperary Brigade of the Old IRA, photographed in 1921
The final example of a successful movement that uses the full spectrum described by the Taxonomy of Action is the contemporary Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta or MEND. Since Nigeria’s independence from British colonial rule, multinational oil companies like Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell have enjoyed the support of successive dictators to appropriate oil from the Niger Delta. The people living in the delta have seen their way of life destroyed. Most are fishing people, but the rivers are full of oil. People have been dispossessed in favor of foreign interests and rarely see any revenue from the oil.
Here we see the same pattern that we saw in South Africa and Ireland. Over the past 20 years, the Ogoni people have led a large nonviolent civil disobedience movement in the Niger Delta. Ken Saro-Wiwa was a poet turned activist who protested the collusion between the government and the oil companies. He and eight others were executed in 1995 under what many believe were falsified charges designed to silence his opposition to the oil interests in Nigeria. In his footsteps came people who saw the government’s reaction to nonviolent activism and advocated using force to resist what they saw as the enslavement of their people.
MEND’s goals are the control of oil production/revenue for the Ogoni people and the withdrawal of the Nigerian military from the Niger Delta. It intends to reach them by destroying the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil from the Niger Delta, which would force the multinational companies to discontinue operations and likely precipitate a national budgetary and economic crisis. Its tactic: sabotage.
MEND sabotages oil infrastructure with very few people and resources. It has resorted to bombings, theft, guerrilla warfare, and kidnapping foreign oil workers for ransom. It is organized into underground cells with a few spokespeople who communicate with international media. Leaders are always on the move and extremely cautious. They do not take telephone calls personally, knowing that soldiers hunting for them have electronic devices capable of pinpointing mobile phone signals. Fighters wear masks to protect their identities during raids, use aliases, and rely on clandestine recruitment.
MEND’s organizational structure has proven effective, and despite its small numbers and hodge-podge networking, it has been quite successful. Between 2006 and 2009, it made a cut of more than 28% in Nigerian oil output. In total, it has reduced oil output in the Niger Delta by 40%. This is an incredible number given its lack of resources.
MEND
These are just a few examples of movements that have used a broad spectrum of actions on the Taxonomy of Action chart. They demonstrate that the precedent for full-spectrum resistance has been set many times; many more groups have utilized force because they understand that those in power understand the language of force best. They tried nonviolence, asking nicely, and making concessions, but it doesn’t always work – and when it doesn’t work, this does.
This is a message that MEND sent to the Shell Oil Company: “It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets. Leave our land while you can or die in it.” You have heard about people building bombs, picking up guns, and committing sabotage. These types of resistance are necessary if an environmental movement is to succeed like the IRA, ANC, or MEND succeeded, but this doesn’t mean that the only role in a militant struggle is either blowing something up or staying home and keeping quiet. As Lierre Keith said, “For those of us who can’t be active on the front lines – and this will be most of us – our job is to create a culture that will encourage and promote political resistance. The main tasks will be loyalty and material support.”
During the armed struggle against the British, only about 2% of people involved with the Irish Republican Army ever took up arms. For every MEND soldier, there were hundreds or even thousands of Nigerians who would help them in any way they could. The first role of an aboveground activist is underground promotion.
Underground promotion is anything that creates the conditions for an underground to develop and work effectively. There are, broadly speaking, two types of underground promotion. The first is passive promotion, which describes after-the-fact or roundabout promotion. This is all some people can safely do. You might talk about failures in the modern environmental movement, and even if you don’t suggest a militant solution, frank discussion of our situation may inspire people to look further. You can shift the culture slowly toward resistance values, and if sabotage does occur, you can support it – or if that’s not safe for you, you can at least take the opportunity to criticize the system and not those who struck against it.
If you are in a position to be more vocal, you can explicitly critique traditional environmentalist ideology. This includes critiquing pacifism or a defense-focused movement, arguing in public and among comrades for the necessity of revolutionary violence or strategic militancy, and promoting or encouraging such acts whenever possible. This is especially important after acts of sabotage or militancy do occur.
If you are an aboveground activist who takes on the project of underground promotion, or, hypothetically, an underground activist, you need to have good security culture. Security culture is a set of customs in a community that people adopt to make sure that anyone who performs illegal or sensitive action has their risks minimized and their safety supported. You are practicing security culture when you consider what you say or do in light of its potential effects on the people around you.
Security culture can be broken down into simple “dos and don’ts.” The first “do” is to keep all sensitive information on a strict need-to-know basis. This includes names, plans, past actions, and even loose ideas. Unless there is a tangible material benefit to sharing information and it can be done safely, you need to keep quiet. People bragging to their friends or getting drunk and letting a name slip have undone more radical movements than all the bullets, bombs, and prisons combined. A good way to make sure you follow this rule is to assume that you are always being monitored.
I wrote this assuming that FBI agents or police may read it. I don’t know if they will or not; they very well may not. The decision to take surveillance as a given reminds us not to say anything in public that they shouldn’t hear. That doesn’t mean we should be paranoid or always worry about who is an infiltrator or a plant, because if we are following security culture well, it shouldn’t matter. When you practice security culture well, it doesn’t make you paranoid; it frees you from paranoia.
Security culture boils down to respecting people’s boundaries and learning to establish your own. Feminism is essential to the radical struggle because patriarchy celebrates boundary breaking. Masculinity demands that men don’t respect “no” and blow past anyone who says, “I don’t want to do that” or “I don’t want to talk about that.” True security culture means that we develop the skills to say no and the skills to say nothing at all if we don’t feel safe or think that speaking will be valuable.
There’s a great article called “Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements.” It’s about the role that masculine culture and macho posture can play in wrecking our movements. Boundary setting is the end-all and be-all of security culture. The best way to cultivate boundary setting in a community is to adopt a strict and central role for feminism in your movement.
“Don’ts” are even simpler: don’t ask questions that could endanger people involved in direct action. This is the flipside of need-to-know: if you don’t need to know it, don’t ask it. Even if you do need to know it, considering waiting for someone to bring it to you. If they bring it to you in a way that isn’t safe, you also need to say no.
You need to make sure that your underground promotion doesn’t cross the line into incitement. If you tell a crowd of people, “go out and blow up this dam,” or “that bridge,” you’ve crossed the line from promotion to incitement. Incitement has serious legal consequences for you or other people in the movement. You should talk to a lawyer or another experienced activist if you want to know where the line is, as it does vary state by state.
Finally, of course, don’t speak to the police or the FBI. They are not your friends. They can lie to you. If they come to you and say, “We know that someone is doing this and you need to tell us about it,” don’t trust them. You will never lose anything by asking for a lawyer and you will never gain anything by talking to the cops.
