February 8, 2022 • 56 mins
Saint Andrew joins us for a discussion on the 2012 essay 'Desert,' and how it does and doesn't relate to our modern view of climate collapse.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
It could happen. Here is the podcast that you're listening
to right now. I'm Robert Evans. All right, that's that's
my job done. What are we What are we doing?
What are we doing today? Hey? What's up? Hey? Andrew?
Back at it again with another podcast. UM. Today, we're
doing something a little bit different from the previous episodes
(00:27):
that I've done. We're having a bit more of an
open discussion about certain book that has been passed around
for about a decade now and as polarized UM members
of the anarchist community. UM for it that way, UM.
(00:48):
Today we'll be talking about the book the infamous uh
polemic Desert by Anonymous. For those who uh, you know,
not aware of this extremely controversial text. Desert is a
(01:09):
nihilist anarchist text who is published in two thousand eleven
that is mainly directed at other anarchists and seeks to
address issues of climate collapse and revolution. It became somewhat
of a meme to tell folks to read Dessert. I'm
not sure when that was, but I just remember scene.
It's a lot um I think in yeah around read
(01:35):
Desert became a name yeah yeah, all over Twitter and
Instagram and Reddit, but of course, being a thing that
exists on the Internet, people who naturally became torn on
the subject of it. And so there are a lot
of perspectives and opinions and think pieces about desert, some
(02:00):
more or less accurate than others. But we are here
to discuss the book, all personal experiences reading it, things
we think it gets right and wrong, and what we
could potentially looen going forward, so I would see the
floor is yours, whoever wants to go first. I mean,
(02:25):
I'm a huge fan of the quote that the book
takes it or that the that it takes its name from,
which comes from you know, Tacitus, who was a dude
writing in the Roman period Um, and the exact quote
that it comes from is and he's talking. Tacitus is
talking about the Roman Empire, robbers of the world. Now
that the earth is insufficient for their all devastating hands,
(02:47):
they probe even the sea. If their enemy is rich,
they are greedy. If he is poor, they thirst for dominion.
Neither East nor West has satisfied them alone. Of mankind,
they are equally covetous of poverty and wealth, robbery, slaughter,
and plunder. They falsely name empire, they make a desert
and they call it peace. Huh, goodass quote. It is
(03:09):
a it is a solid Yeah, And obviously I think
people living in the shadows of every empire that's ever
existed can identify with that quote. Um, it's it's a
powerful kind of central idea to hang your extended essay.
I don't really know what the best term to refer
to it as. Yeah, it's it's it's it's a long essay. Yeah,
(03:33):
it's a very long essay. As we talked about kind
of coming into this, it's extremely two thousand tens um
three Arab Spring pre all the big uprisings and revolts
we had in twenty nineteen, and Um, there's definitely some
stuff that it gets very right. And I think kind
of one of the ways in which it's had an
(03:55):
impact on me is kind of I've I've thought about
what happens to sort of culture as the result of
this kind of Hollywood engine that is heavily tied up
with the United States military Industrial complex UM as a
process of desertification of ideas and the ability to like
conceive of of of new futures. UM. That said, I
(04:20):
I don't really I haven't reread it in a very
long time and haven't really felt um called to in
in many ways because I do think I don't know.
I think there's an extent to which it's been kind
of left behind. Um yeah, some of the things that
have happened since I think. Yeah, UM, I will say
(04:41):
that as someone who really came into my owners an
archist in like, although I had identified with it before, um,
when I had read the book, Um, I think it
was in late late so when I read the book
(05:03):
first time, I read it and honestly, um, there was
some good, some add some some very outdated stuff, and
also some stuff that I don't know. Maybe the author
felt it was like groundbreak and at the time, but
you know, at this present stage just feels like common
(05:28):
knowledge sense, you know, I mean it was, it was
groundbreaking in a way for like climate realism, right, like
this was this was written before you know, this is
written before climate levy thing. This was written before um,
the uninhabitable Earth. This was written before a lot of
kind of the texts that view climate change is an
(05:51):
absolute Like this was written one year before hyper objects,
Which is really interesting actually because you know, the whole
prepence of that book is that climate change is done,
like it happened, where we're like there's no turning back
the clock. And the Desert was written even before that,
like it was. It was one of the first things
now and of course it's it's it's much more niche,
(06:11):
but like it was. If I if I look back
in books that have like impacted me, it was it's
one of the first books like that came out, like
timeline wise to take climate changes, like yeah, it's there's
no saving it, like there's no living in the two thousand's,
there's no living in the nineties. Again, it's like things
are like the world's not going to end, but things
(06:32):
are going to get worse, right like and that, and
that is kind of a big, big part of the
book because it's it's also it's also not pro collapse
like it it doesn't take collapse is an absolute. It
doesn't take. It doesn't it doesn't subscribe to global collapse.
And that's one of the misconceptions I think people have
about them. Yeah, that they just assume it's like this
collapse dumorous like mr. Rupic kind of text, but which
(06:56):
I did not read it as that. I first started
around this same time you did, UM, And I read
it as a part of a lot of books I
was reading to prep for the show when we when
we were writing our first five episodes on like on
climate change and like the Crumbles. So I read it,
read it as a part of my kind of general
research and yeah, like at that point it was already
(07:18):
kind of mimified to be like, you know, like an
anarcho nihilist like Dumer Manifesto. And I read it, I'm like,
that's not what it's saying at all. It's actually once
i'd read it, I was like, I was really taking
it back at how how easily um, popular perceptions of
(07:38):
a piece of media good um, I mean honestly corrupted
beyond recognition. Yeah, you know, like if people are a
bunch of people are telling you know it's that about
is in text or whatever, you know, it's kind of shake,
it kind of shakes the opposite like actually consumed for
yourself and then realize, how did you all get that? Yeah,
(08:00):
how did you read that out of it? It is
really interesting because I'm not even sure if they did
read out of it, or if that was the perception
they had going into it, So they read it through
that lens, and that lens basically you know, changed the
text in their heads to fit that thing, because yea,
it is really interesting how how it is so associated
with like dumerism um. Yet if you like, engage in
good faith with the text, it's very much not a
(08:22):
Doomer manifesto anyway, although there are aspects of it that
I am um that I think attitude wise, that I
am critical of. But I think Chris was going to
say sometimes, yeah, so I was just like, I, I
really I've always not liked this book, Like I read
it back, and I think she doesn'teen when it was
first sort of like coming back, yeah, And I didn't
(08:44):
like it then, and I read it this morning and
I like it even less now than I did then,
And I think, I think, I actually I actually okay. So, like,
I think it's true that most of the text doesn't
do the duomer thing, but I think I understand where
people got it from, because you know, you have quotes
in this like, uh, here here's one. Yet I can
already hear the accusations from my own camp, accusations of
(09:05):
deserting the cause of revolution, deserting the struggle for another world,
such accusations are correct. I would rejoin that such millinarian
and progressive myths are at the core of the expansion
of power. And this is this is what I really like.
I think from an ecological perspective, it's sort of okay.
I strongly dislike Desert as an anarchist text because I
think that's just wrong. I think, I think, I think
(09:27):
there's there there's there's there's an ingrained defeatism in it
that is so strong that it it it just it
like warps the author's perception of the past. Like you
get these things where he's talking about these these kind
of he's talking about like the you know, what you
call the classical anarchist movement from roughly like eighteen seventy
two really sort of ends with the defeat of the
(09:48):
anarchists in Spain and like seven and and he you know,
they say things like from Spain pre nineteen thirty six
to the Jewish anarchists in North America, the illegalist of France,
and the Italian anarchosenty close to Argentina. The habitants of
anarchist counter societies were always, by definition active minorities. The
minorities may have gotten larger in an instructionary moments, but
they remained at minorities always and that's just wrong. It's
(10:11):
it's factually wrong. Like these these movements were not minorities,
like the like the entire like the like the largest
union in France was the CG like in the early
Action hundred was the the you just see it this
deep that all all of the French, Spanish and Portuguese
(10:32):
country speaking countries have a they have one union that's
called the U G C and one union it's called
the CG T. And I can't remember which ones which,
but like like that was that was the largest union
in France, and it was the syndicalist union right like
it was like and there's you know the same thing
with Argentina, right for a like for a while was
the largest union in Argentina. And I think and this
this is sort of my problem with this, which is
that you know, this is a person who's basically like
(10:55):
they talked about, like they are born in the seventies
and they've they they're writing the steals in eleven in
just the midst of the collapse of sort of like
the complete and total destruction of the old anarchist movement, right,
the anarchist movement that had been born out of sort
of like the Zapatistas and the anti globalization movements. And
they've been beaten so badly that you know, I mean
(11:18):
they were crushed, they were completely destroyed, and they've been
beaten so badly that they they can't they literally can't
imagine winning and think that like like revolution in general,
like is essentially is a secular theology. They repeat this
over and over and over again. It's like revolution is
the theology, Revolution is a myth. And it's like and
this is this is something that's just a product of defeat.
(11:39):
It's not a product of sort of taking seriously the
conditions that are emerging around them. And you know, I
was talking about this before the recording. It's like right
after this is written, it's you get the movement of
the squares and then you get occupied, and it's like
basically like every major city in the world goes into revolt.
The revolts are anarchists inspired. And you know, and the desert,
(12:03):
like this is why Dessert vanishes for like six or
seven years, because desert is a piece that's written like
it's it's it's a piece that's that's only happens in
a in a very specific part of a revolutionary cycle,
which is when like every everything has been crushed, all
resistance has been crushed, everyone's losing hope, and then everyone
starts reading dessert again and then the revolutions restart, and
(12:26):
and at that point, like once once once there's like,
you know, two thousand people in the streets again like
fighting the cops, it becomes less and less sort of
like like that, that part of its analysis becomes less
and less relevant, until you know, inevitably everyone like there's
there's a defeat and then everyone goes sort of like
and I think I think that's why it has the
duomer rep because it's it's it's the text that people
(12:48):
read when you've been beaten in the streets. See, Yeah,
that's that's an interesting look at it because I mean,
I definitely agree with the revolution is an idea, like
is a thing like I I specifically within the context
of the United States, which I believe that's what the
books trying to mostly focus on. They do bring up
other parts of the world and stuff, um, but it's
(13:10):
definitely written by in a by an American like citizen
and that that that is I mean, I mean that
that could actually be wrong. Um. It may not be
written by an American, but I in terms of reading it,
it is kind of through like a very like Western
lens of like revolutions not happening here. Um. And I
(13:30):
definitely sympathize and agree with that viewpoint. And I mean
if if you're in a point of being like it
was two US and eleven then occupied happened and like yeah,
but occupied in't. But that that also fits like every
every attempt has not succeeded in this country did to
get any kind of big, meaningful change that we can
push towards something that's like post capitalist. Um. So yeah,
(13:51):
I mean I do think I think it's it's it's
it's mostly targeting people specifically like communists um or Marks
Lendonist who like are just waiting around for the revolution
to happen and then don't do anything like that. Right,
that is that but but but but but I think
this is this is why it's a text that's like
that's not good for the moment, because our problem isn't that,
(14:12):
like like the problem right now isn't that there's no
one like there's no uprising on the horizon, Like everyone's
completely beaten down. No one's ever going to go into
his treats again. Our problem is that like there's just
there's there's there's there's periodic uprisings everywhere, and every single
time everyone is caught off guard, and every single time,
no one is able to actually sort of mobilize off
of it. And you know, like like like no, no one,
(14:35):
no one's been able to like pivot it into something
that's actually like transformative. But but but but I think that
that's a very different problem then the problem that desert
is because desert has already abandoned the possibility that an
uprising can win. That's I mean, it's yeah. And then
let's specifically been the idea of like global revolution, right,
(14:56):
that is, that is the thing that specifically targeting there's
things smaller specific they're saying, like smaller local things actually
can't succeed in a lot of ways. But they're trying
to tie this idea of global revolution is like a
pacifying idea, right just waiting around for this to happen
and tying that to this at the time much more
niche idea. Now it's now it's way more popular. But
(15:17):
this idea of like global collapse and how people think
if they can people think believing in global collapse is
smarter than believing in global revolution. They think it's more realistic.
