by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 6, 2013 | Direct Action, Human Supremacy, Strategy & Analysis
Environmentalists today have our work cut out for us. Caught between the urgency of the ecological crises and reactionary capitalist forces that continue to push (quite successfully) for ever more outrageous and egregious destruction, finding an effective and timely path forward is no easy task. There are a wide variety of strategies for change vying for our attention, broadcast to us by a diversity of folks with a diversity of motivations—some of which are mixed, others confused, and more that are dangerous. By and large, the strategies we’ve adopted for our movements go unchallenged and unquestioned.
But given where we find ourselves—in the middle of an irredeemably exploitative and cruel society fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels—and what we’ve been able to accomplish so far in the fifty-some years of the environmental movement, it’s time to stop a moment and reflect.
What we’ve tried so far—everything from alternative consumer choices, lobbying, and symbolic protests to education, and localized permaculture lifeboats—has proven incapable of addressing the scale and severity of the crises at hand and ineffective in forcing change. While these tactics can be used to achieve certain goals, and certainly have their place within a serious movement for justice and sustainability, they will never be enough to accomplish what we must in the end.
So with that in mind, the time has come to have serious conversations and ask ourselves serious questions. What do we want to achieve, and how can we best achieve it?
Do we want to perpetuate a way of life that affords some of us with incredible material prosperity? Are we merely looking for new ways to sustain the unsustainable? Or do we want first and foremost to stop the destruction and exploitation of the living world, and are we prepared to adjust our society—our way of life—to what that requires of us? Are we prepared to see and name that destruction for what it is,industrial civilization, and do what’s necessary to bring a halt to it?
If so, are we willing to face what’s necessary to be successful? Are we willing to work for that goal by any means necessary, including sabotage and property destruction? Will we support those who do? For if the ends don’t justify the means, what does?
Are we willing to set the health of Earth as the ultimate metric by which we will be judged? As many others have said, those who come after us will not be swayed or moved by how deeply we ached at the world dying around us. They won’t forgive us no matter how big our marches and rallies were, nor how clever our slogans and chants. The precise harmony and abundance of our permaculture gardens will be irrelevant to them if the forests, rivers, and fish are gone. The spiritual fulfillment and inner peace we’ve found we be meaningless and resented if all the mountains have been ripped inside out, the air and water filled with poisons.
Fighting the good fight may satisfy us emotionally, but are we more concerned with emotional fulfillment or the health of the planet?
Either we win, and permanently put an end to this cancerous way of life—in no uncertain terms, dismantle industrial civilization—or it’s game over; baked topsoil devoid of bacteria and oceans empty of even plankton.
As all the tried and tired strategies, the benign, begging and ineffectual hopes for change fail repeatedly, are we prepared to take a new path? Are we willing, as a movement, to revisit our long-sworn oaths against direct action, sabotage, and property destruction? Are we left any other choice?
This is not an exhortation to action, not a dictate on what our tactics can or should be. And it’s certainly not an effort to incite you into doing anything you aren’t comfortable doing. This is an attempt to open the conversation, to humbly consider different strategies and tactics. Because what we’ve been doing so far isn’t working.
On the contrary, as a whole, the environmental movement is playing directly into the hands of the established systems of power. The solutions put forward by the mainstream fail to challenge industrialism, capitalism or civilization, and the mostly center around consumerism and economic growth—whether or not the planet survives is a moot point and is confined to the realm of rhetoric. The tactics proffered and peddled to us pre-packaged in marketing glitz and glamour will never be enough to carry us to our goals, because they refuse to confront and dismantle the material systems that are waging a relentless war against life. Instead, we plead with those in power, hoping in vain that they’ll change their hearts and minds.
But it is material systems—physical infrastructure of extraction and production—that are doing the deforesting, the strip mining, the fracking, the polluting, damming, the trawling; it’s not a few bad apples or an “unsustainable consciousness.” We can change hearts and minds until the sun burns out, but if we don’t confront and dismantle the structures of power that necessitates the devastation wreaked upon Earth by this culture, those compassionate hearts and minds will be irrelevant and quickly replaced by those better fitting the demands of the dominant power systems.
One measure of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and to expect different results. It’s long past time to admit that things aren’t changing; in the last 30 years, there hasn’t been a single peer-reviewed study that showed a living community that was improving or stable.
A recent study found that it’s twenty times more likely that climate change will be more extreme than forecasted than less extreme. Clearly what we’ve been doing isn’t working, or things would be getting better instead of worse (and the rate at which they’re getting worse is accelerating).
So where does that leave us? If the safe and fun strategies—the non-controversial and the convenient; the “green tech,” the lobbying, the consumer lifestyle choices—don’t work, what do we do? If we know it’s not working, how can we continue along the same path and expect anything different?
With so much—everything—at stake, will we collectively step over the line of comfort and safety that is afforded to us in exchange for our compliance and use whatever means necessary to stop the literal dismemberment of the planet’s life-support systems? If not us personally, will we support those who do?