We also encourage people to avoid drugs, alcohol, and other non-political illegal activities that might compromise their ability to follow these rules. Good activists who fell into addiction or became otherwise compromised have hurt our movement.
None of us have come to our positions lightly. Most of us in the environmental movement started out as liberals. We bought the right soap, went to the right marches, and some of us even put our bodies on the line in protests and direct actions. Each one of us, for whatever reason, has come to the conclusion that this isn’t enough. We love the planet too much not to consider every option. We respectfully ask that you sit with whatever feelings you have, whether moral uncertainty, anger, or something else, and if you don’t feel in your heart that the next step needs to be taken, we don’t judge or condemn you. We need you. The struggle needs you to do one of the million other jobs that a nonviolent activist can do for this movement.
But we’d ask that you do one thing before you decide: go down to a riverbank, watch the salmon spawn, watch bison roam, look up at the sky, listen to songbirds and crickets, and ask yourself, if these people could talk, what would they ask of me? What would the pine tree cry out over the hum of the chainsaw blades? The starfish mother who is watching her babies cook to death in an acid ocean – if she could speak, what would she ask you to do? These people matter. Their lives matter, every bit as much as our lives matter to you and me. And they need us. They need us to be smart, strong, strategic, and effective.
We welcome everyone, supporters, promoters, and warriors, to move past fifty years of frustration and insufficient action toward a strategic environmental movement that will do what it takes.
I often hear people say, “I can’t handle violence, I can’t stand violence.” And I say, “I can’t stand violence either.” I can’t stand violence against indigenous people, against bison and wolves, against centipedes and snails, and against women. I can’t stand violence against the people whose lives are fodder for this system. We in DGR don’t like violence any more than you do.
If you are a human being in civilization, especially an American or a white man like me, you can’t choose between violence and nonviolence. That question was decided for me long ago; my life is based on violence. Our lives as human beings in civilization are based on violence. The question is whether we will use that violence to keep killing the world or use it to bring about something new. I encourage you to remember that there is violence out there already. It is happening to people who can’t tell us what’s going on. It happens to people whose screams we don’t hear because we aren’t listening. If you read this and say, “I just can’t handle violence,” I say welcome aboard, because we can’t handle it either.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 25, 2018 | Strategy & Analysis
Editor’s note: This is an edited transcript of a presentation given at the 2016 Public Interest Environmental Law Conference by DGR’s Dillon Thomson and Jonah Mix on the failure of the contemporary environmental movement to meaningfully stop the destruction of the planet. Using examples from past and current resistance movements, Mix and Thomson chart a more serious, strategic path forward that takes into account the urgency of the ecological crises we face. Part 2 can be found here, and a video of the presentation can be found here.
For the past several thousand years, this beautiful planet has been the site of a dysfunctional relationship between civilization, the way of life characterized by the emergence and growth of cities, and the more-than-human communities that it exploits. For the vast majority of our time on earth, humans fit into the logic of whatever land base we happened to inhabit. We watched and listened, we felt, and we communicated with the land to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship. This created the conditions for our long-term survival.
Living examples of this older way of life still exist. Small-scale subsistence cultures have lived in place for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Among these are the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, the Kawahiva of the Brazilian Amazon, the Kogi of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Columbia, and the people of the Nilgiri Hills in India. To this day, subsistence culture is the only time-tested mode of human sustainability on this planet. It is also the way of life that is being destroyed the fastest by civilization.
Civilization, which began just over ten thousand years ago in the Fertile Crescent, marks the beginning of a fundamentally different way of relating to the planet. The human element began to impose its own logic over the logic of the land. Before, human culture had been an extension of an ecosystem. Now we see our culture as separate from nature, a value system opposed to the principles and the workings of nature.
Ever since the emergence of civilization, life on earth has suffered. That’s how we know that the relationship is dysfunctional. Every living system on the planet is in decline, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Not a single peer-reviewed scientific article published in the last thirty years contradicts this statement. You shall know a tree by its fruit, and by its fruit, industrial civilization stands condemned. Or at least it should.
The fruits of civilization are the drawdown of living systems and natural vitality. We must analyze the values and behaviors that have oriented this culture against the planet.
Why should civilization stand condemned? First of all, it commits the cardinal sin: it does not benefit the land on which it is based. All beings and communities must benefit the land where they live in order to survive long-term. That is basic ecology. You have to give back as much or more than you take. Civilization is like a bad houseguest. It takes far more than its fair share and what it gives back is toxic and inedible. It values production over life. To civilization, the needs of the economic system outweigh the needs of the natural world.
The natural world can thrive without an industrial economy, but no human economy can exist without a healthy natural world. It’s embarrassing that this point must be made, but if you look at our culture’s behavior or listen to the talking heads on the radio or TV, you can quickly see we value our economic system above all else.
Our way of life requires widespread violence. This culture would quickly collapse without astounding violence against the earth, non-human communities, and members of our own species. How many people are aware that there are over 27 million human slaves today? The industrial supply chain enslaves more people today than any other period in human history.
You find slavery alive and well in the cotton in your shirt, the tantalum in your cellphone, and the beans in your cup of coffee. It is in the mines, the fields, and the raw materials processing that we don’t have to see because of our position in the supply chain. We are at the end, the “capital C” Consumers.
Professor Kevin Bales arrived at that 27 million number, which he calls the most conservative estimate for the number of slaves in the world today. It accounts for people who are forced into slavery at gunpoint and kept there by threat of direct violence to them or their families. It does not include millions more wage slaves, sweatshop laborers, and people coerced into slave-like conditions through economic hardship, usually at the hands of predatory multinational corporations.
Sweatshop, China
Our culture’s stories say that humans have the right to control and abuse the natural world. This is an issue of entitlement. Our culture feels that we are entitled to rip the tops off mountains, extract bauxite, turn it into aluminum, and make beer cans. Our culture thinks it is okay to torture animals in vivisection labs in order to make shampoo. Our culture thinks that we can exempt ourselves from the natural cycles of life and death. It believes in infinite growth on a finite planet. Our culture behaves as if it can destroy the planet and live on it too.
Violence is part of our culture and has been from the very beginning. It is part of the fabric of civilization and the fabric of our economy. Why? In part, this is due to the economic reward. Violence feeds the bottom line of business.
I have been calling the relationship between civilization and the planet dysfunctional, but it is more like a one-sided war. This goes far beyond disrespect. The behavior of this culture constitutes a form of hatred that is akin to hatred of one’s own flesh. Those who suffer the consequences of civilization are our kin, our family. How can a culture commit atrocity after atrocity against the earth and not hold a deep hatred of the natural world at its core?
