Uncivilized: the best of Green Anarchy Green Anarchy Press 2012 licensed under creative commons This book is set in Book Antiqua, Candara, Concorde, Jaeger Daily News, Nofret, and Segoe UI Welcomes Welcome to (the best of) Green Anarchy 1 I Suppose It was Worth a Shot 5 Introduction 8 Civilization So Vast the Prison 11 What is Green Anarchy GA Collective 13 Operation Civilization I & II Sauri Igni 27 Rising of Barbarians Wolfi Landstreicher 44 Locating an Indigenous Anarchy Aragorn! 48 Technology A Dark and Hungry God Arises 57 Science: Civilization’s Ally Ran Priur 59 Sermon on the Cybermount Rev Black Ahole 63 Towards Something New Terra Selvaggia 67 Tech & Class Struggle Wolfi Landstreicher 69 Godfrey Reggio Interview 72 The Left Anti-Left Anarchy 89 The Nature of the Left 91 Leftism 101 Lawrence Jarach 92 Liberation, Not Organization A. Morefus 99 Ten Blows against Politics Il Pugnale 102 The Left-Handed Path of Repression Crocus Behemoth 106 Not My Vision of Liberation Leaf S. Alone 113 Beyond Utopian Visions A. Morefus 117 China’s War on Nature The Uncarved Block 136 Barbarism & Authoritarianism Jesús Sepúlveda 146 Ongoing Death March As the World Burns 155 Zero War: Total Liberation Dave Antagonism 157 To Produce or Not To Produce Kevin Tucker 168 Limits of Illusion, Limits of Exhaustion Dan Todd 175 A Surrounding for Us to Live Within A Friend of Ludd 178 Thoughts on Predator: An Interview with Ward Churchill 186 Infantile Paralysis Sky Hiatt 189 Why I Hate the City Sal Insieme 199 Resistance The Age of Obedience is Over 207 Hit Where It Hurts Ted Kaczynski 208 In the Mean Time Primal Rage 216 Does Not Compute Austin Train 220 The Enemy is Quite Visible Terra Selvaggia 231 Electric Funeral Havoc Mass 234 Lights Camera Action Grievous Amalgam 244 Revolt of the Savages Kevin Tucker 252 Contributing to Momentum against Civilization I & II Felonious Skunk 260 Nihilism & Strategy Aragorn! 271 Thinking through the Fall Ran Priur 276 When I Walk through the Valley Ann I. Solation 282 Youth Liberation 289 Play Fiercely! Wolfi Landstreicher 293 endgame 298 Decolonization A Call for Escape Routes 303 We are All Indigenous Homer Bust 304 Strangers Touching the Void Sky Hiatt 306 Why Misery Loves Company Ron Sakolsky 316 I am Not a Machine Mia X.Kursions 319 Intuition as a Crucial Part of Rewilding Ardilla 328 A Question of Spirit Faith Stealer 331 Seeds on the Breeze Scavenger 333 We are Not Separate A.R. Son 341 Stones Can Speak Jesús Sepúlveda 345 Reclaiming the Myth-Time Scavenger 350 About Getting Free from the Myth of Revolution Pablo A 356 Max & I (I)Anok Ta Chai 359 Dust in the Wind Mysteria 363 The Error of Correction 365 Flights Of Fancy Dreams with Sharp Teeth 369 Earth’s Lament Everyday Revolution 370 The Dream L’argonauta 374 Diary of a Female Stone-Age Hunter-Gatherer Army of the 12 Monkeys 376 When the Zombies Take Over, How Long Till the Electricity Fails? 380 Reclus Fire 386 Afterword Silence John Zerzan 392 Welcome to (the Best of) Green Anarchy The stratified past still clung to by those who grow old with time is ever more easy to distinguish from the alluvia, timeless in their fertility, left by others who awake to themselves (or at least strive to) everyday. For me, these are two moments of a single fluctuating existence in which the present is continually divesting itself of its old forms. - Raoul Vaneigem, The everyday eternity of life He not busy being born, is busy dying. -Bob Dylan It was a difficult decision to end our anti-civilization journal of theory and action after the Fall 2008 issue, but after twenty-five installments, with exhaustion and repetition beginning to set in, and with the specific paths of our lives headed in different directions, we felt that our mission as that particular collective had reached an endpoint. We hoped that other projects would be born to fill this theoretical and journalistic void and carry on where we left off. While in some specific ways some have, we feel there is way too much white space currently in the anti-civilization discourse. With the relevance of the magazine format much in question, our unwillingness to throw ourselves back into the grind of such an overwhelming and demanding project, and the desire to distill what we did achieve down to a condensed format for future generations (or at least those not around, or paying attention, a few years ago), we decided (after being run over by a little black cart) to put out a book of what we consider to be a comprehensive representation of the essays and theoretical aspects of the project. The Fuse Ignited: A Brief History Green Anarchy was born in 2000, as an illegitimate bastard child of the primitivist-oriented periodical Green Anarchist from the UK. One of its offshoot editors splintered and moved to Eugene, Oregon where