But the book saying no, this is this idea of
global collapse actually falls under all the same issues that
global revolution has. I think i'd want to um sort
of comments here um with regard to like the defeat
(15:41):
is sort of reading um in the text. I understand
that reading um. I mean personally, I distinguished in like
defeatism and dumerism, and I always think, like my own
personality and my own perspective kind of like inoculates me
in a way from like adopting that kind of defeatist
attitude towards um, you know, change. But I don't think
(16:04):
the book is entirely um, you know, dismissive of like revolution. Um.
It just I think the main thrust of it is
that it's critically the idea of like one global revolution,
one global collapse. What it really emphasizes is that, you know,
climate change brings new possibilities for new anarchies plural to
(16:28):
develop worldwide and responds changing circumstances. But at the same time,
you know, in some areas things are going to get
worse than some areas things are going to get better.
And it's not that really one broadbrush could be applied
to the entire earth, but I think, I mean, I
think like this, this is another thing that they're really
(16:48):
guilty of, especially like there's an entire section in here
where they just keep writing about Africa and it's like well,
and then you know, and they'll get pressed on it
and they'll be like, no, no, we mean sub Saharan Africa,
and it's like, what are you talking like. They they
won't name countries, they won't name movements, they won't name people.
It's just they'll just write something about the whole of
(17:08):
Sub Saharan Africa. And it's just like, well, I think
that's evidence of the kind of of what Garrison was
talking about this, right, And this is something you see
all over the place with people writing about politics, with
people trying to write about like particularly revolutionary politics, UM
in a global sense, and I think it's usually a
mistake to do that, UM for the reasons we've kind
(17:29):
of discussed. Any time I see a left wing even
as somebody who I think is generally on point. Who
starts talking about, for example, like extending their theories about
revolutionary politics to places I happen to know just a
little bit about, it's always very clear like, oh you
don't know shit about Syria. Oh you don't know shit
about Libya. Oh you don't know shit about Angle like um.
(17:51):
And that's and that's like not even a moral failing.
It's just that it's impost It's it's impossible really to
have in depth knowledge of like what's actually going on
in those racism, what's going on in those revolutions. It's
why people default so much to the whole. Well, whatever
side the US is on must be the bad side,
and whatever side the Russians on must be the good side.
It's the easiest way to look at that ship. Um.
(18:12):
I don't I think that's. I think that's a worthwhile
critique to make, and it's a critique to make any
time that it happens. Um. I agree with Garrison and
with Andrew that I think the thing that is that
desert gets right. Um. And the thing that I've seen
in my own life is that like the opportunities we
(18:32):
should be looking for are not suddenly that some sort
of global revolution sweeps all of the things we don't
like out of power and magically institutes something better comprehensively
across the globe. It's it's it's room for little anarchies.
It's what we saw in northeast Syria, right where the
government pulls out and people have an opportunity to do
(18:53):
something not perfect, but better. And I think that is
that's kind of one of the things we talked about
a lot on this show. That's why a mutual aid
is valuable, It's why building these connections are valuable. It's because, um,
as things crumble, there will be opportunities two in local areas,
piecemeal institute and and push through for more just and
(19:15):
and better ways of living. Um And I think that
if you're looking at kind of the broad level potentially
optimistic point is that when you have enough of those
and when they spread well enough, and if communication is
good enough, maybe the things that work will get adopted
on a wider uh scale. And there's always the opportunity
that when enough, when ideas spread far enough, they have
(19:37):
a tipping point and and they go viral, you know,
so to speak. But I I I don't I think
that While there's a lot of specifics that Desert gets wrong,
I do think they were ahead of the curve and
recognizing that, and I think it's it's a more productive
way to look at the idea of revolutionary change. Then
we're going to finally have nineteen seventeen. But everywhere, you know,
(20:00):
m throughout to the Africa chapter. The impression that I
got while reading that chapter, and I think the book
itself references Um Samba Um. I got the impression that
(20:24):
the author had read UM Afghan Anarchism, History of a
movement by Sam Member and they were just kind of
like inspired by that, I would say, because as I
do point out, they didn't like specify the specific cultures,
which is an issue considering, you know, the tendency that
(20:45):
Westerners have of you know, being to Africa this large
brush as if it's you know, all one way or
the other. Um. But I think what we do see now,
UM is you know, from the Horn of Africa to
South Africa to Nigeria too, I mean recently Sudan. I believe, Um,
(21:07):
there are Africans, smaller number organizing under the mount of anarchism,
and they are anarchic elements that continue to persist on
the continent. Yeah, I mean I think that's like, you know,
I mean one of the things that they sort of
got they got right, was about how like this the
sort of the the sort of renewal the spread of
(21:28):
urban anarchism they're talking about like Chile in particular, they
got right, Um, Indonesia Bangladestra somewhat. But but but I
think I think there's there's another like my, my, my, my,
my biggest issue with them in terms of the way
they think about ecological stuff that this comes This is
(21:48):
something they talk about with like they have this thing
where they think that forger societies are like, Okay, they're
they're they're they're they're they're more careful than most people.
To frame it as like the forging soci ideas can
be a gallitarian, but I think they wind up talking
about these sort of like the way that sort of
(22:08):
forging nomadic society sort of inherently defy the boundaries of
the state, and like that's true, but you can also
have like nomadic forging societies that have that are you know,
hereditary slave societies. And this is this is a problem
because there's a there's a lot in here about that
that that's about sort of like they're they're you know,
(22:29):
they're they're taking this a sort of like soft anti
se of right. Yeah, it has a few lids where
it does specifically say fialization is the cause of like
I think it's like the civilization is genocide, um, which yeah,
and that can't silly, Yeah, by civilization genocide. Sure if
(22:53):
they're saying that they do cause genocide, if you're if
you're trying to make the case that it seems to
be that civilizations, Uh, well, I don't know every civilization
does not commit genocide, but no, but civilization gives you
a constant Yeah, civilization gives you the framework that makes
genocide possible, well, like potentially intentional genocide possible. I don't
(23:14):
know that I would agree with that, because I think
you see examples of genocide from hunter gatherer societies and
from from so societies, and that the obviously documentation on
that isn't as extensive because we weren't documenting things for
a lot of it. But you do have examples from
from what we know of like um, the America's of
their word genocides committed by societies we would call stateless.
(23:36):
So I think I might argue that like genocide is
a thing that human beings do, and civilization because it
allows us to do everything on a larger scale, allows
us to do way better genocides. That's definitely in our
I think. I think my problem with it is is
that they're going back into this sort of like that
they're going back into the you know, there's this inherent
binarya between forgers and sales societies and that you know,
(24:00):
and and specifically they think that that that these sorts
that the foragers ideas are you know, inevitably gonna become
a gualantarian. It's like that's not true, and it's not
true in ways that you can see right now in
like like they're like they're like there are lots of
places right now where you can look at you know,
forging anxieties that are incredibly right. Like there's there's like,
for example, you get sort of you get the Filani
(24:21):
joining like right wing Islamas groups, right and that like
that kind of thing. I think it has a problem
with It's the same thing as looking at indigenous societies
and and seeing them all on one side of the
(24:42):
fight with with colonizing nations as supposed I'm reading a
book about the history of them a Poochay right now,
which are historically like the indigenous group in Chile that
resisted the law, and the indigenous group really and you
could argue in all of Latin America that resisted the
longest and most effectively. But even then, when you look
at like the campaign to the Chilean government in the
eighteen sixties and eighteen eighties, large like significant chunks of
(25:04):
the Mapoocha sided with the government against other mapoo Chay
and like that's the like, it's it's always a mistake.
I think this is a good one of the things
that you get out of the dawn of everything. It's
always a mistake to like look at any of these groups,
hunter gatherers, stateless societies is like one thing or another.
They're people and some of them sucked just like yeah
they're yeah anyway, Yeah, there's there's one thing that I
(25:28):
wanted to sort of push back against. Robbert, you had
said that genocide is a thing that humans do. Um.
I don't think I agree with that assessment um in
this sense, or at least I'd rather I would like
to clarify um. Okay, if you an opportunity to clarify
what you mean by that. I you know, I don't
(25:48):
know that it's just humans, but I think that genocide
is a thing that as long as we have evidence
in recorded history, it seems like we have done not
just against are not just against other humans, but against
other kind of hominid species. We have we have examples
of things that it seems fair to call genocide, going
(26:09):
back further than we have any kinds of written records. Um,
you know, villages in the Balkans that were you know,
burnt in people who like groups of people, tribes and whatnot,
who seem to have been killed in mass and you know,
there's there's other theories for some of that. Some of
them may have been like people trying to stop a play.
We don't plague or whatever. Like. There's not any kind
(26:29):
of comprehensive solidity. But what we do know is that
as long as we have documentations of humans doing things,
we have documentations of things that we could call genocide.
I see, I see, look look into that a bit more.
I appreciate the glarification. Yeah, can I can I do
a Balkans pivot because there's a there's a there's a
(26:52):
thing like like it genuinely disturbed me reading it in
here about the Serbs dream read that the Bosnian genocide
were so that they're they're they're quoting. Its disturbing about that.
Oh yeah, but this is this is a I uh okay,
So they're they're they're doing they're they're reading a quote
from the book Gypsies, Wars and Other Instances of the
wild where he's talking this is about the Boston genocide.
(27:16):
How is this possible in Europe at the end of
the twentieth century was the question that played obsessively through
my mind. What the war in former Yugoslavia forced us
to suggest the fact that people proved willing to make
a conscious and active choice to embrace regression, barbarity and
return to the wildness. Take the serve fighters who dreamed
of a return to the Serbia of the epic poems
(27:37):
were quote there was no electricity, no computers, when the
serves were happy and had no cities, the breeding ground
of all evil. And then this is this is the
next thing that's that's the text coming back and commenting
on it that some modern day militias reflect romantic desires,
while shelling towns, massacring villages, and being killed in turn
should neither surprise us nor necessarily fully validate romance. It does, however, suggest,
(28:03):
along with the honest expression of joy and destruction mouth
by some soldiers in every war, as well as many anarchists,
that there was a coupling of some sort between a
generalized urge to destroy and disgusted at a complex human society.