In The Culture of Make Believe, Derrick Jensen writes, “Hatred felt long enough no longer feels like hatred, it feels like economics, it feels like religion, it feels like tradition.” This is hatred of our larger earth-body, our larger self, and our sense of self based upon this hatred is no more sustainable than our economy. The cultural stories that we inherit do not tell us that our flesh is continuous with the flesh of the world. Our stories don’t tell us that we are kin with the oak tree, the jaguar, and the soil.
Though scientists understand that everything is connected on a molecular level, most of their research is pressed into the service of extractive industry. Science’s stories have not led to a mutually beneficial relationship with the land. Most of the stories we receive are stories of separation. We can go back to Rene Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes created an artificial division between mind and matter that persists today.
The stories we inherit are stories of human supremacy. They tell us that we are superior to all other life forms and that we have the right to act accordingly.
We are animals among animals. The beings and communities that we are pushing to extinction are not inferior. They are not resources and they do not exist for our use and exploitation. This is a message to the animal in all of you: this is war. Civilization has been at war with the earth for 12,000 years. This is a call to those who want to fight back strategically against civilization – and win.
The environmental movement was created to deal with the dysfunctional relationship between civilization and the natural world. It can be traced back to different starting points. Many people say that the contemporary environmental movement in the West has its roots in the Romantic movement of the 18th century. The conservation movement came in the 19th century. In the 20th century came Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, described in A Sand County Almanac. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring brought even greater visibility to the environmental movement.
Though it’s been more than fifty years since 1962, every living system on the planet is in decline. This decline is accelerating. Why? Many environmental groups have done good work here and there, but by and large, the environmental movement has remained a defensive movement. Our losses are permanent and our victories are often defensive and temporary. We may save a patch of forest for a few years or decades – until it gets cut down. We may save a river or watershed – until they are poisoned.
Rosa Durando lives in Florida, where she is a member of the Palm Beach Audubon Society, the County Land Use Advisory Board, the Citizens Task Force on Zoning, and the countywide Council on Beaches and Shores. She has been a full-time environmentalist worker-watchdog for the past ten years. She says, “Sometimes I feel like a total failure. Other times I tell myself I’ve done well by getting concessions. I don’t think any environmentalists are really successful. The other side is too powerful and too rich. The best we can hope for are safeguards to avoid total destruction next year.”
Durando is one of the honest few among us who speak about the uphill battle of land defense work. The one point I disagree with is that the best we can hope for is to avoid total destruction next year. DGR thinks that there is another path forward to stop the destruction entirely.
Strategies in war include both defense and offense. Defense is anything that prevents an opposing force from gaining territory, power, or resources. Maybe a developer wants to clear-cut one hundred acres of old-growth forest. You take him to court and fight to save half the land. That defensive action is valuable and good; we need everyone working as hard as they can to do things like that. In the end, though, the developer still gets fifty acres. The best possible outcome of a defensive action is that things stay the same. You cannot win a war through defense alone. This is where offensive action comes in.
Offensive action directly takes territory, resources, or power from the opposition. 99% of what industrial civilization does is offensive. It dams rivers and strip-mines mountains. It rounds up African Americans and throws them in jail. It rapes women and commits genocide. Every time the system acts it gains power, territory, or resources. With few exceptions, the system doesn’t act defensively. Without serious opposition, it doesn’t have to.
On the flipside, the environmental movement is too busy fighting defensive battles to focus on offensive gains. The contemporary environmental movement cannot conceive of an offensive campaign against ecocide. This isn’t a recipe for victory. Marjory Stoneman Douglas, one of my heroes, said, “When developers win a battle, it’s in concrete. When environmentalists with a battle, it’s only for thirty days.”
Marjory Stoneman Douglas, champion of the Florida Everglades
This quote captures the heart of the matter. The developers fight offensive battles. They are gaining territory and holding onto it. Environmentalists fight defensive battles. At best we are delaying their forward march. To be clear, we are not doing this because we are stupid, lazy, or unwilling to take risks. We’re doing it because we are up against a massive system with guns, bombs, and jails. It controls the nightly news, talk radio, schools, and everything else that prevents the environmental movement from doing more than slowing it down.
Most of us don’t have anything but a few bucks, some picket signs, our bodies, and a love for the living planet. There are strategies that not only address that inequality but also leverage it in an offensive and effective approach. One of my favorite quotations is from Malcolm X: “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made.”
Malcolm X was speaking about the wound that white America and white people had inflicted on Africans, but his words also describe our violence against the earth. Slowing this violence isn’t progress; even stopping it isn’t progress. Progress would be healing the wound that the blow made. Our enemy is industrial civilization. It’s not capitalism, corporations, or even fossil fuels. These things must be done away with, but they are all expressions of a deeper problem. To end the destruction of the living world, we have to end industrial civilization itself.
Like every system, industrial civilization has two components: its structure and its values. “Structure” describes the real-world, material things that make up a system. “Values” describes the ideology invented to defend that system.
The structure of industrial civilization is clear. It includes the energy grid, extraction infrastructure, communications infrastructure, financial systems, and technology industry. All of these components work toward one of three goals: accessing resources, extracting resources, or processing resources to make them usable for industrial civilization. Everything from clear-cuts and strip-mines to police violence, genocide, and rape is about the control of resources.
Our resistance has to focus on stopping the control, extraction, and processing of resources by industrial civilization. At the center of these processes is the energy grid. Without the energy grid, you can’t spin the drills that kill mountains, run the computers that decide where the murdered mountains go, or keep the lights on in the buildings that take the murdered mountains and turn them into our cell phone batteries. Without power provided by an energy grid, industrial civilization has nothing.
Next is the extraction infrastructure, the part of the system that seizes resources. “Resources” refers to bodies, bones, and blood, living and breathing creatures – the living planet. Extraction infrastructure seizes them and grinds them up. Mining, logging, fracking, refining, and wind and solar energy are all are part of this infrastructure. Extraction infrastructure is organized by communications infrastructure, which includes phone lines, cell towers, and the internet.
Extraction and communications rely on the financial system that keeps capital flowing so that multinational corporations can invest in extraction processes. The technology industry makes extraction more efficient. The systems that enable industrial civilization are interconnected and codependent. The energy grid needs the technology industry, which needs communications. Extraction needs the energy grid and financial systems. Each system depends on the others.
In looking at this structural complexity, it is important to remember that it makes up only one component of industrial civilization. Civilization also relies on values, ideology, and stories to justify its actions. At the core of these stories is the value that industrial civilization prizes above all else: growth.
Endless expansion requires three conditions: hierarchy, stability, and efficiency. Hierarchy is the ranking of lives and communities. Industrial civilization needs hierarchy because a free and egalitarian social system would make endless expansion impossible. White supremacy, patriarchy, and human supremacy are myths central to industrial civilization because they justify the exploitation of Africans, indigenous people, Latinas and Latinos, women, and the more-than-human world.