When we look back in history we find countless examples of past movements facing near identical questions, and all too often they came to the decision that the use of physical force was necessary for fundamental change.
From the women’s suffrage movement which used arson against politicians who opposed the woman’s right to vote, to labor movements in the coal fields of Appalachia where miners battled company thugs. From the Black liberation struggles’ unabashed armed self-defense, to indigenous sovereignty struggles which employed militant land reclamations. From the ANC in South Africa and EOKA in Cyprus sabotaging electric transmission lines, to resistance forces across Europe during WWII attacking rail and transport infrastructures, and liberation movements around the world since using whatever means necessary to fight against colonialism. Strategic sabotage and other forms of militant action are proven to possess incredible potential for social movements to materially undermine the foundations of abusive power.
What will we do with that knowledge? How long will it take to decide, remembering that with every setting of the sun, another 200 species disappear from the world forever? Aren’t we overdue to have these conversations, to stop and ask these questions?
There isn’t any more time to be lost; we have lots of potential tools—tactics and strategies—available to us, and we need to put them all on the table, rather than limiting ourselves to least controversial (and least effective) among them. We need to accept the use of militant tactics, and support those who do. Strategic sabotage against industrial infrastructure has been used by countless movements to fight exploitation, and is undeniably effective.
When nothing else is succeeding in stopping the physical destruction of industrial society, can we finally accept militant action in defense of Earth as a viable option? With what’s at stake, can we afford not to?
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 20, 2013 | Lobbying, Movement Building & Support, Obstruction & Occupation, Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
Resistance against exploitation is nothing new. History is full of examples of people—perfectly ordinary people—fighting back against injustice, exploitation, and the destruction of their lands and communities. They move through whatever channels for action are open to them, but often, left with no legal or political power, they turn to militant means to defend themselves.
It is hardly a simple decision, and rarely the first or preferred option, but when all other paths have been explored and found to lead nowhere, militant action becomes the only realistic route left. Movements and communities come to that truth in many different ways, but almost without fail, they come to it borne by a collective culture of resistance. One inspiring example is the Bolt Weevils.
The Bolt Weevils were a group of farmers in Minnesota who spent several years in the late 1970s perfecting the fine art of sabotaging interstate electrical transmission lines. Their efforts have been memorialized in numerous books and songs, and their story is a hopeful one we would do well to remember and re-tell.
The story of the Bolt Weevils begins in the mid-1970s, when the Cooperative Power Association (CPA) and United Power Association (UPA) proposed construction of a new interstate high-voltage transmission line. Taking its name from the two cooperatives, the CU Powerline would carry current from a generating station in North Dakota across west-central Minnesota to feed the urban centers of the Twin Cities.
In determining a route for the powerline, small farmers land was rated less important than large industrial farms, and as a result, the proposed route crossed the property of nearly 500 landowners. Outraged at being trodden over to for the benefit of industry and urbanism, resistance against the project began immediately in earnest.
Once residents found out about the project, they refused to sign land easements. Local towns passed resolutions opposing the project and reject construction permits. The powerline went to review before the State’s Environmental Quality Council, which went ahead and granted the necessary permits in the face of overwhelming public opposition.
When surveyors showed up out of the blue in one farmer’s fields, he smashed their equipment with his tractor and rammed their vehicle. The action of that one farmer helped catalyze popular sentiments into action. Farmers began using CB radios to notify one another about surveying activities, and would turn out in groups to stop the work. As resistance began to build, local radio stations would broadcast times and locations of protestor gatherings. Farmers and others who opposed the project began meeting every morning in the Lowry town hall, hosting others who’d come from neighboring counties, to make plans for each day.
As surveying and construction continued, the locals escalated their efforts. They would erect signs in their fields to block the sightlines of the surveyors, and stand next to survey crews running their chainsaws to disrupt their work. Survey stakes disappeared overnight. Farmers used their trucks to make roadblocks and their tractors to pile boulders in the construction sites. One group even gained permission from the county to improve a rural road—they dug a ditch across it to stop all traffic.
They filed more lawsuits, and the issue was eventually taken up by the Minnesota Supreme Court, which in the spirit of everything it represents, decided against the farmers and in favor of the powerline. Many of the citizens opposing the pipeline had earnestly believed in institutions like the Supreme Court and the structures of power. After their battles through the courts, many of them were disillusioned and had been radicalized.
Law enforcement began escorting construction and survey workers, and the situation came to a head on January 4th 1978, when 100 farmers chased powerline crews from three different sites, fought with police, and even tore down part of a tower. The next week, the Minnesota Governor ordered the largest mobilization of the State Troopers in Minnesota’s history, with 200 Troopers—fully half of the force—descended on the rural area to ensure construction continued.
