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Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “ A Taxonomy of Action” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet . This book is now available for free online. by Aric McBay There are four basic ways to directly confront those in power. Three deal with land, property, or infrastructure, and one deals specifically with human beings. They include: Obstruction and occupation; Reclamation and expropriation; Property and material destruction (threats or acts); and ...

Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “ A Taxonomy of Action” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet . This book is now available for free online. by Aric McBay As we’ve made clear, acts of omission are not going to bring down civilization. Let’s talk about action with more potential. We can split all acts of commission into six branches: lobbying; protests and symbolic acts; education and awareness raising; support work and building alternatives; capacity building and logistics; and direct confrontation and conflict. The illustration “Taxonomy of Action” groups them by directness. The most indirect tactics are on the left, and become progressively more direct when moving from left to right. More direct tactics involve more personal risk. (The main collective risk is failing to save the planet.) Direct acts require fewer people. ...

Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “ A Taxonomy of Action” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online. by Aric McBay All acts of omission require very large numbers of people to be permanently effective on a large scale. There are plenty of examples of strikes shutting down factories temporarily, but what if you don’t ever want that factory to run again? What if you work at a cruise missile factory or a factory that manufactures nuclear warheads? Is everyone working there willing to go on strike indefinitely? The large pool of unemployed or underpaid working poor means that there are always people willing to step in to work for a wage, even a relatively low one. Failing that, the company in question could just move the factory overseas, as so many have. All of this is especially true in a time when capitalism falters, and attempting to bring down civilization would definitely make capitalism falter. ...

Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “ A Taxonomy of Action” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online. by Aric McBay The word strike comes from eighteenth-century English sailors, who struck (removed) their ship’s sails and refused to go to sea, but the concept of a workers’ strike dates back to ancient Egypt. 3 It became a popular tactic during the industrial revolution, parallel to the rise of labor unions and the proliferation of crowded and dangerous factories. ...

Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “ A Taxonomy of Action” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online. by Aric McBay And here yet another temptation asserts itself. Why not wait until our cause becomes vivid and urgent enough, and our side numerous enough, to vote our opponents out of office? Why not be patient? My own answer is that while we are being patient, more mountains, forests, and streams, more people’s homes and lives, will be destroyed in the Appalachian coal fields. Are 400,000 acres of devastated land, and 1,200 miles of obliterated streams not enough? This needs to be stopped. It does not need to be “regulated.” As both federal and state governments have amply shown, you cannot regulate an abomination. You have got to stop it. ...

Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “ Culture of Resistance” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online. by Lierre Keith / Deep Green Resistance The final difference between the alternative culture and a culture of resistance is the issue of spirituality. Remember that the Romantic Movement, arising as it did in opposition to industrialization, upheld Nature as an ideal and mourned a lost “state of nature” for humans. Emotions were privileged as unmediated and authentic. Nonindustrialized peoples were cast as living in that pure state of nature. The Wandervogel idealized medieval peasants, developing a penchant for tunics, folk music, and castles. Writes Keith Melville, ...

Featured image: Edgar Degas’ “Scène de guerre au Moyen-âge,” 1865, is one of the exhibits said to be inspired by Sade RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Gérard Blot Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “ Culture of Resistance” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online. by Lierre Keith / Deep Green Resistance While the alternative culture “celebrates political disengagement,” what it attacks are conventions, morals, and boundaries. It comes down to a simple question: Are we after shock value or justice? Is the problem a constraining set of values or an oppressive set of material conditions? Remember that one of the cardinal points of liberalism is that reality is made up of values and ideas, not relationships of power and oppression. So not only is shock value an adolescent goal, it’s also a liberal one. ...

Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “ Culture of Resistance” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online. by Lierre Keith / Deep Green Resistance Radical groups have their own particular pitfalls. The first is in dealing with hierarchy, both conceptually and practically. The rejection of authority is another hallmark of adolescence, and this knee-jerk reactivity filters into many political groups. All hierarchy is a tool of The Man, the patriarchy, the Nazis. This approach leads to an insistence on consensus at any cost and often a constant metadiscussion of group power dynamics. It also unleashes “critiques” of anyone who achieves public acclaim or leadership status. These critiques are usually nothing more than jealousy camouflaged by political righteousness. “Bourgeois” is a perennial favorite, as well as whatever flavor of “sell-out” matches the group’s criteria. It’s often accompanied by a hyperanalysis of the victim’s language use or personal lifestyle choices. There is a reason that the phrase “politically correct” was invented on the left. 51 ...

Featured image: Black Orchid Collective Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “ Culture of Resistance” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online. by Lierre Keith / Deep Green Resistance This is the history woven through the contemporary alternative culture. It takes strands of the Romantics, the Wandervogel, and the Lebensreform, winds through the Beatniks and the hippies, and splits into a series of subcultures with different emphases, from self-help and twelve-step believers to New Age spiritual shoppers. There is a set of accumulated ideas and behavioral norms that are barely articulated and yet hold sway across the left. It is my goal here to fully examine these currents so we may collectively decide which are useful and which are detrimental to the culture of resistance. ...

Featured image: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “Other Plans” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet . This book is now available for free online. by Lierre Keith/ Deep Green Resistance Russia is a country with a negative population growth caused by “a collapse of the birth rate and a catastrophic surge in the death rate.” 64 The country has a 0.6 percent population decrease, which means it will lose 22 percent of the population by 2050. That adds up to thirty million fewer people. 65 ...