And there's there's there's another part um only later on
they're talking about ethnic diversity and autonomy will often emerge
(28:23):
both from mutual aid and community and animosity between communities.
I'd like to think, and our history back this up,
that self adantified anarchists will never inflict such pain as
Serb nationalist militias, an example that shows purposely for the Repugnicans.
But we should admit that our wish to function up
is partly driven by the same urge to civilizational dismemberment
that can be found in many interethnic conflicts and in
(28:44):
the minds of fighters more generally. And I think that's fucked.
I think that's true. That's just I think there's commenting
a specific type of anarchist literature, which is like the
make total destroy thing. And yeah, I've definitely I have
observed that in people the same the same urge that
(29:04):
you're you're so broken down by everything that the only
urge that is the only creative urge you have is
to destroy the things around you. I've seen that. I
don't think they're necessarily celebrating that, but they're pointing out
that that urge can be there. When I think they
get really wrong here is that I don't think that's
(29:26):
the urge that that is is like that, that's when
when when you're dealing with interethnic conflict, when you're dealing
with genocide, I don't think that's the urge that's going on.
It'sc s pratically with the Serbs, because the Serbs, like
you know, okay, like when when when an anarchist is
doing mate total destroying right there, you know there, like there,
there's there's a very specific set of things they're attacking
or they're you know, they're attacking building, the attacking the
physical infrastructure of the world. When the Serbs are doing
(29:48):
the Bosnian genocide, like that, they have a very specific
thing they're doing, which is killing Bosnian Muslims. And I
think that's extremely different urge than the sort of like
I don't. I don't think that's about sort of what
it's civilizational dismemberment or whatever. That's about Islamophobia and genocide.
And I think that's a different I think the genocidal
(30:10):
impulse is a I think a very different one than
the sort of the like the impulse to break the
society that has harmed you. Yeah, I think it's important
to draw a distinction between you can kill a shipload
of people without it being a genocide, um. And I
think and it's also one of those things I think
sometimes why people I think why there's hesitation to see
(30:33):
certain acts in early history of genocide is that they're
not as complete as modern genocide. But but what a
genocide really is, and I think it's important to lay
this out. It's not necessarily killing every member of an
ethnic group or a religious group or whatever kind of community. UM.
It is stopping their ability to propagate and continue themselves.
That's why things like destroying churches and destroying the cultural
(30:54):
distoral markers are part of genocide. And it's also why
a lot of genocides they left the women and children alive.
They would kill all the men, and they would take
the women in and they would breed with them. They
might kill the kids sometimes, but it was this The
goal was not necessarily where we need to kill all
of you, it's we want to kill this, this culture,
this population. Um I think the I think, yeah, I
(31:15):
think the parallel he's trying to make here or there
or she? Uh? Is that? Uh? That like that type
of like genocidal cultural destruction is targeted against specific groups.
The difference here is with this type of like you know,
he's he's writting this for other anarchists. He's pointing out,
like our destructive urge, our cultural urge isn't even for
(31:39):
a specific group, it's just for everything, and that can
be unhealthy sometimes sometimes there's ways to do make total destroy.
That's totally fine, but that can go to unhealthy places. Now,
he's not equating like ethnic cleansing with that. He's like
they are like they are different. But when when your
total destroy urges against all of culture, then yeah, that
(32:02):
that can like that's something you should probably ponder. Yeah,
I mean that's definitely I would agree that that's the
thing that's potentially problematic. Right, Like with a number of
different desires. Uh, there's a way in which that can
lead to people doing really fucked up things. Yeah, it's
like it's like it's pointing out that that type of
accelerationism not specific to ideology, but just like accelerationism in general.
(32:25):
I mean, I think when I when I talk about
things like the fact that because not every culture commits
genocides and every civil civilization does, um, and throughout history
there have been more that found the idea repugnant than
found the idea acceptable. Um. But it is really a
consistent thing in history. And I think the lesson with
that isn't necessarily that everything could end in genocide. So
(32:46):
I don't think the lesson is necessarily like, oh you
should look at make total destroy as if you know,
the this kind of trend in anarchist thought could lead
to genocide. It's that people in groups are nearly always
capable of killing a shipload of other people for a
variety of reasons if applied in the proper ways, And
so those of us who seek mass movement should always
(33:08):
be conscious of that, because human beings in large groups
can do wonderful things, but there's a long history of
them doing really fucked up ship sometimes in ways that
surprised the people that got the large group of human
beings together in the first place. The other thing I
(33:31):
wanted to bring up this kind of more circling back
to the dum kind of idea UM, because yeah, a
big part of the book is trying purposely is to
disolution people with this idea of global revolution and dissolution
people with the idea that we can save the earth
because we can't UM. So that's a big thing. And
first I think I think for some people, if you
(33:53):
stop right there and you that's how you end that thought, Yes,
that does lead to dumorism, obviously, like that that is,
that is, but the books, the book doesn't stop there.
The book continues on from there. Now they continue on
from a nihilistic standpoint. I'm not a nihilist. I prefer absurdism.
I prefer discordionism. But those two things are pretty caught
like there. They are more similar than not. UM is
(34:17):
that you can be disillusioned with global revolution and the
idea to save the earth, but that should not change
what we do or how we feel or operate as anarchists.
It's not that we should be disillusioned and then do
nothing and step aside that we should be disillusioned, and
then find that disillusionment itself a form of liberation, like
(34:41):
the freeing nature of being free from this idea of
revolution is that like, no, we are living our lives now.
Don't live for a revolution. Live your life now and
do things now, because that's what you actually have. So
it's like that type of nihilistic, absurdist discordion things. This is,
this is, this is this is where I come back
have a problems with it again because this this is
(35:01):
literally just there is no alternative except it's it's yeah,
and that's do anargy. But I mean, but that's how
I live like that like that, I think, I think
this is a bad I think that's a bad plan.
And I think if if you look, if you look
at what happens with because you know, this, this was
the thing that was really big in the American anarchist movement,
(35:22):
like in you know, from about just and seventeen like
roughly now, and it's like people were rising too. Yeah
that didn't succeed like that, like not really like but
I think like like this is like I think I
think this is like like one of the reasons it
didn't work, Like, okay, this is like the thing that's important.
One of the things is the point of revolutions, even
(35:42):
when they don't succeed, is that for a very brief window,
you actually can like it becomes it becomes possible to
imagine the other world. And what what What this entire
thing is saying is don't do that. That's not that's
not that's that's that's that is not what it absolutely not.
This is okay, I can I finish that sentence? Yeah,
Like yeah, okay, so what what what what? What I'm
(36:03):
saying here is that what what they've abandoned, right, the
thing that they're giving up when they when they give
up revolution, when they're like this is a progressive myth,
this is like uh theology. What what they've abandoned completely
is our human capacity to actually shape a different world.
What they're arguing is that like the the you know,
(36:26):
essentially that the combination of ecological and social forces are
strong enough that humans humans no longer have the capacity
to reshape the world into a way that is different
than this, and that this is now the eternal present,
and you know, and and yeah, inside of the eternal present.
They're saying, you should be fighting for the same things
you should be fighting for, like you know, you should.
(36:47):
You should be in your own sort of local domain.
You should be like, I mean, there are some of
the recommendations are wild, Like I think, I think their
conservation stuff is sketchy given, I mean, it doesn't but
it doesn't apply to an eternal present though, Like they
lay out, like the world is changing a lot and
(37:08):
will for the next fifty years, Like there will be
massive changes and how things are set up in the
next like in the next century, and we need to
take advantage of that. We need to turn those liabilities
into assets and start making those little anarchies like that.
That that is what it's trying to do. And I
would add as well that as it points out the
situations in plastic stooke in Bangladesh, a difference in the
(37:32):
present and will be in the future. You know. What
I think is is trying to be sort of drilled
in here is that at least in the text and
how I read it um is that yes, things will
be different in different parts to wood and probably maybe
they won't be this, you know, or as the what
(37:52):
this is they won't be you know, this one global revolution.
But at the end of the day, Um, I think
what it's trying to emphasize is that we don't have
the structures. And I think what part of what is
trying to emphasize is that we don't have instructures in
place right now to launch an instruction we can meaningfully defend.
And so that is the sort of thing we should
(38:13):
be focusing on. But but but they, but they, but
this and this, this, this is going back to my
problem with it, going going back to the thing where
they go on the rant about how anarchists are like
a permanent cultural majority and will never become a majority.
Is that even even in situations where people had that
capacity and did it they go back, they project back
onto it, go no, no, no, no no, they couldn't have
(38:34):
done that. Like, it's it's not about it's it's it's
they they have a belief and this is something that
they do explicitly say that that anarchist will always be
a permanent minority right there. There will always be an
active but permanent minority. And that is the like like
that specifically, I think is just an actual rejection of
(38:55):
the belief that we collectively can make a better future.
Because if if, if you think our ideas that you know,
if being free right, if if a society, if you
think that that is permanently always going to be a minority,
you are you know, you are condemning. You're condemning the
future to the people who don't believe that. And and
(39:19):
I I understand why, especially if you know, if, if, if,
if the only thing you've ever known is fifty years
of when the new Liberals actually did the thing right.
They took over the entire world, restructure of the entire
world economy, seized every government. Like if if that's what
you live through, I understand why you would think that.
But I think the fact that it was possible to
(39:40):
do it from the other direction is in some ways
a sense that like, yeah, we could do it too.
I don't know, Sorry, I will stop harping on this
one specific point. It just extremely annoys me. I think
it's not giving up the idea that the world can
be better. It's that like, we don't need to have
the majority of people be anarchists to make the old better.
(40:00):
We can still spread our own anarchies and people don't
need to self subscribe as anarchists. But as long as
we start building those systems in the places around us,
people start using them, and people might start like living
them out, even if they don't call themselves anarchists, right, Like,
the majority of people will probably prefer some some type
of state or government. Right. You can even look at
ROSA and be like, yeah, it's still is state issue
(40:23):
in some ways, but some ways not, right, Like, it's
it's going We're not going to get an anarchist world.
That's not going to happen, but we can make it
better through the lens of anarchy. And I think that's
what it's kind of trying to say. Yeah, I I
think it's it's worth acknowledging that, Like, yeah, the majority
of people are never going to be what anarchists are
right now, which is people who comprehensively reject the systems
(40:46):
they live in. Most people are always going to think
more like well, I want to be comfortable, I want
to I support changes kind of that that, you know,
fix this thing that I've noticed as a problem or
that thing. Most people are never going to comprehensively reject
the system. But I do have hope that in time
and given you know space to build things and show
people other ways and improve life for people. You can
(41:08):
get to a point where most people believe a lot
of the things that I think are important. Yeah, And
I think that's what's time. I think that's sorry. I
think that's what the as specificitis UM tend to advocate
for in terms of through the process of social institution
in these larger movements, generalizing the ideas of anarchist ideas
(41:31):
as a whole, making them more common throughout the population.