Protests continued and grew, as the issue began to draw national and international media attention; hundreds turned out for rallies at survey sites, and some schools even let out so students and teachers could attend. In St. Paul, thousands of farmers rallied and demonstrated, and in March of 1978 more than 8,000 people marched almost ten miles through freezing temperatures from Lowry to Glenwood to protest the CU powerline.
It was in the heat of August that the kettle boiled over. Bolts on one of the transmission towers were loosened, and soon afterwards, it fell over, as the Bolt Weevils entered the scene. Then three more fell over. Guard poles and bolts were cut and loosened, insulators were shot out. Over the next few years, 14 towers were felled and nearly 10,000 insulators were shot out. Soon, helicopters patrolled the powerline, and it was made a federal offense to take down interstate transmission lines.
There were numerous arrests, some 120 in all, but only two individuals were ever convicted on felony charges, and even then they were only sentenced to community service. Opposition to the powerline was so common that in some instances, witnesses refused to testify against farmers.
In the end, unfortunately, the powerline was built and went into operation, despite the protests and the disruptions by the Bolt Weevils. While they were unsuccessful in ultimately stopping the project, there’s much from their efforts that we can learn and apply to our work today against exploitation and civilization.
As in most social struggles that turn to property destruction and militancy, that wasn’t the first choice of tactics for those on the ground. They fought for years through accepted legal and political avenues, turning to material attacks after all other courses of action had proven ineffective. But more than that, the popular agitation and organizing in the years leading up to the emergence of the Bolt Weevils didn’t merely precede militant direct action: it laid the groundwork for it.
The work of the local farmers—their protests, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and community organizing—paved the way (forgive the phrase) and set the conditions for the sabotage that would later occur. By mobilizing residents and community members against the project, building social networks, and agitating and raising opposition against CU powerline, a collective culture of resistance was created, planting and watering the seeds from which the Bolt Weevils were born.
With civilization churning onwards towards biotic collapse and underground resistance the only real hope left, caring for those seeds is our primary duty today. The story of the Bolt Weevils—like countless other stories of resistance—shows that militant resistance emerges from strong and supportive cultures of resistance. The time to start building such a culture was yesterday. For those of us who choose to organize and work in an aboveground and legal way, building such a culture that embraces and celebrates sabotage and the use of any means necessary to stop the omnicide of industrialism is our foremost task.
The story of the Bolt Weevils isn’t empowering and inspiring because they “fought off the bad guys and won.” They didn’t win. The power lines were built, forced down their throats in the face of their resistance. No, their story is inspiring because it so clearly and undeniably demonstrates how simply feasible sabotage and material attacks truly are. Often, we talk about militant resistance and direct action as mysterious and abstract things, things that wouldn’t ever happen in our lives or communities, things that no one as ordinary as any of us would ever do.
Whether we romanticize underground action or are intimidated by it, we generally talk about it as though it is something out of a movie or a novel. The truth is that such actions are simply tactics—just like petition-drives or street marches—that can be used to dismantle systems of power. The Bolt Weevils—a group of farmers with hunting rifles and hacksaws*—serve as a stark reminder that one doesn’t require military training and high-tech gadgets to act in direct and material ways against the infrastructure of destruction. We’re all capable of fighting back, and while sabotage against industrial infrastructure can be daunting for many valid reasons, technicality isn’t one of them.
We may have to fail working through other channels (as if we haven’t already) before collectively turning to sabotage and attacks on industrial infrastructure as a strategy, and we will certainly need to build a supportive and strong culture of resistance. But if we’re serious about stopping the destruction and exploitation of civilization, we will be left with no other choice.
*This is speculative. I don’t actually know how they shot out insulators or cut through guard poles, although there are plenty of accounts of hunting rifles and hacksaws being used in this fashion, and it’s from those stories that I hazard this guess.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 6, 2013 | Noncooperation, Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
In our last bulletin, Time is Short presented an overview of the need for strategic target selection. With the industrial economy barreling ever onwards, dragging the world towards biotic collapse, the importance of targeting our efforts cannot be overstated. Identifying and striking at key targets is necessary for any social change movement to be successful, and this is all the more true for radical movements that seek to fundamentally change systems of oppressive power.
Yet for all our earnestness and urgency, our movements have (for the most part) failed to target the key nodes of capitalist and industrial systems.
With so many terrible things happening, we slide into a mode of reflexive defensiveness, shifting haphazardly from one manifestation of civilization’s destructiveness to another, without any coherent plan to stop the machine responsible for all the carnage.
Devoid of a way to make tangible progress towards that goal, we are doomed to ineffectiveness: we become fixated by symbolism and direct our efforts towards symbols of that which we oppose, rather than material structures of power.
Take for instance, this communique from Indonesia, published at 325.nostate.net:
Covered by the night, we burned a private car in Tomohon (small city in North Sulawesi), owned by an unknown person. It was a car located near the local TV station in that town. A car as a symbol of slavery, eco-disaster and the meaninglessness of life.