Stability ensures a steady baseline upon which a system can expand. To cultivate stability, industrial civilization encourages comfort and ignorance. When people have refrigerated food and five hundred channels on TV, we don’t see the destruction around us – or care about it. That doesn’t mean that everyone inside industrial civilization is comfortable or ignorant. Largely, the people who are comfortable and ignorant are those at the top. Those at the bottom – the non-human world, people of color, and women – are largely aware of the violence that the system perpetrates in their lives. To stymie resistance, then, the system works to control all avenues for education and confrontation.
Finally, efficiency enables more expansion. The myth of consumerism teaches that as people buy more, the markets grow, production increases, and more production equals more growth.
The progress myth teaches that human beings arose in a state of primitivism, stupidity, and weakness – and that we are moving toward a grander design. We achieve that grander design by destroying the world around us.
Human beings aren’t moving toward a grander design any more than pigs, centipedes, or whales are moving toward a grander design. No one talks about the day when pigs or centipedes will seize control of the planet and make it better for pigs or centipedes. We like to believe the progress myth because without it, you can’t justify the destruction of the earth. This is where our culture’s love of science comes in. Advanced science is necessary to make superconductors, defoliants, and everything else that kills the planet.
Effective resistance to a system requires that you reject its values and attack its structures. It can never take place on the system’s terms. It can never leave the structure of the system in place. If there is one single flaw holding the modern environmental movement back, it’s our inability to stand firm against more than one aspect of the system at a time.
For example, I used to live in Bellingham, Washington. Bellingham is a major site of controversy over coal trains. Extraction infrastructure murders mountains across the country, packs them into trains, and carries them to the ports in Bellingham. From there they are shipped up to Vancouver and across the ocean to China to keep the lights on in factories where children sew our shoes. Smart, brave people fought back against the coal trains. But what would it talk to attack the entire extraction infrastructure?
Let’s say you defend the structure and retain the values. You call up the company that owns the port and say, “Hey, I only want union labor to unload the coal.” They probably wouldn’t listen to you, but let’s say you succeed. Unions are great, but you haven’t attacked the structure. The coal is still flowing. More importantly, you haven’t rejected the system’s values because you’ve adopted as a given that human beings have the right to ship coal at all.
Let’s say you want to attack the structure. You call up your congressperson or representative and demand that they replace coal trains with wind farms and solar panels. Again, they probably wouldn’t listen, but with enough pressure, you might slow down coal exports – and that’s great. You’ve made a hit against the structure – on the assumption that wind farms, solar panels, or electricity are justified. The system can pat you on the back and promise not to rely on coal so heavily. Then it can strip-mine a mountain, dam a river, kill just as many living creatures, and sell you a “renewable” product. The system took a hit, but with its values untouched, it recovered quickly.
If you want to reject the values of the system, you could sell your car, move into a smaller house, grow your own food, or sew your own clothes. You could condemn the entire system of industrial civilization. You could drop out and be very vocal about it – and that’s great. Even if you’ve rejected the values, though, the coal trains keep rolling. The structure remains intact.
How could one strike at coal trains in a way that rejects the concept of coal trains, wind farms, solar panels, or electricity itself? How could one do damage not only to the structure but also to the ideology that justifies it? You could take a blowtorch, crowbar, or some dynamite and destroy the rail line. Suddenly the coal trains aren’t going anywhere. More importantly, the system can’t recover on its own terms.
Loaded coal trains, Norfolk, VA, USA
Remember, industrial civilization values expansion, comfort, hierarchy, and efficiency. If you condemn coal trains because they’re wasteful and solar is more efficient, or because coal trains are noisy and solar is quiet, or because coal trains clog up transportation and solar power eliminates congestion, that’s great. The system wants efficiency. It wants comfort, so it will happily replace coal trains with something more efficient, quieter, less disruptive, and still fundamentally destructive to the earth.
But if you strike against coal trains because the very idea of a living planet is incompatible with electricity, coal trains, wind farms, or anything else that destroys the earth, you’ve given the system an ultimatum that it can’t easily escape. This is all hypothetical; I’m not telling you to blow up or destroy anything. The point isn’t that successful resistance requires bombs, it’s that it requires a hard stance against the system in its entirety. The values of industrial civilization and the values of a healthy culture that is capable of living in communion with the earth are incompatible. By pushing that contradiction instead of capitulating to the system’s values, we can strengthen our cause.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 11, 2018 | Strategy & Analysis
Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “Introduction to Strategy” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online.
by Aric McBay
It’s also worth looking at the principles that guide strategic nonviolence. Effective nonviolent organizing is not a pacifist attempt to convince the state of the error of its ways, but a vigorous, aggressive application of force that uses a subset of tactics different from those of military engagements.
Gene Sharp recognized this, and Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler followed Sharp’s strategic tradition in their book Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century. They understand that there is no dividing line between “violent” and “nonviolent” tactics, but rather a continuum of action. Furthermore, they also understand the need for tactical flexibility; sticking to only one tactic, such as mass demonstrations, gives those in power a chance to anticipate and neutralize the resistance strategy. In terms of strategy, they argue “that most mass nonviolent conflicts to date have been largely improvised” and could greatly benefit from greater preparation and planning.5 I would argue that the same applies to any resistance movement, regardless of the particular tactics it employs.
Having assessed the history of nonviolent resistance strategy in the twentieth century, Ackerman and Kruegler offer twelve strategic principles “designed to address the major factors that contribute to success or failure” in nonviolent resistance movements. They class these as principles of development, principles of engagement, and principles of conception.
Their principles of development are as follows:
Formulate functional objectives. The first principle is clearly important in any resistance movement using any tactics. “All competent strategy derives from objectives that are well chosen, defined, and understood. Yet it is surprising how many groups in conflict fail to articulate their objectives in anything but the most abstract terms.”6
Ackerman and Kruegler also observe that “[m]ost people will struggle and sacrifice only for goals that are concrete enough to be reasonably attainable.” As such, if the ultimate strategic goal is something that would require a prolonged and ongoing effort, the strategy should be subdivided into multiple intermediate goals. These goals help the resistance movement to evaluate its own success, grow support and improve morale, and keep the movement on course in terms of its overall strategy. This is especially important when the dominant power structure has been in control for a long time (as opposed to a recent occupier). “The tendency to view the dominant power as omnipotent can best be undermined by a steady stream of modest, concrete achievements.”7 This is especially relevant to groups that have very large, ambitious goals like abolishing capitalism, ending racism, or bringing down civilization.