It's only trying to get each and every poost in
the world to self identify as an anarchist, communist or whatever.
It's more so that you're trying to spread these ideas
to the point where they are I suppose the common
sentiment the popular will Yeah, like I it's it's um.
(41:55):
That's like the point of culture jamming and and and
ship like that. Like it's the the idea that like
it doesn't so much matter, like like like what matters
is inserting the things you think are important into the
culture and getting people to identify with them and understand them.
The terms that they specifically use aren't aren't as important,
(42:15):
like that that's not really what matters. Well, Okay, I
don't think they're arguing that though, because I mean, like
do they have lines like this. We cannot, however, remake
the entire world. There are not enough of us, there
never will be. But then you know, they like they
they specifically talk about the oh well, they don't have
to all be anarchists, and you know, I mean, here's
their line. There was unfortunately little little evidence from history
(42:36):
that the working class, never mind anyone else, is intrinically
predisposed to libertarian and ecological revolution. Thousands of years of
authoritarian socialization favor of the jack boot. Neither we nor
anyone else could create a libertarian or global or ecological
global future by expanding social movements further. There is no
reason to think that in the absence of such a
vast expanse, the global transformation concurrent toward desires will ever happen.
(42:59):
I think, I think think the keyword there is global, Like, yeah,
that's they're trying to break with that, and it's important,
like they're writing this specifically for anarchists who are kind
of already nihilistic, kind of already anti sif right, they
are writing this for other anarchists that this isn't a
book to radicalize a normy or a communist by anarchists
for other anarchists to be like, hey, you already kind
(43:21):
of think the world's kind of going to ship. Here's
a way that we can still do things despite the
world being shitty. Because once you're once you're disillusioned, it's
hard to be illusioned again. Like it's it's hard once
you give up on the idea of global revolution, once
you give up in the idea of global collapse, it's
(43:41):
hard to re enter those even if you see things
happening the world, like there can still be uprisings and revolts, absolutely,
but there is a distinction of between uprising and the
revolts and like a global revolution right and specifically like
the Marxist Leninist sounds. And I'd also like to um
continue the paragraph you're reading from there. We had said
(44:02):
that as anarchists, sweet he had said, or they had
said that, as anarchists, we are not the seed of
the future society in the shell of the old, but
merely one of many elements from which the future is forming.
That's okay. When faced with such scale and complexity, there
is value in non servile humility, even for in such Yeah,
but this this is just this is just giving up.
(44:23):
This is this is the old. It's too complicated, it's
too like and like I think, I don't know, like
it's it's it's it's giving up on it's giving up
on trying to do any kind of on on like
humans as a whole, trying to do any kind of
large scale like you know, like it's trying to do
transformation of what the society. I disagree to continue that
(44:45):
that coote to give up hope for global anarchists. Revolution
is not to resign oneself to anarchy, remaining any to protest.
Seaweed puts it well. Revolution is not everywhere or nowhere.
Any bioregion can be liberated through a succession of events,
and strategy is based in the conditions unique to it,
mostly as the grip of facilitation that area weakens through
its own volition for the efforts of its inhabitants. So
(45:08):
aization didn't succeed every at once, and so it's undoing
might only occur to varying degrees in different places at
different times. Even if an area is seemingly fully under
the control of authority, there are always places to go
to live in, to love in, and to resist from,
and we can extend those spaces. The global situation may
seem beyond us, but the local never is. And I
(45:30):
think that's beautiful. I think that's like a That's one
of the things that keeps me alive is ideas like that, honestly.
And at the same time, I also hold the opinion
that none of us, including this author, is a fortune teller,
you know. The desert's picture of the future is not
the only possibility, you know, And I think in a
(45:52):
lot of ways and a lot of always I believe
that they can and have already been proven wrong, you know. Like,
and there's an issue that I really take a lot
of contention with the book. Part of the book that
really pisces me off is the sort of persistence of
the overpopulation myth. Yeah, I don't remember it being so
(46:14):
consistent since I reread it um a couple of weeks ago.
And also this sort of nonchalance the author seems to
have about like mass die offs and that kind of thing,
you know. I think that that's very troubling to me.
That's very specific to It's a type of anti sive
literature that's like we view civilization is going to progress
(46:35):
towards Jenna side anyway, and the way to actually avoid
more deaths is to kind of help the collapse along
because that will end civilization quicker. So therefore less people,
less people will be born, and less people will have
to die. So that's the type of thinking they have.
I don't necessarily agree with that, um necessarily, but like, yeah,
(46:55):
that is that is very typical of this type of literature.
So it gets because it is written mostly for other
anti sid anarchists, but like, yeah, it's not like pro genocide.
It's saying genocide will happen. So the way to make
less of it is to actually kind of slowly start
kind of help helping the crumbles along essentially and while
(47:17):
still you know, making people's lives better in your immediate community,
like with that, with that very local focus. So again
not not saying I necessarily agree with that, but that's
the that's the type of thought it's engaging with. I mean,
I think that's true of some of it. But there
is definitely a lot of like panic about there's going
(47:39):
to be nine billion people and like population grows. All
the over population stuff is a little iffy. You know,
there is a there's a discussion to have on caring capacity,
but we are not there yet. We right now we
way overproduced for them for the amount of people we have. Yeah,
that and that I don't know. That also fresh it
(48:00):
in me immensely. They're like, yeah, we we have consider
they're talking about carring capacity right and they're like, oh,
we already can't. We have a billion people going hungry.
And it's like, yeah, but that's not about the carrying capacity.
That's just that's that's destrition. Which was literally that and
that idea gained more prevalence after Dessert was written. We
kind of more understood, like like culturally that it is
(48:22):
a distribution issue not necessarily a production issue. Now we
do overproduce, right because and the amount of production we
have contributes this tough like climate change and that is bad.
So we should tone down production, but we should make
the ways that it's more sustainable and ecological. Um. Yeah,
I think that does point towards the data nature of
the text. I think Also my last like thing with
(48:42):
it is I think I think it could have benefited
a lot from like in an indigenous stewardship perspective, because
the way it thinks about its particularly the way things
but wildness versus conservation is just very messy, and yeah,
if it falls, it falls. It does a better job
(49:04):
of it than some other antis of things that I've seen,
but it definitely falls into the like trap of like,
here is the wild and then any attempt to manage
it is uh, you know, is civilization and you need
to go back to the wild, and it's like, well,
this is already stewarded and managed. That is the one. Yeah,
(49:27):
it does fall on that slope of like nature being
another that is sacred, which isn't necessarily a great idea,
nor is it really true. Yeah, this is very two
ten two ten. Yeah, right, So I think the book
is critical conceitation and that sort of binary way, and
I agree that indigenous stewardship perspective was sorely needed. But
(49:51):
at the same time, I do think that the way
that the book criticizes um wherever just points out um
the sual conservation may have been and may still be
new for some people. You know, the idea that these
sorts of government conservation projects which sort of preside over
(50:15):
this sort of static vision of nature and ecology and
stuff that is supposedly threatened by humanity. UM. I think
criticizing that approach to nature it's good. I mean the
sort of romanticization of the wild that is very typical
of anti Seve text and thought. UM is very much
(50:38):
anti Sieve. But I do believe that people should look
ah or should rather resist these sorts of conservation impulse.
As I was rereading it a couple of weeks ago,
(50:58):
I wanted to know, UM, what you guy's thoughts of
the section of the book that speaks of the different
modern different the the idea of fourth and fifth generation
war Oh boy, that's a UM that has been UM
sort of a contributional approach to analyzing conflict so figured
(51:25):
out as you have been in you know, actual war
zoons robot that you might have a thing to see. UM.
I mean, it's the kind of thing that we should
probably cover in in detail on because this is a
lot of like William Lynde stuff. I think he's the
guy who came up with the idea of like fourth
generation war less at least and it's UM. It's basically
(51:47):
the idea. It's the idea that warfare UM today is
conducted through a lot of stuff that's not conventional weaponry, right,
So stuff like UM, like like like putting networks together
to like push social division, you know through UM, social
media UM, or carrying out cyber attacks on infrastructure, disinformation UM,
(52:10):
all of that kind of stuff, which is I think accurate.
I've been reporting on what you could call fifth generation
warfare since some UM. I think it's I think to
the extent that it's relevant here. I think one thing
that people on the left need to acknowledge is that
they have UM been blindsided by the effectiveness that the
(52:33):
far right has adapted to UM the key components of
this kind of warfare. And I think nothing is more
key than social engineering and disinformation UM. And they've been
much more successful at it over the last release in
twos and fifteen in particular, UM than the left hast
by basically everywhere, every single and by I think, every
(52:56):
single measure of of success. And I think this is
something we should say in depth for another day, UM.
But I think that it is worth acknowledging that this
is And I also think that and this is again
part of a bigger conversation. We talked about the concept
of like culture jamming. When we talked about like Operation
mind Fuck you know, which is Discordian idea. Um, all
(53:18):
of which you can see is kind of pre predecessors
to the concepts of fifth generation warfare. I think there's
a strong argument to be made that those efforts by
leftists in the eighties and nineties in particular, actually contributed
to the substantial right wing victories that we're seeing right
now in this space. UM. And I think maybe it's
(53:39):
I think there's a number of reasons for that, um,
including some to some extent, the idea of arrogance that
um that what that we were just too smart, that
they were never going to figure out how to utilize
the same means we had, or to kind of judo
like take the momentum for that and spin it around
on us. But they were and they did, and um, yeah,
that'll that'll lead into another or episode. We'll have to
(54:00):
talk about this in more detail. That's something like Grant
Morrison actually talks a lot about in regards to discordionism
and this type of how how you know he used
to work for a company called Disinformation back when disinformation
was Yeah, and now it's like one of the leading
castes of mass death in the world right, So he
(54:21):
that is something that Morrison talks about a lot in
terms of how they did have that arrogance and now
the same forces that they used in hopes of making
the world better and now being used to regress the
world and make it worse. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I had
a big copy of Disinformation on my coffee table when
I was nineteen. I just ordered good there's some fun
(54:45):
essays in their garret. Um, all right, that'll probably, I mean,
did you have more to say on that? And yeah,
I just wanted to say that, you know, regardless of
the unsettent future, UM, regardless of your stands on get
its message however flawed. UM here now as the minor
(55:07):
goods in Alice Huxley's Island so often repeat UM, we
can and should pay attention to what we can do
to support ourselves for whatever outcome you go through, you know,
projects within the spaces we inhabit. I believe that anarchism
could be the seed of the new will. I do
(55:27):
believe that we have an impact a huge impact on
society and on politics, and I believe there are still
many possibilities for liberty still. Yeah, I do as well.
I think that acknowledging you know, failures both of of
of you know ideas and of methods doesn't mean giving
(55:51):
up hope or or ignoring the successes of those same
things which which we're are also present. Um yeah, so
I don't know, stay optimistic. Read something. Uh doesn't have
to beat eert, but just go go read a thing.
Go read yeah, back of your shampoo. B but especially
if it's Dr Brauner's a lot of good stuff in there. Um,
(56:14):
all right, that's gonna do it for us this week.