Yes, cars are terrible. Countless people and animals are killed every day by vehicles. And car culture has become emblematic of industrial society and the lack of meaning and connection available in modern capitalist society.
But how does this advance the cause of revolution? How does this change the structures (industrial society and capitalism) that are to blame for “slavery, eco-disaster and the meaninglessness of life”?
Or this communique from Greece, published on the same site:
We claim the responsibility for the incendiary attack at the house of ex-minister of Economy and National Defence, Giannos Papandoniou. We arrived outside the door of his mansion on Olympias street in Kifissia and torched the two cars used by him and his “wife” Roula Kourakou for their meaningless movements….Far from a populist rhetoric we identify in the face of Giannos Papandoniou an officer of authority. We are not interested in listing the dodgy things he has done, although he surely has done many. Either way, corrupted or not corrupted, state officers, irrelevantly if they hold their positions in the state mechanism, are a permanent target for the insurrectionist dignities.
None of us like politicians, nor the riches and rewards they receive for presiding over oppressive and destructive systems of power. In exchange for their proactive allegiance to and proliferation of the status quo, they’re afforded power and privilege, which lasts long after their terms in office end.
But again, how does burning the car of an ex-politician move us tangibly closer to achieving our goals, towards dismantling the system of which politicians are a single component? How does such an attack effect change on the systems which preserve and enable injustice and oppression?
This isn’t meant to be a hostile attack on the courage or conviction of those who take action like this; neither their commitment nor their readiness to take action is at question. This is simply to pose the question “is this really the most effective way to accomplish our goals?”
And needless to say, this cuts both ways. Most of the more mainstream groups and initiatives fall just as flat. Currently, one of the most prominent progressive campaigns is 350.org’s ‘Fossil Free’ campaign, which seeks to target universities and religious institutions to divest their endowments from fossil fuel companies. This strategy is definitely an improvement on past efforts, which consisted of pleading to politicians; this new initiative identifies a structural problem and aims to address it. Yet there are some obvious and immediate problems with the strategic viability of this plan, and whether university investments in fossil fuels present a worthwhile target.
The foremost issue is that industrial society is entirely dependent upon fossil fuels in order to function and without an abundant & available supply would quickly collapse (which would be a very good thing!). Fossil fuel companies already receive tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies; if their viability was in serious jeopardy, we can safely assume that governments the world over would rush to their aid. Indeed it would be dangerous to assume otherwise. The extraction and use of fossil fuels can’t be effectively challenged or stopped working through the industrial capitalist system, because fossil fuels are an integral structural support of industrial capitalism and it could not exist without them.
And beyond this, it’s entirely un-established whether divestments by universities would even have a meaningful impact of the economic viability of fossil fuel companies. How much such investments constitute is unknown.
This isn’t to say that such a campaign is a waste of efforts or that it’s a bad thing. Anything that brings people together around structural problems inherent to this way of life is a good thing. And economic pressure, as we saw in South Africa, can contribute to a larger campaign that includes other tactics, such as forceful nonviolence, international political pressure, and strategic sabotage. This is just to say that if the goal is to shut down fossil fuel production or corporations, universities’ investments in the industry don’t present a very important target.
A quick evaluation of these actions through the lenses of the CARVER Matrix gives us a more critical analysis of the value of these targets.
In the last bulletin on target selection, we presented an overview of the CARVER Matrix, a tool used asses the strategic value of attacking a target. Obviously, this is not an end-all-be-all; how a target appears through CARVER is not the final and absolute determination as to whether it presents a worthwhile target. But it is undeniably a strong analytical tool from whose use we can benefit and learn much.
Criticality: will the destruction, damage or disruption of the target have significant impact on the operation of an entity?
The personal cars of one or two individuals are irrelevant to the functioning of industrialism or capitalism—consider all the thousands of cars wrecked every year in collisions. This goes for the cars of political figures, such as Giannos Papandoniou, as well.
As for university investment portfolios, they aren’t critical to the function of industrialism or the fossil fuel industry either. Such corporations don’t have much trouble finding capital (as the vitality of the entire economy rests upon an available supply of fossil fuels), and they already receive massive subsidies from governments.
Accessibility: how feasible it is to reach the target with sufficient people and resources to accomplish the goal?
Cars are very accessible; people park them all over the place and they are almost never guarded or protected, as was the case in both of the actions mentioned above.
Investments are not very accessible at all as targets, with decision making power resting within the complex structures of university administrations. Additionally, people with access to these systems (e.g. students or faculty) are necessary for each distinct university, requiring engagement on a massive scale. Furthermore, it is entirely unknown how much such investments even amount to.
Recuperability: how quickly will the damage done to a target be repaired, replaced or bypassed?
Personal cars are widely available and can easily be replaced, provided one can afford them. For powerful institutions and individuals, vehicles are easily replaced, but for the average person randomly targeted by insurrectionary arson, not so much. And a political figure who can afford two luxury cars and bodyguards is unlikely to declare bankruptcy for the loss of one (or two, or a dozen) of their personal cars.