he became affiliated with theEarth First! Journal. In an attempt to publish direct action updates and articles from a more anarchist perspective, he started a newsprint zine called Green Anarchy. Although it was disjointed, somewhat incoherent, aesthetically impoverished, and grossly unedited, as a 16-page newsprint tabloid it was the inglorious birth of our project. After issue #4, the founder, who was moving away to pursue other interests in wilderness survival and such, passed on the project to the seeds of what became the notorious Green Anarchy Collective. After a couple of issues, the original editor returned to find hisGreen Anarchy-lite transformed into a collectively-run, hard-hitting, nail-biting, unapologetically anti-civilization project, which was too much for his luke-warm 19th century (and green-tinted) politics to handle, and he 1 left for good (he later falsely claimed that we stole the project and has recently threatened to re-start his project of the same name, continuing at #5, where he left off....another case of sour grapes mixed with selective memory). Needless to say, the fuse was lit and we were on a hyper-enthusiastic trajectory, as it seemed at the time that anything was possible....remember, this was not all that long after Seattle was trashed and Eugene was still the hot bed of vibrant, creative, critical, and militant anarchist activity....and we ran with it hard! Each issue increased in size, print-run, distribution, coherence, and relevance, and by issue #8, Green Anarchy was receiving national attention with articles like Ted Kaczynski’s “Hit Where It Hurts”, which received mention from the likes of Fox News. By issue #11 we had hit our stride, and by issue #15 we decided to change to a magazine format, in order to increase distribution by getting it into more bookstores and to preserve the physical longevity of the hard copies. Over the next few years, while our format continued to solidify, we broadened and deepened our discourse. The collective grew, shrank, evolved, split, and spliced, as change was essential to keep it fresh and alive, with a few key members (those of us whose drive and dedication verged on obsession) making it through most of the journey. Eventually, we had a 100-page journal circulating 8,000 copies an issue around the world. But, like all things, it came to an end. Black and White and Green All Over: A Typical Issue of Green Anarchy While we hoped that every new installment of what we termed our “anti-civ virus” was vibrant and fresh, aggressively challenging, somewhat jarring, and even downright confusing a times, each issue did contain a familiar format to reserve some continuity. Not only did they all contain a diverse assortment of articles from regular and irregular contributors alike, but also other significant sections which rounded out the project. We became well-known for having the most comprehensive direct action reports in North America, featuring anarchist, anti-capitalist, environmental, and indigenous resistance, as well as prisoner revolts, the often oddly-inspiring “Symptoms of the System’s Meltdown”, and the ferocious feral fury of “The Wild Fight Back!”, an amusing accounting of recent attacks on civilized humans by anything from caged tigers to rabid poodles to strong gusts of wind. We leant our solidarity to those warriors kidnapped by the state with current prisoner listings, updates, and state repression news. We also sent free copies in to any prisoner who requested one, numbering close to a thousand copies per issue. We critically reviewed anarchist and leftist publications, music, videos, and other projects that we felt were relevant to our overall anti-civilization perspective. The reviews were probably our most controversial (and most anticipated) section, due to their often biting tone, which was always from a desire to offer direct and clear criticism in order to further an overarching anarchist project (not just to be mean, as some declared)... we couldn’t help it that our critique could be 2 darkly comical too. Especially venomous was our attitude towards the Leftist drivel and liberal residue that continues to ooze out of the anarchist scene. We made a point to give ample space for our readers to write letters, adding their voice to the ongoing discussions. We published interviews from time to time, re-printed and reclaimed some of our favorite previously published works, interjected some comedic elixirs like the scene-crunching “News From the Balcony with Waldorf and Statler”, and rounded it out with random tidbits, announcements, quotes, editorial commentary, and sloganeering. We joyfully embraced the challenge to fill every bit of boring white space with as many provocative images we could find, matched with every font we could possibly use.