Take care for today. At least it could happen here
as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(56:36):
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening.
It could happen. Here is the podcast that you're listening
to right now. I'm Robert Evans. All right, that's that's
my job done. What are we What are we doing?
What are we doing today? Hey? What's up? Hey? Andrew?
Back at it again with another podcast. UM. Today, we're
doing something a little bit different from the previous episodes
(00:27):
that I've done. We're having a bit more of an
open discussion about certain book that has been passed around
for about a decade now and as polarized UM members
of the anarchist community. UM for it that way, UM.
(00:48):
Today we'll be talking about the book the infamous uh
polemic Desert by Anonymous. For those who uh, you know,
not aware of this extremely controversial text. Desert is a
(01:09):
nihilist anarchist text who is published in two thousand eleven
that is mainly directed at other anarchists and seeks to
address issues of climate collapse and revolution. It became somewhat
of a meme to tell folks to read Dessert. I'm
not sure when that was, but I just remember scene.
It's a lot um I think in yeah around read
(01:35):
Desert became a name yeah yeah, all over Twitter and
Instagram and Reddit, but of course, being a thing that
exists on the Internet, people who naturally became torn on
the subject of it. And so there are a lot
of perspectives and opinions and think pieces about desert, some
(02:00):
more or less accurate than others. But we are here
to discuss the book, all personal experiences reading it, things
we think it gets right and wrong, and what we
could potentially looen going forward, so I would see the
floor is yours, whoever wants to go first. I mean,
(02:25):
I'm a huge fan of the quote that the book
takes it or that the that it takes its name from,
which comes from you know, Tacitus, who was a dude
writing in the Roman period Um, and the exact quote
that it comes from is and he's talking. Tacitus is
talking about the Roman Empire, robbers of the world. Now
that the earth is insufficient for their all devastating hands,
(02:47):
they probe even the sea. If their enemy is rich,
they are greedy. If he is poor, they thirst for dominion.
Neither East nor West has satisfied them alone. Of mankind,
they are equally covetous of poverty and wealth, robbery, slaughter,
and plunder. They falsely name empire, they make a desert
and they call it peace. Huh, goodass quote. It is
(03:09):
a it is a solid Yeah, And obviously I think
people living in the shadows of every empire that's ever
existed can identify with that quote. Um, it's it's a
powerful kind of central idea to hang your extended essay.
I don't really know what the best term to refer
to it as. Yeah, it's it's it's it's a long essay. Yeah,
(03:33):
it's a very long essay. As we talked about kind
of coming into this, it's extremely two thousand tens um
three Arab Spring pre all the big uprisings and revolts
we had in twenty nineteen, and Um, there's definitely some
stuff that it gets very right. And I think kind
of one of the ways in which it's had an
(03:55):
impact on me is kind of I've I've thought about
what happens to sort of culture as the result of
this kind of Hollywood engine that is heavily tied up
with the United States military Industrial complex UM as a
process of desertification of ideas and the ability to like
conceive of of of new futures. UM. That said, I
(04:20):
I don't really I haven't reread it in a very
long time and haven't really felt um called to in
in many ways because I do think I don't know.
I think there's an extent to which it's been kind
of left behind. Um yeah, some of the things that
have happened since I think. Yeah, UM, I will say
(04:41):
that as someone who really came into my owners an
archist in like, although I had identified with it before, um,
when I had read the book, Um, I think it
was in late late so when I read the book
(05:03):
first time, I read it and honestly, um, there was
some good, some add some some very outdated stuff, and
also some stuff that I don't know. Maybe the author
felt it was like groundbreak and at the time, but
you know, at this present stage just feels like common
(05:28):
knowledge sense, you know, I mean it was, it was
groundbreaking in a way for like climate realism, right, like
this was this was written before you know, this is
written before climate levy thing. This was written before um,
the uninhabitable Earth. This was written before a lot of
kind of the texts that view climate change is an
(05:51):
absolute Like this was written one year before hyper objects,
Which is really interesting actually because you know, the whole
prepence of that book is that climate change is done,
like it happened, where we're like there's no turning back
the clock. And the Desert was written even before that,
like it was. It was one of the first things
now and of course it's it's it's much more niche,
(06:11):
but like it was. If I if I look back
in books that have like impacted me, it was it's
one of the first books like that came out, like
timeline wise to take climate changes, like yeah, it's there's
no saving it, like there's no living in the two thousand's,
there's no living in the nineties. Again, it's like things
are like the world's not going to end, but things
(06:32):
are going to get worse, right like and that, and
that is kind of a big, big part of the
book because it's it's also it's also not pro collapse
like it it doesn't take collapse is an absolute. It
doesn't take. It doesn't it doesn't subscribe to global collapse.
And that's one of the misconceptions I think people have
about them. Yeah, that they just assume it's like this
collapse dumorous like mr. Rupic kind of text, but which
(06:56):
I did not read it as that. I first started
around this same time you did, UM, And I read
it as a part of a lot of books I
was reading to prep for the show when we when
we were writing our first five episodes on like on
climate change and like the Crumbles. So I read it,
read it as a part of my kind of general
research and yeah, like at that point it was already
(07:18):
kind of mimified to be like, you know, like an
anarcho nihilist like Dumer Manifesto. And I read it, I'm like,
that's not what it's saying at all. It's actually once
i'd read it, I was like, I was really taking
it back at how how easily um, popular perceptions of
(07:38):
a piece of media good um, I mean honestly corrupted
beyond recognition. Yeah, you know, like if people are a
bunch of people are telling you know it's that about
is in text or whatever, you know, it's kind of shake,
it kind of shakes the opposite like actually consumed for
yourself and then realize, how did you all get that? Yeah,
(08:00):
how did you read that out of it? It is
really interesting because I'm not even sure if they did
read out of it, or if that was the perception
they had going into it, So they read it through
that lens, and that lens basically you know, changed the
text in their heads to fit that thing, because yea,
it is really interesting how how it is so associated
with like dumerism um. Yet if you like, engage in
good faith with the text, it's very much not a
(08:22):
Doomer manifesto anyway, although there are aspects of it that
I am um that I think attitude wise, that I
am critical of. But I think Chris was going to
say sometimes, yeah, so I was just like, I, I
really I've always not liked this book, Like I read
it back, and I think she doesn'teen when it was
first sort of like coming back, yeah, And I didn't
(08:44):
like it then, and I read it this morning and
I like it even less now than I did then,
And I think, I think, I actually I actually okay. So, like,
I think it's true that most of the text doesn't
do the duomer thing, but I think I understand where
people got it from, because you know, you have quotes
in this like, uh, here here's one. Yet I can
already hear the accusations from my own camp, accusations of
(09:05):
deserting the cause of revolution, deserting the struggle for another world,
such accusations are correct. I would rejoin that such millinarian
and progressive myths are at the core of the expansion
of power. And this is this is what I really like.
I think from an ecological perspective, it's sort of okay.
I strongly dislike Desert as an anarchist text because I
think that's just wrong. I think, I think, I think
(09:27):
there's there there's there's there's an ingrained defeatism in it
that is so strong that it it it just it
like warps the author's perception of the past. Like you
get these things where he's talking about these these kind
of he's talking about like the you know, what you
call the classical anarchist movement from roughly like eighteen seventy
two really sort of ends with the defeat of the
(09:48):
anarchists in Spain and like seven and and he you know,
they say things like from Spain pre nineteen thirty six
to the Jewish anarchists in North America, the illegalist of France,
and the Italian anarchosenty close to Argentina. The habitants of
anarchist counter societies were always, by definition active minorities. The
minorities may have gotten larger in an instructionary moments, but
they remained at minorities always and that's just wrong. It's
(10:11):
it's factually wrong. Like these these movements were not minorities,
like the like the entire like the like the largest
union in France was the CG like in the early
Action hundred was the the you just see it this
deep that all all of the French, Spanish and Portuguese
(10:32):
country speaking countries have a they have one union that's
called the U G C and one union it's called
the CG T. And I can't remember which ones which,
but like like that was that was the largest union
in France, and it was the syndicalist union right like
it was like and there's you know the same thing
with Argentina, right for a like for a while was
the largest union in Argentina. And I think and this
this is sort of my problem with this, which is
that you know, this is a person who's basically like
(10:55):
they talked about, like they are born in the seventies
and they've they they're writing the steals in eleven in
just the midst of the collapse of sort of like
the complete and total destruction of the old anarchist movement, right,
the anarchist movement that had been born out of sort
of like the Zapatistas and the anti globalization movements. And
they've been beaten so badly that you know, I mean
(11:18):
they were crushed, they were completely destroyed, and they've been
beaten so badly that they they can't they literally can't
imagine winning and think that like like revolution in general,
like is essentially is a secular theology. They repeat this
over and over and over again. It's like revolution is
the theology, Revolution is a myth. And it's like and
this is this is something that's just a product of defeat.
(11:39):
It's not a product of sort of taking seriously the
conditions that are emerging around them. And you know, I
was talking about this before the recording. It's like right
after this is written, it's you get the movement of
the squares and then you get occupied, and it's like
basically like every major city in the world goes into revolt.
The revolts are anarchists inspired. And you know, and the desert,
(12:03):
like this is why Dessert vanishes for like six or
seven years, because desert is a piece that's written like
it's it's it's a piece that's that's only happens in
a in a very specific part of a revolutionary cycle,
which is when like every everything has been crushed, all
resistance has been crushed, everyone's losing hope, and then everyone
starts reading dessert again and then the revolutions restart, and
(12:26):
and at that point, like once once once there's like,
you know, two thousand people in the streets again like
fighting the cops, it becomes less and less sort of
like like that, that part of its analysis becomes less
and less relevant, until you know, inevitably everyone like there's
there's a defeat and then everyone goes sort of like
and I think I think that's why it has the
duomer rep because it's it's it's the text that people
(12:48):
read when you've been beaten in the streets. See, Yeah,
that's that's an interesting look at it because I mean,
I definitely agree with the revolution is an idea, like
is a thing like I I specifically within the context
of the United States, which I believe that's what the
books trying to mostly focus on. They do bring up
other parts of the world and stuff, um, but it's
(13:10):
definitely written by in a by an American like citizen
and that that that is I mean, I mean that
that could actually be wrong. Um. It may not be
written by an American, but I in terms of reading it,
it is kind of through like a very like Western
lens of like revolutions not happening here. Um. And I
(13:30):
definitely sympathize and agree with that viewpoint. And I mean
if if you're in a point of being like it
was two US and eleven then occupied happened and like yeah,
but occupied in't. But that that also fits like every
every attempt has not succeeded in this country did to
get any kind of big, meaningful change that we can
push towards something that's like post capitalist. Um. So yeah,
(13:51):
I mean I do think I think it's it's it's
it's mostly targeting people specifically like communists um or Marks
Lendonist who like are just waiting around for the revolution
to happen and then don't do anything like that. Right,
that is that but but but but but I think
this is this is why it's a text that's like
that's not good for the moment, because our problem isn't that,
(14:12):
like like the problem right now isn't that there's no
one like there's no uprising on the horizon, Like everyone's
completely beaten down. No one's ever going to go into
his treats again. Our problem is that like there's just
there's there's there's there's periodic uprisings everywhere, and every single
time everyone is caught off guard, and every single time,
no one is able to actually sort of mobilize off
of it. And you know, like like like no, no one,
(14:35):
no one's been able to like pivot it into something
that's actually like transformative. But but but but I think that
that's a very different problem then the problem that desert
is because desert has already abandoned the possibility that an
uprising can win. That's I mean, it's yeah. And then
let's specifically been the idea of like global revolution, right,
(14:56):
that is, that is the thing that specifically targeting there's
things smaller specific they're saying, like smaller local things actually
can't succeed in a lot of ways. But they're trying
to tie this idea of global revolution is like a
pacifying idea, right just waiting around for this to happen
and tying that to this at the time much more
niche idea. Now it's now it's way more popular. But
(15:17):
this idea of like global collapse and how people think
if they can people think believing in global collapse is
smarter than believing in global revolution. They think it's more realistic.