Again, fossil fuel corporations are not starved for funds, and continue to post record profits. And being that the ‘goods’ they produce are fundamental to industrial society, they can pass on any losses they sustain to consumers at the pump, who have little choice but to pay the price. Fossil fuel companies are incredibly profitable (because our way of life is dependent upon the products they supply), and that makes them desirable investments—that will continue to be true whether or not universities and churches hold stock in them. Thus these investments can be considered very recuperable.
Vulnerability: Are there sufficient means to successfully damage, disable, or destroy the target?
Destroying a car doesn’t require many people, many resources, or hardly any technical knowledge, so they are definitely vulnerable targets.
To change the investment behaviors of educational institutions requires a massive number of people working from within their universities to lobby their administrations to change. Because many universities are private institutions, there are few ways to agitate and force change (private institutions can kick out students and aren’t obligated to listen to them), and the only option left is to lobby the administration to enact policy change. Due to these factors, it’s doubtful whether such university investments can be considered vulnerable.
Effect: What are the secondary and tertiary impacts of successfully attacking the target?
The destruction of a single random car (or even the car of a former government official) is unlikely to have significant political or social effects—except for the person the car belonged to. If cars were repeatedly attacked, it’s possible there would be a response by local police. But it won’t have much of any impact on any major effects other than creating one more pedestrian.
Similarly, there are unlikely to be any serious second-hand ramifications of university divestment campaigns, simply because it is a relatively minor facet of the fossil fuel industry. However, the success of this campaign would certainly be a way to broaden the conversation about climate change and fossil fuels, as well as broaching on a conversation about the structural determinants of capitalism itself.
Recognizability: will the attack be recognized as such, or might it be attributed to other factors?
I can’t imagine anyone attributing the burning of a random car to revolutionary groups, and if so, I doubt they would do so in a positive light. The attack of a specific political figure’s car may be different, but again, it’s unclear without further explanation that such an attack was carried out with revolutionary intent, as opposed to pyrotechnic hedonism.
In regards to 350.org’s campaign, if activists were to successfully move scholastic endowment funds out of fossil fuel stocks and investments, they would undoubtedly be recognized for doing so, primarily because there’s simply no way it would happen otherwise.
Clearly, none of these present especially desirable targets—neither individual cars nor university endowment investments in fossil fuels are particularly critical to the function of the systems of power we seek to dismantle, and that must be our foremost criteria.
One could argue that these targets are primarily symbolic, that they were chosen in hopes of raising awareness about the problems of capitalism and industrial society. This however, is precisely the problem. For decades we’ve been crusading against symbolic targets, attacking microcosm-manifestations of the larger structures which are actually dismembering the planet, instead of focusing our efforts on those structures themselves. Earth is not being strip-mined, clear-cut and plowed to death by symbols or metaphors; physical infrastructure is required to do that. Our work needs to reflect that materialism; like the machines doing the damage to the biosphere, our targets need to be material, critical components of industrial infrastructure.
This is a strategic rut of disastrous proportions into which we’ve collectively gotten ourselves stuck, and we’re in desperate need of a strong push if we’re to get out of it, and move onto successfully dismantling the destruction perpetrated by industrial society.
As so many have so rightly said, political change requires the application of force. But that force needs to be precise, aimed at the correct targets—vital nodes within the dominant structures of power. Unless we select and strike at the right targets—the ones that are critical to system function, accessible, minimally recuperable, and are vulnerable given our resources—we’ll be ineffectually burning random objects and pleading hopelessly with the powerful until the cows come home, or until they too pass from Earth.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 23, 2013 | Strategy & Analysis
By Alex Rose / Deep Green Resistance Colorado
We’re up against a lot. With hundreds of species going extinct every day, with the oceans being vacuumed of life, with the last vestiges of wild forests being felled or burned and the heart of the planet being torn up to poison the air, civilization is driving Earth towards biotic collapse. We can’t afford to waste time or energy with so much at stake; dismantling the society that is dismantling the planet is no easy task.
For more than 30 years now, the environmental movement has been working toward that end, yet in few (if any) circumstances have we been able to seriously dislodge the foundations of industrialism. Despite our best efforts, the species count continues to decline as the carbon continues to rise. Those we’re up against are well protected and have immense resources at hand to protect themselves from disruption.
Systems of power—such as patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, civilization—safeguard themselves through brute force. They react with overwhelming violence against those who oppose them. However, this isn’t the only tool available to those in power, and rarely is it the first to which they reach when they feel threatened. One of the more sinister and effective techniques is systemic misdirection.
