#title Why do we publish such objectionable things?
#author Little Black Cart
#date 08/23/2017
#source Retrieved on 2024-01-30 from <[[https://littleblackcart.com/index.php?dispatch=pages.view&page_id=24][littleblackcart.com/index.php?dispatch=pages.view&page_id=24]]>
#lang en
#pubdate 2024-01-30T07:44:42
#authors Little Black Cart
#topics Little Black Cart, publishing, eco-extremism, post-anarchism
This attempt to clarify obvious facts is in response to the new call to
arms
by [[https://anarchistnews.org/content/not-our-comrades-its-attacks-anarchists][Scott
Campell]] but really isn’t about him. He serves as an excellent example
of an approach to anarchism that we do not share, and so will stand in
for all those who agree with his position but tbh it’s hard to feel
particularly strongly about him specifically.
*** What does a publisher do?
This should be obvious to anyone paying attention but the role of a book
publisher is to produce written material, perhaps from a position,
perhaps for an audience, but always in relationship to authors, readers,
and the world at large.
The first two books LBC published were by communists who believed in the
potential active agency of the essential proletariats. They believed the
wielders of infrastructure could overthrow the world. While we found
their arguments fascinating and their thinking complex (enough) we were
not persuaded by their conclusion. We thought their argument was worth
airing out, fully, but we did not confuse our own ideas, dreams, and
passions for theirs. We were not those books we published. We might be
friends but we are not allies.
Eco-extremism, an idea borne of the body and practice and text that Ted
Kaszcinski, put into practice by a variety of people we do not know, is
compelling because it makes some fascinating arguments and has some
complex, and some painfully simple, thinking within it. We are,
ultimately, not persuaded by their conclusion but we think it’s worth
fully airing out.
The ideas we wish to publish are visionary, world-wrecking, ideas about
a passionate, critical, fiery anarchy unleashed upon the world. Perhaps
we are anachronisms but we believe what we are putting out into the
world can inform future authors as it informs me.
*** The post-anarchist moment
Anarchism has failed a lot of people. We have written and published
about this failure since the Occupy Movement sparked and sputtered, but
it’s worth restating as a frame for thinking about critiques of
anarchism today. Anarchism has always been an idea too big for itself,
with a grasp that far exceeds its reach, and that’s hard to swallow when
there is such desperate need. This world is tearing people apart, from
the environmental destruction, to all kinds of diminishing returns in
late capitalism, to the rise of nationalism in the US (and around the
world), but our role, as we see it, is to play the long game. We accept
the failure of anarchism while remaining anarchists ourselves. One of
our responses to the horrible conditions of this world is to
underpromise what we are capable of. This makes us the target of those
who believe anarchists should deliver the new world out of this decaying
shell. We wish them well, and frankly would benefit if their apocalyptic
vision comes true, but our work is not the same as theirs.
Eco-extremism, the idea that our ecological world is coming to an end
and we should fight hopelessly against it is one post-anarchist approach
we can understand.
Another—which currently takes the form of antifa but which we recognize
in other shades of social anarchist engagement with the current
political crises—states that ideology (to whit, anarchism) isn’t as
important as boots on the ground fighting against our enemies. A fair
point, but one that significantly leaves open the question of where do
the enemies begin and end?
Anarcho-Liberalism, or the politics of compromise, is another
(permanent) form of post-anarchism. I have many peers who have seen and
agree with the anarchist critique of Exchange and the State but who want
the terrain of their conflict with it to be in a social world. Sure,
call-out culture is part of this, but so too is raising kids in a
radical way, with people you share values with, with straight teeth,
humility, and values that are middle-class (although never stated as
such).
This post-anarchist moment shakes out similarly to other post moments
(like the ex-hippies, ex-punx, and ex-vegans, all of which we have
directly experienced too). These post moments involve some people
doubling down on some aspects of the original ideas while abandoning
other aspects of those same ideas, some people forgetting they were ever
involved or what they were involved in, and most people just moving on
in exactly the same trajectory they were on when they started. Since
anarchism is largely a white, middle-class, suburban movement, it is no
surprise that so to is the post-anarchist moment, at least in the US.
And that is why eco-extremism is so interesting. Here are groups of
people taking a hard line, (no pun intended) whose socio-economic
position is not like the people we see passing through. We probably hate
and definitely disagree with these individuals but their practice of
their ideas reflects a culture that we are outside of. We wish we had a
contact who we trusted to know the difference between the rhetoric and
the reality. We know Scott Campbell isn’t that actor, neither is Abe
Cabrera.