But the book saying no, this is this idea of
global collapse actually falls under all the same issues that
global revolution has. I think i'd want to um sort
of comments here um with regard to like the defeat
(15:41):
is sort of reading um in the text. I understand
that reading um. I mean personally, I distinguished in like
defeatism and dumerism, and I always think, like my own
personality and my own perspective kind of like inoculates me
in a way from like adopting that kind of defeatist
attitude towards um, you know, change. But I don't think
(16:04):
the book is entirely um, you know, dismissive of like revolution. Um.
It just I think the main thrust of it is
that it's critically the idea of like one global revolution,
one global collapse. What it really emphasizes is that, you know,
climate change brings new possibilities for new anarchies plural to
(16:28):
develop worldwide and responds changing circumstances. But at the same time,
you know, in some areas things are going to get
worse than some areas things are going to get better.
And it's not that really one broadbrush could be applied
to the entire earth, but I think, I mean, I
think like this, this is another thing that they're really
(16:48):
guilty of, especially like there's an entire section in here
where they just keep writing about Africa and it's like well,
and then you know, and they'll get pressed on it
and they'll be like, no, no, we mean sub Saharan Africa,
and it's like, what are you talking like. They they
won't name countries, they won't name movements, they won't name people.
It's just they'll just write something about the whole of
(17:08):
Sub Saharan Africa. And it's just like, well, I think
that's evidence of the kind of of what Garrison was
talking about this, right, And this is something you see
all over the place with people writing about politics, with
people trying to write about like particularly revolutionary politics, UM
in a global sense, and I think it's usually a
mistake to do that, UM for the reasons we've kind
(17:29):
of discussed. Any time I see a left wing even
as somebody who I think is generally on point. Who
starts talking about, for example, like extending their theories about
revolutionary politics to places I happen to know just a
little bit about, it's always very clear like, oh you
don't know shit about Syria. Oh you don't know shit
about Libya. Oh you don't know shit about Angle like um.
(17:51):
And that's and that's like not even a moral failing.
It's just that it's impost It's it's impossible really to
have in depth knowledge of like what's actually going on
in those racism, what's going on in those revolutions. It's
why people default so much to the whole. Well, whatever
side the US is on must be the bad side,
and whatever side the Russians on must be the good side.
It's the easiest way to look at that ship. Um.
(18:12):
I don't I think that's. I think that's a worthwhile
critique to make, and it's a critique to make any
time that it happens. Um. I agree with Garrison and
with Andrew that I think the thing that is that
desert gets right. Um. And the thing that I've seen
in my own life is that like the opportunities we
(18:32):
should be looking for are not suddenly that some sort
of global revolution sweeps all of the things we don't
like out of power and magically institutes something better comprehensively
across the globe. It's it's it's room for little anarchies.
It's what we saw in northeast Syria, right where the
government pulls out and people have an opportunity to do
(18:53):
something not perfect, but better. And I think that is
that's kind of one of the things we talked about
a lot on this show. That's why a mutual aid
is valuable, It's why building these connections are valuable. It's because, um,
as things crumble, there will be opportunities two in local areas,
piecemeal institute and and push through for more just and
(19:15):
and better ways of living. Um And I think that
if you're looking at kind of the broad level potentially
optimistic point is that when you have enough of those
and when they spread well enough, and if communication is
good enough, maybe the things that work will get adopted
on a wider uh scale. And there's always the opportunity
that when enough, when ideas spread far enough, they have
(19:37):
a tipping point and and they go viral, you know,
so to speak. But I I I don't I think
that While there's a lot of specifics that Desert gets wrong,
I do think they were ahead of the curve and
recognizing that, and I think it's it's a more productive
way to look at the idea of revolutionary change. Then
we're going to finally have nineteen seventeen. But everywhere, you know,
(20:00):
m throughout to the Africa chapter. The impression that I
got while reading that chapter, and I think the book
itself references Um Samba Um. I got the impression that
(20:24):
the author had read UM Afghan Anarchism, History of a
movement by Sam Member and they were just kind of
like inspired by that, I would say, because as I
do point out, they didn't like specify the specific cultures,
which is an issue considering, you know, the tendency that
(20:45):
Westerners have of you know, being to Africa this large
brush as if it's you know, all one way or
the other. Um. But I think what we do see now,
UM is you know, from the Horn of Africa to
South Africa to Nigeria too, I mean recently Sudan. I believe, Um,
(21:07):
there are Africans, smaller number organizing under the mount of anarchism,
and they are anarchic elements that continue to persist on
the continent. Yeah, I mean I think that's like, you know,
I mean one of the things that they sort of
got they got right, was about how like this the
sort of the the sort of renewal the spread of
(21:28):
urban anarchism they're talking about like Chile in particular, they
got right, Um, Indonesia Bangladestra somewhat. But but but I
think I think there's there's another like my, my, my, my,
my biggest issue with them in terms of the way
they think about ecological stuff that this comes This is
(21:48):
something they talk about with like they have this thing
where they think that forger societies are like, Okay, they're
they're they're they're they're they're more careful than most people.
To frame it as like the forging soci ideas can
be a gallitarian, but I think they wind up talking
about these sort of like the way that sort of
(22:08):
forging nomadic society sort of inherently defy the boundaries of
the state, and like that's true, but you can also
have like nomadic forging societies that have that are you know,
hereditary slave societies. And this is this is a problem
because there's a there's a lot in here about that
that that's about sort of like they're they're you know,
(22:29):
they're they're taking this a sort of like soft anti
se of right. Yeah, it has a few lids where
it does specifically say fialization is the cause of like
I think it's like the civilization is genocide, um, which yeah,
and that can't silly, Yeah, by civilization genocide. Sure if
(22:53):
they're saying that they do cause genocide, if you're if
you're trying to make the case that it seems to
be that civilizations, Uh, well, I don't know every civilization
does not commit genocide, but no, but civilization gives you
a constant Yeah, civilization gives you the framework that makes
genocide possible, well, like potentially intentional genocide possible. I don't
(23:14):
know that I would agree with that, because I think
you see examples of genocide from hunter gatherer societies and
from from so societies, and that the obviously documentation on
that isn't as extensive because we weren't documenting things for
a lot of it. But you do have examples from
from what we know of like um, the America's of
their word genocides committed by societies we would call stateless.
(23:36):
So I think I might argue that like genocide is
a thing that human beings do, and civilization because it
allows us to do everything on a larger scale, allows
us to do way better genocides. That's definitely in our
I think. I think my problem with it is is
that they're going back into this sort of like that
they're going back into the you know, there's this inherent
binarya between forgers and sales societies and that you know,
(24:00):
and and specifically they think that that that these sorts
that the foragers ideas are you know, inevitably gonna become
a gualantarian. It's like that's not true, and it's not
true in ways that you can see right now in
like like they're like they're like there are lots of
places right now where you can look at you know,
forging anxieties that are incredibly right. Like there's there's like,
for example, you get sort of you get the Filani
(24:21):
joining like right wing Islamas groups, right and that like
that kind of thing. I think it has a problem
with It's the same thing as looking at indigenous societies
and and seeing them all on one side of the
(24:42):
fight with with colonizing nations as supposed I'm reading a
book about the history of them a Poochay right now,
which are historically like the indigenous group in Chile that
resisted the law, and the indigenous group really and you
could argue in all of Latin America that resisted the
longest and most effectively. But even then, when you look
at like the campaign to the Chilean government in the
eighteen sixties and eighteen eighties, large like significant chunks of
(25:04):
the Mapoocha sided with the government against other mapoo Chay
and like that's the like, it's it's always a mistake.
I think this is a good one of the things
that you get out of the dawn of everything. It's
always a mistake to like look at any of these groups,
hunter gatherers, stateless societies is like one thing or another.
They're people and some of them sucked just like yeah
they're yeah anyway, Yeah, there's there's one thing that I
(25:28):
wanted to sort of push back against. Robbert, you had
said that genocide is a thing that humans do. Um.
I don't think I agree with that assessment um in
this sense, or at least I'd rather I would like
to clarify um. Okay, if you an opportunity to clarify
what you mean by that. I you know, I don't
(25:48):
know that it's just humans, but I think that genocide
is a thing that as long as we have evidence
in recorded history, it seems like we have done not
just against are not just against other humans, but against
other kind of hominid species. We have we have examples
of things that it seems fair to call genocide, going
(26:09):
back further than we have any kinds of written records. Um,
you know, villages in the Balkans that were you know,
burnt in people who like groups of people, tribes and whatnot,
who seem to have been killed in mass and you know,
there's there's other theories for some of that. Some of
them may have been like people trying to stop a play.
We don't plague or whatever. Like. There's not any kind
(26:29):
of comprehensive solidity. But what we do know is that
as long as we have documentations of humans doing things,
we have documentations of things that we could call genocide.
I see, I see, look look into that a bit more.
I appreciate the glarification. Yeah, can I can I do
a Balkans pivot because there's a there's a there's a
(26:52):
thing like like it genuinely disturbed me reading it in
here about the Serbs dream read that the Bosnian genocide
were so that they're they're they're quoting. Its disturbing about that.
Oh yeah, but this is this is a I uh okay,
So they're they're they're doing they're they're reading a quote
from the book Gypsies, Wars and Other Instances of the
wild where he's talking this is about the Boston genocide.
(27:16):
How is this possible in Europe at the end of
the twentieth century was the question that played obsessively through
my mind. What the war in former Yugoslavia forced us
to suggest the fact that people proved willing to make
a conscious and active choice to embrace regression, barbarity and
return to the wildness. Take the serve fighters who dreamed
of a return to the Serbia of the epic poems
(27:37):
were quote there was no electricity, no computers, when the
serves were happy and had no cities, the breeding ground
of all evil. And then this is this is the
next thing that's that's the text coming back and commenting
on it that some modern day militias reflect romantic desires,
while shelling towns, massacring villages, and being killed in turn
should neither surprise us nor necessarily fully validate romance. It does, however, suggest,
(28:03):
along with the honest expression of joy and destruction mouth
by some soldiers in every war, as well as many anarchists,
that there was a coupling of some sort between a
generalized urge to destroy and disgusted at a complex human society.