Oppressive and destructive systems protect themselves first and foremost through disguise and deception. They hide their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, coaxing us into attacking dummy targets or symbols of their power, rather than the material structures that support their power. The results are ones we’re all familiar with (or should be): we focus our attention on specific symptoms of the problem rather than the underlying causes, and our efforts for political change are diffuse and uncoordinated, challenging only particular manifestations of larger oppressive power systems, rather than the systems themselves. We wander into a strategic dead-end, and energy is redirected into the system itself.
We are guided into a strategic dead-end, and our energy is redirected to bolster the system itself.
Breaking free of this misdirection-dynamic requires a thorough lifting-back of the veil that’s been draped over our eyes. It means focusing our efforts where they will be most effective, targeting critical nodes and bottlenecks within industrial systems to bring civilization down upon itself.
We need critical and strategic processes of target selection. One powerful tool towards this end is the CARVER Matrix. CARVER is an analytic formula used by militaries and security corporations for the selection of targets (and the identification of weak points). “CARVER” is an acronym for six different criteria: criticality, accessibility, recuperability, vulnerability, effect, and recognizability.
Criticality is an assessment of target value and is the primary consideration in CARVER and target selection. A target is critical if destruction, damage or disruption has significant impact on the operation of an entity; or more bluntly, ‘how important is this target to enemy operations?” Different targets can be critical to different systems in different ways: physically (as in interstate transmission lines), economically (such as a stock exchange), politically, socially, etc.
It’s important to remember that nothing exists in a vacuum; society is made up of inter-related entities and institutions, and our targets will be as well. Thus the criticality of a potential target should be considered in the context of the way that target relates to larger systems. For example, there are thousands of electrical transmission substations all over the world, and hence they may initially seem non-critical. However, some substations carry a much greater load than others and are systemic bottlenecks, whose disabling would have ripple effects across entire regions. Criticality depends on several factors, including:
- Time: How rapidly will the impact of the attack affect operations?
- Quality: What percentage of output, production, or service will be curtailed by the attack?
- Relativity: What will be affected in the systems of which the target is a component?
Accessibility refers to how feasible it is to reach the target with sufficient people and resources to accomplish the goal. What sorts of barriers or deterrents are in place, and how easily they can be overcome? Accessibility includes not only reaching a target, but the ability to get away as well.
Recuperability is a measure of how quickly the damage done to a target will be repaired, replaced or bypassed. Just about anything can be replaced or rebuilt, but some particular things are much more difficult, such as electrical transformers, few of which are manufactured in the U.S. and which take months to produce.
The fourth selection factor is vulnerability. Targets are vulnerable if one has the means to successfully damage, disable, or destroy them. In determining vulnerability, it’s important to compare the scale of what is necessary to disable the target to the capability of the “attacking element” to do so. For example, while an unguarded dam might seem a vulnerable target, if resisters had no means of bringing it down, it wouldn’t be considered vulnerable. Specifically, vulnerability depends on the nature & construction of the target, the amount & quality of damage required to disable it, and the available assets (personnel, funds, equipment, weapons, motivation, expertise, etc.).
Next is effect. Effect considers the secondary and tertiary implications of attacking a target, including political, economic, social, and psychological effects. Put another way, this could be rephrased as “consider all the consequences of your actions.” How will those in power respond? How will the general populace respond? How will this affect future efforts?
Last is recognizability; will the attack be recognized as such, or might it be attributed to other factors (e.g. “It wasn’t arsonists that burned down the facility, it was an electrical fire”). Depending on the particular circumstances, this can cut either way; taking credit for an attack can bolster support and bring more attention to an issue, but it may also make actionists more vulnerable to repression. Recognizability also applies at a more individual level: were fingerprints or other evidence left at the site of the target through which the identity of the attackers can be determined?
Often, numerical values between 1 and 10 are given to each of the target selection criteria in the CARVER Matrix, and then totaled for each potential target. More generally, CARVER presents a critical framework for strategic planning and decision-making, helping us to avoid misdirected action.
It needs to be said that this sort of critical and calculated approach to resistance efforts applies to nonviolent & aboveground groups and operations as well as those that are militant or underground. Nonviolent resistance is too often distorted to fit romanticized ideas of a moral high ground, and is relegated to pure symbolism. But struggle (whether violent or nonviolent) isn’t about symbolic resistance; it’s about facing down the reality of power, identifying its lynchpins, and using force to disable or break them. The particular tactics we use determine the form the force will be applied in, but unless we identify and target the critical lynchpins, the daily destruction wrought upon the earth will continue unabated as we strike at the distractions dangled before us.
For too long our movements have fallen prey to poor target selection or misdirection. When we’re not too busy fighting defensive battles, we focus our energies on those entities which are either entirely non-critical to the function of industrialism or are invulnerable given our capacity for action. And the world burns while we spin our wheels.
In our next Time is Short bulletin, we will take a closer look at several examples of different actions, applying this analytical examination to better understand the importance and relevance of target selection in radical movements.