Develop organizational strength. Ackerman and Kruegler write that “to create new groups or turn preexisting groups and institutions into efficient fighting organizations” is a key task for strategists.8 They also note that the “operational corps”—who we’ve been calling cadres—have to organize themselves effectively to deal with threats to organizational strength, specifically “opportunists, free-riders, collaborators, misguided enthusiasts who break ranks with the dominant strategy, and would-be peacemakers who may press for premature accommodation.”9 These threats damage morale and undermine the effectiveness of the strategy.
Secure access to critical material resources. They identify two main reasons for setting up effective logistical systems: for physical survival and operations of the resisters, and to enable the resistance movement to disentangle itself from the dominant culture so that various noncooperation activities can be undertaken. “Thought should be given, at an early stage, to controlling sufficient reserves of essential materials to see the struggle through to a successful conclusion. While basic goods and services are used primarily for defensive purposes, such other assets as communications infrastructure and transportation equipment form the underpinnings of offensive operations.”10 In particular, they suggest stockpiling communications equipment.
Cultivate external assistance. The benefits of cultivating external assistance and allies should be clear. Combating an enemy with global power requires as many allies and as much solidarity as resisters can rally.
Expand the repertoire of sanctions. The fifth principle is key because it is highly transferable. By “expand the repertoire of sanctions,” they simply mean to expand the diversity of tactics the movement is capable of carrying out effectively. They also encourage strategists to evaluate the risk versus return of various tactics. “Some sanctions can be very inexpensive to wield or can operate at very low risk. Unfortunately, such sanctions may also have a correspondingly low impact. A minute of silence at work to display resolve is a case in point. Other sanctions are grand in design, costly, and replete with risk. They also may have the greatest impact.”11
Their second group of principles consists of principles of engagement:
Attack the opponents’ strategy for consolidating control. This is specifically intended for mass movements, but essentially the authors mean to undermine the control structure of those in power, to generally subvert them, and to ensure that any repression or coercion those in power attempt to carry out is made difficult and expensive by the resistance.
Mute the impact of the opponents’ violent weapons. “The corps [or cadres] cannot prevent the adversaries’ deployment and use of violent methods, but it can implement a number of initiatives for muting their impact. We can see several ways of doing this: get out of harm’s way, take the sting out of the agents of violence, disable the weapons, prepare people for the worst effects of violence, and reduce the strategic importance of what may be lost to violence.”12 These options—mobility, the use of intelligence for maneuver, and so on—are basic resistance approaches to any attack by those in power, and not limited to nonviolent activists.
Alienate opponents from expected bases of support. Ackerman and Kruelger suggest using “political jiujitsu” so that the violent actions of those in power are used to undermine their support. Of course, we could extend this to generally undermining all kinds of support structures that those in power rely on—social, political, infrastructural, and so on.
Maintain nonviolent discipline. Interestingly, the key word in their discussion seems to be not “nonviolence,” but “discipline.” “Keeping nonviolent discipline is neither an arbitrary nor primarily a moralistic choice. It advances the conduct of strategy.”13 They compare this to soldiers in an army firing only when ordered to. Regardless of what tactics are used, it’s clear that they should be used only when appropriate in the larger strategy.
Their third and final group is the principles of conception:
Assess events and options in light of levels of strategic decision making. Planning should be done on the basis of context and the big picture to identify the strategy and tactics used. Often, as we have discussed, this is simply not done. The failure to have a long-term operational plan with clear steps makes it impossible to measure success. “Lack of persistence, a major cause of failure in nonviolent conflict, is often the product of a short-term perspective.”14
Adjust offensive and defensive operations according to the relative vulnerabilities of the protagonists. Strategists need to analyze and fluidly react to the changing tactical and strategic situation in order to shift to offensive or defensive postures as appropriate.
Sustain continuity between sanctions, mechanisms, and objectives. There must be a sensible continuum from the goals, to the strategy, to the tactics used.
There are clearly elements of this that are less appropriate for taking down civilization. For reasons we’ve already discussed—lack of numbers chief among them—a strategy of strict nonviolence isn’t going to succeed in stopping this culture from killing the planet. And there are many things about which I would disagree with Ackerman and Kruegler. But they aren’t dogmatic in their approach; they view the use of nonviolence (which for them includes sabotage) as a tactical and strategic measure rather than a purely moral or spiritual one. What I take away from their principles—and what I hope you’ll take away, too—is that effective strategy is guided by the same general principles regardless of the particular tactics it employs. Both require the aggressive use of a well-planned offensive. Strategy inevitably changes depending on the subset of tactics that are relevant and available, and a strategy that does not employ violent tactics is simply one example of that. The main strategic difference between resistance forces and military forces in history is not that military forces use violence and resistance forces don’t, but that military officers are trained to develop an effective strategy, while resistance forces too often simply stumble along toward a poorly defined objective.
How would a resistance movement expand from hampering to decisively dismantling industrial civilization’s systems of power? What can we learn from history?
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 27, 2018 | Strategy & Analysis
Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “Introduction to Strategy” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online.
by Aric McBay
Despite the limitations created by their smaller numbers, resistance movements do have real strategic choices, from the loftiest overarching strategy to the most detailed tactical level. Let’s explore beyond the default palette of actions. Resisters can and must do far better than the strategy of the status quo.
There is a finite number of possible actions, and a finite amount of time, and resisters have finite resources. There are no perfect actions. Prevailing dogma puts the onus on dissenters to be “creative” enough to find a “win-win” solution that pleases those in power and those who disagree, that stops the destruction of the planet but permits the continuation of business as usual and lifestyles of conspicuous consumption. If resisters fall prey to this belief, if they accept its absurd and contradictory premises, they are engineering their own defeat before the fact. If resisters believe this, they are accepting all blame for the actions of those in power, accepting that the problems they face are theirfault for not being “innovative” enough, rather than the fault of those in power for deliberately destroying the world to enrich themselves.
At the highest strategic level, any resistance movement has several general templates from which to choose. It may choose a war of containment, in which it attempts to slow or stop the spread of the opponent. It may choose a war of disruption, in which it targets systems to undermine their power. It may choose a war of public opinion, by which to win the populace over to their side. But the main strategy of the left, and of associated movements, has been a kind of war of attrition, a war in which the strategists hope to win by slowly eroding away the personnel and supplies of the other side, thus wearing down the omnicidal power structures and public opposition to change more quickly than those forces can destroy our communities, more quickly than they can gobble up biodiversity, more quickly than they can burn the remaining fossil fuels. Of course, this strategy has been an abysmal failure.