And there's there's there's another part um only later on
they're talking about ethnic diversity and autonomy will often emerge
(28:23):
both from mutual aid and community and animosity between communities.
I'd like to think, and our history back this up,
that self adantified anarchists will never inflict such pain as
Serb nationalist militias, an example that shows purposely for the Repugnicans.
But we should admit that our wish to function up
is partly driven by the same urge to civilizational dismemberment
that can be found in many interethnic conflicts and in
(28:44):
the minds of fighters more generally. And I think that's fucked.
I think that's true. That's just I think there's commenting
a specific type of anarchist literature, which is like the
make total destroy thing. And yeah, I've definitely I have
observed that in people the same the same urge that
(29:04):
you're you're so broken down by everything that the only
urge that is the only creative urge you have is
to destroy the things around you. I've seen that. I
don't think they're necessarily celebrating that, but they're pointing out
that that urge can be there. When I think they
get really wrong here is that I don't think that's
(29:26):
the urge that that is is like that, that's when
when when you're dealing with interethnic conflict, when you're dealing
with genocide, I don't think that's the urge that's going on.
It'sc s pratically with the Serbs, because the Serbs, like
you know, okay, like when when when an anarchist is
doing mate total destroying right there, you know there, like there,
there's there's a very specific set of things they're attacking
or they're you know, they're attacking building, the attacking the
physical infrastructure of the world. When the Serbs are doing
(29:48):
the Bosnian genocide, like that, they have a very specific
thing they're doing, which is killing Bosnian Muslims. And I
think that's extremely different urge than the sort of like
I don't. I don't think that's about sort of what
it's civilizational dismemberment or whatever. That's about Islamophobia and genocide.
And I think that's a different I think the genocidal
(30:10):
impulse is a I think a very different one than
the sort of the like the impulse to break the
society that has harmed you. Yeah, I think it's important
to draw a distinction between you can kill a shipload
of people without it being a genocide, um. And I
think and it's also one of those things I think
sometimes why people I think why there's hesitation to see
(30:33):
certain acts in early history of genocide is that they're
not as complete as modern genocide. But but what a
genocide really is, and I think it's important to lay
this out. It's not necessarily killing every member of an
ethnic group or a religious group or whatever kind of community. UM.
It is stopping their ability to propagate and continue themselves.
That's why things like destroying churches and destroying the cultural
(30:54):
distoral markers are part of genocide. And it's also why
a lot of genocides they left the women and children alive.
They would kill all the men, and they would take
the women in and they would breed with them. They
might kill the kids sometimes, but it was this The
goal was not necessarily where we need to kill all
of you, it's we want to kill this, this culture,
this population. Um I think the I think, yeah, I
(31:15):
think the parallel he's trying to make here or there
or she? Uh? Is that? Uh? That like that type
of like genocidal cultural destruction is targeted against specific groups.
The difference here is with this type of like you know,
he's he's writting this for other anarchists. He's pointing out,
like our destructive urge, our cultural urge isn't even for
(31:39):
a specific group, it's just for everything, and that can
be unhealthy sometimes sometimes there's ways to do make total destroy.
That's totally fine, but that can go to unhealthy places. Now,
he's not equating like ethnic cleansing with that. He's like
they are like they are different. But when when your
total destroy urges against all of culture, then yeah, that
(32:02):
that can like that's something you should probably ponder. Yeah,
I mean that's definitely I would agree that that's the
thing that's potentially problematic. Right, Like with a number of
different desires. Uh, there's a way in which that can
lead to people doing really fucked up things. Yeah, it's
like it's like it's pointing out that that type of
accelerationism not specific to ideology, but just like accelerationism in general.
(32:25):
I mean, I think when I when I talk about
things like the fact that because not every culture commits
genocides and every civil civilization does, um, and throughout history
there have been more that found the idea repugnant than
found the idea acceptable. Um. But it is really a
consistent thing in history. And I think the lesson with
that isn't necessarily that everything could end in genocide. So
(32:46):
I don't think the lesson is necessarily like, oh you
should look at make total destroy as if you know,
the this kind of trend in anarchist thought could lead
to genocide. It's that people in groups are nearly always
capable of killing a shipload of other people for a
variety of reasons if applied in the proper ways, And
so those of us who seek mass movement should always
(33:08):
be conscious of that, because human beings in large groups
can do wonderful things, but there's a long history of
them doing really fucked up ship sometimes in ways that
surprised the people that got the large group of human
beings together in the first place. The other thing I
(33:31):
wanted to bring up this kind of more circling back
to the dum kind of idea UM, because yeah, a
big part of the book is trying purposely is to
disolution people with this idea of global revolution and dissolution
people with the idea that we can save the earth
because we can't UM. So that's a big thing. And
first I think I think for some people, if you
(33:53):
stop right there and you that's how you end that thought, Yes,
that does lead to dumorism, obviously, like that that is,
that is, but the books, the book doesn't stop there.
The book continues on from there. Now they continue on
from a nihilistic standpoint. I'm not a nihilist. I prefer absurdism.
I prefer discordionism. But those two things are pretty caught
like there. They are more similar than not. UM is
(34:17):
that you can be disillusioned with global revolution and the
idea to save the earth, but that should not change
what we do or how we feel or operate as anarchists.
It's not that we should be disillusioned and then do
nothing and step aside that we should be disillusioned, and
then find that disillusionment itself a form of liberation, like
(34:41):
the freeing nature of being free from this idea of
revolution is that like, no, we are living our lives now.
Don't live for a revolution. Live your life now and
do things now, because that's what you actually have. So
it's like that type of nihilistic, absurdist discordion things. This is,
this is, this is this is where I come back
have a problems with it again because this this is
(35:01):
literally just there is no alternative except it's it's yeah,
and that's do anargy. But I mean, but that's how
I live like that like that, I think, I think
this is a bad I think that's a bad plan.
And I think if if you look, if you look
at what happens with because you know, this, this was
the thing that was really big in the American anarchist movement,
(35:22):
like in you know, from about just and seventeen like
roughly now, and it's like people were rising too. Yeah
that didn't succeed like that, like not really like but
I think like like this is like I think I
think this is like like one of the reasons it
didn't work, Like, okay, this is like the thing that's important.
One of the things is the point of revolutions, even
(35:42):
when they don't succeed, is that for a very brief window,
you actually can like it becomes it becomes possible to
imagine the other world. And what what What this entire
thing is saying is don't do that. That's not that's
not that's that's that's that is not what it absolutely not.
This is okay, I can I finish that sentence? Yeah,
Like yeah, okay, so what what what what? What I'm
(36:03):
saying here is that what what they've abandoned, right, the
thing that they're giving up when they when they give
up revolution, when they're like this is a progressive myth,
this is like uh theology. What what they've abandoned completely
is our human capacity to actually shape a different world.
What they're arguing is that like the the you know,
(36:26):
essentially that the combination of ecological and social forces are
strong enough that humans humans no longer have the capacity
to reshape the world into a way that is different
than this, and that this is now the eternal present,
and you know, and and yeah, inside of the eternal present.
They're saying, you should be fighting for the same things
you should be fighting for, like you know, you should.
(36:47):
You should be in your own sort of local domain.
You should be like, I mean, there are some of
the recommendations are wild, Like I think, I think their
conservation stuff is sketchy given, I mean, it doesn't but
it doesn't apply to an eternal present though, Like they
lay out, like the world is changing a lot and
(37:08):
will for the next fifty years, Like there will be
massive changes and how things are set up in the
next like in the next century, and we need to
take advantage of that. We need to turn those liabilities
into assets and start making those little anarchies like that.
That that is what it's trying to do. And I
would add as well that as it points out the
situations in plastic stooke in Bangladesh, a difference in the
(37:32):
present and will be in the future. You know. What
I think is is trying to be sort of drilled
in here is that at least in the text and
how I read it um is that yes, things will
be different in different parts to wood and probably maybe
they won't be this, you know, or as the what
(37:52):
this is they won't be you know, this one global revolution.
But at the end of the day, Um, I think
what it's trying to emphasize is that we don't have
the structures. And I think what part of what is
trying to emphasize is that we don't have instructures in
place right now to launch an instruction we can meaningfully defend.
And so that is the sort of thing we should
(38:13):
be focusing on. But but but they, but they, but
this and this, this, this is going back to my
problem with it, going going back to the thing where
they go on the rant about how anarchists are like
a permanent cultural majority and will never become a majority.
Is that even even in situations where people had that
capacity and did it they go back, they project back
onto it, go no, no, no, no no, they couldn't have
(38:34):
done that. Like, it's it's not about it's it's it's
they they have a belief and this is something that
they do explicitly say that that anarchist will always be
a permanent minority right there. There will always be an
active but permanent minority. And that is the like like
that specifically, I think is just an actual rejection of
(38:55):
the belief that we collectively can make a better future.
Because if if, if you think our ideas that you know,
if being free right, if if a society, if you
think that that is permanently always going to be a minority,
you are you know, you are condemning. You're condemning the
future to the people who don't believe that. And and
(39:19):
I I understand why, especially if you know, if, if, if,
if the only thing you've ever known is fifty years
of when the new Liberals actually did the thing right.
They took over the entire world, restructure of the entire
world economy, seized every government. Like if if that's what
you live through, I understand why you would think that.
But I think the fact that it was possible to
(39:40):
do it from the other direction is in some ways
a sense that like, yeah, we could do it too.
I don't know, Sorry, I will stop harping on this
one specific point. It just extremely annoys me. I think
it's not giving up the idea that the world can
be better. It's that like, we don't need to have
the majority of people be anarchists to make the old better.
(40:00):
We can still spread our own anarchies and people don't
need to self subscribe as anarchists. But as long as
we start building those systems in the places around us,
people start using them, and people might start like living
them out, even if they don't call themselves anarchists, right, Like,
the majority of people will probably prefer some some type
of state or government. Right. You can even look at
ROSA and be like, yeah, it's still is state issue
(40:23):
in some ways, but some ways not, right, Like, it's
it's going We're not going to get an anarchist world.
That's not going to happen, but we can make it
better through the lens of anarchy. And I think that's
what it's kind of trying to say. Yeah, I I
think it's it's worth acknowledging that, Like, yeah, the majority
of people are never going to be what anarchists are
right now, which is people who comprehensively reject the systems
(40:46):
they live in. Most people are always going to think
more like well, I want to be comfortable, I want
to I support changes kind of that that, you know,
fix this thing that I've noticed as a problem or
that thing. Most people are never going to comprehensively reject
the system. But I do have hope that in time
and given you know space to build things and show
people other ways and improve life for people. You can
(41:08):
get to a point where most people believe a lot
of the things that I think are important. Yeah, And
I think that's what's time. I think that's sorry. I
think that's what the as specificitis UM tend to advocate
for in terms of through the process of social institution
in these larger movements, generalizing the ideas of anarchist ideas
(41:31):
as a whole, making them more common throughout the population.
It's only trying to get each and every poost in
the world to self identify as an anarchist, communist or whatever.