The forces we’re up against are ruthless and calculated; they’ll do whatever they can to keep us ineffective, and when that fails, they bring down all the repressive force of which they’re capable. If we’re to be successful in stopping industrial civilization, we’ll have to identify and undermine its critical support systems. We don’t have much time, which is why we can’t afford to waste it on actions, targets or strategies that don’t move us tangibly closer to our goals.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 2, 2013 | Strategy & Analysis
Within the radical environmental movement, it is widely acknowledged and rightly accepted that we have little time left before the earth is driven into catastrophic and runaway biotic collapse. We know that civilization is predicated on the slow dismemberment of the planet’s life support systems—a dismemberment that is increasing in speed as more efficient and devastating technologies are developed. We know that for a healthy, living world to survive, industrial civilization cannot.
It is also acknowledged (although perhaps less widely) that we are incredibly outnumbered and outgunned, so to speak. People aren’t exactly lining up around the block to join the movement, and when was the last time any of our campaigns weren’t starved for funds? We don’t have many people or resources at our disposal, and if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that isn’t changing anytime soon.
Due to these limitations, which should be glaringly (if dishearteningly) obvious to anyone involved with radical organizations or movements, we need to take extra care in devising how we chose to allocate the energy and resources we do have. With so much at stake and so little time to muster decisive action, we cannot afford to put time and effort into strategies and actions that are ineffective.
Additionally, in devising our strategies and tactics, we need to accommodate those personnel and resource limitations: a strategy that requires more people or more resources (or both) than are actually available to us is a recipe for quick failure. As obvious as this should be, these sorts of strategic considerations seem to be mysteriously absent from the radical movement*.
Of course, simply because these conversations aren’t happening doesn’t mean that there isn’t an unspoken strategy, a framework within which we operate by default. While this may not be articulated explicitly, our actions form a collective strategic template.
By and large, the strategy of the environmental movement is one of attrition, a slow battle with the goal of wearing down the institutions & forces of environmental degradation until they cease to function. Whether by default or perceived lack of alternatives, this has been accepted as an unquestioned strategy for the overwhelming majority of those of us in the environmental movement. This is a mistake which could cost us the planet if not revisited and corrected.
A strategy of attrition is one in which you wear down an opponent’s resources, personnel, and will to fight to the point of collapse. As a strategy, it intends one of two outcomes: through the continual depletion of the aforementioned resources, the enemy suffers unacceptable losses and surrenders or capitulates out of hopelessness; or, the enemy is worn down over time to the point that it is incapable of function and operation.
One classic example of attrition and exhaustion strategy being implemented is that of Ulysses Grant’s campaign against the Confederacy in the later part of the American Civil War. Grant attacked and pushed the Confederate army continuously, despite horrific losses, with the theory that the greater manpower and resources of the Union would overwhelm the Confederacy—which would prove correct.
In the context of the modern environmental movement, this strategy looks only slightly different.
Again, there is no articulated grand strategy within the environmental movement—whether we’re talking about the entire spectrum or just the radical side of things, there is no defined plan for success. However, our work, campaigns, initiatives and actions fit rather snugly into the box of attrition strategy: we focus on one atrocity at a time—one timber sale, one power plant, one pipeline, one copper mine—doing our best to eliminate one threat at a time. These targets aren’t selected based on their criticality or importance to the function of civilization or industrialism, but are selected by what might be best described as reactionary opportunism.
And that makes sense: remember we’re vastly outweighed in every way imaginable by those in power, and time is quickly running out. With 200 species going extinct every day, the sense of urgency that drives us to try and win any victory we can is understandable and compelling.
Unfortunately, this mix of passion and earnestness has led the environmental movement into a strategic netherworld. If our goal is to stop the destruction of the planet, we would do well to turn a critical eye toward the systems that are responsible for that destruction, identify the lynchpins within them, and organize to disable and destroy them.
Instead, we wander blindly in every which direction, striking out wildly, hoping that enough of our glancing blows find a target to wear the systems down to the point of collapse. But this strategy fails to account for the power & resource imbalance between “us” and “them”, as well as the time frame for action.
To address the first shortcoming: those in power—those who benefit from and drive industrial extraction & production—have near limitless resources at their disposal to pursue their sadistic goals, whereas things look decidedly different for those of us who fight for life. Every day, millions—billions—of humans go to work within the industrial economy, and in doing so, wage war against the planet. Those of us on the other side of the war don’t have—and can’t compete with—that kind of loyalty or support. China is still building one new coal-fired power plant every week, and worldwide, coal plants are being erected “left and right”1.
How many coal plants did we shut down this week? The week prior?
For a strategy of attrition to be viable or effective, we need to be disrupting, dismantling or retiring industrial infrastructure as quickly or quicker than it can be constructed and repaired. At this point, we’re lucky if we can stop new projects, new developments, new strip mines, timber-harvest-plans, oil & gas fields, etc., much less drawdown those already in operation.