A strategy of attrition only works when there is an indefinite amount of time to maneuver, to prolong or delay conflict. Obviously that’s not the case in the current situation, which is urgent and worsening. Furthermore, to achieve success in a war of attrition, the resistance must be able to wear down the enemy more quickly than it gets worn down; again, in the present case, those in power are not being worn down at all (except in the degree to which they are so rapidly consuming the commodities required for their own reign to continue).
Furthermore, a resistance movement fighting a war of attrition must reasonably expect that it will be in a better strategic position in the future than it is at the current time. But who genuinely believes that we—however you would define “we”—are moving toward a better strategic position? And in order to get ahead in a war of attrition, resisters would have to have more disposable resources than their opponent.
Another crucial element in a war of attrition is reliable recruitment and growth. It doesn’t matter how many enemy bridges a group takes out if the adversary can build them faster than they can be destroyed. And on every level, civilization is recruiting and growing faster than resistance forces. To keep pace, resistance fighters would have to destroy dams more quickly than they are built, get people to hate capitalism faster than children are inculcated to love it, and so on. So far, at least, that’s not happening.
Of course, we are not in a two-sided war of attrition. Those in power aren’t holding back, but have been actively attacking. And those in the resistance haven’t even been fighting a comprehensive war of attrition; it’s more like a moral war of attrition. Rather than trying to erode the material basis of power, we’ve been hoping that eventually they’ll run out of bad things to do, and perhaps then they’ll come around to our way of thinking.
A movement that wanted to win would be smarter and more strategic than that. It would abandon the strategy of moral attrition. It would identify the most vulnerable targets those in power possess. It would strike directly and decisively at their infrastructure—physical, economic, political—and do it while there is still a planet left.
Strategy and tactics form a continuum; there’s no clear dividing line between them. So the tactics available, which will be discussed in the next chapter, Tactics and Targets, guide strategy, and vice versa. But strategy forms the base. If resistance action is a tree, the tactics are spreading branches and leaves, finely divided and numerous, while the strategy is the trunk, providing stability, cohesion, and rootedness. If resisters ignore the necessity and value of strategy, as many would-be resistance groups do—they are all tactics, no strategy—then they don’t have a tree, they have loose branches, tumbleweeds blowing this way and that with changing winds.
Conceptually, strategy is simple. First understand the context: where are we, what are our problems? Then, develop the goal(s): where do we want to be? Identify the priorities. Now figure out what actions are needed to get from point A to point B. Finally, identify the resources, people, and specific operations needed to carry out those activities.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you love salmon. Here’s the context: salmon have been all but wiped out in North America, because of dams, industrial logging, industrial fishing, industrial agriculture, the murder of the oceans, and global warming. The goal is for the salmon population not only to stop declining, but to increase. The difference between a world in which salmon are being wiped out, and one in which they are thriving, comes down to those six obstacles. Overcoming them would be the priority in any successful strategy to save the salmon.
What actions must be taken to honor this priority? Remove the dams. Stop industrial forms of logging, fishing, and agriculture. Stop the massive production and dumping of plastics. Stop global warming, which means stop the burning of fossil fuels. In all these cases, existing structures and practices have to be demolished for salmon to survive, for the goal to be accomplished.4
Now it’s time to proceed to the operational and tactical side of this strategy. According to the US Army field manual, all operations fit into one of three “all encompassing” categories: decisive, sustaining, or shaping.
Decisive operations “are those that directly accomplish the task” or objective at hand. In our salmon example, a decisive operation might be taking out a dam or preventing a clear-cut above a salmon spawning stream. Decisive operations are the centerpiece of strategy.
Sustaining operations “are operations at any echelon that enable shaping and decisive operations” by offering direct support to those other operations. These supporting operations might include funding or logistical support, communications, security, or other aid and services. In the salmon example, this might mean providing transportation to people taking out a dam, bringing food to tree-sitters, or helping to research timber sale appeals. It might mean running an escape line or safehouse, or providing prisoner support.
Shaping operations “create and preserve conditions for the success of the decisive operation.” They alter the circumstances of the conflict and help bring about the conditions required for victory. Shaping operations could include carrying out a campaign on the importance of removing dams, undermining a particular logging company, or helping to develop a culture of resistance that values effective action and refuses to collaborate. However, shaping operations are not necessarily broad-based or indirect. If an allied underground cell were to attack a nearby pipeline as a distraction, allowing the main group to take out a dam, that diversionary measure would be considered a shaping operation. The lobby effort that created the Clean Water Act could even be considered a shaping operation, because it helps to preserve the conditions necessary for victory.
If you review the taxonomy of action chart, you’ll see that the actions on the left consist mostly of shaping operations, the actions along the center-right consist mostly of sustaining operations, and the right-most actions are generally decisive.
Click for larger image
These categories are used for a reason. Every effective operation—and hence every effective tactic—must fall into one or more of these categories. It must do one of those things. If it doesn’t—if that operation’s or tactic’s contribution to the end goal is undefined or inexpressible—then successful resisters don’t waste time on that tactic.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 19, 2018 | Strategy & Analysis
by Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance
THE SITUATION
Our world is in crisis. Species extinction, topsoil loss, deforestation, rising seas, ocean acidification, global warming. It’s no exaggeration to say that the dominant culture is killing the planet. At the same time, societies around the world are staggeringly unjust. Neocolonialism builds up empires on the backs of indigenous peoples, sweatshop workers, unpaid and underpaid women, and the bodies of our nonhuman kin.
FALSE SOLUTIONS
We do not trust electoral politics, NGOs/non-profits, or foundations. Change must come from the grassroots, but the masses can be led astray. False solutions abound in the form of vague reforms, half-measures, and technologies that only strengthen empire.
REVOLUTION
We aim for nothing less than total liberation from extractive economics (including capitalism and socialism), white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, industrialism, and the culture of empire that we call civilization. This is a war for survival, and we’re losing. We aim to turn the tide. We mean to win. Some will end up in prison. Some will die. This is the price of justice. Revolution will not be tranquil or easy.
STRATEGY
Our main strategy is to build a revolutionary culture that supports outright destruction of the dominant culture (empire/industrial civilization). Specifically, we promote a strategy informed by the history of guerilla warfare that entails coordinated underground cells using sabotage to destroy global energy, transportation, communications, trade, and finance systems. The goal is to stop the global economy, not to harm individuals or the people. We recognize the value in other strategies such as mass movements, building alternatives, and changing laws, but these methods have little chance of stopping or significantly altering the course of global empire.
THE FUTURE
There are countless thousands of examples of land-based, sustainable, just human cultures, the majority of them indigenous. When the global economy collapses, we will need to live this way once again. The people will need to help the land heal by dismantling the vestiges of this system and stewarding toxic waste such as nuclear plants into dormancy. Low-energy societies will thrive in the ruins of civilization. They will face their own challenges, as all people do, but they will be strong if we protect their ability to exist by removing threats to the planet.