It's more so that you're trying to spread these ideas
to the point where they are I suppose the common
sentiment the popular will Yeah, like I it's it's um.
(41:55):
That's like the point of culture jamming and and and
ship like that. Like it's the the idea that like
it doesn't so much matter, like like like what matters
is inserting the things you think are important into the
culture and getting people to identify with them and understand them.
The terms that they specifically use aren't aren't as important,
(42:15):
like that that's not really what matters. Well, Okay, I
don't think they're arguing that though, because I mean, like
do they have lines like this. We cannot, however, remake
the entire world. There are not enough of us, there
never will be. But then you know, they like they
they specifically talk about the oh well, they don't have
to all be anarchists, and you know, I mean, here's
their line. There was unfortunately little little evidence from history
(42:36):
that the working class, never mind anyone else, is intrinically
predisposed to libertarian and ecological revolution. Thousands of years of
authoritarian socialization favor of the jack boot. Neither we nor
anyone else could create a libertarian or global or ecological
global future by expanding social movements further. There is no
reason to think that in the absence of such a
vast expanse, the global transformation concurrent toward desires will ever happen.
(42:59):
I think, I think think the keyword there is global, Like, yeah,
that's they're trying to break with that, and it's important,
like they're writing this specifically for anarchists who are kind
of already nihilistic, kind of already anti sif right, they
are writing this for other anarchists that this isn't a
book to radicalize a normy or a communist by anarchists
for other anarchists to be like, hey, you already kind
(43:21):
of think the world's kind of going to ship. Here's
a way that we can still do things despite the
world being shitty. Because once you're once you're disillusioned, it's
hard to be illusioned again. Like it's it's hard once
you give up on the idea of global revolution, once
you give up in the idea of global collapse, it's
(43:41):
hard to re enter those even if you see things
happening the world, like there can still be uprisings and revolts, absolutely,
but there is a distinction of between uprising and the
revolts and like a global revolution right and specifically like
the Marxist Leninist sounds. And I'd also like to um
continue the paragraph you're reading from there. We had said
(44:02):
that as anarchists, sweet he had said, or they had
said that, as anarchists, we are not the seed of
the future society in the shell of the old, but
merely one of many elements from which the future is forming.
That's okay. When faced with such scale and complexity, there
is value in non servile humility, even for in such Yeah,
but this this is just this is just giving up.
(44:23):
This is this is the old. It's too complicated, it's
too like and like I think, I don't know, like
it's it's it's it's giving up on it's giving up
on trying to do any kind of on on like
humans as a whole, trying to do any kind of
large scale like you know, like it's trying to do
transformation of what the society. I disagree to continue that
(44:45):
that coote to give up hope for global anarchists. Revolution
is not to resign oneself to anarchy, remaining any to protest.
Seaweed puts it well. Revolution is not everywhere or nowhere.
Any bioregion can be liberated through a succession of events,
and strategy is based in the conditions unique to it,
mostly as the grip of facilitation that area weakens through
its own volition for the efforts of its inhabitants. So
(45:08):
aization didn't succeed every at once, and so it's undoing
might only occur to varying degrees in different places at
different times. Even if an area is seemingly fully under
the control of authority, there are always places to go
to live in, to love in, and to resist from,
and we can extend those spaces. The global situation may
seem beyond us, but the local never is. And I
(45:30):
think that's beautiful. I think that's like a That's one
of the things that keeps me alive is ideas like that, honestly.
And at the same time, I also hold the opinion
that none of us, including this author, is a fortune teller,
you know. The desert's picture of the future is not
the only possibility, you know, And I think in a
(45:52):
lot of ways and a lot of always I believe
that they can and have already been proven wrong, you know. Like,
and there's an issue that I really take a lot
of contention with the book. Part of the book that
really pisces me off is the sort of persistence of
the overpopulation myth. Yeah, I don't remember it being so
(46:14):
consistent since I reread it um a couple of weeks ago.
And also this sort of nonchalance the author seems to
have about like mass die offs and that kind of thing,
you know. I think that that's very troubling to me.
That's very specific to It's a type of anti sive
literature that's like we view civilization is going to progress
(46:35):
towards Jenna side anyway, and the way to actually avoid
more deaths is to kind of help the collapse along
because that will end civilization quicker. So therefore less people,
less people will be born, and less people will have
to die. So that's the type of thinking they have.
I don't necessarily agree with that, um necessarily, but like, yeah,
(46:55):
that is that is very typical of this type of literature.
So it gets because it is written mostly for other
anti sid anarchists, but like, yeah, it's not like pro genocide.
It's saying genocide will happen. So the way to make
less of it is to actually kind of slowly start
kind of help helping the crumbles along essentially and while
(47:17):
still you know, making people's lives better in your immediate community,
like with that, with that very local focus. So again
not not saying I necessarily agree with that, but that's
the that's the type of thought it's engaging with. I mean,
I think that's true of some of it. But there
is definitely a lot of like panic about there's going
(47:39):
to be nine billion people and like population grows. All
the over population stuff is a little iffy. You know,
there is a there's a discussion to have on caring capacity,
but we are not there yet. We right now we
way overproduced for them for the amount of people we have. Yeah,
that and that I don't know. That also fresh it
(48:00):
in me immensely. They're like, yeah, we we have consider
they're talking about carring capacity right and they're like, oh,
we already can't. We have a billion people going hungry.
And it's like, yeah, but that's not about the carrying capacity.
That's just that's that's destrition. Which was literally that and
that idea gained more prevalence after Dessert was written. We
kind of more understood, like like culturally that it is
(48:22):
a distribution issue not necessarily a production issue. Now we
do overproduce, right because and the amount of production we
have contributes this tough like climate change and that is bad.
So we should tone down production, but we should make
the ways that it's more sustainable and ecological. Um. Yeah,
I think that does point towards the data nature of
the text. I think Also my last like thing with
(48:42):
it is I think I think it could have benefited
a lot from like in an indigenous stewardship perspective, because
the way it thinks about its particularly the way things
but wildness versus conservation is just very messy, and yeah,
if it falls, it falls. It does a better job
(49:04):
of it than some other antis of things that I've seen,
but it definitely falls into the like trap of like,
here is the wild and then any attempt to manage
it is uh, you know, is civilization and you need
to go back to the wild, and it's like, well,
this is already stewarded and managed. That is the one. Yeah,
(49:27):
it does fall on that slope of like nature being
another that is sacred, which isn't necessarily a great idea,
nor is it really true. Yeah, this is very two
ten two ten. Yeah, right, So I think the book
is critical conceitation and that sort of binary way, and
I agree that indigenous stewardship perspective was sorely needed. But
(49:51):
at the same time, I do think that the way
that the book criticizes um wherever just points out um
the sual conservation may have been and may still be
new for some people. You know, the idea that these
sorts of government conservation projects which sort of preside over
(50:15):
this sort of static vision of nature and ecology and
stuff that is supposedly threatened by humanity. UM. I think
criticizing that approach to nature it's good. I mean the
sort of romanticization of the wild that is very typical
of anti Seve text and thought. UM is very much
(50:38):
anti Sieve. But I do believe that people should look
ah or should rather resist these sorts of conservation impulse.
As I was rereading it a couple of weeks ago,
(50:58):
I wanted to know, UM, what you guy's thoughts of
the section of the book that speaks of the different
modern different the the idea of fourth and fifth generation
war Oh boy, that's a UM that has been UM
sort of a contributional approach to analyzing conflict so figured
(51:25):
out as you have been in you know, actual war
zoons robot that you might have a thing to see. UM.
I mean, it's the kind of thing that we should
probably cover in in detail on because this is a
lot of like William Lynde stuff. I think he's the
guy who came up with the idea of like fourth
generation war less at least and it's UM. It's basically
(51:47):
the idea. It's the idea that warfare UM today is
conducted through a lot of stuff that's not conventional weaponry, right,
So stuff like UM, like like like putting networks together
to like push social division, you know through UM, social
media UM, or carrying out cyber attacks on infrastructure, disinformation UM,
(52:10):
all of that kind of stuff, which is I think accurate.
I've been reporting on what you could call fifth generation
warfare since some UM. I think it's I think to
the extent that it's relevant here. I think one thing
that people on the left need to acknowledge is that
they have UM been blindsided by the effectiveness that the
(52:33):
far right has adapted to UM the key components of
this kind of warfare. And I think nothing is more
key than social engineering and disinformation UM. And they've been
much more successful at it over the last release in
twos and fifteen in particular, UM than the left hast
by basically everywhere, every single and by I think, every
(52:56):
single measure of of success. And I think this is
something we should say in depth for another day, UM.
But I think that it is worth acknowledging that this
is And I also think that and this is again
part of a bigger conversation. We talked about the concept
of like culture jamming. When we talked about like Operation
mind Fuck you know, which is Discordian idea. Um, all
(53:18):
of which you can see is kind of pre predecessors
to the concepts of fifth generation warfare. I think there's
a strong argument to be made that those efforts by
leftists in the eighties and nineties in particular, actually contributed
to the substantial right wing victories that we're seeing right
now in this space. UM. And I think maybe it's
(53:39):
I think there's a number of reasons for that, um,
including some to some extent, the idea of arrogance that
um that what that we were just too smart, that
they were never going to figure out how to utilize
the same means we had, or to kind of judo
like take the momentum for that and spin it around
on us. But they were and they did, and um, yeah,
that'll that'll lead into another or episode. We'll have to
(54:00):
talk about this in more detail. That's something like Grant
Morrison actually talks a lot about in regards to discordionism
and this type of how how you know he used
to work for a company called Disinformation back when disinformation
was Yeah, and now it's like one of the leading
castes of mass death in the world right, So he
(54:21):
that is something that Morrison talks about a lot in
terms of how they did have that arrogance and now
the same forces that they used in hopes of making
the world better and now being used to regress the
world and make it worse. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I had
a big copy of Disinformation on my coffee table when
I was nineteen. I just ordered good there's some fun
(54:45):
essays in their garret. Um, all right, that'll probably, I mean,
did you have more to say on that? And yeah,
I just wanted to say that, you know, regardless of
the unsettent future, UM, regardless of your stands on get
its message however flawed. UM here now as the minor
(55:07):
goods in Alice Huxley's Island so often repeat UM, we
can and should pay attention to what we can do
to support ourselves for whatever outcome you go through, you know,
projects within the spaces we inhabit. I believe that anarchism
could be the seed of the new will. I do
(55:27):
believe that we have an impact a huge impact on
society and on politics, and I believe there are still
many possibilities for liberty still. Yeah, I do as well.
I think that acknowledging you know, failures both of of
of you know ideas and of methods doesn't mean giving
(55:51):
up hope or or ignoring the successes of those same
things which which we're are also present. Um yeah, so
I don't know, stay optimistic. Read something. Uh doesn't have
to beat eert, but just go go read a thing.
Go read yeah, back of your shampoo. B but especially
if it's Dr Brauner's a lot of good stuff in there. Um,
(56:14):
all right, that's gonna do it for us this week.
Take care for today. At least it could happen here
as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(56:36):
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.