This is true across the whole spectrum of activism and the environmental movement. On the more liberal side of things for example, take Bill McKibben and 350.org’s newest campaign, an initiative to get universities, cites, and churches/synagogues/mosques to divest from fossil fuel companies. The idea is essentially to slowly bleed money away from the fossil fuel industry, modeled after the divestment campaigns of the anti-apartheid movement. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry isn’t exactly hurting for investors, and it certainly isn’t reliant upon money from university endowment funds for its survival. Equally problematic, industrial civilization requires fossil fuels to function, and hence these companies already have the support and subsidies of governments around the world—do we think they’ll suddenly abandon their undying support for these companies? And besides, a slow drain on their stock prices must be balanced against the record profits being made in the industry: do we really think that this outweighs the capital available to the industry?
The same is true of many of the most radical actions taken in defense of earth, such as that of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Their first (and arguably primary) goal was/is “To cause maximum economic damage to a given entity that is profiting off the destruction of the natural environment.”2 That’s great, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with causing maximum economic damage to those that profit from the degradation of the earth, in and of itself. But what is the realistic extent of “maximum economic damage”, and what is the capacity of those entities to absorb it? For example, although the ELF claims to have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, every year companies lose more than that due to employees playing fantasy football at work. Absurdities of industrial capitalism aside, the point should be clear; the capacity of our movement to effect significant change through compounded economic damage is severely outweighed by the damage the system does to itself, and also by its ability to absorb that damage.
All of which is to say that 200 species went extinct today, and there hasn’t been a single peer-reviewed study put out in the last 30 years that showed a living system not in decline: for us to be satisfied with slightly diminished industry profits or anything less than a complete end to the death machine of industrial civilization is unconscionable.
None of this is to say that 350.org or the ELF aren’t worthwhile organizations who’ve done good things. This is not a critique of those groups in particular, because countless other organizations share the same strategic flaws; it’s a critique of the movement as a whole that continues to produces the same strategic inadequacies.
And then there’s the second problem presented by an attrition model: time. Attrition affects the greatest damage over a long period of time. Unfortunately, we don’t have much time. As previously mentioned, 200 species vanish into the endless night of extinction every day; 90 percent of large ocean fish are gone, the old growth forests are gone, the prairies and grasslands are gone, the wetlands and riparian areas are gone, the clean freshwater is gone. Every year, the predictions put out by climatologists and modelers are more severe, and every year they say the previous year’s predictions were underestimates. The Energy Information Administration says we have five years to stop the proliferation of fossil fuel infrastructure if we are to avoid runaway climate change (and some say this is overly optimistic)3. If we had decades or centuries in which to slowly erode and turn the tide against industrialism, then perhaps we could consider a strategy of attrition. But we don’t have that time.
To reiterate, this isn’t a strategic model that holds any real hope for the earth.
Smart strategic planning starts with an honest assessment of the time, people, and resources available to our cause, and moves forward within those constraints. We don’t have much time at all; the priority at this point is to bring down civilization as quickly as possible. We don’t have many people either, and can’t realistically expect many to join us; the rewards and distractions—the bread and roses—provided in exchange for loyalty to the established systems of power mean we will always be few and that we will never persuade the majority. Finally, our resources are also incredibly limited, and hence we need to focus on using them in ways that accrue the greatest lasting impact.
Given these limitations, it should be clear that a strategy of attrition is more than unwise; it’s fatal for both us and the rest of the planet. Working within the framework created by the available time, people and resources, and with the goal of physically dismantling the key infrastructure of civilization, the strategy with the greatest chance of success is one of targeted militant strikes against key industrial bottlenecks. As opposed to the slow grind of attrition, this would be a quick series of attacks at decisive locations; rather than waiting for the building to be eroded away by wind and rain, collapse the structural supports of the building itself; we would opt instead for a strategy of decisive ecological warefare.
Many of us put all the energy and passion we have into our work, and dedicate our lives to the struggle. But that won’t be enough. We’re up against a globalized death machine that is skinning the planet alive and cooking the remains; we will never be successful if we put our efforts into trying to dent their profit margins. Burning SUVs and vandalizing billboards have an important role to play in developing a serious culture of resistance (as does organizing students), but we can’t afford to pretend those sorts actions are meaningful or threatening blows to the industrial superstructure.
Time is short. If we’re to be effective, we need to move beyond half thought-out strategies of attrition that try to compete with the resources of those in power. We need to devise strategies that use the resources available to decisively disable and dismantle the infrastructures that enable their destruction and power.
*This isn’t to say that there is no strategic thinking, planning, or action at all; many organizations are very smart and savvy in undertaking specific actions and campaigns. The issue isn’t a lack of strategy in particular situations or campaigns, but comprehensively of the entire environmental movement as a whole.
1. “China & India Are Building 4 New Coal Power Plants—Every Week.
2. “Earth Liberation Front”. http://www.earthliberationfront.tk/
3. “World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, EIA warms”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