IDENTITY POLITICS
The experiences of those who have suffered systematic oppression can never be fully understood by those who have not. However, being a member of an oppressed group does not automatically lead to wisdom. We value and lift up those leaders who have true vision and skill, not figureheads or puppets. Anti-oppression politics form the bedrock of our human morality, but our goal is not political correctness; it is revolution.
RACISM AND PATRIARCHY
Racism and patriarchy both exist to further power and domination by turning large groups of people into exploitable others. These toxic ideologies deeply influence our culture and prop up empire by providing a steady stream of cheap and free labor, children to serve as the next generation of consumers and soldiers, and stereotypes to manipulate the population with. As the oppression of women and people of color is so wrapped up in the global industrial economy (via mass media, pornography, the prison-industrial system, housing, etc.), we see dismantling empire as critical to the dismantling of the concrete systems of power enforcing racism and patriarchy.
IMMIGRATION
The global economy creates millions of refugees each year via wars, trade, and propaganda. Most immigration happens because people’s land or livelihoods have been destroyed. Ideally, people should be allowed to live in their homes on land that is healthy and can support their community. Therefore, the best way to address the immigration “problem” is to bring down the global empire. We must stop the problem at the source.
HOW WE WORK
We must be tenacious, smart, strategic, careful, bold, and self-reflective. We must be unapologetic and non-compromising. We’ve got to sacrifice. Those who are ready have to get together and do the tedious work of organizing and building organizations and communities, engaging in political struggles, and carrying out realistic strategies for success. We don’t hope to be effective, we plan to make it happen.
LOYALTY
Throughout history, repressive and counterrevolutionary forces have worked to drive wedges into communities of resistance. Never forget COINTELPRO. Our protection lies in a fierce, forgiving loyalty to those who resist.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 15, 2018 | Strategy & Analysis
Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “Introduction to Strategy” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online.
by Aric McBay
I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman’s billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery.
—Henry David Thoreau, “A Plea for Captain John Brown”
Anarchist Michael Albert, in his memoir Remembering Tomorrow: From SDS to Life after Capitalism, writes, “In seeking social change, one of the biggest problems I have encountered is that activists have been insufficiently strategic.” While it’s true, he notes, that various progressive movements “did just sometimes enact bad strategy,” in his experience they “often had no strategy at all.”1
It would be an understatement to say that this inheritance is a huge problem for resistance groups. There are plenty of possible ways to explain it. Because we sometimes don’t articulate a clear strategy because we’re outnumbered and overrun with crises or immediate emergencies, so that we can never focus on long-term planning. Or because our groups are fractured, and devising a strategy requires a level of practical agreement that we can’t muster. Or it can be because we’re not fighting to win. Or because many of us don’t understand the difference between a strategy and a goal or a wish. Or because we don’t teach ourselves and others to think in strategic terms. Or because people are acting like dissidents instead of resisters. Or because our so-called strategy often boils down to asking someone else to do something for us. Or because we’re just not trying hard enough.
One major reason that resistance strategy is underdeveloped is because thinkers and planners who do articulate strategies are often attacked for doing so. People can always find something to disagree with. That’s especially true when any one strategy is expected to solve all problems or address all causes claimed by progressives. If a movement depends more on ideological purity than it does on accomplishments, it’s easy for internal sectarian arguments to take priority over getting things done. It’s easier to attack resistance strategists in a burst of horizontal hostility than it is to get things together and attack those in power.
The good news is that we can learn from a few resistance groups with successful and well-articulated strategies. The study of strategy itself has been extensive for centuries. The fundamentals of strategy are foundational for military officers, as they must be for resistance cadres and leaders.
PRINCIPLES OF WAR AND STRATEGY
The US Army’s field manual entitled Operations introduces nine “Principles of War.” The authors emphasize that these are “not a checklist” and do not apply the same way in every situation. Instead, they are characteristic of successful operations and, when used in the study of historical conflicts, are “powerful tools for analysis.” The nine “core concepts” are:
Objective. “Direct every military operation toward a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective.” A clear goal is a prerequisite to selecting a strategy. It is also something that many resistance groups lack. The second and third requirements—that the objective be both decisive and attainable—are worth underlining. A decisive objective is one that will have a clear impact on the larger strategy and struggle. There is no point in going after one of questionable or little value. And, obviously, the objective itself must be attainable, because otherwise efforts toward that operation objective are a waste of time, energy, and risk.
Offensive. “Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.” To seize the initiative is to determine the course of battle, the place, and the nature of conflict. To give up or lose the initiative is to allow the enemy to determine those things. Too often resistance groups, especially those based on lobbying or demands, give up the initiative to those in power. Seizing the initiative positions the fight on our terms, forcing them to react to us. Operations that seize the initiative are typically offensive in nature.
Mass. “Concentrate the effects of combat power at the decisive place and time.” Where the field manual says “combat power,” we can say “force” more generally. When Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest summed up his military theory as “get there first with the most,” this is what he was talking about. We must engage those in power where we are strong and they are weak. We must strike when we have overwhelming force, and maneuver instead of engaging when we are outmatched. We have limited numbers and limited force, so we have to use that when and where it will be most effective.
Economy of Force. “Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts.” In order to achieve superiority of force in decisive operations, it’s usually necessary to divert people and resources from less urgent or decisive operations. Economy of force requires that all personnel are performing important tasks, regardless of whether they are engaged in decisive operations or not.
Maneuver. “Place the enemy in a disadvantageous position through the flexible application of combat power.” This hinges on mobility and flexibility, which are essential for asymmetric conflict. The fewer a group’s numbers, the more mobile and agile it must be. This may mean concentrating forces, it may mean dispersing them, it may mean moving them, or it may mean hiding them. This is necessary to keep the enemy off balance and make that group’s actions unpredictable.
Unity of Command. “For every objective, ensure unity of effort under one responsible commander.” This is where some streams of anarchist culture come up against millennia of strategic advice. We’ve already discussed this under decision making and elsewhere, but it’s worth repeating. No strategy can be implemented by consensus under dangerous or emergency circumstances. Participatory decision making is not compatible with high-risk or urgent operations. That’s why the anarchist columns in the Spanish Civil War had officers even though they despised rulers. A group may arrive at a strategy by any decision-making method it desires, but when it comes to implementation, a hierarchy is required to undertake more serious action.
Security. “Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage.” When fighting in a panopticon, this principle becomes even more important. Security is a cornerstone of strategy as well as of organization.