*** Atassa
Atassa is relevant to the extent that it explores this seam. I’ll review
some of its contents here. Abe outlines what the eco-extremist position
is. 1) Pessimism towards human endeavors 2) Wild Nature is the primary
agent in the eco-extremist war 3) Listening to the call of the ancestors
against the destruction of a way of life 4) individualism against mass
society 5) indiscriminate attack as an echo of Wild Nature itself. 6)
Nihilism as a refusal of the future 7) Paganism/animism as attempts to
rescue ancestral dieties.
John Jacobi’s article is an attempt to contextualize eco-extremist
thought for a North American audience. It does it by telling the story
of a young man who starts corresponding with Ted Kaczynski and is put
into context with people trying to live the ideas that he preaches (“The
Apostles”). In this excellent piece you learn about the factionalism of
the indomitistas and how ITS fits in with this history of ideas. This is
a history of 21st century eco-radicalism, of which eco-extremism is but
a portion.
There are a few translations in Atassa #1
but the one I’ll mention here is a lesson drawn from The Battle of
Little Big Horn (from Regression #3) which
is about the violence attempted (and ultimately failed) by Sitting Bull
and his peoples attempt to defend themselves against the European
menace. The conclusion is worth repeating “Thus in the response to the
question of means, we say that we cannot limit ourselves to the old
weaponry just because we criticize the technological system. We should
use the weapons of the system against itself. Just as the Native
American participants did not hesitate to use those repeating firearms,
we are not going to hesitate to use any modern weapon that might cause
the enemy casualties.”
Ramon Elani (also an editor of *Black Seed*, hence the tarring of that
project with the same brush as the actions of ITS, a group based in
Mexico) has a piece
called [[https://atassa.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/return-of-the-warrior/][the
Return of the Warrior]] that returns to Pierre Clastres (who engaged
anarchists have been interested in for the past 30 years) and reviews
his work on what makes a society, what makes a state, and how violence
may be the solution to both problems. This thinking is also followed up
in his newest piece in [[http://blackseed.anarchyplanet.org/][Black Seed
#5]] ([[https://godsandradicals.org/2017/08/21/the-way-of-the-violent-stars/][which
is reprinted here]].
This is a review of less than the first half of the first issue
of *Atassa*. You can disagree with it, you can argue with it, but you
cannot confuse it with support for the killing of comrade anarchists,
with authoritarianism, or with murdering people, any more than is
reading *Helter Skelter*, *The Autobiography of Malcolm
X,* or *Monster*, or even the bulk of CCF and IAF material. I agree that
the strategy, ethics, and sociability of these texts should all be
questioned but shouting out emotionally-laden conclusions as if they are
facts is not how to begin. I would love to publish texts that criticize
these ideas and groups. This post-anarchist moment needs this kind of
debate and I’m glad *Atassa* is inspiring this kind of emotional
reaction. I just hope there are followthroughs more complex than the
existing bombastic, moralistic, and accusing internet essays. This is
not to say I’m against bombast, discussing morals, or accusations, but
let’s use them to begin a conversation, rather than end one.
*** Social Struggle
We deeply respect those anarchists who believe that anarchist practice
is social struggle or it is nothing. We do not agree but we respect this
position and apologize that our respect isn’t always clear, as we focus
on other things. We take disagreement as a central part of our anarchist
practice and assume others do as well.
Social struggle can be intoxicating. We have been high ourselves and we
are not saying it is for naught. We are saying that it is part of what
makes interesting people—all of our closest friends have fought the
same pyrrhic battles you are fighting today—but it is only a part. It
is also a bunch of other things that we, and our friends, criticize all
the time. It is often paternalistic, christian, futile, embarrassing,
and self righteous, whereas our nihilistic excesses can seem childish,
funny-not-funny, embarrassing, edgelordy, and insufficiently serious.
These are called different perspectives and our disagreements could
start from the baseline of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each
other’s positions.
LBC does NOT support ITS or violent attacks against anarchists. This
does not mean that we believe that all anarchists are the same or even
on the same team but this so called support we have been accused of
isn’t material, ideological, or real. Accusing us of supporting ITS is a
way of using guilt by (three degrees of) association instead of by
argumentation. *Atassa* is a journal of eco-extremism and is not the
same thing as a group from another country who travel in some of the
same ideas. People who spend their time calling publications (that do
not make calls to action) “authoritarian” and smearing potential
collaborators with a pile of name-calling instead of fighting for the
social struggle they claim to desire, are wasting their time, and ours.