Surprise. “Strike the enemy at a time or place or in a manner for which they are unprepared.” This is key to asymmetric conflict—and again, not especially compatible with a open or participatory decision-making structures. Resistance movements are almost always outnumbered, which means they have to use surprise and swiftness to strike and accomplish their objective before those in power can marshal an overpowering response.
Simplicity. “Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding.” The plan must be clear and direct so that everyone understands it. The simpler a plan is, the more reliably it can be implemented by multiple cooperating groups.
In fact, these strategic principles might as well come from a different dimension as far as most (liberal) protest actions are concerned. That’s because the military strategist has the same broad objective as the radical strategist: to use the decisive application of force to accomplish a task. Neither strategist is under the illusion that the opponent is going to correct a “mistake” if this enemy gets enough information or that success can occur by simple persuasion without the backing of political force. Furthermore, both are able to clearly identify their enemy. If you identify with those in power, you’ll never be able to fight back. An oppositional culture has an identity that is distinct from that of those in power; this is a defining element of cultures of resistance. Without a clear knowledge of who your adversary is, you either end up fighting everyone (in classic horizontal hostility) or no one, and, in either case, your struggle cannot succeed.
In the US Army’s field manual on guerrilla warfare, entitled Special Forces Operations, the authors go further than the general principles of war to kindly describe the specific properties of successful asymmetric conflict. “Combat operations of guerilla forces”—and, I would add, resistance and asymmetric forces in general—“take on certain characteristics that must be understood.”2 Six key characteristics must be in place for resistance operations:
Planning. “Careful and detailed.… [p]lans provide for the attack of selected targets and subsequent operations designed to exploit the advantage gained.… Additionally, alternate targets are designated to allow subordinate units a degree of flexibility in taking advantage of sudden changes in the tactical situation.” In other words, it is important to employ maneuvering and flexible application of combat power. It’s important to emphasize that planning is notabout coming up with a concrete or complex scheme. The point is to plan well enough that they have the flexibility to improvise. It might sound counterintuitive, but the goal is to create an adaptable plan that offers many possibilities for effective action that can be applied on the fly.
Intelligence. “The basis of planning is accurate and up-to-date intelligence. Prior to initiating combat operations, a detailed intelligence collection effort is made in the projected objective area. This effort supplements the regular flow of intelligence.” That’s strategic and operational intelligence. On a tactical level, “provisions are made for keeping the target or objective area under surveillance up to the time of attack.”
Decentralized Execution. “Guerrilla combat operations feature centralized planning and decentralized execution.” It is necessary to have a coherent plan, and in order for that plan to be a surprise, the details often have to be kept secret. A centralized plan allows separate cells to carry out their work independently but still accomplish something through coordination and building toward long-term objectives. Decentralized execution is needed to reach multiple targets for a group that lacks a command and control hierarchy.
Surprise. “Attacks are executed at unexpected times and places. Set patterns of action are avoided. Maximum advantage is gained by attacking enemy weaknesses.” When planning a militant action, resisters don’t announce when or where. The point is not to make a statement, but to make a decisive material impact on systems of power. This can again be enhanced by coordination between multiple cells. “Surprise may also be enhanced by the conduct of concurrent diversionary activities.”
Short Duration Action. “Usually, combat operations of guerrilla forces are marked by action of short duration against the target followed by a rapid withdrawal of the attacking force. Prolonged combat action from fixed positions is avoided.” Resistance groups don’t have the numbers or logistics for sustained or pitched battles. If they try to draw out an engagement in one place, those in power can mobilize overwhelming force against them. So underground resistance groups appear, accomplish their objectives swiftly, and then disappear again.
Multiple Attacks. “Another characteristic of guerrilla combat operations is the employment of multiple attacks over a wide area by small units tailored to the individual missions.” Again, coordination is required. “Such action tends to deceive the enemy as to the actual location of guerrilla bases, causes him to over-estimate guerrilla strength and forces him to disperse his rear area security and counter guerrilla efforts.” That is, when those in power don’t know where an attack will come, they must spend effort to defend every single potential target—whether that means guarding them, increasing insurance costs, or closing down vulnerable installations. And as forces become more dispersed in order to guard sprawling and vulnerable infrastructure, they become less concentrated and correspondingly make easier targets.
Other writers on resistance struggles have shared these understandings. Che Guevara outlined similar strategy and tactics in his book Guerilla Warfare (1961), which itself followed from Mao Tse-Tung’s 1937 book on the subject. Colin Gubbins, former head of the British Special Operations Executive, wrote two pamphlets on the subject for use in Occupied Europe (written not long after Mao’s book). These pamphlets—The Partisan Leader’s Handbook and The Art of Guerilla Warfare—were based in part on what the British learned from T. E. Lawrence, but also from their attempts to quash resistance warfare in Ireland, Palestine, and elsewhere. In The Partisan Leader’s Handbook, Gubbins touched on the elements of surprise (“the most important thing in everything you undertake”), mobility, secrecy, and careful planning. “The whole object of this type of warfare is to strike the enemy, and disappear completely leaving no trace; and then to strike somewhere else and vanish again. By these means the enemy will never know where the next blow is coming,” he wrote.
Gubbins also urged resisters to “never engage in any operation unless you think success is certain.” Small resistance units don’t have the numbers or morale to absorb unnecessary losses. Resistance groups should only engage the enemy at points and times where they can overwhelm. The first step to take before any action is to plan a safe line of retreat, and “break off the action as soon as it becomes too risky to continue.” A newly founded resistance group often lacks the experience and training to accurately gauge how risky a situation is, which is why Gubbins recommends erring on the side of caution. It is better to learn iteratively and build up from a number of small successes than to get caught attempting operations that are too large and apt to end in failure. The takeaway message: successful resistance movements choose their battles carefully.
Just as asymmetric strategies require specific characteristics for success, they also have definite limitations.3 Resistance forces typically have “limited capabilities for static defensive or holding operations.” They often want to hold territory, to stand and fight. But when they try, it usually gets them killed, unless they’ve spent years developing extensive social and military groundwork and have a large force and popular support. Another limitation is that, especially in the beginning, resistance forces lack “formal training, equipment, weapons, and supplies” that would allow them to undertake large-scale operations. This can be gradually remedied through ongoing recruitment and training, good logistics, and the security and caution required to limit losses through attrition; however, resistance forces are often dependent on local supporters and auxiliaries—and perhaps an outside sponsoring power—for their supplies and equipment. If they can’t find those supporters, they will probably lose.
Communications offer another set of limitations. Communications in underground groups are often difficult, limited, and slow. This also applies to organizational command; the more decentralized an organization is, the longer it takes to propagate decisions, orders, and other information. And because resistance groups have small numbers and finite resources, “the entire project is dependent upon precise, timely, and accurate intelligence.”
